ROGER KIMBALL: Our New Secessionists. “Someday, the sudden efflorescence of incontinent animus against Donald Trump will occupy an interesting section in the annals of psychopathology, furnishing, perhaps, a new chapter for Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. But for the moment, the political ergot is too freshly distributed into the metabolism of ‘elite’ opinion to be described calmly. We can only stand by and watch, like an anthropologist at some savage ritual, while the natives rage.”
Archive for 2018
February 13, 2018
PETER SUDERMAN: If You Really Wanted to Ban Porn, Here’s What It Would Take.
To start with, you would need to stop the production of porn by business enterprises, forcing, at minimum, every person who has ever attended the Adult Video News Awards in a professional capacity to immediately find a new line of work.
Next, you would need to find a way to stop a slew of high profile, incredibly lucrative websites from posting, hosting, or otherwise distributing explicit material.
After you cracked down on the pros, you would need to go after amateurs by finding some way to stop tens of millions of iPhone-wielding Americans from making home movies—many of which would resemble professional products in quality—and distributing them anonymously online, or even just amongst trusted circles of friends.
To be at all effective, you would also need to enforce criminal penalties against former professionals who continued to produce porn for the black market. And you’d need to penalize thrill-seeking amateurs as well, which would mean going after, and perhaps locking up, a wide array of sympathetic and otherwise law-abiding individuals from all walks of life whose only crime was to record and distribute consensual sexual activity. You’d also need to punish illicit viewers, whose numbers could easily reach into the tens of millions.
This is in response to Ross Douthat’s weekend NYT piece headlined “Let’s Ban Porn.”
“Let’s ban [blank]” rarely works out as intended.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: ‘It’s humiliating’: plight of Venezuelan middle class is pawn shops’ gain.
Not so long ago, Nelly Osorio used to drive a newish car, drink a glass of whiskey every Friday night and get a manicure at least once a month. But today she is waiting outside a pawnbroker’s to sell off her jewelry.
Like many members of Venezuela’s dwindling middle class, Osorio, 60, has seen her life change drastically over the past two or three years.
The country’s minimum wage is 797,510 bolivars a month – about £2.40 at a black market exchange rate. Osorio still owns an apartment in the eastern part of the capital and as a chemical engineer, she earns 10 times the minimum wage. But every day, she feels poorer.
When her youngest son’s university fees were due, neither Osorio nor her husband had enough in their bank accounts. So she headed to the pawn shop to sell off a gold ring.
“It’s humiliating,” she said, as she waited outside.
Plus, this being The Guardian, the obligatory Command-F:
It’s a mystery what went wrong.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: What students know that experts don’t: School is all about signaling, not skill-building. “The main reason firms reward education is because it certifies (or “signals”) brains, work ethic and conformity. It’s therefore sensible, if unseemly, for students to focus more on going through the motions than acquiring knowledge. Almost everyone pays lip service to the glories of education, but actions speak louder than words.”
LOVE TRUMPS HATE OR WHATEVER: ‘Dammit, they missed’! Lefties spew HATE after Donald Trump Jr.’s wife is hospitalized.
TYLER O’NEIL: Susan Rice Email Suggests Obama Intel. Community Did Not Proceed ‘By the Book’ on Trump-Russia. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
They usually doth.
IN THE EMAIL FROM J. M. NEY-GRIMM: Fate’s Door.
Secrets, like troubles, come in threes. When you possess one of either, two more arrive to keep it company.
Nerine, a sea nymph of the ancient world, knows too much about both.
Each morning, in the chill before the sun’s rising, Nerine and the three Fates stand under the mighty branches of the World Tree, gazing into the depths of the root-girdled Well of Destiny, watching the dooms that must come to pass that day.
When the dawn’s visions show Nerine’s lover—shipwrecked and drowning—all her renounced yearning for him rises anew.
Surely, as handmaiden to the Fates themselves, she might tilt the odds to give her beloved a chance.
Somehow—this day, this morning, this time—Nerine must subvert destiny or lose the companion of her heart forever.
Love and coming of age in a mythic Mediterranean where the gods and goddesses of old shape history.
AN UNDERWATER ECOSYSTEM HIDDEN FOR 120,000 YEARS: Scientists to explore hidden water world exposed by iceberg’s split.
THERE WERE ROMANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO? WHO KNEW! Toga-wearing men found on ancient Roman mosaic in Israel.
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: New Yorkers won’t wear flu masks unless they’re fashionable.
HARVEY WEINSTEIN JUNIOR HIGH? School tells students they must ‘say yes’ when asked to dance at Valentine’s Day party.
UH? I’M FAMOUS NOW? Dinosaurs.
MY FRIEND AMANDA CONTINUES TO READ COMMUNISTS: Look, I’ve talked to her about masochism, okay? But at least she’s fisking them, right? Lenin-hulk Smash and Grab Power- On The State And Revolution Part 3– by Amanda S. Green.
FROM MY FRIEND LARRY CORREIA: Fisking the “Stop Telling Poor People to Cook” Doofus, with Special Guest, My Mom.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE WEIMAR ERA: Over at Ed Driscoll.com I have a lengthy review of the new Netflix series, Babylon Berlin.
(Bumped.)
WAS ABORTION BARBIE WEARING HER TAMPON EARRINGS? Wendy Davis: Pelosi Fan or Opportunist?
WHAT YOU’D EXPECT: From the Cocaine-Encrusted Fingers of Chelsea Handler Comes…
OBAMA’S SHOWS HIM LOST IN THE WEEDS: Smithsonian Reveals The Obamas Official Portraits And They Are Interesting.
February 12, 2018
OUT TOMORROW: My latest from Encounter Books: The Judiciary’s Class War, in which I explore the consequences of having one branch of government reserved for people who are wealthy and have post-graduate degrees, and offer some solutions. Order a copy! You’ll be glad you did. And so will I!
THE OBAMA PORTRAITS ARE GETTING MIXED REVIEWS. But personally, I feel that these capture their essence better:
JULIETTE OKINYI OCHIENG: I don’t miss George W. Bush anymore. “The silence during his own administration and the silence during the Obama Administration seemed characteristic of GWB. He let his actions do the talking, or so it seemed. But now Trump’s presidency seems to have loosened GWB’s tongue. Bush’s criticism of President Trump itself isn’t the point; it’s where he did it, his own hypocrisy, and most importantly, what his criticism is.”
HERE’S TONIGHT’S OPEN THREAD. Party on!