THE COASTAL BUBBLE IS A FOOD DESERT.

The establishment media's lack of awareness of Life in These United States is a fact of long standing.  "In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, NBC talker Chuck Todd quipped about having to establish a bureau in Kenosha County, not far from here.  I don't know that such a bureau is opening soon.  I do know that the incela corridor media are wising up to the fact that the troubles inland were visible from the train window, if they'd but take a train ride and interact with the passengers."

That lack of awareness presents in things large and small.  "Milwaukee's racing sausages are breakout stars of the World Series."  The unaware writer is one Dan Simmons with Washington's Post,  who is drooling at the gastronomical references.

With the Brewers in their first World Series since 1982, the people in shorts and absurdly large, top-heavy costumes have been hailed for making history as the first sausage racers to be featured in the World Series.

The sausages even took the field during the Brewers’ World Series away games. Fans packed into Milwaukee watch parties at American Family Field on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday still got to cheer on their favorite sausage while the Brewers faced the Rays 1,200 miles away in Florida.

Because the Crew took care of business in Florida on the Wednesday, the sausages were available to race in the end zone at Lambeau Field on the Thursday, when the Brewers showed their hardware to Packer Nation.  Yes, a few of the Brewers essayed a Lambeau Leap.  I'd advise against trying it in a racing sausage costume!

WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS, MAKE TZATZIKI.

In February, the Tom & Jerry's gyros-beef-and-many-other-treats Chicago in Sycamore suffered a major fire.  The building was beyond salvage and the owners moved to temporary quarters on the other side of Sycamore.

Once site clearance at the original location was completed, the owners sought building permits to build another restaurant there.  Sycamore's city council used the occasion to change the zoning of that lot, as well as of other restaurant lots nearby, including a McDonald's that was doing a planned on-site replacement of its stand.  You know, the kind of rig-a-ma-role that has held up rebuilding in the Pacific Palisades for over a year and kept California's high speed rail authority from operating trains on even forty chains of track.

Never mind any of that.  The new Tom & Jerry's opened for business on Monday.  "Tom & Jerry’s Restaurant reopened with a new building nine months after the fire and five months after construction broke ground on May 1."

Let's say the restaurant, and its crew, have a loyal following.

So many people attended the ribbon-cutting that the restaurant’s parking lot was at capacity before the grills were fired. That caused groups of people to park on the west side of DeKalb Avenue and walk across five lanes of traffic without a crosswalk to be among the first to order at the new, but old, location.

That's taking long chances for a gyros or a beef as the eatery is on the inside of a curve in Sycamore Stroad, or DeKalb Avenue that far north, and motorists honor the 40 mph speed restriction more in the breach.  The new restaurant is laid out much like its predecessor at that location.  I must check it out, see if the Christmas trees that get season-suitable colored lights, e.g. red and white for Valentine's Day and purple for Easter, are back.

MORE ACCOLADES FOR JOHN KASS.

The longtime Chicago opinion columnist, first with Chicago's Tribune and then as a free agent, called it a career in October.

PUT A PIN IN IT.

No sooner has the World Series beer been drunk than free agency begins.

The 2026 World Series was a long time coming for Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy. The 67-year-old got his start as a baseball coach in 1982 and didn't get a full-time managerial gig in the majors until 2023.

After such a lengthy climb to reach the pinnacle of the sport, Murphy was — understandably — a bit more willing to let loose following the Brewers' championship-clinching win in Game 5 on Wednesday.

He got that opportunity — and didn't disappoint — upon being presented with the final-out baseball from Game 5. That moment was captured on video, as Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers walked over to Murphy and gave the manager the baseball that secured the last out of the 2026 World Series.

Murphy embraced Bauers for the gesture, and then delivered one more piece of sage advice to his first baseman, one that came at the expense of the New York Yankees.

Jake Bauers, who went from baseball obscurity to most valuable player in the National League championships is a free agent as of right now, with a qualifying offer from the Brewers to consider, and his manager was his authentic self.  "You're going to be a rich f***er. Just remember when you're on that horses*** Yankees team and you're all playing for yourselves, just remember this is the way we used to do it."  Why the Yankees?  "The club could be in the market for a first baseman this offseason, especially one who can take advantage of the team's short porch in left field."

MAKING A JOYFUL NOISE.

The World Series is not yet decided.  We know who the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra roots for.

This rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at the Bradley Symphony Center 👏 📹: milwsymphorch / IG https://t.co/Ts3doIig2y

— MLB (@MLB) October 25, 2026

Go Brewers.

PASSING THE BATON.

The current standard for collegiate or professional championships won in the Great State of Wisconsin is the nine national titles garnered by Wisconsin's women's hockey team.  More than a few of those players also won Olympic gold (Team U.S.A.) or silver (Team Canada) in the days before pitchers and catchers reported.

Thus, it is fitting and proper for representatives of the Wisconsin skaters to participate in the festivities opening the World Series in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin's social media team posted that picture without a caption.

John Hinderaker liked Mickey Guyton's rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

He was also impressed with players actually lining up for the Anthem, but less impressed with replay review.  Perhaps we'll take those things up another day.

Milwaukee Brewers from the 1982 World Series, when the Brewers were an American League team, were on hand to throw out the first pitch.  Robin Yount, who Christian Yelich acknowledged as the team's de facto initial captain, honored longtime play-by-play announcer Bob Uecker in his choice of attire.

The Brewers held serve at home.  Keep in mind, dear reader, that the batters listed toward the bottom of the lineup card are major league baseball players, and they can hit for power accordingly.

Game Three starts in about ninety minutes in St. Petersburg.

THE FINAL SUMMIT.

Steve Lee, who managed the Union Pacific steam program until 2010, has departed this life.

A Kentucky native, Lee began his railroading career with the Illinois Central in 1972 and later served as a trainmaster and road foreman for the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific. As the Rock Island faced bankruptcy, Lee became the division road foreman for UP out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1980. He took charge of UP’s Heritage Fleet in 1989, overseeing 4-8-4 “FEF-3” 844 and 4-6-6-4 “Challenger” 3985 along with the railroad’s vintage diesels and passenger cars. He led the program until his retirement in 2010.

Union Pacific's decision to bring a Big Boy out of retirement and donate 3985 for preservation came later.  Union Pacific's steam program's success during the Steve Lee years undoubtedly contributed to headquarters opting to restore a Big Boy to service.

Lee was born Aug. 2, 1950, in the small north-central Kentucky town of Vine Grove, not far from Fort Knox. His hometown is located on the former Illinois Central line from Louisville to Paducah, now part of the Paducah & Louisville regional railroad. Lee hired on with the IC in 1972 and later went on to become a trainmaster and road foreman for the Rock Island. Around the time of the Rock’s demise in 1980 he landed a job with Union Pacific as a division road foreman at Cheyenne.

The spotlight began to shine on Lee in 1989 when UP put him in charge of its Heritage Fleet, based at the Cheyenne shops complex. The fleet included Nos. 844 and 3985, both of which were already operational, as well as the railroad’s extensive roster of other vintage steam and diesel locomotives and passenger cars.

Overseeing a Cheyenne crew that included full-time employees and volunteers, Lee took UP’s steam program and its locomotives far and wide, staging a number of high-profile events that included running 844 and 3985 to Railfair events at the California State Railroad Museum in 1991 and 1999, bringing 844 (still numbered 8444) to the 50th-anniversary celebration of Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal in May 1989, and taking 3985 to Chicago in 1993 for the National Railway Historical Society’s convention.

In the early days of double-stack intermodal trains, Union Pacific put 3985 on the head pin of an American President Lines train, without any diesel assistance.  The year of Mr Lee's retirement, Union Pacific put 3985 on the head pin of Ringling Barnum's Blue Unit.

Children of all ages still flock to trackside when 844 or 4014 are at work.  R.I.P.

NOTICE OF DISCONTINUANCE.

Chicago opinion columnist John Kass calls it a career.

It’s time for me to wind down the website. Past time. I held on too long because it had cost me too much in pain and psychic blood at the hands of the jacobin newsroom union that destroyed the once-great Chicago newspaper that I loved. And I loved it for those decades and decades.

But I’ve run my race. Now it is time for me to go. Past time. I didn’t want to consider it once. I was afraid. I wouldn’t even dare brush up against it.

Especially when clinging  rather desperately to some old man dreams of myself as Laertes in his garden, an old man still hoping  to prove his worth as the warrior he once had been, still insisting he had spears left to throw.

But I’m old now. There are no spears.  Five strokes in three years convinced me. After that wonderful Indian Summer that we just had, the sky grew cold and  I finally came face to face with it: Betty explained the math. Five strokes in three years, she said, And you can still speak, you can still read and use a search engine, you can read Victor Davis Hanson and Plato, you can still discuss the great ideas.

