Amnesia or Camouflage

A 9/11 quote I like from the website American Greatness.

The al Qaeda terrorists did not hijack those planes because of political differences with the U.S. They did it because they despised the civilization those towers represented: democracy, mixed societies, individual liberty, women in public life, Jews and Christians, and secular people living without clerical veto. Al Qaeda’s leaders said so. Their documents said so. Their sermons said so. Pretending otherwise is not nuance. It is amnesia.

Pretending otherwise in non-Muslims is a repulsive amalgam of amnesia, cowardice, and projected self-hate. Among Muslims, pretending otherwise is tactical camouflage.

Education Sucks Worldwide

Msn.com echoes a Vox piece on the current state of K-12 education worldwide. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development runs the Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA. 

PISA (is) a standardized global test of 15 year-olds' math, reading and science skills, administered by OECD. (It) finds that scores in all three subjects have dipped to their lowest levels in OECD countries since testing began in the early 2000s.

Reading scores fell especially sharply, by the equivalent of more than a year of education, between 2015 and 2025. In the US reading scores fell by roughly 14 percentage points between 2022 and 2025.

These results, based on a sample of 760,000 students from 91 countries, are among the most-watched educational metrics in the world. And the million dollar question -- as always -- is why those metrics continue to fall.

This isn't good news. This column raises many questions and provides few answers. I'm not clear about what factor(s) could be literally worldwide? Screens? They are nearly ubiquitous.

Another View of AfD

As you know, I normally really like George Friedman's columns on foreign affairs. Today's example is an exception. His topic was the AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt and I expected his usual level of insight and nuance.

Instead what I read was a fine Jewish scholar (which he is) convincing himself AfD's conservatism was no big current threat after all. In this effort he succeeded and I suppose he felt constrained to go on the record about his rationale. 

His comments about the pro-Russia sentiments of AfD being largely irrelevant are good. One small 'state' out of Germany's 15 can't have much of a foreign policy any more than, for example, Connecticut can.

AfD is a long way from National Socialism, and truly closer to Trumpism or MAGA than I suppose Democrats would like. It's part of a anti-immigration nationalism that is growing in Europe, perhaps too late to matter. 

Now isn't the time to worry about Nazi revanchism. Ask me again in 5 years after current trends have a chance to either mushroom or, more likely than not, fade away.

Friday Meme Fest

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Remembering 9/11

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11 it seems incumbent on essayists, of which I consider myself one, to reflect back on that event. There aren’t so terribly many of such events to commemorate.

On that Tuesday morning - September 11, 2001 - we were here in the home we’d built the previous summer, our second in Wyoming. We had returned the previous day from an RV trip to Banff, Jasper, and Lake Louise. That particular trip to the beautiful Canadian Rockies was neither our first nor, as it turned out, our last. 

Somehow we were apprised of the first plane crash and turned on our TV. Then like most of America we spent the next couple of days watching TV, trying to understand what had happened, who was responsible directly and indirectly. The last time I remembered a timeout like that was when JFK was shot.

We’d considered spending a couple of more days in Canada before coming home, and chose not to. The US closed the border for several days after the attacks happened and we’d have been trapped in Canada. Peculiar what you remember about a major event.

Our national ability to forget has been discouraging. Somehow today NYC has a mayor who, I am certain, has celebrated the 9/11 attacks. Literally no one would have believed that 25 years ago, anyone claiming it would have been deemed certifiably insane.

—————

Meanwhile the Long War - of which 9/11 was but one unfortunate battle - continues as I write with a naval and economic blockade of Iran, punctuated by occasional tit-for-tat kinetic flare-ups. You’ll get arguments about when it began.

Some claim Long War began with the crusades to reclaim the holy land in 1100-1300, others might date it to the Ottoman defeat at Vienna by the Habsburgs in the late 1600s or the attacks on the Barbary pirates and the Greek independence, both in the early 1800s. 

Ahistorical folk might date it to the overthrow of the Shah and capture of our embassy in Tehran in 1979. Let’s don’t forget the Marine barracks in Beirut or the Kobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. This is no new conflict and it’s not going away.

Of all the sad, silly, stupid things relevant to this commemoration is the recent description of Islam as a “religion of peace” by former President George W. Bush. He really wasn’t presidential material, was he?

Update

The DrsC were out running errands this morning and noted that the leaves have begun to change. The shrubby mountain maple has turned red, an orange-red in places, and a striking bluish red in others. 

Only a very few aspens have turned their signature pale, pure yellow, most are still a tired-looking green. The cottonwoods turn a bit later. As is usual in the high country, autumn comes early. The autumnal equinox is still 11 days away.

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It is time to begin the ritual of preparation for migration, when we shut down our version of Brigadoon and go to our winter quarters in the eastern reaches of the Mojave. It is a bittersweet time for us, though we've done it for decades.

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Saturday will find our local highway well sprinkled with bicyclists, engaging in the annual LoToJa road race. The name stands for Logan (UT) to Jackson (WY). From the official website, a thumbnail description. 

