I’m not sure whether to call Freddie deBoer’s outburst a cri de coeur or a diatribe but it’s certainly a thought-provoking reaction:

You know personally I’ve been achingly specific about my critiques of social justice politics, but fine – no woke, it’s a “dogwhistle” for racism. (The term “dogwhistle” is a way for people to simply impute attitudes you don’t hold onto you, to make it easier to dismiss criticism, for the record.) But the same people say there’s no such thing as political correctness, and they also say identity politics is a bigoted term. So I’m kind of at a loss. Also, they propose sweeping changes to K-12 curricula, but you can’t call it CRT, even though the curricular documents specifically reference CRT, and if you do you’re an idiot and also you’re a racist cryptofascist. Also nobody (nobody!) ever advocated for defunding the police, and if they did it didn’t actually mean defunding the police. Seems to be a real resistance to simple, comprehensible terms around here. Serwer is a guy who constantly demands that he and his allies be allowed to do politics on easy mode, but he’s just part of a broader communal rejection of basic self-definition and comprehensible terms for this political tendency. Also if you say things they don’t like they might try to beat you up. Emphasis on try.

I haven’t bothered to reproduce the copious links in the passage above but they are, indeed, copious.

I don’t post incessantly on Joe Biden’s declining approval ratings. I don’t even post on the subject as much as some strong supporters of him do. I do think it’s worth pointing out that the RealClearPolitics index of polls has actually declined after including polls taken after the hard “infrastructure bill” was passed and sent for the president’s signature. He’s now ten points underwater. That’s not in the danger zone yet but it’s not good sign, either.

But is it really true, as Frida Ghitis suggests at CNN, that the remedy for President Biden’s declining popularity is better communications?

Biden needs to become a better salesman. As CNN’s Jim Acosta noted, “If Trump had gotten an infrastructure bill after all those Infrastructure Weeks, he’d have been flying stealth bombers over the Lincoln Memorial and unveiling the Trump bridge in every swing district in America…”

Trump, of course, is the consummate marketing man. Biden needs to up his game in that department.

And it is nowhere more evident than in impressions about the economy.

The CNN poll found 38% of Americans say the economy is the most pressing problem facing the country. It’s the number one concern of Republicans and the second highest among Democrats, who worry more about the pandemic.

I think that when people go to the market and find the cost of groceries is sharply higher than it was a year they notice. Apparently, Ms. Ghitis think they’re merely misinformed. Whose priorities are out of whack?

I would also add that if Ms. Ghitis thinks that President Biden will rise to the occasion and suddenly become a moving orator she hasn’t been paying attention. Joe Biden has been in the public eye for most of the past 50 years. He has never been a great communicator and his skills have diminished over time if anything. There’s an old saying about teaching an old dog new tricks. They weren’t talking about dogs this old. I wonder whether you can teach a really old dog anything. Particularly when he perceives that what he has been doing is working.

The chart above appears in Bjørn Lomborg’s most recent Wall Street Journal op-ed about optimizing climate policy:

Politicians at the Glasgow climate conference seem to be competing to come up with the most outrageously dire forecast. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called global warming “a doomsday device,” while United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said that humans are “killing ourselves with carbon.” They both get points for alliteration, but neither of these statements is true. As this series has detailed, climate change is a real problem, but often vastly exaggerated. It’s more accurate to conceive of it as something that merely slows humanity’s progress. And there are intelligent ways to mitigate global warming once you understand the real scope of the problem.

The U.N. estimates that even if no country does anything to slow global warming, the annual damage by 2100 will be equivalent to a 2.6% cut in global gross domestic product. Given that the U.N. also expects the average person to be 450% as rich in 2100 as today, that figure falls only to 434% if the temperature rises unimpeded. This is a problem, but not the end of the world.

That means we don’t have to panic but instead can decide policy rationally. Economist William Nordhaus won the Nobel Prize in 2018 for his work on effective climate solutions, and the chart nearby shows the outcome of his model to find the optimal climate policy. His crucial point is that the damage global warming inflicts aren’t the only costly part of climate change; climate policies also create significant economic harm. Since we have to pay both costs, his model aims to minimize their sum.