But another stroke? I didn’t need any further convincing. I couldn’t contemplate the alternatives.

He took what they dished out, and he did it his way.

Over the years, Mr Kass took on the Combine, the chumbolones of Chicago's Democrat machine, correctly noted the folly of using tax money for public radio, and in many ways continued the combination of sass and wit of Mike Royko.  Readers are suggesting he bestow one more Golden Moutza to close out the year.

YE WHO NOW WILL BLESS THE POOR, SHALL YOURSELF FIND BLESSING.

The Holiday Trains that used to run under Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern auspices continue this Festive Season, with the Canadian and United States trains covering Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern metals.  Scroll down for a list of performers.

The United States train will make half-hour long performances at Pingree Grove, 9 am and Byron, noon of the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 24 November, on their way to Zwolle, Louisiana, covering territory Kansas City Southern's train used to serve.  The stock then returns to Chicago to wind up a little bit south of Saskatoon, with a 5.15 pm call at Gurnee and a 7 pm performance at Sturtevant on Tuesday, 8 December.

These trains run to provide entertainment and an opportunity to make cash or in-kind contributions, to the local food banks along the Holiday Train's routes, and to the Salvation Army where the Holiday Express calls.

Mark your calendars and make a note in your shopping list.

LIVE BY THE PRAISE, DIE BY THE HATE.

Thus did Indiana Fever reserve Sophie Cunningham brush off the off-the-court noise inspired by her defense of Caitlin Clark and of women's sports for, well, women.

Speaking of off-the-court noise, how well did Marc Silverman's "The Bears are done being the Packers’ little brother" age?  Last week, he wrote, "The Bears have taken the North, and now they must practice what they preach and not give it back."

JOE MAGARAC'S NEIGHBOR.

Mike Ditka, the quintessential Chicago Bear, dies at 86.

Still revered as “Da Coach” and ringmaster of the 1985 Bears, one of the most dominant and perhaps the zaniest Super Bowl-winning team in league history. Ditka was enshrined in the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame and the Bears said during a ceremony in 2013 that his “No. 89″ jersey will be the last one retired by the team.

He was born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, the son of a welder who changed the family name from Dyczko. He grew up in nearby Aliquippa, close to the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing plants that dotted the western part of the state, a big, talented, three-sport athlete and All-American at Pitt whose bruising style made his first nickname, “Iron Mike,” a good fit.

In Western Pennsylvania, you learn to play through the whistle.

The Bears play at Green Bay this Sunday at noon.  R. I. P.

BUYING INTO AMERICA.

My position on immigration and assimilation has long been "Give these kids an America to buy into, and an America that buys into these kids, and we'll be OK."

That picture is from the 2016 Oktoberfest season at the Bavarian Bierhaus near Milwaukee.  The youth soccer players doing some fundraising for the Bavaria youth soccer program are now young adults, and, who knows, some might be starting families and bringing up the next generation of Bavaria's players.

Last weekend brought us Milwaukee's lakefront Oktoberfest, which shared the weekend with baseball playoffs, and buying into American cultural appropriation was in Ordung.

That's a candid shot, several of those festival goers had been posing together for photos to share alike.  As you see, they're serious about their beer, with a half-liter cup and a liter souvenir Maß or two on that table.

EVERYTHING ELSE IS ELABORATION.

Jonathan Turley concludes his "Why We Shouldn’t Cancel the Supreme Court" with "In revolution after revolution, newly-established courts carried out the purported will of the people with terrible consequences. In an age of rage, it is too often reason itself that is canceled."

His essay, as befits a student of constitutional law, focuses on the role of the United States Supreme Court.  In the course of establishing his argument, he makes the following points about the American Founding.

Today’s attacks on the American judiciary do indeed harken back to the rhetoric that raged before the advent of “The Terror” in revolutionary France—the rhetoric that gave rise to the kind of “mobocracy” that the Founders sought to avoid by designing our constitutional order as they did.

To help understand this, it is useful to recall the fundamental differences between the American Revolution, which led to the world’s oldest and most prosperous republic, and the French Revolution, which led to a short-lived, blood-soaked tyranny. Both revolutions were based on Enlightenment ideas. But America’s revolution was closely tied to the political philosophy of John Locke, who held that our rights come not from the government, but from God. The institutional arrangements of the Constitution, including the independent court system, were designed to protect these God-given individual rights.