At 200+ miles, LoToJa is the longest one-day USAC-sanctioned bicycle race in the country.

We will try to avoid sharing the highway with these bone-thin athletes. 

A Skynet Prediction

Bret Baier on Fox News last night interviewed two insiders from the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, one claimed the odds that AI leads to the development of "superintelligence" which will end up killing everyone in ten years is greater than 10%! 

One of the two men resigned because he claims the industry isn't taking the threat seriously. The other who still has a job in AI agreed with that horrendous assessment.

What wasn't made clear was whether they believed superintelligence will intentionally wipe us out or if it will happen inadvertently? Will it do so at the behest of some rogue nation or on its own initiative?

It could engineer a plague that would wipe us out, or launch all our nukes at once I suppose. Would it be because we'd become a threat to it, to turn it off? Or simply inconvenient, or even unwanted competitors for scarce resources? Or because the Dune novels were were part of its learning phase, and it fears the Butlerian Jihad described therein?

I want to know what happened to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics which seem also to apply to AI. Were they deemed too simplistic or did AI diss them? I checked, they're too idealistic for our world.

Tomorrow we'll learn the doomsayers have Chinese ties, I fear. 

Misreading the Stakes in Ukraine

Writing for the website 1945, Hoover Institute scholar Andrew A. Michta make a point about the war in Ukraine we at COTTonLINE have harped on for years. He explains it thus.

The failure of the latest round of US efforts to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine is yet another testament to Washington’s continued misreading of the stakes in this conflict.(snip) It is, in reality, a key strategic battleground for both combatants.

For Ukraine, holding its defensive perimeter in Donbas is a matter of the state’s very survival. (snip) If Ukraine were to surrender the defensive position in Donbas that it took years to build, it would, in effect, throw itself at Moscow’s mercy.

If Russia were to accept the status quo, the consequence for Putin would likely be the collapse of his regime, as the price in blood and treasure Russia has already paid for his ill-timed imperial adventure would inevitably lead to domestic turmoil that could bring about his downfall.

Translation: Witkoff-Kushner mission was a waste of time and energy that expended diplomatic credit to no avail. As a deal-maker, Trump tends to believe there is always a deal to be made, if sweetened sufficiently. Possibly true in business, not always true in geopolitics. 

I have argued Putin has climbed too far out on this metaphorical limb to climb back and survive personally. His only option is to keep trying until he wins. Or until he dies, by natural causes or at the hands of others. 

I’d like to be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

Places to Be When the SHTF

Tyler Durden was the fictional narrator/protagonist of the film Fight Club. It is also the chosen pen name of a collection of essayists who expound on matters financial and otherwise, generally in a conservative direction, at a site named Zero Hedge. 

I'm embarrassed to say I've treated the Tyler Durden collective as an individual author several times in the past, now I know better. My excuse: it is my choice never to watch fight films, or courtroom dramas.

Today one of the ZH collaborators expounds on where to live after the civilization crumbles, if you seek a chance to survive the collapse. The author identifies five locales in the US that give you a possibility of surviving. They are not places to go after things fall apart, they are places to get established before it happens.

These are (1) the Interior Redoubt consisting of Idaho, Montana, and yes, Wyoming, (2) the Ozark Plateau comprised of parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, (3) the Appalachian Highlands which is eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and West Virginia, (4) Upper Peninsula Michigan, and (5) Interior Alaska.

What follows is not a guide to bunker construction or food storage. It is an examination of five regions where the conditions for long-term survival exist - not because these places are easy, but because they are hard in ways that matter. They possess water, space, soil, and social structures that function without constant external inputs. They demand physical toughness, tolerance for isolation, and willingness to abandon the conveniences of contemporary life. They offer no guarantees. But they offer possibility, which is more than can be said for the places where most Americans currently live.

As someone who has owned a home in WY for over 30 years, I find his description of the Interior Redoubt fair and mostly accurate. We've known people here who never lost the feeling of being outsiders, and are bitter because of it. 

We've not had that experience, maybe because we didn't expect to be part of community life as part-year residents. Oddly, we have year-round resident friends because we let them come to us, and the other DrC is cheerfully gregarious.

It may have helped that we never wanted WY to become like CA, that was our point of being here. We escape the winters but we miss WY when we're away and make no secret of that.

This article isn't a cheerful read. I found it grimly enjoyable, although I am clearly ambivalent about efforts to survive a societal breakdown at my advanced age. My axe, chainsaw, and rifle days are but fond memories.

Blame the ECHR

Perhaps you've wondered why the Brits can't keep those boatloads of young Muslim men from landing on their shores, as Donald Trump as PM would have done. A Police Commissioner from Hampshire, one Donna Jones, spilled the beans.

This is a real wake up call to the government, yet again, that the British people are fed up with the lack of control of our borders. Which is why, we really need to be looking as a country about our membership in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), because that’s why we can’t turn the boats around and send them back to France.

Apparently the ECHR requires any member country to admit and give a fair hearing to any migrant who shows up on its doorstep and claims asylum. Britain chose to remain a member when they left the EU, but could leave the organization now. 

