TRADITION IS THE PRESERVATION OF FIRE.

Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts made a presentation, "Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order," at Hillsdale College.  It is not the most orderly presentation of ideas, although its opening paragraphs suggest the ways in which the old values regime breaks down.

The top-down, elitist brand of politics that has dominated the United States since the end of the Cold War—under Republican and Democratic administrations alike—has failed. Yes, we are materially richer than we were in 1991, and our largest corporations are more profitable. But we are militarily and strategically weaker, fiscally endangered, and spiritually enervated. As a result, public trust in the vaunted institutions that our elites control—political, scientific, journalistic, educational, religious—has evaporated. And populism—especially on the conservative Right—is on the rise.

Although I will focus on the U.S., this rise of populism is widespread. From Argentina to Italy to France to the United Kingdom to Hungary, there are similarities. The new populism tends to be economically and politically nationalistic. It tends to be culturally patriotic and socially conservative. It tends to sympathize with workers over corporations. It is also self-consciously, defiantly—often mockingly—anti-establishment.

It is not a coincidence that so many of the West’s populist leaders—Javier Milei, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orbán, Giorgia Meloni, and Donald Trump—have, shall we say, colorful personalities. Their political swagger may threaten elite politicians almost as much as their policy agendas do, because it punctures the bubble of credentialed, institutional authority that insulates elite power from public scrutiny.

With few exceptions, the Left as we know it today has rejected populism out of hand, embracing instead Big Government, Big Business, Big Banks, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Labor, Big Ag, Big Media, and Big Entertainment. For the most part, today’s Left is hard at work fortifying the power these institutions wield against the rigors of democratic accountability.

Thus the only hope for a sustainable, democratically legitimate populist reform movement today is on the Right. The question is whether the leaders of the movement can harness the highly negative energy from which the populism emerges and channel it toward a coherent, positive politics of national renewal and reform.

From time to time, that spectre of a new international movement emerges to let the ruling classes tremble, doesn't it?  It's not clear, though, that the establishment's rejection of the current populist currents is necessarily a movement of the left.  Pronoun protocols in the human resources departments and women in the corporate suite implementing the latest management fad do not strike me as the sort of thing to bring the proletariat to the barricades.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Buckle up.  "There are a lot of tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet this year."

Pray this is the first.  "The crisis of democratic government then, is actually a crisis of progressive government. People seem to feel that they have been taxed, regulated, bossed around and intimidated by left-of-center politicians for decades — but the results are bad and have been getting worse."  I mean, when Our Intellectual Betters have lost Fareed Zakaria!  "On the other side, if Democrats do not learn some hard lessons from the poor governance in many blue cities and states, they will be seen as defending cultural elites, woke ideology and bloated, inefficient government. That might be a formula for permanent minority status."

Why do we accept government by an invalid?  I don't want to be ruled over by anybody.  What the hell is self-governance anyway if you can't trust the people to figure out this democracy thing themselves?  Normal voters are tired of liberal America’s condescension and elitism.  Democrats spent the year trying to convince people they didn’t realize how good they had it.  The Democratic Party Deserves Its Image as a Party of War.

Biden is a disgrace.  "Everyone in America should be grateful that this man will not serve a second term."  The thoughtless three-hour delay of the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover is simply emblematic of his reign.  Goodbye.  "Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will still be the one-term president responsible for Donald Trump's return to the White House."

Practically?  "Practically every terrible idea eating away at America’s soul originated with some academician whose philosophy gelled while writing his PhD dissertation."

Jimmy Carter.  "How far have we declined when the president of the United States can't pay for coffee?"  R.I.P.

Buckwheat.  "She did not even lie well. Check out the blinking and the stuttering and stammering. She is not, and will never be, a smidgen good at her job."  Democrats are sort of cute when they’re out of power.

A city by the sea does not have enough water.  The Democrats for which Californians have cast votes for decades have failed you.  Anybody wondering why “America First” helped get Mr. Trump elected?

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes resumes.

CAROLS IN THE SQUARE, TRADEOFFS EVERYWHERE.

Christmas and Hanukkah overlapped this year, which motivated Free Press contributor Eli Lake to meditate on "Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs."

His opening paragraphs refer, directly, to the title of the post.

I love Christmas—the parties, the spirit of charity, the lights glowing on modest row houses, the tree at Rockefeller Center, even the schmaltzy movies. What I really love, though, is the music.

