WARTHOG ESCORT: Three USAF A-10 Thunderbolt IIs escort a USMC MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor. The combat search and rescue exercise took place in Hawaii.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, GENDER-GAP EDITION: Millennial Males with Degrees are Getting Crushed in the Workplace. “The negative impact of low levels of education on work rates is significant – and essentially the same for men and women. The employment rate among young adult women with just a high school diploma has dropped by 8.9 percentage points. For men of the same age group, the fall is 9.6 percentage points. Since there are more men with less education, this explains some of the gender difference in employment rate changes. But it is actually among the better educated that the gender gap emerges. Among those aged 25-34 with a college degree, the male employment rate has dropped twice that of women.”

Plus: “Is it possible that today’s young men are suffering from a malaise created by current societal norms?”

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Related: Everyone Who’s Never Read A History Book Shocked As Socialist Turns Into Authoritarian At First Whiff Of Power.

IMPLEMENTED WITH HELP FROM WESTERN COMPANIES AND ACADEMICS WHO CONSTANTLY TELL US HOW MORAL THEY ARE: China bans 23m from buying travel tickets as part of ‘social credit’ system: People accused of social offences blocked from booking flights and train journeys.

A friend on Facebook comments: “I’m a futurist and I will cut to the chase and tell you what this will become: a precision starvation system that in case of food shortfalls allows the Chinese Communist Party to determine who eats and who does not.” Well, that’s just a high-tech improvement on the standard socialist playbook. See, e.g., Maduro’s Venezuela. So yeah, probably.

Of course, a system like this also offers a splendid opportunity for opponents to sow social discord via hacking.

VANDALS AT THE GATES: Profs and pols behaving badly in Nebraska.

JIM TREACHER ASKS THE AWKWARD QUESTION: In What Sense Is The Bulwark Conserving Conservatism? “I just don’t see how crapping all over conservative ideas is conserving conservatism. It might give you a visceral thrill to goof on individuals you hate, and if that’s all you want out of it, fine. But don’t condescend to me and pretend you’re accomplishing anything.”

Related: So what, exactly, is the moral component of #NeverTrump?

OUR MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORS: Trevor Noah doesn’t seem to get why people didn’t like his joke about the India/Pakistan conflict.

AT AMAZON, save in Car Care.

Plus, bargains in Beauty.

I DON’T ACTUALLY THINK THAT DONALD TRUMP HAS NO POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, but I do think it’s impossible to understand today’s politics without thinking in terms of the class struggle.

Related: Trump and the Revolt of the “Somewheres.”

In both respects, his campaign and presidency have been strikingly similar to the nationalist movements in England and Europe, from Brexit to the euroskeptic governments in Poland, Hungary and Italy, to the neonationalist parties of Germany and France. In each case, the insurgents have claimed that their nation’s political and business leaders are part of an international elite that sacrifices national sovereignty in ways—from free trade and open immigration to murky treaties and remote bureaucracies—that harm many of their countrymen.

The harmed countrymen tend to be less-educated hinterlanders and members of the working class, who find representation in the nationalist movements. The shocked establishments—incumbent politicians, government careerists, media figures, corporate executives and intellectuals—have responded in striking unison. The political arrivistes, they insist, are ill-informed populists, xenophobic if not racist, inflamed by irrational hatred of immigrants, exhibiting authoritarian tendencies. Europe’s leading internationalists, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, have coordinated their actions and policies to keep the nationalist movements at bay. The synchronous counterattacks seem to validate the theory of a global elite.

“The global elite is screwing us and we’re going to make them stop” is in fact a coherent political philosophy, though not one much thought about among academics or Beltway types. Plus, read on about the “Anywheres” vs. the “Somewheres,” which sounds a lot like Chris Arnade’s Front Row and Back Row kids.

SO TALKING ABOUT GINGIVITIS, ALZHEIMER’S, HEART PROBLEMS AND LONGEVITY ON FACEBOOK, a friend noted that he bought this set of dental tools on Amazon and uses it to clean his own teeth every couple of weeks. I’m not sure I’m that hardcore, but it’s a lot cheaper than going to the dentist.

THIS IS INTERESTING: Gab browser extension puts a far-right comments section on every site. And one that the site owner doesn’t control; the commenters do, which cuts both ways. I installed it, and it works fine, but there’s not much commentary on the sites I visited yet.

NOW OUT FROM CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL: Cry Wolf. He’s had some health problems lately, so if you’ve been thinking of buying one of his books, this would probably be a good time. I ordered it (it’s the latest in the Empire’s Corps series) and am reading it now.

OPEN THREAD: It’s Saturday Night.

RICK MORAN: Rep. Ilhan Omar: Anti-Semitic to the Bone.

Which doesn’t excuse this: WV GOP Displays Poster Suggesting Rep. Omar Is A Terrorist: “The poster shows the World Trade Center in flames on 9/11 with the caption ‘‘NEVER FORGET’ — YOU SAID…’ with a photo of Omar underneath it. The second half of the caption reads, ‘I AM THE PROOF – YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN.’”

TRUE, THOUGH TRIVIALLY OBVIOUS: Elon Musk sent a $100K Tesla Roadster to space a year ago. It has now traveled farther than any other car in history.