My immediate reaction was that I doubt it will impress or convince a single climate activist which leads me to suspect that Mr. Lomborg is “preaching to the choir”. My second reaction was that I am deeply distrustful of artifacts like “the average person”. I’m more interested in the impact on the median person. We also might consider the differences in impact between the median human being and the median American. I’ll return to this subject in a bit.

If you don’t believe me use the worldwide governmental response to COVID-19 as a yardstick. Optimal policies based on cost-benefit analysis were rare; much more common were strategies intended to minimize cases of COVID-19. I think it’s arguable that those strategies have proven futilem some would say counter-productive.

Maybe I’m just an incurable optimist but I think it’s possible to persuade climate activists that policies other than those being pursued are more likely to achieve their stated goals. Let me provide several arguments along those lines.

First, as I have pointed out before carbon emissions increase with income. Elon Musk doesn’t just produce slightly more carbon emissions than the average human being he produces a lot more. That it’s not a linear relationship (it’s less than linear) is not particularly comforting—it’s still increasing. That means that measures like carbon taxes which are regressive in their impact won’t accomplish as much as you might think.

Second, as regressive measures are applied the status value of conspicuous displays of consumption like flying to climate conferences in private jets with huge entourages, gas-guzzling vehicles, inefficient homes, and so on actually increases. In other words the effects of those measures are likely to be perverse resulting in more emissions than might otherwise have been the case.

Third, don’t ignore Jevons paradox. As resources are used more efficiently, it may actually spur increased consumption of those resources.

Finally, preaching austerity will never be politically popular and convincing Western politicians to impose draconian restrictions on those least able to affect emissions is not only impractical—they just won’t do it and even if they do they won’t enforce them. Not if they want to keep their jobs. Producing more power from nuclear and reducing carbon in the atmosphere via CCS is much more politically practical.

I found this post by Hakeem Jefferson at 538 on why racist white Republicans vote for black candidates interesting:

Can white voters who back a Black candidate still hold racist beliefs and views?

That question has come to the fore in the wake of Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory in the blueish state of Virginia. Conservatives were quick to counter claims that Youngkin’s win represented the effectiveness of stoking racial fears with results from Virginia’s down-ballot election for lieutenant governor — a contest where the Republican candidate, Winsome Sears, made history by becoming the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, for example, emphatically mocked the notion that “voters called white supremacists elected a Black Lt. Gov.” Conservative commentators on Fox News and Twitter, including Sears herself, also used the historic victory as an ostensible shield against accusations of Republican racism.

He proposes several explanations along with a bit of statistical analysis to back up his conjectures including:

• Racially prejudiced white voters are not opposed to Black candidates simply because they are Black, but because they believe that most Black candidates will fight for “those people” and not “people like us.”

• Black Republicans’ partisan and ideological commitments allay concerns that they are for “them,” not “us.”

• “racial distancing”
• moral credentialing

I think there’s a kernel of truth in this analysis. However, I look forward to Mr. Jefferson’s analysis of why racist white Democrats vote for black Democratic candidates or why black moderates and conservatives vote for Democratic candidates who are much more progressive in their views than they. I suspect it’s largely for the same reasons e.g. moral credentialing or their mirror images e.g. “racial nearing”.

In the New York Times Bret Stephens declaims confidently that the failure of “wokeness” is inevitable:

There are protest movements that, even in ferocious dissent, believe that the American system is ultimately geared to fulfill its inner promises — of equality, unalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness, e pluribus unum, a more perfect union. This is what Frederick Douglass had in mind when, in an otherwise scathing indictment of America’s hypocrisy, he called the Constitution a “glorious liberty document.”

And there are protest movements that have turned against the system, either because they don’t think the system can meet its promises, or because they never agreed with the promises in the first place. “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock,” Malcolm X said memorably. “The rock was landed on us.”

The experience of nearly 250 years is that the first type of movement generally succeeds: emancipation, suffrage, civil rights, marriage equality. They have aimed to build the country up, and bring Americans more closely together, on foundations already in place.

The second type — from the Confederacy to the white supremacy of the Jim Crow era to militant Black nationalism in the 1960s — always fails. These movements want to tear things down, divide Americans, reject and replace our national foundations.

