FRIDAY short TAKES.

Just once, I'd like to open the Friday short takes with something cheerful.  Not this week.  "Instead of a return to normal, Biden has done his best to keep the country in a state of constant emergency." Those writers would like Dementia Joe to take a nap. No such luck.  "The Democratic Party cannot provide an alternative to an 80-year-old man whose physical health and mental competence are clearly at issue, and who would be 86 years old before he leaves the White House at the end of a second term."  Neither of those articles has anything nice to say about the likely opponent, and it could be that making promises that can't be kept is the winning strategy.  "People don't like freedom. They like their populist messiah promising them bull---."  Logic?  That's so last century, and it might be phallogocentric to boot!  "You may deny that incentives matter, that markets work, that scarcity and opportunity costs exist, you may think that everything reduces to racist-sexist-homophobic oppression, but what if you are wrong?"  Reality?  Perhaps that can be deferred.  "Such policies are a recipe for stagnation."  Yes, and I saw this movie, forty years ago.

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  Refer to me as Normal.  Elon Musk, too.  "I regard cisgender as a slur." Such mockery is to be encouraged.

2.  Male lesbians even Rush Limbaugh couldn't imagine.  "If you’re a lesbian but won’t date a man who identifies as a woman, you’re a bigoted transphobe who can die in a pile of burning Harry Potter books."

3.  Democracy?  "What is democratic about one raving lunatic holding a state’s whole political process hostage, not even because his delusions have not won out, but because he has been asked to observe some basic rules of decorum?"

4.  As it is in the Colonies?  "Without the respect of the public, the House of Windsor risks being lumped together with pop stars, social media influencers and reality TV contestants as fodder for the British tabloids, undermining the cachet that underpins its role in public life."

5.  Advantage, Kurt Schlichter?  "Whether it’s your religion, your disposition, your location, your politics, or your penchant for enjoying Cracker Barrel every once in a while, they sneer at you with contempt. You are below them, and they want you to know it."

6.  You have been warned, Critical Studies types.  “Indeed, the power to suppress speech is often very quickly directed towards suppressing the views of marginalized groups.”  Oh, they'd likely cavil over that "marginalized."

7.  How did that turn out?  "It's too soon for a responsible historian to say whether [Joe Biden will] be more successful in sustaining our Republic than European leaders were in defending theirs."

8.  Whatever.  "Understood properly, neoliberal capitalism is a form of necropolitics, or more specifically, a type of gangster capitalism that is criminogenic."

9.  In the same way that a drowning man can improve his situation by drinking lots of water?  “Big government is failing, and the only way to fix it is bigger government.”

10.  The fruits of the Jarrett regency.  "It has managed in two years to wreck the border, destroy energy autonomy, fuel racial tensions, create an entirely new cause of the aggrieved 'transgender community,' tank the economy, spike crime, and put America into rapid decline abroad beneath the Biden façade—and call it all 'progress.'"

11.  Positive change is never a certainty.

12.  Quackery is quackery.  "We will not defeat it by ever more high-sounding rhetoric about the life of the mind."

13.  Dial up the smug.  "The overall effect, if you’re not charmed by it (and a lot of her Republican colleagues are), is condescension bordering on arrogance. Sinema, who graduated from high school at 16 and college at 18, carries herself like she is unquestionably the smartest person in the room."

14.  Well-meaning people can be wrong.

15.  There's no limiting principle.  "Most politicians justify progressive income tax rates on the basis of one’s ability to pay. But this simply says, 'If you have it, we will take it.'"

16.  Aren't "change" and "progress" coherent beliefs?  "When language becomes unmoored from meaning, we are all at risk of mistaking change for progress."

17.  No.  Next question?  "If we admit them to the university, are we not obligated to provide a path for them to succeed?"

18.  Yes, Virginia, there is regime media.  "Democratic conspiracy theories, such as those alleging Russian responsibility for the election of Donald Trump in 2016, often come with the imprimatur of prestigious media outlets."

19.  It's the monopsony.  "When payments are decided by government fiat, rather than by millions of consumers in a free market, quality goes down, and there are shortages."

20.  What's your basis for comparison?  "If a minimum wage job in the US means 'poor' to you, then you are claiming that it’s better to be poor in the US than to be middle class in most of the world."

21.  A cluster, of more than traffic congestion.  "Traffic signals are used to create traffic congestion so that there can be gaps in the traffic flow."

22.  May I introduce some self-styled progressives to Henry Grabar?  "We expect [parking] to be very convenient, immediately available, and free. It would be unimaginable to hold any other good or service to this standard."

23.  Trains don't swerve.  "Journalism professors, railroad locomotive engineers (both passenger and freight), and anyone else familiar with the basic operation of a railroad, have all run screaming from the room"