A Decline of More Than Numbers

On this day:

3114 BC
According to the Lounsbury correlation, the start of the Maya calendar.
1521
Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) falls to conquistador Hernán Cortés.
1792
King Louis XVI of France is formally arrested by the National Tribunal, and declared an enemy of the people.
1831
Nat Turner sees a solar eclipse, which he believes is a sign from God. Eight days later he and 70 other slaves kill approximately 55 whites in Southampton County, Virginia.
1868
A massive earthquake near Arica, Peru, causes an estimated 25,000 casualties, and the subsequent tsunami causes considerable damage as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand.
1937
The Battle of Shanghai begins.
1942
Major General Eugene Reybold of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizes the construction of facilities that would house the “Development of Substitute Materials” project, better known as the Manhattan Project.
1962
Representatives from the Russian Orthodox Church and the Holy See meet in Metz, France, and come to an agreement wherein the Russian church would send observers to the Second Vatican Council and in exchange, the Roman Catholic Church would refuse to condemn Communism.

***

Quotes from Mamdani’s top aide, Cea Weaver: ‘If you don't believe in the government's sacred right to seize property, it's over’, and ‘Impoverish the White middle class’.

Thinking is, apparently, harder than governing.

***

The Pittsburgh airport plans to replace two people movers with additional seating in the concourses.

***

A TikToker and Instagram user (whose account is now unavailable) claims that "On August 12, 2026, the world will lose gravity for 7 seconds. NASA knows. They're preparing but won't tell us why." The video has had almost 62,000 likes and has been shared 268,000 times on Instagram alone and is now creeping into feeds. Why this nonsense is preferred in the huge reservoir of internet nonsense is unknown.

***

Longtime NASA astronaut Mike Fincke is leaving NASA months after he lost the ability to speak for roughly 20 minutes aboard the International Space Station, an incident that forced a premature end to his and three crewmates' journey.
Fincke’s last day at the space agency is Wednesday, NASA said in a news release.

***

Forbes fired its top editor after discovering that he had accepted a seven-figure payment from a businessman whose company had a lucrative relationship with the magazine.

Randall Lane, Forbes’ chief content officer, received roughly $6 million from RJ Shook, the founder of Shook Research, a company that has worked with Forbes on the magazine’s rankings of the top financial advisers for a decade, according to a New York Times report.

***

A Decline of More Than Numbers

Humanity has never lived in a time of long-term secular population decline. There have been sudden demographic shocks, like the Black Death, but those were short-lived and came at times when the human population as a whole was much younger on average. To a degree we probably cannot even fathom, human civilization and human psychology are built upon notions of growth, youth, renewal, and hope. What would it mean to live in a shrinking world, where most people will have no direct connection to future generations? Where innovation and creativity, disproportionately supplied by younger people, are not only increasingly scarce but perhaps even seen as increasingly undesirable? Where the very notion of sacrificing for the future becomes obsolete? Unlike the economic consequences of demographic decline, these are some of the harder-to-quantify aspects of the problem that society, by and large, has not even begun to reckon with. But they might prove far more important, especially if it turns out that the techno-optimists are right about the role technology can play in the economy of the future. In short, we are on the precipice of arguably the most fundamental shift humanity has ever experienced. And right now, for the most part, we are going into that shift blind.--Jeremy Friedman

This might be the largest of the Left's many blind spots. Struggle is a condition of man. It has always been with us. But achievement has not. What Friedman is writing about here is not production or the financial balance of entitlement demands. It is even possible that AI will be able to meet those demands. What this population trend heralds is the gradual loss of struggle, the human fight to achieve and provide. The threat of scarcity and its liberating human efforts to overcome and succeed. Achievement. 

Shrinking effort and success. Narrowing dreams. And a disconnection of us from the future. It sounds like we'll be better fed and less sick, but it also sounds like a return to the emotional Dark Ages.

