Leftism is all about harnessing the power of pixie dust and expeller pressed unicorn horn oil. I wish the laws of economics and of nature to be different, therefore they are. One way magical thinking manifests itself is the sun-dappled dream that we can get rid of fossil fuels, switch to electric vehicles, the changeover will be painless, and we won’t notice any change in our standard of living.

An electric car is, well, electric, and electric is easy because I can just plug in my Vitamix blender at home to make my artisanal kale smoothie and it just turns on and couldn’t be simpler. So having an electric car will be just as easy!

Michael Lind has a good article in Tablet outlining the difficulties in putting an electric car in every garage. Never mind how we’re going to “cleanly” produce all the electricity these vehicles would consume. Electric vehicles, and especially the batteries that power them, require the kinds of natural resources that don’t grow on trees.

But according to experts on global mineral production who belong to SoS Minerals, in a letter delivered to the British Committee on Climate Change:

The metal resource needed to make all cars and vans electric by 2050 and all sales to be purely battery electric [in the UK] by 2035. To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and 12% of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry. …

Challenges of using ‘green energy’ to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years’ worth of total global copper supply and 10 years’ worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms.

There is not enough cobalt, neodymium, or lithium being mined and refined in the entire world today for Britain to meet its green transition goals in the next generation. And Britain has only 67 million people. The United States has 330 million. The world has nearly 8 billion. Do the math.

“Every once in a while, a politician slips up and tells the truth“

“Lieutenant“ Governor Flanagan did that Monday on Twitter:

She’s right. After three generations of actively creating dependence on government, they have… created dependence on government.

It’s a feature, not a bug. To the DFL, anyway.

Given the glacial pace of John Durham’s investigation, it’s easy to assume that nothing is really going to come of his efforts; it’s a drill we’ve all seen before. Before Lucy pulls the football away yet again, let’s note that Durham did establish something long suspected:

John Durham released a potential smoking gun in the case against Michael Sussmann on Monday night, as he published documents showing the Democratic cybersecurity lawyer messaged the FBI general counsel that he was not working on behalf of any client, when in fact he was working for the Clinton campaign.

So what did Sussman say?

On Monday evening, however, Durham revealed Sussmann conveyed that lie in a text message to [FBI general counsel James] Baker on Sept. 18, 2016 — the night before their meeting at the bureau.

“Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss,” Sussmann wrote to the FBI top lawyer. “Do you have availibilty [sic] for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

Except he wasn’t. He was indeed representing the Clinton campaign. As the linked article from the Washington Examiner explains:

Sussmann’s lawyers have said Sussmann met with the FBI in September 2016 “to pass along information that raised national security concerns” and characterized this as simply “to provide a tip.” The lawyers contended that Sussmann was “charged with making a false statement about an entirely ancillary matter — about who his client may have been when he met with the FBI — which is a fact that even the Special Counsel’s own indictment fails to allege had any effect on the FBI’s decision to open an investigation.”

Durham countered that “the defendant made his false statement directly to the FBI General Counsel on a matter that was anything but ancillary: namely, the existence … of attorney-client relationships that would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.”

“The defendant’s false statement to the FBI General Counsel was plainly material because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign,” Durham wrote.

Do I have any reasonable expectation that Sussmann will ultimately be brought to justice, let alone his clients? Forget it D, it’s Chinatown. And as Sussmann’s client famously said in yet another context:

What difference does it make? We know. And while stories are soft pedaled or buried entirely, they are out there to know. And in the case of the Clintons, it means they won’t be coming back.

If there’s one thing people love, it’s feeling better than others.

And as America has undergone its “Great Sort”, pop psychology has provided a dysfunctional society boundless opportunities to do just that. Those opportunities are scientifically dubious, but just plain feel good, because they satisfy that primal need to dunk on other people.

