An Echo of Weimar

Writing for The Hill, Nancy Jacobson observes the extreme left and extreme right pursuing similar “burn it down” goals, using similar means, while at the same time hating each other.

Both have espoused antisemitic views, are hostile to free speech, and are adverse to free enterprise. Both believe the U.S. is a malignant force in the world. Both encourage an endless cycle of politicized retribution and persecution.

This combination of extreme forces was most famously seen in the Weimar era of Germany, after losing World War I and before the Nazis controlled the country. Organized gangs of bullies on both sides roamed the streets dealing out lawless violence to chosen targets (and each other). 

We are mostly still in the talking stage, which is bad enough. Antifa has on occasion gone farther and recent events in Minneapolis suggest the left is mobilizing. 

Allowed to continue, at some point the citizenry becomes disgusted with the violence and the government’s weak response. History suggests a strong man surfaces promising to quell the unrest. No, Trump is not that man. 

However, if the situation gets worse, one of his successors might be. This is not a path down which we need to travel, it doesn’t end well.

Sunday Snark

This⬆ is a maze of mirrors.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's 

Crack Open Some Cold Memes.

Ow, Canada - Poorer than Alabama

Breaking economic news from Canada, their per capita GDP is less than that of Alabama! Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the rending of raiment.

See this series of reactions posted by Ed Driscoll at Instapundit. An apparent Canadian responded thusly (NSFW).

We imported millions of people from third world shitholes and now our country is turning into a giant third world shithole. How is that possible?

Possible? It is very nearly unavoidable. 

The accompanying graph shows more than a quarter of the Canadian populace is foreign born. The US has problems and our foreign born are only maybe 15% (and recently declining).

Acculturation takes time, time we hope we have. Canada’s lump of the foreign born may be indigestibly large.

Goldilocks

As Presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden did little, and that poorly. In contrast Donald Trump has done very much, and of that body of work, much that is consequential and positive.

I wonder if, looking back, historians will develop a theory that both too little and too much presidential action is possible. In the current era, both have been exhibited literally within a single decade. 

Perhaps a theory of the “Goldilocks presidency” will result. A sort of golden mean where neither too little nor too much is ideally done by the nation’s CEO. Let’s call that a COTTonLINE almost-prediction.

It is not my personal preference, however. I find Trump’s hyperactivity refreshing and invigorating after a longish period of “can’t do,” gridlocked government.

Rice Whine

Susan Rice, Obama's UN ambassador, has gone public with a threat to every company, campus, and government employee who can credibly be accused of cooperating with the Trump agenda. Her threat: we will make your life as miserable as the law allows when we Dems return to power. Margolis accurately calls the Rice threat “fascist.”

She threatens that Dems will remember who "collaborated" and those will get no goodies, no grants, no plum committee assignments, no contracts. They will be on the government's and the media's (excrement) lists. Those not imprisoned will become "non-persons."

Imagine if vengeance becomes official Democrat Party policy. Can you think of anything more likely to force MAGA folks and their allies to think thoughts no one in a republic like ours should ever think? 

Thoughts about exercising force majeure to avoid another election where the alternative to winning is exile or a life of torment. Civil war might well ensue.

An SOP of political vengeance is third world madness - banana republic autocrats rule till they die in office of natural or unnatural causes - or they self-exile somewhere with no extradition treaty. The penalty for stepping down in-country is lynching or imprisonment (cf. Brazil, South Korea). It is not our way, it is in fact unAmerican in a literal sense.

If highly placed Democrats don't disavow the Rice vengeance formulation, if they let it stand, be warned. I believe it places continuation of our multiparty elected government at serious risk.

FAFO in NYC

It is early days in the administration of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. His actions so far appear to be calculated to drive both the wealthy and the upper middle class out of town. 

Detroit might be a not-bad model for NYC's future, Mamdani is taking early steps on a path that leads to the Gotham of Harry Harrison's book Make Room, Make Room, and the 1973 film Soylent Green inspired by MRMR.

Downstream from Soylent Green lies the dystopian Manhattan of the 1981 Escape from New York. Seal Team psych washouts yearning to play Snake Plissken lie in wait.