I am Jewish, so you won’t find me dragging a small Douglas fir into my living room. I will not attend midnight mass or keep an advent calendar. On Christmas Day, I eat wonton soup and sweet and sour chicken at a Chinese restaurant, as is my people’s tradition. But the music of the season is a balm and a bop. And it’s not only infectious; it’s secular.

What we understand as "caroling" got its name from the Medieval French custom of singing in public with musical accompaniment.  And longtime Christmas carol maven William Studwell, late of Northern Illinois University, would recognize the sacred and the secular alike in his "Carol of the Year" series.  "The complete list includes Adeste Fideles and Stille Nacht, as well as a few favorites of a less religious nature."

PROTECTING COMPETITORS DOES NOT PROTECT COMPETITION.

The Federal Trade Commission, in all its majesty, seems bent on resurrecting the structure-conduct-performance paradigm only with new actors.  Not too long ago, the Jarrett regency's appointees blocked a merger of Albertsons with Kroger, to the predictable hallelujahs from Common Dreams types.

Antitrust advocates on Tuesday welcomed a pair of court rulings against the proposed merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, which was challenged by Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and multiple state attorneys general.

"The FTC, along with our state partners, scored a major victory for the American people, successfully blocking Kroger's acquisition of Albertsons, "said Henry Liu, director of the commission's Bureau of Competition, in a statement. "This historic win protects millions of Americans across the country from higher prices for essential groceries—from milk, to bread, to eggs—ultimately allowing consumers to keep more money in their pockets."

"This victory has a direct, tangible impact on the lives of millions of Americans who shop at Kroger or Albertsons-owned grocery stores for their everyday needs, whether that's a Fry's in Arizona, a Vons in Southern California, or a Jewel-Osco in Illinois," he added. "This is also a victory for thousands of hardworking union employees, protecting their hard-earned paychecks by ensuring Kroger and Albertsons continue to compete for workers through higher wages, better benefits, and improved working conditions."

I'm not sure which price scissors are at work in order that Kroger and Albertsons simultaneously compete wages up and grocery prices down.  The genealogy of Albertsons suggests things might not be that easy.  Direct your attention, dear reader, to that "Vons in Southern California."  Years ago, Vons attempted a merger with another Southern California grocer called Shopping Bag.

In the 1950s, competition in the Los Angeles grocery market intensified. Small grocers were acquired by large companies, and large companies greatly increased their numbers of stores in the city. From 1948 to 1958, for example, the number of stores owned by Von’s Grocery Co. (Von’s) (defendant) increased from 14 to 27. Shopping Bag Food Stores (Shopping Bag), which competed with Von’s, increased its number of stores from 15 to 34. Together, Von’s and Shopping Bag controlled 7.5 percent of the grocery market. In 1960 Von’s acquired Shopping Bag by purchasing all its stock and assets. The United States government (plaintiff) sued Von’s, alleging that its acquisition of Shopping Bag violated § 7 of the Clayton Act. The government argued that the acquisition was likely to worsen the trend of large grocers obtaining greater market share to the detriment of small grocers. The government sought a temporary restraining order, which the district court denied. Eventually, the district court held that the acquisition did not violate § 7 because there was not a reasonable probability that it would create a monopoly or substantially lessen competition. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.

I take issue with that "competition intensified" passage.  It changed in form, with sole proprietorship grocers served by Commission Row distributors or jobbers being replaced by vertically integrated grocery chains that organized their own logistics.  To the Supreme Court of the era, the disappearance of the sole proprietors and the combinations into chains were the substantial lessening of competition the authors of the Clayton Antitrust Act had in mind.

Held. The merger of two of the largest and most successful retail grocery companies in a market area characterized by a steady decline, before and after the merger, in the number of small grocery companies, combined with significant absorption of small firms by larger ones, is a violation of § 7 of the Clayton Act. Pp. 384 U. S. 274-279.

(a) By the enactment of the Celler-Kefauver amendment to § 7 in 1950, Congress sought to preserve competition among small businesses by halting a trend toward concentration in its incipiency, and, thus, the courts must be alert to protect competition against increasing concentration through mergers especially where concentration is gaining momentum in the market. Pp. 384 U. S. 276-277.

(b) This case presents the precise situation which Congress intended to proscribe, where two powerful companies merge to become more powerful in a market exhibiting a marked trend toward concentration. Pp. 384 U. S. 277-278.