What Politics Is

On this day:

30 BC
Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, commits suicide, allegedly by means of an asp bite.
1099
First Crusade: Battle of Ascalon Crusaders under the command of Godfrey of Bouillon defeat Fatimid forces led by Al-Afdal Shahanshah. This is considered the last engagement of the First Crusade.
1676
Praying Indian John Alderman shoots and kills Metacomet, the Wampanoag war chief, ending King Philip’s War. ('Praying Indian' refers to an American Indian convert to Christianity.)
1914
World War I: the United Kingdom declares war on Austria-Hungary; the countries of the British Empire follow suit
1944
Waffen SS troops massacre 560 people in Sant'Anna di Stazzema.
1952
The Night of the Murdered Poets: 13 prominent Jewish intellectuals are murdered in Moscow.
1960
Echo 1A, NASA’s first successful communications satellite, is launched.
1976
Between 1,000 and 3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zaatar massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the Lebanese Civil War
1982
Mexico announces it is unable to pay its enormous external debt, marking the beginning of a debt crisis that spreads to all of Latin America and the Third World.
1994
Major League Baseball players go on strike. This will force the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
2000
The Oscar-class submarine K-141 Kursk of the Russian Navy explodes and sinks in the Barents Sea during a military exercise. 

***

The sinking of the Kursk was a MasterClass in a state's self-absorbed disdain for those it professes to represent and to care for. And, of course, an insight into its glorious leader, Putin.

***

"We’ve generated the first early human eggs derived from stem cells. This is a big deal -- the potential to redefine fertility is real."

This is a post on X from a guy in a lab.

***

The more fixated we are on mental health, the more sensitive we become to anything that might qualify as a symptom and the more we use clinical language to describe normal emotional experiences like grief, burnout and loneliness. This broadening of what we think counts as a disorder — known as concept creep — encourages us to pathologize ordinary life and see ourselves as mentally unhealthy.--Cowen

*** 

Termarr Johnson, who is one of the top prospects for the Pittsburgh Pirates, suffered a serious injury.

***

Mayor Zohran Mamdani blamed a “miscommunication” Tuesday after an awkward public clash between City Hall and NYPD officials over whether the department would provide security for his wife Rama Duwaji’s upcoming Middle East trip.
He's got to be the only socialist in history who doesn't know that revolutionaries take over the police first.

***

In 2024, Nancy Pelosi earned more from investments than any large hedge fund in the United States.

***

The Antikythera mechanism, recovered from a Roman shipwreck in 1901 turned out to be a hand-cranked bronze computer that could predict eclipses and track the irregular orbit of the Moon, and nothing of comparable mechanical complexity would appear anywhere on Earth for another 1,400 years

***

Recently, the government gave $500 million to the coal industry, mostly in West Virginia. Now that's a lot of money, but that's less than the people of NYC gave to the wife of the Ex-mayor when they left office. That's consoling.

***

The goofy Ms. Hong lost in the Democrat primary for Governor in Wisconsin, despite support from the GOP PACs. One wonders if she was finally recognized as an incompetent by Democrats or alienated her foolish base by compromising on her foolish positions.
And Flanagan won in Minnesota, proving voters don't care what you do or don't do in office.

***

Toxoplasma gondii, a single-celled organism that can only reproduce sexually inside cats, rewires the fear circuits in rodent brains to make them attracted to cat odors rather than repelled by them.

Researchers have spent decades investigating whether this same parasite, which lives dormant in hundreds of millions of people, might subtly influence human behavior and preferences in ways we don't recognize.

That may be unconstitutional!

*** 

What Politics Is

A very ugly podcast is being rebroadcast on a website I like. It is an interview with a trans-prostitute and her story of an encounter with Lindsey Graham. I'm sure there will be many opinions about this, especially on the very confused Left. 

I know little about Graham. I thought he was funny, and I've heard the rumors. And I don't care about his personal life — aside from the security risks it presents. But I do care about scandalmongering, especially the dead, as a political tool, and I think that it characteristically appears late and in the absence of substance or courage. And I hate the idea that this kind of attack substitutes for political debate and reduces serious, threatening government problems to personal quirks and inconsistencies.