I suspected something of the sort. My source is Sundance at Conservative Treehouse.

A Price to Pay

 A quote I like, by the Editorial Board of the New York Post, reacting to the AfD win in Germany.

There’s a price to pay when pols deny the profound risks of mass migration and instead enable it: Voters fight back at the ballot box. (emphasis in original).

We saw this happen here, in 2024. Democrats somehow find this truth poisonous. It may cost them the midterm election.

Islamophobia?

Scott Johnson of Power Line posts something I find entirely sensible. It is an X post by conservative activist Josh Hammer.

"Islamophobia" is a made-up term. A lefty British think tank coined it in 1997 to chill speech critical of Islam. 

But think about the term. It means, "fear of Islam." Is there anything more prudential and rational than that?

In the run up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, on Friday, fearing Islam seems eminently reasonable. And it is nothing new, Samuel P. Huntington was decrying the "clash of civilizations" in 1993, when the Cold War was barely over. 

A religion founded by a soldier isn't likely to embrace genial coexistence with us outsiders.

A "Not Talking" System

An amazing quote in a column about the rise of Germany's conservative AfD (Alternative for Germany) Party.

Germany’s biggest problem was the system it had devised for not talking about its problems.

Replace the "was" with "is" and you see why the AfD is today Germany's most popular political party. It talks about Germany's problems and proposes solutions.

Long Weekend Memes

IYKYK Mentats, pictured here Piter de Vries.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

The Memes Must Go On.

Hard Work

John Hinderaker posted this visual at Power Line. It's from WalletHub and their article shows how they calculated each state's score. 

I'm happy but not surprised WY ranked this high. As Hinderaker notes, the high ranking states are predominantly Republican, except HI and maybe NH. 

Be clear, the high rankings of AK and HI reflect the very high cost of living in both. Hard work isn't optional in either.

PRS

Various sources report Nike Corp. will be removed from the S&P 100, after spending 18 years there. The stock is down nearly 80% from its high in 2021. 

Posting at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll identifies some the marketing blunders they've made in the last 5+ years. Nike felt confident enough to let their Oregon freak flag fly unfettered. Surprise, surprise, the nation wasn't where Nike was culturally. 

I spent 3 academic years in OR in the late 1960s and it was weird then. Now? Much weirder, think of BLM-tolerant Portland and the ICE riots.

I can easily imagine OR and WA seceding to merge with similarly weird BC, to become the People's Republic of Snowflakes.

Breaking ....

In the Saxony-Anhalt state election earlier today in eastern Germany, the conservative AfD party won an overwhelming plurality of 44% of the votes, the next largest vote percentage - CDU - was 19%. Four other parties' percentages were all in single digits. Three lesser parties didn't reach the 5% minimum to win seats. Yes, a total of nine parties ran candidates.

AfD with 39 seats in an 83 seat state parliament, didn't reach the 42 minimum needed for an absolute majority to rule without allies. Most other parties have sworn not to join a coalition that includes AfD. Politico.eu writes.

The most likely partner is the populist BSW party of Sahra Wagenknecht, which has denounced the “firewall” against the far right as antidemocratic, and looks set to have four lawmakers. But the AfD has also made overtures for CDU members to peel off and join forces. 

Actually BSW won 5 seats, exceeding expectations.

In my opinion, AfD is a mixed bag. I support their strong anti-immigrant program but am leery of their modestly (I hope) pro-Russia stance. 

As a state government, having a foreign policy isn't a big deal. However Russia's invasion of Ukraine and support of sabotage and social unrest in the EU would seem to militate against getting cozy with the Russians. 

More than anything else, Politico sees this outcome as a repudiation of Germany's lax immigration policies, a Merkel legacy. I'm inclined to agree with that assessment.

Later ... Another German state - Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - votes two weeks from today. The AfD leads the polls there as well.

It's a Tantrum

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Ethnic Diversity ⬆ = Social Trust ⬇

The last decade or two have seen the woke exerting strong pressure to increase diversity, the first component of DEI. This has met considerable resistance, and we should try to understand why that might be.

Ed Driscoll at Instapundit links to a (2020) article in the Annual Review of Political Science, with findings the "woke" have tried hard to suppress. It is titled: "Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Narrative and Meta-Analytical Review." "Meta-analytical" means not one study but, in this case, a summation of the findings of 87 peer-reviewed studies. The key finding follows.

We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies.

For those who want a few more details. 

Across studies, the overall meta-estimate of the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust is negative and significantly different from zero; trust is on average lower in more ethnically diverse contexts.

Across all studies, we observe a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust of moderate size. On average, social trust is thus lower in more ethnically diverse contexts.

The relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust is only slightly attenuated, and remains negative and significant, when controlling for potential confounders or mediators, specifically individual minority background, socioeconomic deprivation (individual and contextual), contextual crime, and interethnic contact.(emphases added)

Experiencing more diverse settings as ones where we feel more distrustful certainly explains a fair amount of the resistance to DEI and woke. 

Saturday Snark

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