(c) Section 7 requires not only an appraisal of the immediate impact of the merger on competition, but a prediction of the merger's effect on competitive conditions in the future, to prevent the destruction of competition. United States v. Philadelphia Nat. Bank, 374 U. S. 321, 374 U. S. 362. P. 384 U. S. 278

(d) Since the appellees were on notice of the antitrust charge, the judgment is reversed, and the District Court is directed to order divestiture without delay. P. 384 U. S. 279.

233 F. Supp. 976, reversed.

Page 384 U. S. 271

Forty or so years ago, economists, particularly those of the creative-destruction-competition-is-discovery school scorned the Court's analysis as missing, completely, the irrelevance of those sole proprietor groceries to the real action, which was the emerging supermarket chains.  Where Vons and Shopping Bag were relatively minor players compared with Safeway.  And yes, a previous generation of structure-conduct-performance economists raised precisely the same objections to Safeway that they raise today about Wal-Mart.

[Once upon a time] there was a middle-class-friendly economy in which large manufacturing firms produced goods in unionized factories. Wal-Mart is the leading edge of a proletarianized economy in which large retailers squeeze those manufacturers while doing everything possible to drive down wages. Tapped's Ezra Klein spells out those behaviors in more detail.

Perhaps I'm showing my age, but at one time the populist political economy saw those large manufacturing firms as building blocks of a monopoly capitalism that practiced conscious parallelism, which reduced efficiency by restricting output and raising prices, and the unions as accomplice residual claimants to the monopoly profits thereby obtained. The retailers of the era were complicit in that monopoly capitalism, with a concentrated food packing industry and often vertically integrated supermarkets profiting by the inflated price of bread, although, again, food and commercial workers' unions participated as residual claimants. Because firms could practice conscious parallelism without calendars to keep track of the phases of the moon or meetings in the back room at Dirty Helen's, antitrust action could do nothing about the resulting inefficiencies, although Wal-Mart could.

But when Wal-Mart goes after those inefficiencies, that's bad. Mr Klein summarizes in a few sentences what several chapters of the book spell out in more detail.

What's funny about the case at hand today is what happened to yesteryear's Wal-Mart.  Safeway are (checks notes) an Albertson affiliate, part of one of those vertically integrated grocery chains I alluded to at the start of this post.  "We support our stores with 22 distribution centers and 19 manufacturing plants."

THE DEMOCRATS SAY FAREWELL TO A PRESIDENT.

It has been over fifty years since the Democrats last buried a president, Harry Truman in the early 1970s.

The recently deceased President Carter served as a foil for Ronald Reagan during his Capitol ceremony, and the eulogies for the elder President Bush combined Cold War triumphalism with some affirmation of the so-called rules-based international order.

PROTECTIONIST FOLLIES, OR RENT-SEEKERS DOING THEIR THING.

I have no reason to change my position with respect to the sale of United States Steel from where it was a year ago.  "It's not as if we didn't see something like this coming, long ago.  In February 2022, policy wonks Rosemary Bezy and Patricia DeMarco expressed dismay when U. S. Steel built new capacity in ... Arkansas."

The political economy is straightforward enough:  Hillary Clinton couldn't even carry Arkansas in 2016, whilst Donald Trump and Joe Biden both contend for voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

We can't bring back those workers or their health, but we can note that U. S. Steel is still slow to adapt.  It's probably still heretical in the union halls of the Mon Valley or to the northwest along the Mahoning to say Nucor-Yamato.  Never mind that Nucor and Yamato established a joint venture to recycle scrap into heavy structurals a quarter century ago in Blytheville, Arkansas.

They're still at it, and it's apparently OK for a United States located company to include Yamato in its corporate title, while an aircraft carrier called Kaga takes delivery in San Diego of F-35s to help contain China.

ON EITHER TRACK, AT ANY TIME, IN EITHER DIRECTION.

Florida East Coast and Brightline released in-cab video of an avoidable collision in Delray Beach.

From the Brightline Safety and Security Team: Railroad safety is a community wide effort. For everyone’s safety, never drive around crossing gates when they are down. pic.twitter.com/6TSeHHOuyq

— Brightline (@GoBrightline) December 29, 2024

Fifteen people, including three firefighters, were injured.  Everybody is alive, and the train stayed on the rails.

Brightline's trains have had a lot of avoidable close encounters of the wrong kind with pedestrians and motorists and whenever one occurs, people who should know better say foolish things.  "There was clearly some lack of communication between emergency services and the people running the bullet train."