The ideology-cum-protest movement loosely referred to as Wokeness belongs to the second type. Last week it had its first major encounter with electoral democracy, not only in the governor’s race in Virginia but also in a referendum on replacing the police department in Minneapolis and on law-and-order issues in Seattle. Wokeness got clobbered, and not for the last time.

What’s wrong with a movement that, on its narrowest terms, aims to make Americans more aware of racial injustices, past and present? Nothing. In cases like those of Eric Garner, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, non-Black America has had a long-overdue education about the fact that Black lives can still be subject to the same casual cruelties of a century ago.

But, like many movements that overspill their initial causes of action, Wokeness now connotes much more than an effort to reform the police or denounce racial injustice when it occurs. It is, instead, an allegation that racism is a defining feature, not a flaw, of nearly every aspect of American life, from its inception to its present, in the books we read, the language we speak, the heroes we venerate, the roads we drive, the way we do business, the way we select for merit and so on.

I have my doubts.

The persistence theory is the notion that because it did not rain yesterday and it did not rain today it will not rain tomorrow. I think it’s incredibly weak as a predictive tool. It’s true until it isn’t.

There are many differences between today and the 1860s, mid-20th century, and 1960s. The echo chamber has never been so isolating, so pervasive, or able to mobilize. A long-time Gramscian strategy has largely succeeded and has control of the “commanding heights” of the society: higher education and, increasingly, all K-12 education as well, the news media, public intellectuals. Their influence is increasingly seen among the Congressional Democrats, state and local governments, and states attorneys, cf. the Cook County States Attorney.

The theme of the day seems to be people calling other people liars. Democrats are saying that Republicans are lying about CDVID-19. Republicans say Democrats are lying about a long list of subjects including the Steele dossier, COVID-19, the economy, inflation, the situation at our southern border, and critical race theory. Here’s an example of that last one. In his Washington Post column Marc Thiessen says that Democrats are lying about critical race theory:

It has become a refrain on the left and its media echo-chamber following Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race: Critical race theory is not being taught in schools. PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor recently accused Republicans of winning by “lying about critical race theory.” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) declared “there is not a school in Virginia that teaches critical race theory.” Those who say otherwise, we are told, are “dishonest,” hyping a “fake CRT threat,” promoting an “imaginary” issue to “manipulate low information people,” engaging in “race-baiting lies” and blowing a “racist dog whistle.”

This is demonstrably false. Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools, which were ground zero in the debate over the role of parents in their kids’ education, paid $314,000 for critical race theory coaching for its teachers from the Equity Collaborative — a consulting firm that turns critical race theory into practices for “building more equitable learning environments.” In its presentation “Introduction to Critical Race Theory” the Equity Collaborative instructs teachers that racism is “an inherent part of American civilization” and attacks “ideas of colorblindness, the neutrality of the law, incremental change, and equal opportunity for all” for maintaining “whites’ power and strongholds within society.” It also questions “the idea of meritocracy” which “allows the empowered … to feel ‘good’ and have a clear conscience” and concludes with a breakout session for teachers to discuss “How might you use CRT to identify and address systemic oppression in your school, district or organization?”

One Loudoun country parent filed the public record request to find out what took place in these sessions and obtained a set of talking points used by the Equity Collaborative to train Virginia teachers. They were encouraged not to “profess color blindness,” but rather to admit their own “racist, sexist, heterosexist, or other detrimental attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and feelings” and acknowledge that “addressing one’s Whiteness (e.g., white privilege) is crucial for effective teaching.”

It’s not just Loudoun County. In 2019, Virginia state superintendent of public instruction James F. Lane sent a memo to all school districts promoting critical race theory training materials, and declaring “CRT has proven an important analytic tool in the field of education, offering critical perspectives on race, and the causes, consequences and manifestations of race, racism, inequity, and the dynamics of power and privilege in schooling.” And as Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo points out, “Right now, on its website, the Virginia Department of Education recommends ‘Critical Race Theory in Education’ as a ‘best practice’ and derives its definitions of ‘racism,’ ‘white supremacy,’ and ‘education equity’ explicitly from ‘critical race theory.’”