And the people of NYC? They volunteered for what's coming; they voted for Armageddon. Quoting H. L. Mencken, "The common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Influencing Is High Risk

I have noticed every week or two I read about another young influencer dying in their teens or twenties. Being curious I did a web search for "influencer dies young." I found page after page of cases of these deaths.

Somebody should look into this phenomenon, why do influencers often die young? How many are suicides? How many engage in life-threatening behaviors? How many fall victim to accidents? Or are killed by fans? 

One thing is sure, were I an underwriter, I wouldn't write life insurance policies on influencers. They appear to be at high risk of dying young.

Oh, Canada

Politico has a poll of Canadians who are angry with Trump’s America, not viewing us as a reliable ally or friend (out from behind paywall). In a sense, they are probably correct. 

Trump publicly takes a very dim view of nations he believes are “taking advantage of the US” in trade or otherwise. For example, Canada’s current military is a pale shadow of its former self. They know we have to defend them against invasion so they don’t bother. 

Prior presidents put up with Canada’s “spoiled child” behavior, Trump is disinclined to do so. Tough love is more his style. 

He seems much more likely than his predecessors to try to change things he dislikes, See for example, Venezuela and Iran. I’d be very surprised if Trump hasn’t privately considered whether taking over Canada is practical.

A Vibesession

An opinion writer with the unlikely name of Bayta Ungar-Sargon observes we are in a “vibecession” which she defines as follows.

Not a recession—that’s when the economy is bad—but a VIBE-cession: That’s when the economy is good, but the vibes just suck.

And she identifies a reason, supplied by Vox.

White-collar workers likely exert disproportionate influence over how economic conditions are perceived, since we enjoy an outsize voice in journalism and politics. Given that clout, the fact that job and wage growth has been especially weak in white-collar sectors might partly explain the darkening national mood.

To which she adds. 

The fact that white collar workers are much more likely to be Democrats, and political affiliation has become a major predictor for whether a voter thinks the economy is doing well, might explain a lot.

To which I’d add that the bad vibes are the sour feelings of voters who find their TDS exacerbated by Trump’s hyperactivity and omnipresence. I doubt there is much the GOP can do to assuage their angst. 

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Unclear Aims

About the military build-up in the Middle East and negotiations with Iran, Power Line's John Hinderaker opines as follows.

It appears to me that we are in a situation where we have been negotiating for something we don’t really want, a worthless undertaking by the mullahs with regard to weapons, while marshaling a great deal of military force that, however powerful in its own terms, will not prove capable of bringing about the downfall of the mullahs, the only objective we should be working toward.

That's close to my view, as well.

Perilous Parallels

We have repeatedly noted that China appears to be on an economic trajectory similar to Japan, if somewhat less far along the story arc. To see our many mentions, search this site using the key words “China like Japan.” 

Others have seen the similarities too, a recent example is by Ronny P. Sasmita, an Indonesian writing for Asia Times. He draws many parallels between what happened in Japan two decades ago and what is happening in China now.

One factor not similar between the two neighboring economies is governance. China’s is very much top-down and command-driven, Japan’s was much less so. Whether Xi can wield this power to avoid the trap into which Japan fell is unclear at this writing. 

As “the Donald” is fond of saying, “We’ll see what happens.”

No Shrinking Violet

In a column for The American Conservative, of which he is senior editor, Andrew Day decodes the actual message the Trump administration sent Europe via Sec. Rubio’s speech to the Munich conference. I particularly like Day’s description of Trump.

Look at Donald Trump. Look at the totality of his life in business and media and politics. Does he symbolize restraint to you? Are you simple? The man used to split his time between a palace in Palm Beach and the top of a skyscraper in Manhattan with his name on it, cycling through leggy supermodels and eating three Big Macs every meal, before moving into the White House—which he’s currently turning gold.

Not precisely a model of restraint, is our Trump? We’re headed back to the Moon and beyond. Ejecting millions of illegal aliens, reforming government, changing long-held policies, acting the neo-colonial hegemon, settling international disputes, and more. 