These opportunities came in successive waves of theories: “Conservative/liberals have better sex lives than liberals/conservatives”, self-adulatory navel gazing about Boomers/Xers/Millenials/GenZs, the brief fixation on the joys and superiority of introversion, endless diagnoses (during the Trump years, “narcissistic personality disorder” was in vogue)…

…and, I suspect, this latest one: pathologizing “stupidity”.

In 1976, a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity.

Stupid people, Carlo M. Cipolla explained, share several identifying traits: they are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Let’s take a look at Cipolla’s five basic laws of human stupidity:

The “five laws” are there, and make sense, more or less.

But I’m wondering – does nobody think this sort of affectation through? Ever?

Because if combine this (I predict) fad-to-be with the fad that is currently ebbing – the “Dunning Kruger Effect – people doing the diagnosing will realize that they are, largely…

…well, subject to which facile, self-adulatory cultural trope?

Again – don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…

Joel Doakes from Como Park emails:

If:

A sane man instinctively recoils in horror from harming another, and later suffers PTSD from the guilt;

A sociopath cares about his own group but not other groups and therefore has no problem harming them; and

A psychopath actively enjoys harming people and seeks out the opportunity to do so; then,

judging from behavior observed on freeways, grocery stores, Twitter and social media, ordinary Americans seem to be sliding from sanity to sociopathy, becoming less empathetic and more emphatic, less generous minded and more generally pissed at the world in general. And judging from crime reports and YouTube videos, young African-Americans seem to be sliding from sociopathy toward psychopathy.

If true, this change will make it easier for all Americans to resort to violence, murder, rebellion, revolution, which is what certain Liberal/Progressive/Leftists seem to desire: an end to the United States as it now exists.

Why has this happened?

Did we fall or were we pushed?

Joe Doakes

Well I’m not going to answer directly, I will remind you that the extremes like it when people feel the need to abandon the center.

Last week the Treasury Dept imposed sanctions on an individual and four related companies that “procured ballistic missile propellant-related materials for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research and Self Sufficiency Jihad Organization (IRGC RSSJO), the IRGC unit responsible for the research and development of ballistic missiles.”

This was in response to “Iran’s missile attack on Erbil, Iraq on March 13 and the Iranian enabled Houthi missile attack against a Saudi Aramco facility on March 25 as well as other missile attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

The individual had “been personally involved in high-level meetings and traveled with senior IRGC RSSJO officials and, in his role as the manager of Sina Composite, procured processing machines for nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) from China using falsified shipping documents.”

One of the companies “has procured centrifuge spare parts used in the production of ballistic missile propellant valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from suppliers in China.”

In response, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said:

“This move is another demonstration of the ill-will of the US government toward the Iranian nation, which is a continuation of the failed policy of maximum pressure by that government against Iran, and this clearly proves the fact that the current US administration, contrary to what it claims, uses every opportunity to level baseless accusations against the Iranian people and impose pressure on them,” Saeed Khatibzadeh said.

“The US claims to be ready to return to full implementation of its obligations under the nuclear deal, while it continues to significantly violate the UN Security Council resolution 2231.”

2231 is the resolution (text here) in support of the original JCPOA. That’s a bit rich, accusing the US of being in violation. The resolution said this of Iran’s missile program:

Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology…

If you believe Iran isn’t trying to build a nuclear missile program, there’s a place for you in the Biden Administration. This would be the same administration currently trying to negotiate a return to the JCPOA with Iran. I always wonder if the Treasury Dept’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ever gets invited to the White House Christmas parties. They are diligent about keeping tabs on Iran. I’m always amazed the commissars in the White House let them issue all these sanctions. It makes all these negotiations in Vienna look rather silly.

What’s more, this Iranian missile program is proceeding with the assistance of China. Factor things like this in when you wonder why China was sliding stacks of dollars to the Bidens.

St. Paul man shoots daughters boyfriend after he allegedly barges into his house with a very bad attitude:

A 56-year-old man told investigators that his daughter’s boyfriend broke kicked in his front door, threatened his daughter, and he shot him.

Paramedics pronounced [“boyfriend” Kaleef] Barnes dead at the scene.