No.  Watch the video.  The collision is the most easily preventable, as the driver of the fire truck has an unobstructed view of the approaching train.  Many crossing collisions involving a second train involve someone darting out from behind the first train to clear the crossing: in this instance, from the right, and the driver or pedestrian has no opportunity to see the second train.  I do not want to get into a third possibility, where somebody attempts to beat a train to the crossing, not aware of a second train coming the other way.  When that happens the collision can affect both trains as well as the driver or pedestrian who took a long chance.

Four Delray Beach firefighters have been placed on leave pending an investigation.  "Fire Chief Ronald Martin said Assistant Chief Kevin Green, Division Chief Todd Lynch, Captain Brian Fiorey, and Driver Engineer David Wyatt have been placed on leave with pay 'pending the results of an internal administrative investigation to determine if City and Fire Rescue policies and procedures were followed.'"  If that investigation includes higher ranking White Shirts as well as the operator and officer in command on the truck, perhaps future train crews and Delray Beach first responders will be spared a repeat.

Expect train movements at any time, on any track, in either direction.  That is all.

DONALD TRUMP, CHAMPIONING THE BABBITTS.

Sing unto me, O Muse, of reality dawning on Ruy "Liberal Patriot" Teixeira.  "In the wake of the Democrats’ drubbing at the hands of Donald Trump and the GOP, you’d assume the party would be all-in on a fundamental rethink, starting with some serious soul-searching on how the party came to be so out of sync with the majority of America on key cultural questions."

And thus will the promised epic post, with musical interludes, on the impatience of the Normals with Their Intellectual Betters commences.

Chris Cuomo joins the chorus.  “That’s exactly why you lost the election. You are out of touch. You lost the plot about how people feel in the majority. That’s what you did.”  As does Thomas "Listen, Liberal" Frank.  "Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The Democrats are a party of college graduates, as the whole world understands by now, of Ph.D.s and genius-grant winners and the best consultants money can buy."

Joel Kotkin is thinking along similar lines.

The traditional Democratic focus on class mobility would be far more effective than their current approach, which is largely shaped by their own ideological and sociological bubbles rather than the concerns of regular Americans. As long-time Democratic operative Van Jones has observed, once voters choose wrongly, they’re dismissed as racists and fascists. It goes without saying that this kind of selective scapegoating is not a workable political strategy.

People who voted with the winning side concur.  Rita Panahi puts it bluntly.  "One of the main reasons behind the political alignment we’re seeing in the West is that the working & middle classes finally woke up to the fact that the Left hates them."  The editors at Issues & Insights spike the football.

Despite having won five of the last eight presidential elections, the Democratic Party today is in far worse shape than it was in 1980.

It has been completely overrun by its America-hating, DEI-ESG-CRT-socialist-Marxist-spewing radical fringe, which obsesses over things such as “transgender” rights and a phony climate crisis instead of jobs and opportunity.

You don't have to dig that deep into the polemical reservoir.

TAKE "NONGOVERNMENTAL" SERIOUSLY.

Former president Jimmy Carter departed this life at the end of last year.  Reason's Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency, while taking stock of the Carter presidency, offers a back-handed compliment.

In the coming weeks, we can expect to hear a lot of nice things about how "our best ex-president" hammered nails for Habitat for Humanity instead of racking up $200,000 speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.  But even the most effusive Democrats will likely stop short of praising Carter's performance as president, while those Republicans able to maintain a dignified silence will bide their time until it's OK to start burning him in effigy again.

Whatever ceremonial respect Jimmy Carter gets paid while he's lying in state, it's unlikely to change his historical reputation as a second-rater. The scholars who fill out the presidential rankings scorecards typically dump him in the bottom half of American chief executives, and most of the rest of America remembers him as a colossal failure.

There's something in the Carter presidency for just about everyone to deplore. If Barack Obama was "like a Rorschach test"—people saw in him what they wanted to see—then Jimmy Carter evokes images we'd rather blot out: gas lines, yellow ribbons around trees, burning helicopters in the desert, that goddamned cardigan sweater. He left office as "a potent symbol for the futility of government and naïveté of reformist zeal," historian Bruce J. Schulman writes, "as much a relic of the despised, disparaged '70s as yellow smiley faces, disco records, and leisure suits."