AI, The Debt, Censorship, Suspicion of Achievement, The Iran War, Russia in Ukraine, Open Borders, Mystery Cabinet Appointments, Children's Academic Test Scores, The Electoral Success of Shallow Revolutionary Thought — and we get this.

It confirms my opinion of the perpetrators and changes my opinion of the website that rebroadcast it.

Principles Are a Process

 On this day:

1942
Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi.
1965
Race riots (the Watts riots) begin in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California.
1972
Vietnam War: the last United States ground combat unit leaves South Vietnam.
2003
NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year history.

***


I like the pluralism of modernity; it doesn't threaten me or my faith. And if one's faith is dependent on being reinforced in every aspect of other people's lives, then it is a rather insecure faith, don't you think? -Andrew Sullivan, author and editor (b. 10 Aug 1963)

***

Shortly before Air Force One took off from Turkey at the end of last month's NATO summit, President Trump secretly slipped away from the presidential jet and was whisked to another plane with the help of an airport catering truck, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the matter.--CBS

***

Mars is very quiet because of low atmospheric pressure. Surface pressure is about 0.6 kilopascals, less than one percent of Earth’s sea-level pressure, so there is far less air to carry a vibration to your ear. The Martian atmosphere is about 95 percent carbon dioxide, and at Mars’ low pressure, those molecules exchange energy with sound waves differently than they do under Earth-like conditions. Below about 240 hertz, the molecules’ vibrational modes have time to absorb and release energy during each cycle of the wave. Above it, they do not have time to relax, changing the effective heat capacity of the gas and increasing the speed of sound. The same molecular physics also contributes to strong attenuation, while viscosity heavily damps frequencies above a few kilohertz.
High-frequency components would technically arrive a fraction of a second ahead of the low ones, while much of the treble would be absorbed by the atmosphere.

Voice and music would be different; commands a risk.

***

Principles Are a Process

AOC called the crazy DSA ideas--despite the success of DSA candidates--"Woke 1". For a woman who talks off the top of her head, this was likely coached but very clever. The Press took it up, acting as if political principles were flu-like, coming and going, mutating, forgettable when the weather changes.

Apparently, we are to take these revolutionaries seriously, but not too seriously. And their ideas less so.

This may be a successful ploy in election subterfuge, but it will be interesting when the Left begins to enforce the roots of their deracination programs. Force is dangerous enough as a policy; it will be very challenging if you admit beforehand that your motivating dogma for doing so is mutable.

An Allocation Economy Run by Autocrats Makes You Free

 

On this day:

991
Battle of Maldon: the English, led by Byrhtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex, are defeated by a band of inland-raiding Vikings near Maldon in Essex.
1519
Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque second-in-command, Sebastian Elcano, will complete the expedition after Magellan died in the Philippines.
1755
Under the orders of Charles Lawrence, the British Army begins to forcibly deport the Acadians from Nova Scotia to the Thirteen Colonies.
1792
French Revolution: Storming of the Tuileries Palace – Louis XVI of France is arrested and taken into custody as his Swiss Guards are massacred by the Parisian mob
1920
World War I: Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI’s representatives sign the Treaty of Sèvres that divides up the Ottoman Empire between the Allies.
1969
A day after murdering Sharon Tate and four others, members of Charles Manson’s cult kill Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.
1990
The Magellan space probe reaches Venus. (Symmetry!)

1995
Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols are indicted for the bombing. Michael Fortier pleads guilty in a plea-bargain for his testimony.

***

“One is not born, but becomes a woman”--Simone de Beauvoir

***

The New World of Malice and Mischief: The water system in Braham, Minnesota, was among dozens of systems hit after federal agencies warned that Iran-linked hackers could target U.S. infrastructure.

***

It was at Cambridge that Darwin read Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative – a book that was partly a travel account and partly a scientific treatise of the German explorer’s expedition through South America. It was this publication, Darwin said, that “determined me to travel in distant countries, and led me to volunteer as naturalist in Her Majesty’s ship Beagle”.
He returned to England in October 1836 with more than 1,500 specimens preserved in spirits and almost 4,000 skins, bones and other items. Then the real work began: sorting, classifying, writing and thinking. He published The Voyage of the Beagle (and sent it in trepidation to his hero Humboldt, who admired it) and began to make notes on his “species theory”.