Trump is a hyperactive CEO, an over-the-top builder-developer-impresario-raconteur on steroids. He’s gotten our sluggish, no-can-do government to bestir itself, while having the time of his life. 

Trump’s motto could be “Go Big.” Not young, I hope he has the energy to keep going full-tilt until January, 2029.

Malign Influence of “The Groups”

Have you wondered why the Democratic Party keeps getting pulled to the left? To supporting policies that do not have widespread acceptance among the electorate, the losing side of the often cited 80-20 split?

The short answer is that most of their money comes via what I call “victim groups.” That is, organized groups of those who feel wronged by the path our society is now on. Most of us - the 80 - never give politicians a dime.

To access campaign money local Dem. candidates have to align themselves with those groups’ preferred policies, even when the voters of their districts don’t support said policies. It is very much a matter of “who pays the piper calls the tune.” What campaign pros call “the groups” control the purse strings.

Author Alicia Nieves has been a Democrat campaign pro and knows whereof she writes. Her column is a long, thorough treatment of how the Democratic Party keeps getting pulled to the left. It is very much “inside baseball.”

Chalk Up Another One

Writing at PJ Media, columnist Catherine Salgado reports another mass shooting by a transgender individual. This time it was at a high school hockey game in Rhode Island. 

For a vanishingly small slice of the population, trans folk are too often suicides who choose to take several others with them. Presumably they seek revenge against a society that couldn't agree to live in their fantasy world. 

The mentally ill and addicted need inpatient treatment, or failing that, custodial care apart from the rest of us. Doing so would clear the streets and parks of most of the homeless - urban renewal thrown in as a bonus.

Later … Karol Markowicz of the New York Post makes some of these same points concerning trans as an often violent mental illness.

Rubio Puts the EU on Notice

The resent Munich Security Conference, and SecState Rubio’s speech there have been much in the news as reflected in the headlines listed at RealClearPolitics and RealClearWorld. His tough love message was much like Vance’s earlier one, except with sugar coating.

George Friedman explains the “how” and “why” of it thusly.

The Europe of today isn’t what it was in 1945. Economically, the European Union’s collective gross domestic product is a bit larger than China’s. There is no economic reason that Europe cannot protect itself, especially in light of Russia’s recent setbacks.

Given this situation, the reasons for U.S. defense guarantees are no longer relevant. The European economy is revived, and the Russian threat has dramatically declined.

It’s a matter of whether Europe can do what it must do: create a European military under the control of a European state, the funds for which would come from Europe’s collective wealth.

Europe contains as many as 50 sovereign states, speaking nearly that many languages or dialects, with a long bloody history of warfare amongst them. Whether they are able to do what the current situation demands is unclear to me, to Friedman, and most importantly to the leaders of those many nations and principalities. 

These Kingston Trio lyrics, from a song ironically titled "The Merry Minuet," are relevant to the EU's problems with coalescing into a nation.

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles.

Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much!

Qui Bono

The Guthrie kidnapping has captured the public interest almost as much as that of the Lindberg baby. We hadn’t had a celebrity kidnapping in the US in several decades. The Frank Sinatra Jr. and Patty Hearst abductions were 50+ years ago.

Several thousand people with visibility, known wealth, and short memories - like the Guthries - have tended to forget the possibility and got careless. The current case is a wake up call.

Lawyers and economists ask the question qui bono, meaning “who benefits.” Thinking about the Guthrie kidnapping, it occurs to me the private security firms - equipment and manpower - will benefit, enormously. 

People in Los Altos, Montecito, Bel Air, Long Island, Miami Beach, and the tonier suburbs of Dallas and Houston will have taken note and in many cases become worried.

As the weeks go by and the whereabouts of the senior Mrs. Guthrie remains unknown, their worry gets worse. And business for security equipment vendors and installers gets better, as does employment in the bodyguard business. Builders of panic rooms will start getting inquiries, too. Arms vendors will sell more self-protection weaponry.

Saturday Snark

My first student assistant could have

modeled for the Big Boy.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.