Count Mr Healy among the few pundits not troubled by the paucity of transformational zeal: "[T]here's a lot to be said for James Earl Carter's comparatively modest conception of the office."  It is not to that I wish to speak.  Rather, let me focus on that post-presidential hitch as volunteer carpenter for Habitat.  Let us consider, dear reader, the extent to which zoning codes and set-back regulations and all the other impedimenta of housing development make fewer building sites available for Habitat projects, push up the prices of houses, and might make a Habitat house a more elaborate project than it otherwise would be.

HUMANS, NEITHER CATTLE NOR SHEEP.

The teaching point for Christmas Eve and Christmas services returned, this year, to the curious political economy of Roman Catholicism, or perhaps of the Social Gospel.

PROJECT 2025.

Happy New Year.  I intend to start by taking stock of some phenomena that might transcend the daily news cycle or the latest crisis of the moment.  We'll start, though, with a musical interlude.

I have reservations, some of them serious, about another Trump presidency.  And yet, after the serial disasters of Obama and Biden, perhaps the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Danielle "WTH" Pletka, an establishmentarian sort of conservative, details the serial disasters.

I’ve been pretty hard over on the Obama-worse-than-Biden side, but I’m starting to wobble. Joe Biden is leaving office not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with an expulsion of noxious gases that hang like a toxic cloud over the last four years. But let’s first admit that Barack Obama was a hard act to beat.

The election of America’s first black president should have been a cause for celebration, a post-racial moment for a nation that had long struggled to put a history of racism behind it. But that wasn’t Obama’s legacy; au contraire. Instead, Obama served up an administration that unrepentantly exacerbated race relations, that spawned — though far from on its own — the execrable antisemitic Black Lives Matter movement, that forced down America’s throats in partisan fashion a federal takeover of certain elements of the nation’s healthcare, and in foreign policy — that is, after all, our focus — authored the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, ignored the deliberate murder of 500,000 Syrians, fostered the creation of ISIS, ignored the Russian invasion of Crimea in Ukraine, allowed the establishment of Russian forces in Syria, abetted the Saudi war in Yemen, aided the ouster and killing of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya, and then ignored the subsequent collapse of the Libyan state, and so very, very much more. That he did so with a sneering disregard for anyone that disagreed with him, aided and abetted by a rogue’s gallery of odious incompetents convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority only ground salt into the weeping sore of his legacy.

The Normals impatience with the sneering and the superiority is material for a post soon to follow.  The best thing about Barack Obama shattering the color line on the presidency is that subsequent presidential hopefuls can be evaluated along more conventional lines.

MARKING OFF.

It has long been my custom to post a Festive Season video, featuring vintage, or sometimes modern-retro, tinplate trains under the tree.

This year's video features only the vintage trains in the sun room.  There is a look at the model railroad in preparation.

I'm taking time away for a few football games, for a long winter's nap, and for some serious work down cellar.

Thank you for looking in.  Enjoy the Festive Season.  Posting will resume next year, some time after Three Kings.

LET THERE BE EVEN MORE STORIES TO TELL.

I started the 2022 book review season with high hopes.  "It has not been a good couple of years for posting entries in the 50 Book Challenge.  We'll see if my resolution to file more book reports and fret less about national affairs that I can't influence stands up this year."  It didn't, nor did 2023 or 2024 turn out much differently.

We conclude the 2024 season with Book Review N^o. 13.  (Is it that hard to knock out one a week rather than one, on average, a month?)  Peter Caddick-Adams's Sand and Steel: The D-Day Liberation and the Liberation of France has in common with Soldier, Sailor, Frogman, Spy the reality that there ought be no end to the retelling of stories.  His sources, as one might expect of a former faculty member with the UK Defence Academy, include more Britons.  That, alone, sheds much more light on the landings than Stateside readers might be accustomed to.  Pick it up and read it through.

In keeping with my relatively brief recommendation of Soldier, Sailor I'll tease only a few anecdotes.  Long before planning for the landings began, the allied Air Forces were in action over occupied Europe, and to keep the planes flying, there were technicians defusing unexploded Flak shells.  One revealed a note, in Czech, reading "This is all we can do for you now."  It's probably not wise to outsource the manufacture of material to forced laborers in occupied countries.  Nor might it be to befriend school-kids: perhaps some youngsters who hung out near the training sites heard a few code words, and those might have been offered as possible solutions to crossword puzzles!  And no battle preparation, no matter how much secrecy is attached thereto, prevents the chaps who are training from figuring out what is going on.  If we're practicing on this beach under these tide conditions, we're probably going on June 5 or 6.

