WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF MASS DEATH:  Ebola: OK, it’s crunch time.

AFTER ALL, COMMUNISM HAS ONLY KILLED 100 MILLION. LET’S FIND OUT:  What’s your comfort number, Lefties?

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED. THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE:  Muy caliente: Occasionally-Cortex goes full Stazi!

ROSS DOUTHAT ON OUR SORRY NEW ARISTOCRACY:

But then the WASPs themselves decided to dissolve their own aristocracy, and transform their once-Protestant universities into a secular mass-opportunity system — a more democratic way of education, in which anyone with enough talent could climb the ladder, and personal achievement and technical expertise would be prized above all else.

This was meritocracy, the system that we now take for granted. And for several reasons it didn’t work as planned.

First, meritocracy segregates talent rather than dispersing it. By plucking the highest achievers from all over the country and encouraging them to cluster together in the same few cities, it robs localities of their potential leaders — so that instead of an Eastern establishment negotiating with overlapping groups of regional elites (or with working-class or ethnic leaders), you have a mass upper class segregated from demoralized peripheries.

Second, the meritocratic elite inevitably tends back toward aristocracy, because any definition of “merit” you choose will be easier for the children of these self-segregated meritocrats to achieve.

But even as it restratifies society, the meritocratic order also insists that everything its high-achievers have is justly earned. “He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple,” Ann Richards famously quipped of George H.W. Bush; well, the typical meritocrat is born on third base, hustles home, and gets praised as if he just hit a grand slam.

This spirit discourages inherited responsibility and cultural stewardship; it brushes away the disciplines of duty; it makes the past seem irrelevant, because everyone is supposed to come from the same nowhere and rule based on technique alone.

As a consequence, meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice. The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era and the “smartest guys in the room” decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley.

We have the worst political class in history, one full of contempt for the people and nation it rules.

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TEACH WOMEN NOT TO SEXT MINORS: Former Miss Kentucky charged with sending naked selfies to underage student. “It is claimed Bearse, a teacher at Andrew Jackson Middle School in Cross Lanes, sent a 15-year-old boy at least four topless photos. In interviews from her pageant days she said she always wanted to be an elementary school teacher.”

LAURENCE JARVIK: The Unforgettable William Barr.

OPEN THREAD: Comment on the day’s events, with humor, pith, and pungency.

AT AMAZON, save on this computerized star-locating telescope from Celestron. Or go with this beginner’s model.

FLASHBACK: Michael Bloomberg suggests disarming minorities to ‘keep them alive.’

IS RAND PAUL RIGHT ABOUT SPECIAL PROSECUTORS BEING WRONG?

You may also wish to read what Peter Morgan and I wrote.

OUR MORAL BETTERS: “What starlet was in danger from Harvey Weinstein, when Streep knew about him, and kept his secret? What about her 3 a.m.?”

HOW THE GRASSROOTS WOMEN’S MARCH GOT TAKEN OVER BY PROFESSIONAL LEFTIST ACTIVIST ANTI-SEMITES: Tablet: Is the Women’s March Melting Down? This is great reporting from The Tablet, and the sort of investigative reporting the New York Times and NPR would be doing is they valued real journalism over being part of the resistance.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Mayor Garcetti’s speech at USC shut down by protesters.

DOWNLOAD IT EARLY AND OFTEN: Crime Follies: Overcriminalization, Independent Prosecutors, and the Rule of Law.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Defeat And The Dossier Explain Everything. “Could not the U.S. government long ago, without the prompt of a special counsel, have uncovered that Michael Cohen did not fully pay his taxes—in the manner of an Al Sharpton, Timothy Geithner, and Tom Daschle?” That’s different because shut up.

MARK STEYN IS ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: “If Max Boot were less of a cockwomble, would he be a more effective rotter?”

20 MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: President Trump Is Going To Be Impeached. The Question Is How Much Damage It Does.

Third, their base demands it and will punish them if they don’t.

Fourth, impeachment will take place as the 2020 primary season gets underway and they undoubtedly feel the best campaign advertisement for the Democrats will be lengthy House Judiciary Committee hearings, covered gavel-to-gavel by CNN and MSNBC as well as extensive play in the New York Times and Washington Post, where Trump can be attacked and where there will be virtually no significant coverage of his defenders. If the Senate drags its feet, that will be a further point of attack. It the Senate votes to acquit, yet another vulnerable flank is revealed.

Given the near inevitability of impeachment, how does this play out? Will the impeachment be seen as the political opportunism and revenge that it is or will it be seen as justified? Will it draw out more anti-Trump votes to reward the act? Or will the Democrat base be smoking a cigarette and wiping down with a damp washcloth in the afterglow and just forget to show up?

Read the whole thing.

YES, POLITICAL BIAS HAS MEASURABLE EFFECTS ON HOW WE SEE ‘NEWSWORTHINESS:’ That’s the conclusion of Instapundit contributor Gail Heriot of the University of San Diego School of Law and Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego.

I think this is a significant study of how readers assess the significance of news stories and explain why on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) web site. And I hope Heriot and Pashler do a similar analysis of the attitudes of journalists who decide what is and is not news.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: ‘Cute Aggression’ Study Explores Why We Want To Squeeze Cute Babies and Animals.

NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” NOW ONLY PAYS 1/1024th OF A DIVIDEND: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Claims Jewish Ancestry During Hanukkah Event.

(Via New York Observer columnist Michael Malice, who tweets, “Mazel tov to [Ocasio-Cortez] for discovering she’s 1/1024 Sephardic btw.”)

NONSENSE, HE’S SIMPLY SITTING DOWN TO CHAT WITH RESPECTED NBC JOURNALIST AL SHARPTON: Beto O’Rourke, Looking To 2020, Meets With Democrat With Racist And Anti-Semitic History.

Since at least the 2000 election cycle, it’s apparently a Democratic party law that all presidential candidates must meet with Sharpton for his approval.

HEISMAN WINNER PROVES IF YOU WORK HARD AND BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, YOU TOO CAN HAVE JOURNALISTS TRY TO RUIN YOUR LIFE BY COMBING THROUGH YOUR OLD TWEETS.

Wait, I thought the Babylon Bee was supposed to be satire.

SPACE: “Tasting Life?” New ESA Spacecraft to Probe Plumes of Europa’s Global Ocean.

BUT OF COURSE: Facebook’s audit of alleged anti-conservative bias ongoing, won’t commit to releasing final report.