This is true in other states as well. In New York City, school administrators were required to undergo training sessions where they learned that “objectivity” and “individualism” were elements of “white-supremacy culture.” In California, students as young as six are being taught CRT-inspired lessons in white privilege and structural racism.

It no longer appears possible to be mistaken or to convince someone that they are in error. They’ve got to be lying.

I’m not sure that any of these things meet the standards of a lie (telling of an untruth with the intent to deceive). That’s not to say that there aren’t any inveterate liars out there. There are but they’re mostly the usual suspects. I don’t see any of this as a recipe for comity.

With respect to CRT while I do think that junior high and high school students should be taught the truth about slavery and Jim Crow on the other hand I don’t think that CRT or DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) has much of a role in education at any level but I don’t think that people are lying about it, either. I think they’re repeating what they’ve been told uncritically and trying to put the best possible face on things but they aren’t lying as such.

I don’t know how closely you have been following Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial. It’s pretty hard to escape it here in Chicago—Kenosha is almost a Chicago suburb.

From what I have heard of yesterday’s proceedings, the prosecution basically made the defense’s case for them. Now the defense is puttin Rittenhouse on the stand to testify in his own defense which is usually a mistake. All illustrating a point I’ve made around here from time to time: just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you’re a good lawyer.

My own view is that Kyle Rittenhouse was in fact defending himself but he shouldn’t have been there at that time, doing what he was doing and armed. That was a formula for tragedy. From what I’ve heard he shouldn’t be convicted of first degree intentional homicide or recklessly endangering safety. I think he should be convicted of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 and failure to comply with an emergency order for sure.

It also is a case in point for how, when the legal authorities stand down in the presence of violent disorder, somebody else is likely to stand up and the outcome will be worse than enforcing the law in the first place. I hope people learn a lesson from that but I doubt that they will.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the reorganization of General Electric:

How the mighty have fallen—and perhaps will rise again. On Tuesday General Electric CEO Larry Culp announced a split-up of its aviation, healthcare and energy units, capping two decades of market decline. Markets can be unforgiving, but they are the best allocators of capital.

“By creating three industry-leading, global public companies, each can benefit from greater focus, tailored capital allocation, and strategic flexibility to drive long-term growth and value for customers, investors, and employees,” Mr. Culp said in announcing the separation of assets. At least that’s the hope. Shareholders cheered the breakup by driving GE’s stock price up 2.65%.

The Boston-based conglomerate founded by Thomas Edison has in recent years shed its locomotive, consumer appliances, lighting, oil and gas and aircraft-leasing businesses to pay off tens of billions of dollars of debt. Much of its problems stem from its legacy GE Capital division whose bad financial bets nearly sunk the company during the financial crisis.

For decades GE was a symbol of U.S. manufacturing and management prowess, and former CEO Jack Welch was hailed as a business genius. In 2000, the year before Welch retired, GE’s market capitalization hit nearly $600 billion. It’s now $122 billion, a tragic decline for the investors and retirees who had relied on its steady returns. During the bubble years GE relied on swelling profits from its financial arm to stoke shareholder returns.

My experience has been that a move like this is usually a prelude to selling off more saleable portions of the business and, occasionally, abandoning those with less potential. I’ve seen it at close hand 2, 3, 4 times.

Can someone explain to me what’s actually happening with GE?

Could someone please explain to me the opposition to mandates against being vaccinated against COVID-19? I genuinely don’t understand the argument.

Here’s what I think. I think that mandating vaccination is within the power of the states. I don’t think that it is within the power of the federal government and, especially, I do not believe that the president has the authority to require people to be vaccinated via executive order. I don’t even believe that requiring employees of government contractors to be vaccinated ex post facto is within the power of the president via executive order. I also think that issuing such edicts is a formula for a full-employment program for plaintiff’s attorneys.

I also think the states have the authority quarantine people. Whether they have the authority to quarantine people who aren’t sick is an open question.

I think that, although requiring children under 12 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is within the power of the states, doing so would be a more complex matter than such a mandate for adults. Young children’s risk of contracting COVID-19 is so low and the risks of the vaccines are not non-zero. I have no idea of how many children would end up being exempt. The entire exercise could be meaningless.

So, could someone willing to talk about it please explain to me what’s wrong with mandates for adults to be vaccinated?