A Quote for the Fourth of July

Noah Millman, writing in The Week about American politics:

Authority, in any political system, rests on the consent of the governed; democracy just provides the most effective means for the political class to determine whether the governed continue to consent.

"Most effective" and, I'd add, normally least violent means. For example, Britain's political class just learned, via Brexit, they no longer have the governed's consent to remain in the EU. Very effective indeed.

Have a Happy Fourth

COTTonLINE wishes all readers a happy Independence Day. It is a celebration of our Brexit, when we colonists declared independence from Britain under King George III.

Our country is far from perfect, containing Democrats and other lowlife. However, having visited over 100 other countries, it is still my favorite.

The DrsC and our neighbor Ed will travel to the adjacent state, Idaho, to view fireworks, and do a little "big city" shopping. Idaho is where our nearest Walmart, Best Buy, Penney's, Home Depot and discount grocery live. That's also our nearest access to chain eateries like Outback and Olive Garden.

Verdict: Incompetence

Paul Mirengoff, who writes at Power Line, evaluates nearly 8 years of Obama foreign policy and reaches the following conclusions:

Obama’s fiercest critics say that much of Obama’s foreign policy wreckage is the intended result of his policy. They are right, I think, to some degree.

But Obama didn’t want Brexit. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that he wanted a failed state in Libya, an ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and a Ukraine compromised by Russian aggression.

Obama’s foreign policy failures cannot be understood without reference to his incompetence and inability to understand the world as it is.

Analysis: true, and H. Clinton is his worshipful acolyte.

What Happened to Boris

If you've wondered why the Tories dumped Brexit leader Boris Johnson when Leave passed, Janet Daley who writes for The Telegraph (U.K.) has a scenario that makes sense to me.

I honestly find the theories of a long-standing plot to replace Johnson with Gove when it came to the leadership contest hard to credit for precisely this reason: the Leave campaign did not expect to win. They therefore had no reason to anticipate, and plan for, the vacuum left by the resignation of David Cameron. Everybody was taken by surprise by the depth and breadth of public resistance to EU membership. Suddenly, when it was time to get serious, too many of the participants found the prospect of Boris turning into Prince Hal and renouncing his own inner Falstaff less than credible.

His Falstaff wasn't so very "inner," Boris likes playing the clown, being entertaining.

The Posh Shooters of Dhaka

The New York Times is reporting the gunmen who killed 20 in a restaurant in Bangladesh were young men from the nation's elite.

The men, all in their late teens or early 20s, were products of Bangladesh’s elite, several having attended one of the country’s top English-medium private schools as well as universities both in the country and abroad.

Among them was the son of a former city leader in the prime minister’s own Awami League, the governing party.

Fortunately, all but one earned the Darwin Award for their efforts. It's worth remembering Osama ben Laden was the rich son of a wealthy Saudi family. The 1960s kids in the Weather Underground came from affluent families, too. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised.

The Cosmopolitan Tribe

The New York Times' Ross Douthat muses on his experiences as a cosmopolitan and observes that his globalist peers form a tribe, however much they might deny it. See his mea culpa.

It’s a problem that our tribe of self-styled cosmopolitans doesn’t see itself clearly as a tribe: because that means our leaders can’t see themselves the way the Brexiteers and Trumpistas and Marine Le Pen voters see them.

They can’t see that what feels diverse on the inside can still seem like an aristocracy to the excluded, who look at cities like London and see, as Peter Mandler wrote for Dissent after the Brexit vote, “a nearly hereditary professional caste of lawyers, journalists, publicists, and intellectuals, an increasingly hereditary caste of politicians, tight coteries of cultural movers-and-shakers richly sponsored by multinational corporations.”

They can’t see that their vision of history’s arc bending inexorably away from tribe and creed and nation-state looks to outsiders like something familiar from eras past: A powerful caste’s self-serving explanation for why it alone deserves to rule the world.

Sure enough, Ross, the culpa is yours and your buddies', who probably won't thank you for ratting them out. BTW, Joel Kotkin called your group "the clerisy," which assortative mating is making into a literal tribe. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Kotkin on Populism

Demographer Joel Kotkin, writing for The Daily Beast, takes on the populist, anti-elite attitudes that are sweeping much of the developed world, something he's labeled the Great Rebellion. His thrust is to understand from whence it comes and where it goes.

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing.

Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars raging, poverty-stricken migrants pouring across borders and class chasms growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding. But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act.

The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail.