According to police, this killing marked the 13th homicide in St. Paul this year. Last year at this time, the city’s homicide count was at nine. Barnes’ shooting happened just hours after an unrelated shootingThursday evening in the North End neighborhood where one man was killed and another seriously wounded.

The case is still with the Ramsey county attorneys office. Coming weeks after the Hennepin county attorneys office declined to charge a woman for a self-defense shooting in her own home, and apparently declined to press charges against it would be car jacking victim, one might be tempted to feel encouraged that citizens are cleaning the cities up, just a little bit.

But Berg’s 18th law is still in full affect. We don’t know all the details, and if anything, John Choi may be worse at dealing with civilian self-defense shooters than even Mike Freeman.

So your metaphysical appeals in whatever form your worldview recognizes on behalf of the homeowner/citizen are encouraged.

Senator John Marty is apparently working hard to burnish his cred as a progressive extremist.

Yesterday, he introduced a bill to require licensing for gun owners.

And in it, he proved himself a word the successor to Wes “Lying Sack Of Garbage” Skoglund and the “Reverend“ Nancy Nord Bence, in that nut a shingle claim he makes is it simultaneously substantial, original and true.

Seriously:

“For young people, the 15-year-olds who can easily access guns now and commit armed carjackings and murders and other things, you know, they would have to go through training and they would have to go through a process to do this,” said Marty. “And, we would have limits so that some of these 16-year-olds couldn’t go out and buy guns.”

Anyone see the problem in the Senator’s statement?

Anyone at all?

I don’t want to keep seeing the same hands, here.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

I’ve been thinking that donations to politicians were buying access. If some front company in Ukraine donates a million dollars to Hillary’s Haitian Relief Fund, she’ll return their calls so they can express their concerns about US foreign policy. But thinking about it more, that’s gotta be wrong. Everybody knows that system can’t work. She gets calls from all her donors, she makes no promises to any of them, just says pleasing platitudes and moves on. That’s not worth a million dollars.

They’re buying notice.

I donate a million dollars to Hillary’s fund, foundation or library, her staff notifies my staff of actions which could harm me. But not just notice, timely notice, notice given far enough in advance that I can move assets, sell stocks, transfer funds to avoid whatever new tax or regulatory scheme is coming down the pike, and far enough in advance so I can wipe my computers, like with a cloth, or at least ditch my laptop at some rural pawnshop to avoid ‘insider trading’ sanctions by regulators.

It won’t work for little guys like me. Even if I had known three years ago that St. Paul rent controls were coming, could I have positioned myself to take advantage of them (or at least, not be hurt by them)? No. Not enough cash on hand, not nimble enough in the market, not able to take advantage of the warning. But what about Blackrock or Zillow? Could they have used that knowledge to stop buying in St. Paul and concentrate on Roseville instead? Absolutely.

I wonder how long the safe harbor provision is?

Joe Doakes

Depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

What would happen if someone in a position of authority blatantly defied the law? Would a piece of paper immediately appear and envelop them in parchment shackles?

Sulla is remembered as the first Roman dictator to take power by force. He first displayed his military prowess while serving under Marius, and a sharp rivalry developed between the two. The Senate was becoming wary of Marius’ own ambitions and when war broke out against King Mithridates, Sulla was given command of the army sent to deal with him.

In Rome, Marius maneuvered to have command given back to him, but Sulla had the messengers sent to give him the news killed and Sulla marched back to Rome. Sulla was the first to take an army past Rome’s sacred pomerium and enter the city. Sulla regained his power, Marius fled to Africa, and Sulla marched east again.

Allies of Marius (who died in 86 BC) continued to work against Sulla, and Sulla once again marched on Rome, this time decisively defeating his opponents at the Battle of the Colline Gate in 82 BC. The Senate appointed Sulla to the office of dictator, the first in 120 years, but this time with no expiration date. Sulla began a purge of people opposed to him and his friends, and Sulla used his dictatorial powers to undertake many unilateral reforms.