***

Three skeletons have been found in a cave in Mexico dating to about 13,000 B.C., earlier than the freezing of the Bering Strait. They look like ethnic Indonesians.

***

During her Sunday appearance on ABC News’s “This Week,” Ocasio-Cortez discussed her decision to freeze her eggs, saying, “In this political environment where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us, as leaders, to have these conversations and share these processes.”

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

***

An Allocation Economy Run by Autocrats Makes You Free

According to Corey Robin, professor of political science at Brooklyn College, "the socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree. When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival." He continues, “The socialist believes that making things free makes people free.”

Freedom "from the need to smile for the sake of a sale?" From the unexplained bodega closing? The freedom to be rude? Impolite? Disinterested? Unmotivated?

And, more importantly, who is making these free things and why?

You can’t have socialism with a scarce good or service, especially among strangers, without the dreaded word unheard in socialism: allocation. Scarce goods and services must be allocated. Allocated. By someone. Not by the market, but by some person based on some uncertain criterion. 

Who are the allocators? What will be the criterion? 

This is a professor at a university, and this is simply not serious thinking.

Sunday/The Storm

 On this day:

48 BC
Caesar’s civil war: Battle of Pharsalus – Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt.
1942
Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement.
1942
World War II: Battle of Savo Island – Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.
1944
Continuation war: The Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive, the largest offensive launched by Soviet Union against Finland during the Second World War, ends to a strategic stalemate. Both Finnish and Soviet troops at the Finnish front dug to defensive positions, and the front remains stable until the end of the war.
1945
World War II: Nagasaki is devastated when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, is dropped by the United States B-29 Bockscar. 39,000 people are killed outright.
1965
Singapore is expelled from Malaysia and becomes the first and only country to date to gain independence unwillingly.
1969
Members of a cult led by Charles Manson brutally murder pregnant actress Sharon Tate (wife of Roman Polanski), coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish actor Wojciech Frykowski, men’s hairstylist Jay Sebring and recent high-school graduate Steven Parent.
1971
The Troubles: The British security forces in Northern Ireland launch Operation Demetrius. Hundreds of people are arrested and interned, thousands are displaced, and twenty are killed in the violence that followed.
1974
As a direct result of the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon becomes the first President of the United States to resign from office. His Vice President, Gerald Ford, becomes president.

***

A small percentage of listeners know that one of the core melodies of Paul Simon’s lovely song “American Tune” is taken from Johann Sebastian Bach, namely the Passion Chorale from “St. Matthew Passion.” You could say Paul Simon is a plagiarist, though I would prefer not to use this term. He borrowed creatively, as do many other popular music artists.

But wait, it gets worse yet. That melody does not come originally from Bach, but rather he in turn plagiarized a 1601 secular love song by Hans Leo Hassler, namely “Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret” (My feelings are confused). So the lineage is not even the glamorous one you might have imagined. If anything, “American Tune” sounds closer to the Hassler melody than to Bach’s adaptation.--Cowen, on artists borrowing art and, indirectly, AI

***

Drones, like the shoulder-fired missile, magnify the damage an individual can do. And our concentrated technology makes that damage more impactful. 

Everyone is more dangerous, and more vulnerable.

***

As the Wall Street Journal has documented, Trump has taken a personal hand in the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approvals, the Federal Trade Commission’s merger reviews, and the Federal Communications Commission’s authority over broadcast licenses. The administration can offer a plausible rationale for any one of these interventions. Cumulatively, though, they leave a different impression — that the administrative state’s technocracy has been restored to a clientelist species of democratic control. Unsurprisingly, spending on lobbying targeting the White House has surged to record levels.--drescoll

***

Left-leaning Americans are averaging far fewer children than conservatives, whose birth rates hold steady near the 2.1 replacement level.

