IN THE BLOG OF THE ROCOCO MARXISTS:

Shot:

Whenever I go back and forth between Europe and the States, a curious set of facts strikes me.

In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes.

In New York, Washington, Philadelphia, I do the same thing, but it is not the same experience at all. I take broken down public transport to the cafe — everybody’s been at work since 6 or 7 or 8, so they already look half-dead — order coffee and a croissant, both of which are fairly tasteless, do some writing, pick up some mass-produced groceries, full of toxins and colourings and GMOs, even if they are labelled “organic” and “fresh”, all forbidden in Europe, head home — people are still at work, though it’s 7 or 8 — and watch something bland and forgettable, reality porn, decline porn, police-state TV. I think back on my day and remember how I didn’t see a single genuine smile — only hard, grim faces, set against despair, likeimagine living in Soviet Leningrad.

Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food, the media, little things like fashion, art, public spaces, the emotional context, the work environment, and life in general make me less sane, happy, alive. I feel a little depressed, insecure, precarious, anxious, worried, angry — just like most Americans do these day. So my quality of life — despite all my privileges — is much worse in America than it is anywhere else in the rich world. Do you feel that I exaggerate unfairly?

It’s not just an anecdote, of course. Americans enjoy lower qualities of life on every single indicator that you can possibly think of. Life expectancy in France and Spain is 83 years, but in America it’s only 78 years — that’s half a decade of life, folks. The same is true for things like maternal mortality, stress, work and leisure, press freedom, quality of democracy — every single thing you can think of that impacts how well, happily, meaningfully, and sanely you live is worse in America, by a very long way. These are forms of impoverishment, of deprivation — as is every form of not realizing potential that could be.

But I don’t wish to write a jeremiad, for I am not a pundit. The question is this: why don’t Americans understand how poor their lives have become? Is it even a fair question to ask?

— Umair Haque, “What Do You Call a World That Can’t Learn From Itself? Why Don’t Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are?”, Eudaimonia, Monday.

Chaser:

From the very outset the eminence of this new creature, the intellectual, who was to play such a tremendous role in the history of the twentieth century, was inseparable from his necessary indignation. It was his indignation that elevated him to a plateau of moral superiority. Once up there, he was in a position to look down at the rest of humanity. And it hadn’t cost him any effort, intellectual or otherwise. As Marshall McLuhan would put it years later: “Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.” Precisely which intellectuals of the twentieth century were or were not idiots is a debatable point, but it is hard to argue with the definition I once heard a French diplomat offer at a dinner party: “An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others.”

After World War I, American writers and scholars had the chance to go to Europe in large numbers for the first time. They got an eyeful of the Intellectual up close. That sneer, that high-minded aloofness from the mob, those long immaculate alabaster forefingers with which he pointed down at the rubble of a botched civilization—it was irresistible. The only problem was that when our neophyte intellectuals came back to the United States to strike the pose, there was no rubble to point at. Far from being a civilization in ruins, the United States had emerged from the war as the new star occupying the center of the world stage. Far from reeking of decadence, the United States had the glow of a young giant: brave, robust, innocent, and unsophisticated.

But young scribblers roaring drunk (as Nietzsche had predicted) on skepticism, cynicism, irony, and contempt were in no mood to let such . . . circumstances . . . stand in the way. From the very outset the attempt of this country cousin, the American intellectual, to catch up with his urbane European model was touching, as only the strivings of a colonial subject can be. Throughout the twentieth century, the picture would never change (and today, a hundred years later, the sweaty little colonial still trots along at the heels of . . . sahib). In the 1920s the first job was to catch up with the European intellectuals’ mockery of the “bourgeoisie,” which had begun a full forty years earlier. H. L. Mencken, probably the most brilliant American essayist of the twentieth century, led the way by pie-ing the American version of same with his term “the booboisie.” In fiction the solution was to pull back the covers from this apple-cheeked, mom’s-cooking country of ours and say, “There! Take a good look at what’s underneath! Get a whiff of the rot just below the surface!”

—Tom Wolfe, “In the Land of the Rococo Marxists,” Harpers, June 2000. (And included in his 2000 compendium of his non-fiction essays, Hooking Up.)

NO. Facebook Wants Your Face and You’ll Probably Let Them Have It.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Dems Unhinged on Tax Reform, Corporations Dump $$ into Economy and Much, Much More.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FIREFIGHTER: A C-130 drops fire retardant on a scorched hill above Santa Barbara.

BIG, IF TRUE: Dear Democrats, Ownership Isn’t Theft.

THEY SAID HE COULDN’T WIN IN 2016. NOW THEY SAY HE CAN’T WIN IN 2018? Remember all those “experts” who couldn’t conceive of any scenario in which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not win the 2016 presidential contest against Donald Trump. In many cases, the same experts are now predicting Republicans will get shellacked in the 2018 midterm elections because of Trump.

Now along comes LifeZette White House Correspondent Jim Stinson making a solid case for the proposition that Trump won the White House by ignoring conventional political wisdom and passage Wednesday of the biggest tax cut reform in U.S. history points to the likelihood that he will do it again next November. Are our political experts like the generals who are always fighting the last war?