For all its divergent views, the Great Rebellion has accomplished this: the first serious blow to the relentless ascendency of neo-liberal crony capitalism. The rebels have put the issue of the super-state and the cause of returning power closer to the people back on the agenda.

Caveat: If you read Kotkin's article, you'll discover that nobody at The Daily Beast does copy editing. You'd think Kotkin would be more careful, maybe he expected the publisher to clean it up.

No Substitute

As Independence Day approaches, our nation remains locked in the several conflicts of the Long War, and faces impending conflicts in the East and South China Seas. I believe it is time to recall two quotes of General Douglas MacArthur, cited from a Fox News article by a recent biographer, Arthur Herman. They are:

There is no substitute for victory.

And this advice to Congress:

When men become locked in battle, there should be no artifice under the name of politics, which should handicap your own men, decrease their chances for winning, and increase their losses.

Wisdom from a man who knew how to win battles and wars. Sad that no president since Roosevelt has been willing to follow his advice.

Patronised, Slandered and Distrusted

Another insight into the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, more particularly in England and Wales. Writing in The Spectator (U.K.). Brendan O'Neill cites research which points to the Leave vote being mostly, or at least strongly, one of the poor and less-educated.

Of local authorities with average house prices of less than £282,000, 79 per cent voted Leave; where house prices are above that figure, just 28 per cent did so. Of the 240 local authorities that have low education levels — i.e. more than a quarter of adults do not have five A to Cs at GCSE — 83 per cent voted Leave. Then there’s pay, the basic gauge of one’s place in the pecking order: 77 per cent of local authorities in which lots of people earn a low wage (of less than £23,000) voted Leave, compared with only 35 per cent of areas with decent pay packets.

O'Neill says we know who voted Leave, why did they do so? His answer will interest you:

My take, from talking to numerous Leave voters, is not that they feel slighted by the political class but that they oppose it. (snip) They are sick of being castigated for their way of life. People have a strong sense of being ruled over by institutions that fundamentally loathe them, or at least consider them to be in dire need of moral and social correction.

They feel patronised, slandered and distrusted, not ignored. They feel their working-class culture and attitudes are viewed with contempt.

Many Trump voters feel exactly this way, with much justification. Note the British spelling of "patronised," we spell it with a z.
Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

Your Sunday Snark

Button for sale at a Trump rally, with this caption:

KFC Hillary Special

Two fat thighs

Two small breasts

Left wing

ABC's Martha Raddatz wanted to know if women at that rally found it offensive? They didn't, but said they preferred the "Hillary for prison, 2016" button, showing the candidate behind bars.
Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

Squandering the Advantage

New York Times' snark-mistress Maureen Dowd spends a whole column drawing invidious-to-both comparisons between Donald Trump and Boris Johnson and then, characteristically, finishes with something on-target.

Bill Clinton still has a talent for getting himself — and the wife he supposedly wants to help — in trouble.

Bill’s having a Phoenix airport 30-minute meet-cute with the attorney general in charge of the F.B.I. investigation on Hillary’s emails was a debacle for all three of them.

How could the guy with the gold-plated political instincts not see the problem with trooping across the tarmac to surprise Loretta Lynch with a visit? It’s part of a bizarrely predictable cycle of the Clintons: Just when things seem to be going well, they squander the advantage.

"I am just flabbergasted by it,” Trump said. “I think it’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

For once, he may not be exaggerating.

The issue is lack of character. Wanna bet Bill offered Lynch a Supreme Court appointment? I wouldn't take the other side of that bet. Not that we'll ever be certain ....

Saturday Snickers

Gleanings from Steven Hayward's weekly collection of comics, captioned photos, and wise-ass sayings, as run in Power Line.

First, a publicity still of George C. Scott, portraying Gen. Patton, with this caption:

Mocking Hillary

I love it, 

God help me, I do love it so.

Photo of a dorky-looking Millennial with this caption:

I'm voting for the candidate who got people

killed, covered sexual assaults and

threatened national security

because the other one said mean things. 

A cartoon of the President standing behind a podium in the White House, holding a newspaper story of the Istanbul airport attack. Two voice balloons show what he is saying:

The solution is obvious...      we need to ban airports.

Side-by-side photos of Orlando shooter Omar Mateen and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, with voice balloons.

Mateen: I do this in the Name of Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi and Allah.

Lynch: We May Never Know the Shooter's Motivation.

Two photos, first of two women in a convertible, Elizabeth Warren wearing an Indian headdress and Hillary Clinton made up to resemble the Joker from Batman. Hillary speaks:

Hold onto your headdress, Lizzy! I got this!!