Conversely, the French Revolution was inspired in the end not by Lockean principles but by the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which extolled the “general will” of the people and opposed institutions (including courts) that interfered with that will. This concept of a general or popular will served as a license for French revolutionaries like Robespierre—who declared that “Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible . . . a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy”—to unleash a torrent of executions that would eventually come to turn on the revolutionaries themselves.

There is a radical movement rising in the U.S. with chilling parallels to the French Revolution. Demands for the elimination or packing of the Supreme Court and other measures are ripped from the French revolutionary handbook.

My stance, more as citizen with some knowledge of political economy than as constitutional or legal scholar, is that perhaps in a quarter millennium we got a few things right, as witness the Declaration and Constitution still governing, while France has had Bonapartism and four or five republics over the same time horizon.  Steven Hayward introduces the likely instabilities of any such reforms more directly.  "Progressive reforms would likely cause greater instability in our already unstable politics."  Why?  "If you think government is slow and ineffective now, that Americans are dangerously polarized, and that policy instability is a drag on the public interest, just wait till the Progressives get their way, and then demand another round of constitutional 'reform' when it doesn’t work out the way they hope."  Indeed, or perhaps mais oui!

THE RACE TO ELEVEN WINS.

David Manney's "From Uecker on the Radio to 103 Wins: What a Season" celebrates the Milwaukee Brewers path to the playoffs.

Some of my favorite Brewers memories don't begin at a ballpark.

They begin on a hot Wisconsin summer night with my dad, my brother, and me fishing on Half Moon Lake in Carson Park while Bob Uecker called the game on the radio. You could hear the water, the insects, maybe somebody fumbling with tackle, and Ueck describing baseball as only he could.

Those nights became part of what the Brewers mean to me.

There were ballpark memories, too. I remember going to the Met in Minneapolis and watching Larry Hisle hit two home runs against the Twinkies, including one off the fair pole.

Years later, sitting in the left-center field bleachers at the Metrodome, I had binoculars on home plate while Paul Molitor stole home while Robin Yount stood at the plate. It remains one of the greatest baseball moments I've ever seen in person.

And I know what some of you are thinking: the MLB lost some of you as a fan. I respect that. For me, however, baseball is part of me.

Growing up in Eau Claire, Wis., it meant it was easier to see the Brewers play the Twins than to drive three hours to Milwaukee County Stadium.

Until 1971, I was able to listen to, and suffer through, Brewer games on WTMJ, with Merle Harmon, and later Bob Uecker, on the play-by play; for the last forty years I've been able to enjoy the day games, but must make do with, or without, a scratchy radio broadcast of the night games, including much of that season-ending series win in Philadelphia and the sweep of the Cardinals.

THE BITTER FRUITS OF ADULTISM.

Deconstruct "I'm the boss, you're the kid," and bear what follows.

I’ve never considered taking a drink into an interview. I’m not even comfortable taking one if offered. I don’t do it because it’s generally a short enough process that it’s unnecessary.

And frankly, saying you need to stay caffeinated to talk to a potential boss sends signals I don’t know that I’d have been a fan of.

The problem here is that people are opining on this sort of thing often without asking a question of why we tended not to bring beverages to interviews in the first place. It’s one of a thousand examples of people seeking to upset the status quo without understanding why the status quo exists.

On the flip side, many of those who are upset over it may not even know why they’re upset over it. I doubt anyone came right out and said, “You guys tend to be so boring that I need as much caffeine as possible to stay awake to talk to you.” They just got bent out of shape from the start.

These little rules are common, but they generally all start from somewhere, and like Chesterton’s Fence, we need to understand them and why they exist before we set about dismantling them.

That's Tom Knighton, reacting, correctly, to the most recent first world problem: should a job-seeker bring an iced coffee to a job interview.  His conclusion?

Perhaps more importantly, why do you think you need it inside with you for a 20-minute interview? Or do you just need to knock down doors for the sake of knocking them down?

If so, be careful, because you might be on the other side of that desk and have to deal with someone just like you, only worse, and have no recourse left because of what you did at the time.

Call me old school, bringing your own drink, hot or iced, into an interview, let alone food, signals a lack of seriousness.  If the interviewer offers you coffee, tea, or water, politely accept or decline: the prudent thing might be to decline, the offer might be to put you at ease or perhaps as a test of your impulse control.