***

Sunday/The Storm

Today's gospel is the walking-on-the-water episode, where Christ, at the end, calms the sea. It is a dense concept in which Christ, having multiplied the loaves and fishes, flees the crowd that would make him king. So he rejects the idea of worldly position, but later dominates the chaotic forces of the world.

Here, for the first time, Peter is singled out, and he behaves like most men, impulsively, with faith then, on consideration, with terror over faith's true consequences.

                                    E Tenebris

COME down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land,	5
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God’s throne should stand.
“He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name	10
From morn to noon on Carmel’s smitten height.”
Nay, peace, I shall behold before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face. Oscar Wilde

SatStats

 On this day:

1503
King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey, Edinburgh, Scotland.
1588
Anglo-Spanish War: Battle of Gravelines – The naval engagement ends, ending the Spanish Armada’s attempt to invade England.
1844
The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, headed by Brigham Young, is reaffirmed as the leading body of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
1863
American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).
1908
Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers’ first public flight.
1942
Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mahatma Gandhi’s call for swaraj or complete independence.
1945
World War II: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and begins the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.

***

"The goal of socialism is communism." - Vladimir Lenin

***

Super-rich complain but experts welcome Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax-- Guardian headline

***

According to Adam Smith, contrary to the prevailing wisdom of his day, empire, once all the trade-offs were considered, diminished the wealth of nations rather than increasing it.

***

Warren Buffett's own preferred metric -- the Buffett indicator -- recently reached its highest point in history. This figure measures the relationship between the total value of U.S. stocks and GDP, and Buffett himself noted that when it nears 200%, investors are "playing with fire." As of this writing, it sits at 232%.

***

SatStats

42 percent of Americans over 60 believe they will literally work until they die.

***

College graduates are currently entering the toughest entry-level job market in years, with underemployment climbing past 42 percent.

***

In 2024, roughly 4 percent of fast-food locations in the US used voice AI technology in the drive-thru lane, according to Intouch Insight’s annual Drive Thru Survey. Last year, that figure grew to 5 percent; early research suggests that it has now climbed to 6 percent.

***

White Castle was the only fast-food chain in the Fortune’s top 20 list of best workplaces in retail last year

***

Homeschooling

Homeschooling is no longer a fringe practice. According to U.S. Census Bureau survey data, roughly 6 percent of American K-12 students — about 3 million children — were reported as homeschooled in the 2023-24 school year, nearly double what it was before the pandemic. And this is not a pandemic hangover that is fading. Analysis of state records found homeschooling growing at an average of 4.9 percent across reporting states in 2024-25 — more than double the pre-pandemic growth rate — with several states hitting all-time enrollment highs.

Homeschooling families are more racially and ethnically diverse than the stereotype suggests and growing more so over time.

In Delaware, one of the few states that reports these figures, Black students make up 12 percent of the homeschool population.

No single profile describes homeschooled adults. Outcomes vary

***

A 2024 survey by the National Apartment Association found that 22 percent of property managers identified aggressive or abusive tenants as their biggest workplace challenge.

***

While migration from NY has slowed in the last couple of years, high earners and married people continue to leave in large numbers. The data show that 13,662 taxpayers—roughly 1 in 1,000 resident taxpayers—on net left the state in 2024.

“The greatest net loss of taxpayers was among married filers with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000—a net loss of 8,200, or more than half of the total net out-migration, in 2024,” the comptroller’s office says. The highest out-migration rate was for households making $500,000 or more—about one in 100 of whom moved out that year.

All this before whatever effect Mamdani has.

***

In the 2021-22 school year, about 31% students nationwide experienced chronic absenteeism, reports the U.S. Department of Education. The rate at the start of last school year was about 24%.

Pennsylvania reported a 21% chronic absenteeism rate last year, which is down from its peak 26% in 2022 but still higher than its 2018 rate of 15%.

Why do Bad Things Stick?