APRÈS MOI, LE DÉLUGE: Trump at CPAC: Democrat Gun Control Will Not Get Past My Desk.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Despite City’s Positive Outlook On Crime Numbers, NYPD Reports Murders & Rapes Soaring In 2019.

NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: Everyone Who’s Never Read A History Book Shocked As Socialist Turns Into Authoritarian At First Whiff Of Power.

Note to Snopes: It’s the Babylon Bee, so it’s satire — or is it?

CANADA: Unlike Trump, Trudeau Is In Real Trouble.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to use a 22LR for Long-Range Training.

FROM WALTER’S HOUSE TO YOUR HOUSE: The London Spectator reviews the upcoming biography, Gropius: The Man Who Built the Bauhaus:

Almost everything that is known about Gropius suggests a person of considerable control and dedication. He came from a professional Berlin family — the Gropius-Bau, the handsome Berlin museum space, was the work of an architect uncle, Martin Gropius. A stretch in military service after 1904 seems to have suited him; strangers would often comment on his upright stance, like a Prussian officer in mufti.

The architectural training was, surprisingly, less thorough, and Gropius left the Konigliche Technische Hochschule in Berlin after two years, without taking a diploma. (He never learnt how to draw properly.) By then he was already designing buildings for family and friends. In 1908 he took a post in the Berlin office of Peter Behrens, a fascinating figure who, according to Fiona MacCarthy,  married the monumental simplicity of the classical Prussian architect Schinkel to the aesthetic thought of  the English Arts and Crafts movement. The startling result, one of the defining moments of modernism, was the AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin, resembling a vast, unadorned abstract sculpture. By 1914 Gropius himself had made his own major construction, the quite bracingly bleak Fagus factory. This is a man who got his way.

The most important episode in his career, rightly given prominence in MacCarthy’s title, was his founding of the Bauhaus in 1919, unifying two Weimar institutions. In its short 14-year history, the school managed to draw an extraordinary range of aesthetic approaches into a unified project. There was a place in it, at different times, for mystics, poetic fantasists, hard Marxist ideologues, industrial fetishists and dedicated William Morris-type craftsmen. Gropius somehow kept it together, despite its incompatibilities, and in the face of bitter hostility from politicians and the public. After four years it had to move from Weimar to Dessau, where Gropius created the single most persuasive argument for the Bauhaus idea. The school and the idyllic line of masters’ houses in a pine grove must be visited: they embody a compelling vision of a life where work, communal existence, private spaces, creativity and natural beauty can exist harmoniously and concisely.

The Bauhaus lost its equilibrium after Gropius’s departure in 1928, and with Hannes Meyer as director fell under the jurisdiction of the austere Marxist faction. It moved to Berlin in its last year, and was closed down in 1933. Quite helpfully in the long run, Hitler’s persecution sent the Bauhaus masters to all corners of the world.

To the regret of Gropius, in more ways than one. As Jonathan Petropoulos wrote in his 2015 book, Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany:

A key, for Gropius, was green architecture: both in the sense of the conservation of resources and with regard to nature. The homes and housing complexes he designed always featured garden spaces, and the buildings stood in proportion to nature (never exceeding four stories). The idea was to have people surrounded by trees and grass, and to make it easy to access these resources (no long elevator rides as in a skyscraper). This, in concert with the technology, would provide a life-enhancing balance. Gropius’s efforts to reclaim technology, to use it for benign purposes, proved a viable project. His success in this regard led him to be overconfident about his ability to find common cause with the Nazi regime, which had its own “green” agenda, albeit as part of a broader racist worldview. Hitler marketed the Autobahnen, for example, as providing the means for urban residents to escape the unhealthy city and connect with the supposedly pristine and restorative German countryside.

* * * * * * * *

Gropius was a German nationalist, perhaps not surprising considering that he hailed from a prominent family and had been an officer in World War I. Even after he left Germany in late 1934, he would sign important letters with the phrase “mit deutschen Gruss” (with German greetings), and while living in England and the United States in the 1930s he invariably took pains to emphasize that he was a German citizen.

* * * * * * * *

Gropius’s decision to relocate to England in the fall of 1934 should not be considered a form of political opposition to the Nazi regime.

And how, as a reading of the entire chapter on Gropius in Petropoulos’ book illustrates. Philip Hensher’s review of Fiona MacCarthy’s upcoming biography is headlined, “A clear vision of Walter Gropius the man is hard to come by.” But Gropius’ worldview in the 1930s, as the international socialism of the Weimar Republic mutated into National Socialism, isn’t difficult to ascertain if you know where to look.

THE INDECENT-AMERICAN COMMUNITY:

“Remind me again why Christians vote for Trump, despite his personal corruption?,” Rod Dreher writes. “You think it might have something to do with the fact that we know what the Democrats have planned for us?”

IT’S A LITTLE CLEARER WHY THE BRITISH AUTHORITIES TOOK SO LONG TO ADDRESS ROTHERHAM’S RAPE GANGS:

A member of the House of Lords has been charged with two counts of attempting to rape a girl.

Former Labour peer Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, 61, is also charged with indecent assault of a boy under 13.

Prosecutors allege the offences took place between 1971 and 1974, when Lord Ahmed would have been aged between 14 and 17.

Two other men, Mohammed Farouq, 68, and Mohammed Tariq, 63, both from Rotherham, have also been charged.

Has it been going on this long?