Our own constitution is a marvel of checks and balances designed to keep power from concentrating in a few hands. Power is pushed down towards the people and not the other way around. And yet, it is just a piece of paper. It has no inherent power. It is only our own will to abide by constitutional law and our will to enforce it against those who won’t that give the US Constitution Power.

Berg’s Seventh Law is absolute, and the Left routinely clutches its pearls and sees Republican Sullas on every street corner. Be you Trump or Dubya, you’re a dictator.

Let’s not rehash Obama’s unconstitutional use of the IRS against its political enemies, or its unconstitutional DACA, or Biden’s unconstitutional extension of the eviction moratorium.

My point in all this is a US President as dictator is not the only fear, and indeed is not necessary to erode the protections we enjoy under the US Constitution.

What if instead of one Sulla at the top, there are a thousand Sullas across the land? On school boards, in state assemblies, in bureaucracies, in entertainment executive offices, in corporate board rooms, in banks. What if people with power to affect how we live just decide “I’m going to do what I want. I’m going to take what I want. I dare you to do something about it.”

Vigilance cannot sleep. Wherever a Sulla is found, they must be met with force. I don’t mean physical force. I mean determined political resistance. If Sulla is on the school board, then we are there making ourselves heard. If Sulla is in the Speaker’s chair of a state House, then we fill the seats in front of them with our candidates.

The pieces of paper we hold dear may inspire us, and even empower us, but the foundations of freedom must rest on something stronger than paper. I don’t fear those who would do what they want whether legal or not, I fear those would let them.

Not sure why my comment moderation has run amok.

I’ll work on it as time permits.

I’ll also manually approve comments as I’m able during the day.

…in re his wife’s alleged prompting him to support the January 6 rioters, as viewed by his wife’s text, could be fairly described as ten dollars worth of hype wrapped around a quarter’s worth of evidence.

SCENE: It’s 6AM, at Twin Cities International. Mitch BERG is leaving an airport bar, after having his ritual shot of whiskey before getting on a plane for a business trip. As he turns to walk down the concourse, he almost literally runs into Aaron ROSTON, A writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.   ROSTON is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives. He is wearing a t-shirt that says GAY on the front.

ROSTON: Merg.

BERG: Hey, Aaron. On your way to Florida, I see?

ROSTON: Not bad, for a stupid person. How could you tell?

BERG: Just a hunch.

ROSTON: You’re an idiot, so you should know Governor DeSantis’s bill makes it illegal to say “gay” in Florida. I’m going there to practice civil disobedience and also spend my stimmy checks.

BERG: Civil disobedience?

ROSTON: I’m gonna say gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay…

BERG: Huh. Courageous. Of course you are, and you do realize that the Florida law doesn’t make talking about homosexuality illegal. It just bars teachers from doing spontaneous sex ed classes with kids under the age of 8.

ROSTON: You’re too stupid to be an educator, so I’ll explain this to you. What if I have a kid who has two mommies, or two daddies, and is confused about the situation? What am I supposed to do?

BERG: If a kid has same-sex parents who haven’t explained the situation to the kids, that’s both weird and – here’s a radical notion – their business, not yours.

ROSTON: So you’re a mouth-breathing gay hater. What if I wanted to tell my children…

BERG: They aren’t “your children”. You’re a public employee – a crossing guard, as it happens, but I hear teachers who say the same thing – who is part of a system we, the public, pay to teach our kids how to read, write, do math, think critically, and other skills. So – you were saying?

ROSTON: What if I wanted to tell (makes scare quotes) my students that my partner and I were going axe-throwing over the weekend?

BERG: Then you tell them you’re going axe-throwing. Big whoop.

ROSTON: You moron. And what if I then wanted to tell them that after axe-throwing, we were going to go back to my place and __________ his __________ in the ___________ until ___________ with a…

BERG: (Interrrupting): Well, if it were my five-through-eight-year old, I’d be calling the police and teaching you a lesson about boundaries.

ROSTON: So you hate gays.