1284
The Republic of Pisa is defeated in the Battle of Meloria by the Republic of Genoa, thus losing its naval dominance in the Mediterranean.
1777
American Revolutionary War: The bloody Battle of Oriskany prevents American relief of the Siege of Fort Stanwix.
1806
Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates ending the Holy Roman Empire
1862
American Civil War: the Confederate ironclad Ship CSS is scuttled on the Mississippi River after suffering damage in a battle with USS Essex near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1914
World War I: First Battle of the Atlantic – two days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Helgoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
1930
Judge Joseph Force Crater steps into a taxi in New York and disappears never to be seen again.
1940
Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union.
1945
World War II: Hiroshima is devastated when the atomic bomb “Little Boy” is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people are killed instantly, and some tens of thousands die in subsequent years from burns and radiation poisoning.
1991
Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
1996
NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
2011
A helicopter containing members of Navy SEAL 6 is shot down in Afghanistan killing 38.

***

Tyranny is not freedom just because you voted for it.

***

More than 900 million SpaceX shares are set to unlock Thursday, more than doubling the publicly available stock in Elon Musk’s space and AI company.

***

A new tactic is emerging in the evolving Social Security failure:

'Social Security is less a need-based program than a transfer of wealth from the young and unpropertied to the old and comfortable.'

***

The Democrat's search for muscles has arrived in a tight black T-shirt and a mystery degree in Michigan.

This will be a rarely meaningful election as it offers a serial candidate who dislikes the country he wants to represent. That is a serious test of national tolerance.

***

Is a "deal" a "treaty"?

***

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has suggested a state actor was behind the explosive-laden drone that was found at Leipzig airport.


***

Why do Bad Things Stick?

Can we transcend our history? Should we? Somehow the great achievement of the Revolution has been eclipsed in recent years and replaced by guilt. Is that permanent? Does everything in history create a permanent alloy, or are they just blends of colors to be washed away?

Things in America are different now. Silliness is no longer simply dismissed. Foolish people who want to dismantle the Constitution are taken seriously. The President codifies petulance. He puts state money into company investments. These are significant, philosophy-altering events. Can they be rolled back when he leaves, or will we stagger on with the new, heavier and distorting alloy of what we once had?

This is one view:

"America at 250 has never been wealthier or more powerful. It has grown two-thirds faster than Western Europe over the past 20 years. Rival ideologies – Chinese authoritarianism, Islamism – are hideously unappealing.

Yet, at the same time, the US is starting to behave like a tinpot autocracy. The best way I can describe it is as Third Worldery. The attempt to browbeat the Nobel Peace Prize Committee; the obsession with building big arches; the tariffs; the annexation threats against Canada, Denmark, and Panama; the renaming of public institutions after a living leader; the successful attempt to bully FIFA over a red card. Such things are the hallmark of insecure dictatorships, not of confident democracies.

Opting for strongman government seems to have opened the way to Third Worldery across the board. Once you build your head of state into a Father of the Nation type, once dissent from his latest whims is portrayed as a form of treachery, other things follow.

It is the same pattern everywhere. When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan insists that the rest of us refer to his country in English as “Türkiye”, he invites us to treat Turkey as a post-colonial failed state rather than as the Western democracy it was before his time. I mean, we use English exonyms for serious places. No one demands that we say Deutschland or Nippon or Magyarország. But touchy third-worldists demand Côte d’Ivoire, Timor-Leste and Cabo Verde – and now the Gulf of America - the classic needy-country move.

…..

Then again, as Lady Macbeth says, “What’s done cannot be undone”. Those who have downplayed, excused, or ignored Trump’s venality will struggle to find grounds on which to oppose equally sleazy stuff from a successor in either party. Standards have been permanently lowered. We will look back wistfully on what was lost."--from Hannan

It's hard to know where to start. Trump? Biden's Presidency-from-the -Crypt? Johnson's creeping Authoritarianism-with-Good-Intent?

Bad ideas will always get a hearing. Some will lie fallow and, unopposed, will fester. The Bell Curve is nonjudgmental. But tolerance for error and respect for precedents has momentum. Ask Dred Scott.