Second photo, the car in mid-air having sailed off a cliff as in Thelma and Louise.

Photo of a Special Ops GI, cradling his M-4, with desert and Blackhawk in background, captioned:

72 virgins huh?

Well then, let's get these boys laid.

I have a strong feeling that sentiment has repeatedly been voiced by our guys in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Your Saturday Snark

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR, no known relation) speaking at the Western Conservative Summit, about the FBI investigation of the Clinton emails, as quoted by John Hinderaker at Power Line.

The FBI still does not have 30,000 emails the expected Democratic nominee for president claimed to have deleted.

It has gotten so bad, the FBI is on the verge of asking Vladimir Putin for his copies of Hillary’s emails.

Working with President Barack Obama, Clinton oversaw a foreign policy that treated allies as troublemakers and our enemies as victims with legitimate complaints about the United States.

EU Like Soviet Union?

Leonid Bershidsky writes about the West for Bloomberg View, from the viewpoint of a sympathetic Russian. Here he writes about supposed parallels between what is now happening to the European Union - Brexit, for a start - and the fall of the Soviet Union.

To nationalists within Europe, the EU with its supranational institutions resembles the Soviet Union in many ways. It's ruled mainly by an unelected bureaucracy, it has a weak parliament, it propagates political correctness.

Most importantly, however, they are worried about what they see as its attempts to erase national identities and promote a sort of European super-identity in its place. Within that narrative, what happened in the U.K. is seen as the beginning of the kind of nationalist awakening that tore the Soviet Union apart.

The analogy has an obvious fatal flaw, though. The Soviet Union was based on coercion. The EU -- whatever may be said of Germany's economic pressure on weaker members -- is not.

There are, however, lessons to be learned from the Soviet Union's collapse. Poorly managed superstates -- also known as empires -- tend to fall apart. Yet jealousy, racism and a stubborn desire to go it alone do not lead to riches.

The nationalists' criticisms of the EU appear valid and obnoxious. I concede free men (and women) are often poorer than semi-slaves,
but . they . are . free.

High School Doesn't Cut It

Bloomberg Markets has a short article on the job market's bias in favor of those with at least some college. See what they write:

Of the 11.6 million jobs added since the rebound took hold in 2010, about 99 percent — or 11.5 million jobs — were filled by people with either at least some college education, a bachelor's degree or better, according to a study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce. Only 80,000 spots went to workers with a high school diploma or less, according to the report.

One of the report's authors argues:

It’s not just a factor of a more educated population, it’s how the labor market is changing. The labor market is demanding a more skilled workforce.

Maybe ... maybe not. Another factor intervenes:

The growing supply of college-educated Americans has also contributed to the stark differences in labor-market outcomes.

Other factors, unmentioned by Bloomberg, might be at play though I'd not expect employers to admit them. Employers who've hired high school or less employees may have experienced substantial dysfunctional behavior (drugs, violence, alcohol, absenteeism) from this group. They may have decided to hire "better socialized" individuals with more education since they're available and less likely to cause trouble.

Finally, hiring only people with education is a covert way to discriminate against blacks and Hispanics, without ever admitting it. I'm surprised the SJWs haven't twigged to this ruse.

Personal Vehicles

I have a further reflection on John Hinderer's musings below about public transportation and the widespread preference for private automobiles, even among the poor. John wrote: "When people can afford to drive cars, they prefer to do so." I'd add, even when they can't afford it, they prefer it.

As a world traveler, I'll share my most vivid memory of the truth of this adage. It happened in mainland China in the mid-1980s. We spent perhaps 10 days in-country touring, staying in hotels and sightseeing.

At some earlier time China had built a vast number of "walking tractors." These resembled nothing so much as an rototiller on steroids, minus the rotor.  These had a liquid-cooled motor mounted on two driven wheels and were designed to pull a plow through the earth.

The operator did not ride, but walked behind steering with two handles somewhat resembling motorcycle handlebars. We saw scores of these but only 1 or 2 being used as intended, plowing fields.

Most had been converted to conveyances. Where the plow was supposed to attach they'd attached the drawbar of a wagon. Across the front of the wagon a board provided a bench on which to sit, steering with the handle bars.

They'd be chugging down the road, invariably sans radiator cap so a plume of steam wafted from the filler pipe, laden with people and goods going to market.  A combination omnibus and pickup truck, cobbled together out of what was on hand. Running, one can almost be certain, on gasoline diverted from state enterprises.

I'll never forget the sight. It is the best example of the indomitable will to individual transportation, in the face of near-overwhelming odds, I've ever seen or expect to see.