BERG: Hey, look – over there! A kid in a wheelchair with a MAGA hat.

ROSTON: WHEREWHEREWHEREWHERE! I wanna make him cry…

(sees nothing)

ROSTON: (Looks around frantically) Where? Merg?

(But BERG has disappeared)

And SCENE

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” – Milton Friedman

“Milton Friedman is no longer in charge.” – Presidential Candidate Joe Biden

“Awesome, dude. Here’s your beer back.” -Diocletian

Joe Doakes

Here’s the article by Joel Kotkin that Mr. D. linked, and that I quoted from on the air.

And here’s today’s music.

Yesterday we took a brief gander at China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an infrastructure project on a grand scale meant to ensure China has access to the natural resources it needs and to facilitate trade going the other way.

In a serendipitous development in the Hunter Biden saga, yesterday the Washington Post published a story accepting as fact the reporting the New York Post did back in October 2020 based on the contents of a laptop that Hunter Biden left in a repair shop.

(This would be the same reporting the fools at Facebook and Twitter tried to stop from spreading. In addition to the reporting the New York Post did, NY Post columnist Miranda Devine wove all the disparate threads into a coherent story of corruption in her book Laptop From Hell.)

The initial reporting on the laptop focused on Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine and his position on the board of Burisma even though he had no experience in Energy etc… That was not the extent of Hunter Biden’s money-grubbing, not by a long shot. He was also chasing deals in China, and the Washington Post story focuses on the China angle.

The deal was years in the making, the culmination of forging contacts, hosting dinners, of flights to and from China. But on Aug. 2, 2017, signatures were quickly affixed, one from Hunter Biden, the other from a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong.

Within days, a new Cathay Bank account was created. Within a week, millions of dollars started to change hands.

Within a year, it would all begin to collapse.

While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.

Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden.

The “Fake news” of 2020 is today’s headline.

I’m not one of those conservatives that bags on teachers as his default setting. My mother’s parents were teachers. My dad was a great teacher. My little sister teaches. Three out of four of them voted or vote GOP. Teachers are as individual as anyone else.

Now, as an example, when bad cops – corrupt sergeants, mobbed-up detectives, thumpers on patrol, sadists in squad cars – emerge, the question pops up; why don’t the good cops do something about the bad cops? Why does the “thin blue line” seem to believe standing with a bad cop is more important than good civilians?

So – let’s take that (perfectly valid) logic and apply it to teachers. Why aren’t the good ones able to do something about teachers like this?

The question is only partly rhetorical.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As my mind wanders, it links unrelated ideas.  For example: 

How deadly is Covid?  How many people died OF Covid, WITH Covid, or merely DURING the Covid pandemic?  It makes a huge difference but the media glosses over the distinction all the time.

Similarly, Miami Beach declared a Spring Break curfew because of a shooting, and a Wal-Mart got trashed by “Spring Break Youths.”  Except there is a striking lack of logo sportswear in the videos.  Are we certain these are UCLA students who brought their pistols to town for a shootout during Spring Break?  Are we certain those Walmart yutes are students from Harvard and Yale?  Could they be locals causing trouble DURING Spring Break? It makes a difference but the media glosses right over it.  

Blaming the wrong people leads to punishing the wrong people.   How can we make good decisions if the media gives us bad information? And that links to Ukraine, and gun control, and FBI racial crime statistics, and inflation, and . . . .

Joe Doakes

If people can’t trust the institutions that make self-government sustainable, what do they think the inevitable end result is?

Beginning Wednesday, China is playing host to a meeting in Tunxi ostensibly on Afghanistan and attendees include various neighbors of Afghanistan. Of greater interest are the side meetings taking place there.

China will host a series of meetings about Afghanistan on Wednesday, featuring representatives of Russia, the US, the Taliban, and South and Central Asian countries, as it ramps up diplomatic engagement with its troubled neighbour.

The meetings in Tunxi, in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui, will be a rare instance of officials from Moscow and Washington meeting since Russia invaded Ukraine last month.

The Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Yue Xiaoyong, China’s special envoy to Afghanistan, would host counterparts from the United States, Russia and Pakistan for the latest “troika plus” talks.

The four-way meeting will be held on the sidelines of a conference of ministers from Afghanistan’s neighbours, at which Foreign Minister Wang Yi will host ministers and officials from Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the Chinese ministry said.

Out of one of those side meetings came this little item.

Foreign Ministers of Russia and Iran Sergei Lavrov and Hossein Amir Abdollahian at a meeting in China confirmed the desire of both countries to strengthen cooperation in all areas, despite the sanctions imposed by Western countries against Moscow and Tehran, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

Russia talking with Iran, in China. What could go wrong? Even though Lavrov has a shooting war on his hands, and has a hostile West to deal with, he still found time to fly to eastern China. A sign, I think, of the value Lavrov saw in making the trip.

What form this joint sanction-busting cooperation might take is unclear, but there are other interesting things to keep an eye on here. China made this comment at the conference (bold is mine)…

It’s almost impossible to put enough lipstick on the porcine Biden administration. All the polls are in the crapper and the only numbers that are going up are in the grocery aisles. Meanwhile, as Joel Kotkin notes, Biden and the rest of the party are doing their best Thelma and Louise imitation, especially where the environment is concerned: 

The cave-in to the greens has increased the Democrats’ economic vulnerability, particularly in the wake of Russian aggression and the continued role of China as the world’s dominant greenhouse-gas emitter. The well-funded American environmental elite lack the grudging sense of realism of their German counterparts, who have been forced to reconsider some of their energy policies in light of the invasion. But in resource-rich America, the green grandees still oppose boosting fossil-fuel energy supplies, despite 80 per cent of voters, and an equal percentage of Democrats, favouring the use of both fossil fuels and renewables. Public support for Net Zero / the Green New Deal hovers around 20 per cent.

You don’t want to get crosswise of the ol’ 80/20 rule, but somehow the Donks have pulled it off. And it’s got the old Clinton hands up in arms. Back to Kotkin:

Cultural issues represent another fault line between the bulk of the electorate and the tin-eared elites of the party. Democrats’ have embraced what former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville scathingly labels ‘the politics of the faculty lounge’, such as support for the increasingly discredited Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to ‘defund the police’. This idea may be beloved at places like Harvard, but among the less elevated mortals it is widely unpopular, even among minorities, including two of the nation’s Democratic African-American mayors, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner and New York City’s Eric Adams.

Voters view crime as the second-most pressing issue, after the economy and inflation. Here again the survey results are equally distressing for the progressive agenda. Voters, according to one recent survey, blame the Democrats for the current crime wave by a margin of two to one. Moderate Democrats, like retiring Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, herself a refugee from Vietnam, found her support for legislation that would penalise undocumented criminals got her labeled as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the party’s dominant progressive mob.

Now it may surprise those of us in Minnesota that Black Lives Matter is increasingly discredited; Esme Murphy and the KARE Bears haven’t mentioned it much. But it should surprise no one that someone like Stephanie Murphy would lose support of the party apparat; on the bright side, she has thus far avoided being called a Russian operative, but it’s early and she might still get the full Tulsi if she’s not careful. Closer to home, it will be interesting to see how self-styled moderates like Dean “Everyone’s Invited” Phillips navigate the electorate.

There’s a long time between now and November, but it’s difficult to envision a reversal of the trends. One should never underestimate the ability of the Republican Party to blow it. Still, the Donks find events in the saddle and all the narrative engineers at their disposal can’t change the prices at Hy-Vee or Holiday. For nearly half a century, Joe Biden has wanted to be president in the worst way. And he’s getting his wish.

Green, “sustainable” energy policies that make middle class live unsustainable.

Transitioning from houses to apartments, from cars to mass transit.

Moving from meat to vegetables, with maybe some insect thrown in as a treat.

Hyperinflation, which serves mainly to make common savings and investment worthless, but does wonders for the wealth of the plutocrats, “futurists” and pols – who will give up no cars, houses, yachts ,warmth or food.

