FRIDAY short TAKES.

Despite nuclear weapons now being available, natural boundaries are still useful for political divisions.  Even if somebody's going to suggest I'm a Russian agent for noting that to be true of the Dniepr.

Another short course in traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.  Some of the links are to longish articles.

1.  The Scottish Enlightenment for the win.  "America was not conceived in irredeemable racism, and it is not systemically racist today; biological sex still matters; parents must control their own children’s upbringing."

2.  Devolution fostered by emergence?  "In short, the solution to our fragmented democracy will more likely emerge bottom-up from civil and market society, rather than top-down through politics."

3.  Even the brightest among you could benefit by a modicum of repetition.  Institutions are civilization.  "The West is a series of institutions and values. The West is not a geographical place. Russia is European, but not Western. Japan is Western, but not European."

4.  They did not shine.  "[Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky] did not conduct themselves or the agencies to the benefit of us all, only to the benefit of their political allies."

5.  Don't ride your pet hobbyhorses.  "Can you take a vastly complex situation that is 100% not about your thing and somehow still make it about your thing?"

6.  Deny, deflect, change the subject.  "If you’ve ever tangled with a malignant narcissist, you likely know [deny, attack, reverse victim and offender] intimately." Charlie "Prof Scam" Sykes used to call attention to that sort of behavior, until he reverted to carrying water for Democrats.

7.  Welcome back, Carter.  "We’re not getting cheap gas, cheap food, energy independence, etc. because that’s not what the establishment wants."

8.  There are many ways to talk rot.  "If everyone agreed, you could just assign one book and be done with it. That’s not how scholarship works."

9.  Stop voting for this.  "Detroit languished. Seattle was executed."

10.  The humorous rules for experimenters, applied.  "The failure of reality to match alarmists’ projections has been recognized for some time."

11.  Let the ruling classes tremble.  "Those responsible for our governing consensus are exasperated by an increasingly indocile and intractable public that will not accept their authority."  It follows that "The public is not unwise to withdraw its trust."

12.  Another Tom Clancy scenario? "The Russian Army's slipshod combat performance definitely raises legitimate questions about the Kremlin's ability to wage full-scale conventional war against a peer. Shift from Europe to East Asia and Russia's military failure calls into question the vulnerability of the Kremlin's greatest geostrategic treasure: resource-laden Siberia."

13.  When in doubt, project.  "[W]hen there’s disagreement, people go immediately to maligning your motivations."

14.  Kick the legacy media, they deserve it.  "If you want to understand why no one trusts the press, this is why."  No penalty for piling on!  "The question is why the Times did not [bring up Hunter Biden's laptop], and the answer clearly has more to do with partisan sympathies than the journalistic standards the paper claimed to be defending."

15.  Is it possible to motivate a potted plant?  "Zelensky succeeded today in forcing Americans to distinguish leadership from puttering. The fact that the Beltway’s newspaper reflects that difference should give Biden’s handlers the cold shakes … as well as Democrats in Congress who will likely pay a price for it in November."

16.  The potted plant has a lousy legislature to work with.  "Americans cannot keep suffering under the current energy crisis. Yet, instead of proposing solutions, Democrats are busy trying to make the situation far worse."

17.  Leon Trotsky, not Pajamas Media.  "Then as now, the Democratic Party is built on a lie: that it speaks for working class people."

18.  Smart diplomacy.  "A bigger question to answer would be why Americans need to “sell our soul” for Iranian oil when we can extract our own right here, using American workers. It’s one thing to go the full Greta on climate-change hysteria, but it’s more than just skosh hypocritical to then start cutting deals with terror-supporting petro-states to get the price of gasoline down in time for an election."  What does it profit a ficus to strike a deal with the ayatollahs and end the dollar as reserve currency?

19.  End the fashionable nonsense.  "Four major fronts in this global war to destroy liberal democracies and free-market systems have been decarbonization, COVID response, baseless accusations of racism, and corrosion of the rule of law — all efforts to undermine key foundations of civil society."  Plus:  "Putin should have just pulled up a comfortable chair, eaten popcorn, and watched the West self-destruct."

20.  Weak people produce difficult times.  "The kind of Americans the world fears or respects have been put out of government and military leadership and replaced by a menagerie of nursing home patients, human resources ladies, affirmative action hires, sexual degenerates, and obese four-star generals angling for board seats on the next Theranos start-up."  Lots of background on color revolutions in Ukraine and possibly the United States.

21.  Give emergence a chance.  "We don’t need to convince every person who likes their car, SUV, or truck that it would be more virtuous or sensible or rational to get around some other way."

22.  Tenure review is not easy.  "In other words, it is a vanity press for mediocre academics."  A lot of the wokery is on such platforms, but it's probably classist to point that out.