The economics job meetings offered a different sort of hazard: there were departments that conducted interviews with bottles of the adult beverages in plain view.  Always politely decline an offer of one!

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS IS A YOUNG PERSON'S GAME.

The Milwaukee Brewers last night secured their fourth straight division championship.  "Yelich, Woodruff relish standing as last ones left from 2018 division champs."  That's Christian Yelich, 2018 Most Valuable Player, and Brandon Woodruff, the last pitcher not named Shohei Ohtani to hit a home run in a playoff game.

The Chicago Cubs will likely be a playoff team, although for the third straight season since they recruited Craig Counsell away from the Brewers, their coaching staff and their big payroll has not won the division.  There has been a Central Division for years, with good Cardinals or Reds teams being all over the record books, and yet, neither of those teams put together four straight division wins.

There's still a lot of playoff baseball coming, and we'll see how well the Brewers, with a roster of relative newcomers, fare.  There is Sprecher chilling.

THERE'S A PROTOTYPE FOR EVERYTHING.

Illinois Railway Museum operated its night trains Saturday and Sunday.  The "coach train" included several of the usual heavyweight coaches, plus sleeper lounge Villa Real, dining car Galt House, not carrying passengers; and ten section observation Inglehome.  Power for the evening was a recently acquired Amtrak F40PH with Operation Lifesaver additional markings.

I wonder if George Gershwin got the idea for Rhapsody in Blue while riding a twelve-wheeled heavyweight car.  Inglehome had a drumhead for the evening.

I could put together a reasonable facsimile of this train, perhaps with a rainbow of paint jobs, and have it orbiting the basement during the upcoming open days.

Hicks Car Works have two photo albums featuring the daytime Saturday operations.

A CENTENNIAL.

Somewhere on the midway there ought to be a Tilt-a-Whirl.

The first of these operated at the 1926 Minnesota State Fair.

With screams and giggles, whipping ponytails and white-knuckle grips, Minnesota fairgoers are taking delight in the magic of the Tilt-A-Whirl ride as it turns 100 years old.

The iconic ride and its brightly colored cars debuted at the Minnesota State Fair in 1926, and it has been a mainstay at fairs across the country ever since.

The inventor originally hoped to create a watergoing carroussel that would offer less predictable motion than the up-and-down of a horse on a sliding pole.

Herbert Sellner “created a water merry-go-round and, basically, one boat was driving, and all the other boats were tied together,” [Rice county historian Jenna] Nelson said. “It got destroyed by a storm in 1925.” Herbert’s brother, Martin, suggested adapting it for land.

In January 1926, Sellner started sketching drawings for this new ride, calling it the Tilt-ulator. On April 24, he filed a patent in Minneapolis, and a month later, according to Sellner’s notes, he had made a significant change: The new ride — with nine cars, as one advertisement put it, “tilting, sweeping, spinning, swooping, swaying, speeding, sliding, skidding, rounding, rotating, rising, revolving, hesitating, flying, falling, curving and circling” — would be called the Tilt-A-Whirl.

The concept is elegant.  Motors power a segmented undulating turntable on which nine (now seven) cars freewheel around a center pivot on each segment.  Sometimes a car simply rocks back and forth.  Other times, it gets into a positive feedback loop and pivots ever faster, which might be what the hardcore riders are hoping for.

The ride is powered by seven individual motors around a circle — and gravity makes the car spin around its dips. Weight from the riders shifts the cars’ positions as they lean, sending the cars off balance, said ride operator Thomas Lauthier, who brings his Tilt-A-Whirl to fairs around the country.

Lauthier has been operating the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Minnesota State Fair for the last 12 years. He said Midwesterners have a particular affinity for the ride.

The Sellners were skilled in the woodworking and mechanical arts.

Herbert Sellner was born in Faribault in 1887. His father was a skilled cabinetmaker, and Herbert inherited his father’s creativity and talents. In 1912, at the age of 25, he established the Sellner Woodcraft Company in Faribault to manufacture mission furniture, lamps, and other wood articles. Sellner also created the Ideal Lamp Company. A 1917 catalog listed magazine racks, smoking and telephone stands, folding dining tables, and lamps with leaded stained glass shades. When World War I affected supply availability, Sellner began manufacturing wood toys for children.