Here’s a sample of Stinson’s analysis: “Wednesday’s triumph enhances Trump’s reputation as the disruptive leader who is keeping his promises and draining the Washington swamp. His tactics have always been disruptive, but now Washington’s GOP Establishment seems finally to be moving in his direction.”

WHY DO YOU THINK? So why’s China setting up shop in the Caribbean?

Monica Showalter:

According to a front-page above-above-the-fold report in yesterday’s South China Morning Post, the extensive plan is a clear bid to increase the Asian superpower’s “influence” in the region. The Post reports:

Beijing’s blueprint envisions the construction of massive infrastructure projects in the small tropical nation, which has a population of about 100,000. They include the construction of a highway connecting the major towns on its main island, which is about four times the size of Hong Kong Island, and a railway line encircling it. The plan also calls for the building of deepwater ports that could accommodate a large number of cruise and cargo ships, a large wind farm to replace diesel-fuelled generators and a modernised airport with more, longer runways. It also sees a future for Grenada as an offshore tax haven for foreign companies or individuals.

And we suppose China will claim it wants nothing in return…

What this is really about is a likely retaliation for the U.S.’s attempt to reassert its naval presence in the South China Sea, standing up for and reassuring our democratic allies in Southeast Asia, most of which rim the South China Sea. Up until President Trump took command, China had been brazenly seeking to extend influence there, building illegal atolls for military purposes in the area, much to these countries’ dismay.

Now that the U.S. is back, China is back, this time seeking to set up a foothold in the U.S.’s traditional sea of influence, the Caribbean.

If President Trump were to make a pointed speech reasserting the Monroe Doctrine, would there be more heads spinning in Beijing — or at the State Department?

JAMES PIERESON: The Demise Of The Blue State Model.

The new tax legislation approved this week by Congress and to be signed by President Trump includes a provision that will cap the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT) at $10,000 per household. (Businesses will still be allowed to deduct those taxes as business expenses.) The other provisions of the tax bill—especially the corporate tax rate cut—should encourage investment in the United States and spur faster economic growth. But the cap on state and local deductions may be the most significant in terms of its potential political consequences. . . .

With the SALT cap in place, governors and legislators in those high tax states will find it more and more difficult to deal with their fiscal problems by raising taxes on wealthy taxpayers and business owners. In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, governors in Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, and California signed legislation to raise state taxes to deal with financial shortfalls instead of making the more difficult choice to reduce expenditures. This may prove impossible to do in the future, given the incentive that wealthy taxpayers now have to pack up and leave for friendlier tax climates.

To survive in a competitive universe, blue state governors and legislatures may have little choice but to reduce taxes and pare back public services and public employment—in other words, to abandon the blue state model.

This is assuming that they will respond rationally, which is not to be assumed.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Columbia Prof Says Trigger Warnings a Threat to Teaching English.

“Wouldn’t this same position apply in all areas of study? Kudos to the professor for standing up.”

YUGE: Trump gives green light to selling lethal arms to Ukraine.

How long before “colluding with Kyiv” becomes a thing?

CLIMATE OF FEAR: Leftists Dox FCC’s Ajit Pai on Facebook, Urge Insane People to Defecate on His Lawn.

SHIKHA DALMIA: #MeToo Run Amok:

Sexual harassment is a serious issue, especially in the workplace. All people deserve to have a comfortable work environment free from harassment. Many of the high-profile heads that have rolled since the #MeToo movement emerged clearly deserved their comeuppance, including, of course, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose multi-decade, sexual predation triggered it all. So did actor Kevin Spacey (who is accused by 24 men, including a 14-year-old boy, of unwanted advances), NBC’s Matt Lauer (who apparently had a button under his desk to automatically lock the door when he was propositioning co-workers), and PBS’s Charlie Rose (who allegedly groped women and exposed himself to them). There were multiple victims and a clear pattern of extreme behavior in all these cases.

But the basis for the defenestration of others is much less clear. . . .

Jenna Wortham wrote in The New York Times that she is unperturbed by the excesses of the movement because she wants “every single man to be put on notice” and “feel vulnerable” just the way women do. But a movement that thoughtlessly and reflexively throws decent men under the bus will discredit itself and hurt its ability to take down the real abusers. That’s a pity, because a responsible reckoning to hold genuine monsters accountable is something that women do indeed need.

Call enough decent men sexual harassers, and people may decide that sexual harassers aren’t as bad as the people condemning them.

REEVALUATING THE F-35: The Pentagon’s Biggest Program Had Its Best Year Ever In 2017.

IT’S GOING TO BE VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE GOP TO KEEP THE HOUSE IN 2018: Nadler Wins Top Dem Spot On Judiciary.

PETER INGEMI: Hezbollah Drugs, and how much Black Lives Actually Mattered to Barack Obama.

The Black Community stood behind Barack Obama and his administration tooth and nail. They ignored the bad economy, the failed policies, the rise of ISIS terror and furthermore in 2012 they turned out and saved him from defeat against a much more competent adversary.