Seems like the “new world order” looks a lot like the old, pre-1776 world order, doesn’t it?

Victor Davis Hanson – perhaps more optimistic than I feel at the moment – in a piece you should read. Pull quote:

So a reset reckoning is coming—in reaction to the “new orders” championed by Biden and the Davos set. 

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility—and arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies. 

What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked. 

I hope he’s right. The boundless stupidity of the “send me more stimmies” set – whose votes count just as much as those of smart people – serves as the counterexhibit.

One reason we study the past is because at its core, human nature is constant. Our fundamental needs and our capacity for good and evil can be recognized in any era. How people in the past reacted to circumstances can be predictive of how people in the present might react when faced with similar circumstances.

I’ll share an example of this. In a well-known passage in his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides records (more like imagines, as he wasn’t there) the Melian Dialogue (Book 5, 84–116), a (one-sided?) conversation between Athens and the people of the island of Melos in 416 BC.

At this point in the Peloponnesian War, Athens was still feeling secure in its naval power. In the first part of the war, Athens had major successes against Sparta at Naupactus, Pylos and Sphacteria. Defeats at Delium and Amphipolis though led to the Peace of Nicias between the two in 421 BC. Meant to last 50 years, it barely lasted 6.

In 416 BC, then, as the peace was unravelling, Athens sent a sizeable force to conquer Melos, the reasons for which aren’t relevant to this discussion. I’ll just add that while it’s easy to think of the ancient Greeks as a bunch of bearded guys sitting around in white robes yammering in the public square about philosophy and democracy, they were very much tribal people.

Old And Busted, One Week Ago: Russian forces, stymied by poor logistics and fierce Ukrainian resistance, start digging in to consolidate their gains around Kyiv and Kharkhiv.

New Flavor: “We’ll ‘conduct an operational pause‘, as a sign of good faith for negotiations”.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is at a coffee shop. He orders an egg souffle – the last one in the fridge. As the CASHIER is giving him the egg souffle, Avery LIBRELLE steps, unbeknownst to BERG, up into line behind.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, fuuuuuuor criying out loud, how ya been…

LIBRELLE: President BIden is showing the value of having a season hand with decades of experience in foreign policy in control.

BERG: Uh…

LIBRELLE: (Ignoring BERG for the moment, speaking to the CASHIER) I’ll have one of the cheese and onion egg souffles).

CASHIER: I’m sorry, ma’…er, si…er (Looks at BERG, terrified. BERG shrugs shoulders) …uh, we are out. We just sold the last one.

LIBRELLE: (Looks at BERG). So you got the last egg souffle.

BERG: Yeah, sorry – they are apparently lo…

LIBRELLE: I wanted an egg souffle.

BERG: I know, right? They’re keto, and they’re…

LIBRELLE: We need to sort this out.

BERG: I mean, I’m sorry. I didn’t plan it this way.

LIBRELLE: We need to reach a negotiated settlement on this impasse.

BERG: I mean, I already have it. I paid for it, I’m about to eat it. What “negotiated settlement” did you have in mind?

LIBRELLE: Someone needs to remove you from this coffee shop, and leave me the egg souffle.

BERG: I find your terms unacceptable.

LIBRELLE: Perhaps you need to just disappear.

BERG: You’ve followed a bag negotiating strategy with an even worse one, one that might be chargeable as assault.

LIBRELLE: It was just a harmless ad lib from my internal monologue.

BERG: Sort of like our putative President’s negotiating style.

LIBRELLE: Hey. That was a Biden joke. And you should talk; your Saint Ronald did the same thing when he told the Soviets to tear down the wall.

BERG: Calling for real estate improvements aren’t the same as asking someone to disappear the leader.

LIBRELLE: What are we going to do about the souffle?

(BERG takes a big bite).

LIBRELLE: Fascist!

BERG: (Muffled, with souffle in his mouth) Naturally.

And SCENE.