By 1923, Sellner’s creativity evolved, and he invented both a water toboggan slide and a water wheel that became popular items at bathing beaches. The slide was thirty feet high, featured a 100-foot-long track, and occupied a space of 18 by 100 feet. With 12 toboggans priced at 50 cents a ride, the owner could earn $6.00 every hour.

During the War, the Tilt-a-Whirl factory retooled to produce bomb carts.  Larson International in Texas subsequently purchased the Sellner firm and they continue to produce Tilt-a-Whirls.

A century ago, Minnesota creativity gave us Burma-Shave and its roadside signs, and a midway classic, as long as your stomach is up to it.

OUR SILVER JUBILEE YEAR BEGINS.

Cold Spring Shops opened for business on the afternoon of Tuesday, 5 September, 2002, the day after Labor Day.  Our Silver Jubilee year will thus commence during the long weekend.

Britain's investor owned railways recognised the Silver Jubilee of King George V with a train named, er, titled, as they have it there, Silver Jubilee and a series of mixed traffic locomotives named for the countries and colonies of the Dominion and the Commonwealth and for prominent figures or events.  Canadian Pacific got in on the honours with two classes of 4-4-4 fast passenger locomotives.  A representative of the smaller series occasionally polishes the rails at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.

We'll see what the upcoming year brings.  There are a lot of things I carried on about early on that I can still carry on about, although I cannot characterize all the developments of the past quarter century as for the worse.

DENY COHERENT BELIEFS, FREE-RIDE ON THE EFFORTS OF THOSE WHO HAVE SOME.

My case is familiar.

I've been fighting it out on this line since before there was a Cold Spring Shops.  "Yeah, when you deny coherent beliefs of any kind, you get incoherence."  That cannot turn out well.  "If you're going to deny coherent beliefs, everybody else has to be in on the con."  That post also noted, "Arguments from authority only work when people respect your authority."

But people in authority have been undermining their authority for a long time, while dressing up in the skin suits that Erudition and Expertise have become.  Thus does Arthur Brooks, writing in The (Not Detroit) Free Press, conclude, "Millions of Americans aren’t just misinformed. They’re searching for coherence in a world that no longer provides it."

It's still up to people who don't buy the postmodern wordnoise to uphold standards.  Kurt Schlichter argues, "All This 'Feelings' Nonsense Should Make You Feel Sick."  That's notionally about the legal distinction between being out of sorts or being nuts.  In the course of his argument, though, he fires a broadside against the notion of people living "their truth."

The legal issue really has to do with whether the jurors believe she had a mental defect that made her unable to tell right from wrong, but this isn’t a hard case. It’s an easy case. It’s only made hard because a significant percentage of our society has decided that reason is inconvenient, as it leads to results that they don’t prefer, so they’ve decided to jettison it completely in exchange for a paradigm in which feelings determine reality. The advantage of a feelzocentric paradigm is obvious. You always get the result you want because the only criterion for any issue is how you feel.

Left unchecked, this idea would be the death of civilization. But of course, the irony is that only civilization can allow the frivolity of a feelzocentric paradigm to persist. Its practitioners are made safe and secure by those of us bound to the harsh rigors of reason. Basically, we create a world where they can act like idiots and not get themselves killed by other people who are controlled by their emotions. You know, kind of like the entire Third World.

It's an absence of bourgeois norms, perhaps seasoned by tribal politics and the cult of Mohammed that makes the Third World what it is, not because Third World universities are on the cutting edge of high concept philosophy.  Well, OK, that's for arbitrary values of "third world" that include France.

Bad ideas, though, have a way of trickling down from the ivory tower into common discourse.

We used to look down on people who weren’t rational. But now we look on them as sensitive, as caring and compassionate. Our Oprahized society celebrates those who prioritize the feelz. How it’s caring and compassionate to let a woman who throttled a trio of babies escape punishment is beyond me. Like you, my mind can’t wrap around people who are entirely bereft of reason in favor of emotion.

We see it online, too, with irrational people babbling endlessly about stupid nonsense in defiance of objective fact.

"Nonsense in defiance of objective fact" might not be what hangs that Plymouth jury.  As long, though, as we live in a world where "reality has no regard for your feelings" is a right-wing talking point, and uttering it might get the campus bias response team on you, it's going to be on the people who insist that logic and content must carry the day to protect themselves, and the people not so inhibited. from the consequences of denying coherent beliefs.