Two decades later the unbelievable swarm of thousands of light motorcycles in supposedly Communist Vietnam, some carrying whole families at once, made the same point. People want their own wheels; urban planners would be well advised to stop hating and denying that fact.

Epiphany

If you read a ton of stuff, as I obviously do, you once in awhile run across something that really hits home, something that says to you: "My gosh, I've lived that exact experience." I just this minute had that experience and want to share it with you.

I was reading an interview with Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve and Coming Apart, done by James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute at their website AEIdeas. I don't agree with everything Murray writes - his guaranteed annual income, for example - but much of his work is rock solid.

Pethokoukis asks Murray:

Since you’ve written “Coming Apart” do you know of anybody one might call a “one percenter” who has decided to end their isolation? Have you gotten any feedback like that?

Murray answers:

I was speaking to some students at Harvard, and this was at a dinner that was being sponsored by a couple who were in the room, who were one percenters. So I went over to introduce myself and to chat with them, at which point they said to me, well “‘Coming Apart’ really changed our lives. We decided to move out of Greenwich, we moved to this small town, and got a pickup truck.” And my face sort of went white, and I wanted to say to them, “It was only a book,” and it turned out that they really loved it out there.

The other DrC and I are not one percenters but we live well. As retired professors, we're clearly members of Murray's "cognitive elite."

Almost thirty years ago while still working we moved to horse country acreage, bought a pickup truck, and have loved life outside the cognitive elite bubble. Our pickup - the fifth we've owned - is my favorite vehicle.

We spend 2-3 months a year living in RV parks, where the modal campers are successful blue collar workers. We have the education, the income, and the professional achievements to be members of the cognitive elite, but we don't share their stilted leftist values.

Rural America is where the real people live; it's where we spend nearly all of our time. Like Murray's one percenters, we love it "out there," as Murray admits he also does.

Clinton Character

Bloomberg's Francis Wilkinson writes the story of the Clintons - Bill and Hill - in ten talking points, done as point/counterpoint. The real "meat" is in the first six, the last four are basically padding.

Point One: Bill and Hillary Clinton are victims of a perpetual right-wing smear campaign.
Point Two: Bill and Hillary Clinton evade rules and skirt laws that others are required to follow.
Point Three: The conservative campaign against the Clintons has been so vile and relentless that they are naturally defensive.
Point Four: If the Clintons have really been subject to a quarter century of unscrupulous attacks, then surely they know that they need to be extra cautious about appearances.
Point Five: Politicians aren't machines. They're human beings, with insecurities, neuroses, quirks and blind spots just like everyone else.
Point Six: The Clintons have an uncanny habit of making themselves vulnerable to attack.
Point Seven: Obama benefited from having witnessed what the Clintons were subjected to.
Point Eight: But it won't end with them.
Point Nine: No, it will never end. Because it's politics.
Point Ten: Because it's the Clintons.

It's the recurring crises of their careers, in a nutshell. Like many of us, they're their own worst enemies.

Their joint shortcoming is character. If you'll forgive my wordplay, it needs to be something one has, not merely something one is.

An Improbable Coincidence

The Lucianne.com site carries two fascinating items this afternoon, as part of its today Must Reads. The first, from The Daily Caller, is headlined thus:

Exclusive: Hillary Clinton Scheduled To Meet With FBI On Saturday

While the second, also from The Daily Caller, is headlined:

Exclusive: Was Bill Clinton Plea Bargaining With The Attorney General?

Do you believe in coincidences? Where the Clintons are concerned? Why would you?

Hang on and buckle up, the ride from here to November could be a wild one. Bernie has his fingers crossed. Joe Biden is a doofus, but his record is somewhat clean and he's no socialist.

Prosecution Possible

The New York Times is reporting that Attorney General Loretta Lynch will accept any recommendation for prosecution in the Clinton email investigation brought to her by the FBI or career prosecutors. On the surface, this appears to be good news.

If one is conspiracy-minded, it could also signal that she's covertly agreed with (or been assured by) the FBI and career prosecutors that no such recommendation will be forthcoming. Then, knowing it isn't coming, it becomes safe to announce she will follow a recommendation she knows will never be made.

One thing we know about Washington, a cover-up normally causes the actors more trouble than whatever they're covering up would have done. In this case, the day of reckoning only has to be postponed until late January of next year. If Clinton can get elected, she can pardon anybody involved in a cover-up. And there is always the slender possibility it will never ever come to light, given the MSM's well-documented bias to the left.