Barack Obama didn’t just betray America by enabling international terrorists in order to allow himself to fund one of the World’s primary backers of said terror, but he did so knowing that the Hezbollah drug trade terrorized black neighborhoods, black families and particularly young black men, betraying those who had been his most loyal supporters.

Those black lives destroyed by the drug trade didn’t matter to Barack Obama or his administration as much as funding Iran did. That’s an uncomfortable truth that many who voted Obama will silently endure rather than admit how badly they have been played.

Obama Administration spokesmodel Ben Rhodes is still on Twitter, and still bragging about the deal he sold to the complicit mainstream media.

SILENT SPRINGSKI: The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia.

Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage.

Having grown up desperately poor at the turn of the 20th century, Lysenko believed wholeheartedly in the promise of the communist revolution. So when the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end. It never did. But in a twisted way, that commitment to ideology has helped salvage Lysenko’s reputation today. Because of his hostility toward the West, and his mistrust of Western science, he’s currently enjoying a revival in his homeland, where anti-American sentiment runs strong.

There’s a lesson here for America’s own “science” worshipping progressives, if only they weren’t so immune to facts and reason.

Plus:

Lysenko promoted the Marxist idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. Put them in the proper setting and expose them to the right stimuli, he declared, and you can remake them to an almost infinite degree.

To this end, Lysenko began to “educate” Soviet crops to sprout at different times of year by soaking them in freezing water, among other practices. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember these environmental cues and, even without being treated themselves, would inherit the beneficial traits. According to traditional genetics, this is impossible: It’s akin to cutting the tail off a cat and expecting her to give birth to tailless kittens. Lysenko, undeterred, was soon bragging about growing orange trees in Siberia, according to Hungry Ghosts. He also promised to boost crop yields nationwide and convert the empty Russian interior into vast farms.

Such claims were exactly what Soviet leaders wanted to hear. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Joseph Stalin—with Lysenko’s backing—had instituted a catastrophic scheme to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, forcing millions of people to join collective, state-run farms. Widespread crop failure and famine resulted. Stalin refused to change course, however.

To Stalin, the famine was a feature not a bug. And the Marxist belief that people can be endlessly reshaped using Lysenko’s methods continues to this day.

IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS IN THE TAX-BILL HOOPLA, IT’S A BIG DEAL: Memory Problem: McCabe draws blank on Democrats’ funding of Trump dossier, new subpoenas planned.

Congressional investigators tell Fox News that Tuesday’s seven-hour interrogation of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe contained numerous conflicts with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting the Republican majority staff of the House Intelligence Committee to decide to issue fresh subpoenas next week on Justice Department and FBI personnel. . . .

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a “friendly witness” to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. “If he could have, he would have,” said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump “dossier” and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier’s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.

Stay tuned.

UNSILENT COUP: The left calls for the overthrow of Trump, then criticizes conservatives for noticing it.

The scolds of the chattering class have spent the last few days rebuking Fox News for wondering aloud if a “coup in America” is underway. Such talk is “irresponsible,” say the Brian Stelters. According to their estimate, warning of a coup is more “inflammatory” than engaging in one. All these suddenly prim nincompoops appear on networks or host shows that regularly feature pols calling for Trump’s impeachment on the most trivial grounds, former “intelligence” officials who encourage insubordination if not insurrection, and pundits who insist that Trump’s cabinet and executive agencies defy him.

Much of the media’s energy is devoted to calling for a de facto coup. The premise of practically every story, from the travel ban to the most basic executive appointments, is that it is somehow “controversial” for a duly elected president to use the powers vested in the executive branch. Trump is apparently not to hire or fire anybody, should never tell executive agencies what to do, should take, not give, orders from diplomats and bureaucrats, should submit to all acts of judicial activism, must never criticize Congress, and should in general stop offering any opinions at all. All of this is deemed “unpresidential” and “scandalous” by the media.

It is comic the lengths to which the media will go to try to mau-mau a Republican president into passivity while seeking to maximize the power of unelected officials. The more undemocratic the figure (provided he is liberal), the more the media demands that his power go unchecked. The media loves bureaucrats, regulators, career diplomats, unelected judges, and other assorted “experts.” They wear the white hats in almost all of the media’s stories while elected officials wear the black ones.

It’s almost like the enemy sees the values of typical voters as something to be suppressed.

WEIRD, I THOUGHT ALL THOSE “NEW GERMANS” WOULD MAKE THEIR ECONOMIC GROWTH UNSTOPPABLE: Germans fear huge loss of jobs from US tax reform.

THE YEAR IS ALMOST OVER.  HAVE YOU ROTATED YOUR CAT?  Cat Rotation: A Primer.

ROGER SIMON: Coming Soon: Trump, Season 2!. “Can ‘Trump’ Season 2 outdo ‘Trump’ Season 1 the way the second season of ‘The Crown’ is said to have topped the first? Trump One certainly had a boffo finale with the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.”

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED:  UVA Won’t Recognize Conservative Student Group That Insists Members Be Conservative.