SPENGLER: A funeral for a world that never was: Senator John McCain’s grand funeral was also a chance for the Establishment to take one step closer to its grave.

Funeral services are not for the benefit of the defunct, who is beyond our praise or condemnation, but for the living, who know before long that they will follow the honored dead into a cold grave.

Senator John McCain’s funeral was the most ostentatious that Washington has accorded except for a president, and much grander than the 2006 funeral of Gerald Ford, for example. The American Establishment took the opportunity to mourn a world that it imagined but never inhabited.

The eulogies for the Arizona senator, to be sure, were a convenient occasion for the Establishment to show its dudgeon at “the pointedly un-invited President Trump,” as the New Yorker noted, calling the event “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

McCain’s daughter Meghan contrasted what she called her father’s “real greatness” with the “cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice,” a reference to Trump. Politics, though, were less important than the American elite’s collective exercise in self-consolation after the catastrophic failure of its policies and its repudiation by the voters in the 2016 election.

Senator McCain served his country and suffered on its behalf as a prisoner of war, and deserves respect on the occasion of his passing. But the unctuous sea of self-congratulatory declarations of virtue embedded in his obsequies were enough to make the portraits in the Capitol rotunda puke. . . .

In its narcissism and self-adulation, the Establishment will not die of pricking of the thumb, but the other way around.

By civility and bipartisanship, the Establishment refers to the policy consensus that squandered America’s dominant position in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. America had no military competitors of importance when George W. Bush took office in 2001, and an edge in high technology that made the American economy seem insuperable. Since then:

China has taken America’s place as the leading exporter of high-tech equipment;
America faces credible military competition from China;
Real median household income hasn’t grown since 2000;
The civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 67% in 2000 to 63% today;
Productivity growth has languished at 1% a year since the global financial crisis;
US federal debt has between 2000 and 2018 has doubled as a share of GDP;
The American economy became “cartelized, corrupt and anti-competitive,” dominated by a handful of tech monopolies who combined to crush competition.

Other than that, the establishment has done fine.

THEY COULD HAVE WORSE PROBLEMS: At Boeing Factory, Unfinished 737s Pile Up. “Supplier bottlenecks threaten production at aerospace giant’s factory near Seattle.”

Boeing delivered just 29 of the 737s in July, though more than 50 mostly-finished jets roll off the production line each month. Company officials have said deliveries could slow in the third quarter but pick up in the fourth as suppliers get back on track. The 737 is Boeing’s most popular commercial aircraft and a top moneymaker that has helped propel the company’s stock more than 40% in the past 12 months.

The delays are due largely to two suppliers: engine maker CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric Co. and Safran SA, and fuselage manufacturer Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. Both companies have said some of their own small suppliers are struggling to meet demand.

CFM executives have pledged to catch up on engine deliveries that have been several weeks behind. Spirit AeroSystems said it has resolved problems and resumed on-time shipments to Boeing.

I’m thinking of all the new high-paying manufacturing jobs necessary to keep up with demand for Boeing’s jet.

MICHAEL WALSH: Life Under Socialism in Venezuela: Nasty, Brutish, and Stinky.

But other than making life pleasant, civil, and fresh-smelling, what has capitalism ever done for us?

ANDREW COX: Justice Kavanaugh, More than a Puppet. “Far from political ideology, what seems to be of the upmost importance to Kavanaugh, is answering the question: whether Congress has provided the agency with authority to issue whatever regulation is in question? Notably, both in dissents, Kavanaugh has asked this question of the EPA and FCC. With respect to the EPA, Kavanaugh contested the agency’s attempt “to permit regulation of an environmental problem that Congress did not anticipate when it enacted the statute.” And with respect to the FCC, Kavanaugh questioned the agency’s ability to implement net neutrality laws saying: ‘If an agency wants to exercise expansive regulatory authority over some major social or economic activity . . . an ambiguous grant of statutory authority is not enough. Congress must clearly authorize an agency to take such a major regulatory action.'”

SO FAR, THEY SEEM TO HAVE THE “PAWN” THING DOWN PRETTY WELL: Higher education has historically been a bulwark against authoritarianism. Or its pawn. What’ll it be this time? But on Twitter I see academics trying to use this article to argue, essentially, that if you criticize universities, you must be a fascist. Which is convenient.

MEH. THEY’RE INCREASINGLY IRRELEVANT. Our New Hollywood Overlords.

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WITH ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE ON THE RISE, WE NEED THESE: Artificial cells are tiny bacteria fighters. Or something.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Seven People Whose Lives Were Ruined by Social Media.

Flashback: The Shaming Spiral — How social media moralizes for profit.

SEEMS LIKE AN ERROR NOT TO HAVE HIM ON BOARD: Buzz Aldrin slams ‘First Man’ for not showing US flag during moon landing.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: UCLA’s infatuation with diversity is a costly diversion from its true mission. Yes but it’s an iron rice bowl for a lot of administrators.

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WE HOLD ARNE DUNCAN’S UNTRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT:  No, it isn’t true that his Department of Education cared deeply about the due process rights of male students accused of sexual assault.  Or even that it cared shallowly ….

MARS COLONIES: These Stunning Designs Show What Our Future on Mars Might Look Like.

NIKE MAKES SUBSTANTIAL IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION TO TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: Colin Kaepernick Named Face of Nike’s 30th Anniversary of ‘Just Do It’ Campaign.

They may have also helped sell quite a few more copies of Clay Travis’ new book, due out later this month, whose title derives from a famous quote by the man who has sold warehouses full of Air Jordans for Nike since the mid-‘80s: Republicans Buy Sneakers Too.

As Travis notes on Twitter, “Nike is also the official shoe of the NFL. You talk about a major ‘Fuck you,’ to the league on the week the NFL season starts. Holy crap.”

SPACE: Scientists Map Out How to Nudge Small Asteroids into Earth’s Orbit. “A University of Glasgow team explores the subtle art of capturing asteroids without killing everybody.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE: Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims.

THE INSTA-WIFE: Is Feminist Brain-Washing A Form Of Child Abuse?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Top 5 ‘Budget-Priced’ .50 BMG Rifles.

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SCRAPPLEFACE: Warren Admits Shame: Harvard Hired Her on Merit Alone:

“What does it say to our nation’s minority persons that their mentor and leader actually achieved success through dint of hard-work, and skill,” Sen. Warren lamented in a Globe interview. “I’m petrified that this will close the doors of affirmative action opportunity in the faces of my fellow tribespersons…yes, petrified like those majestic forests in Navajo and Apache territory, on the land that the White man now calls ‘Arizona.’”

It’s satire, but is it really?™

WHY DO THEY CALL THEM TOXIC? Toxic metals put heart at risk, even at low levels.

OUT ON A LIMB: End of History Author Francis Fukuyama Thinks Leftist Identity Politics Helped Create Trump.

A great deal of modern politics is about the demand of that inner self to be uncovered, publicly claimed, and recognized by the political system.

A lot of these recognition struggles flow out of the social movements that began to emerge in the 1960s involving African-Americans, women, the LGBT community, Native Americans, and the disabled. These groups found a home on the left, triggering a reaction on the right. They say: What about us? Aren’t we deserving of recognition? Haven’t the elites ignored us, downplayed our struggles? That’s the basis of today’s populism.

As John Podhoretz tweeted in November of 2016, “Liberals spent 40 years disaggregating [the] U.S., until finally the largest cohort in the country chose to vote as though it were an ethnic group.”