That's all for now.  Just get the book and read it.  There will doubtless be more stories to tell.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

PAIR GLAMOUR WITH GLITZ AT YOUR PERIL.

A fashion editor with more than a little familiarity with The Avenue, Fifth Avenue, perfectly captures what happens next.

Luxury is in a death spiral. After a decade of nearly unfettered growth, the sector is bombing across the globe. Analysts point to less-affluent buyers reining in their spending and slowing demand in China. I believe there’s another culprit: a growing realization that many luxury houses have broken the principles that made them so successful. These hoity-toity brands, which cheapened their essence and eviscerated their desirability with down-market celebrity partnerships, licensing deals and influencer advertising, have no one to blame but themselves.

This started at the source of so many modern woes: social media. For those not glued to TikTok or “The Kardashians,” social media, helped along by reality TV, has instigated a frenetic game of one-upmanship in which top social-media content makers aim to project wealth while outdoing themselves and their competition. This means flaunting luxury goods in posts that are then spread widely by algorithms. Kyle Richards, a cast member of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” has become infamous for hitting the gym with a difficult-to-get Hermès Birkin bag — which costs anywhere from five figures to hundreds of thousands of dollars — dangling from her arm.

At the same time, the rich were getting richer — and more people were joining them. According to Swiss bank UBS, there were 7.64 million millionaires in the United States in 2000. By 2023, we saw that number nearly triple.

That she got away, in the pages of the house organ for "American greatness is a myth," with noting that at least some of the middle class is vanishing upward might be the more astonishing claim.

BUST UP THOSE EPISTEMICALLY CLOSED HOTHOUSES.

Normals have good reason to despise the faux-sophisticates, and eventually the faux epistemic closure undermines the sophistication.  Perhaps, rather than woke being a mind virus, Lionel Shriver understands it better, as a fungal infection.

This dogma has infected all our institutions like a fungus. It won’t be easy to eradicate. Ever notice how quickly, after a full complement of treatments, athlete’s foot comes right back? One American election won’t do the trick. There are simply too many people with a vested interest in wokery, because ‘decolonising the curriculum’, say, is their job. Many a current museum director was hired expressly to ensure that an art collection doesn’t acquire work by white people. Numerous black female hires – who may tick two boxes in a kind of diversity ‘buy one, get one free’, but who are sometimes conspicuously under-qualified, such as ousted Harvard president Claudine Gay – owe their appointments to that fungal way of thinking, and they won’t all go quietly. America’s entire Democratic Party is steeped in this brain rot, and Kamala still came within 1.5 percentage points of winning the popular vote. On both sides of the Atlantic, universities, the judicial system, NGOs, the legal and medical professions, the news media, cultural institutions, theatre, publishing, film: they’ve all been putrefied by the zombie fungus.

What it takes, though, is for sufficiently many people to notice that cultural vanguards, whether they're ruining literature or architecture, or making a hash of managing the government, are doing a bad job.

I’ve never doubted that our level-headed and unindoctrinated contingent – however beleaguered, persecuted and shockingly few in number – has always been destined to win, because lunacy eventually collapses from its own contradictions. It’s only ever been a question of how much longer we have to put up with this staggering bullshit.

As for the present juncture, I have a theory. Let’s remember the nature of the opposition. Wokesters are conformists. They didn’t invent their wretched ideas; they’re reading from a common hymn sheet. That’s why they all use the same words and subscribe to the exact same roster of convictions, no matter how preposterous: these people aren’t original thinkers. But they imagine they’re at the cutting edge. Being ‘progressive’ means they’re in the vanguard. See, they think woke makes them modern. They think woke makes them hip.

Whatever the more complex truth of the matter, it’s in our interest to promote the trope that woke is over. That woke has been vanquished. That woke is totally yesterday, hopelessly stale and played out. That the rest of us are all moving on to genuinely thorny questions that aren’t stupid. That we’ll no longer waste our time pushing back against petty amateur linguists who insist we call the portly ‘people living with obesity’. That, whatever our private reservations about the guy, Trump’s election marks a hard Before and After. That as Kamala would say, we’ve ‘turned the page’ and ‘we’re not going back’.

Because when you say something enough times (this is a gambit the wokesters themselves have mastered), you can make it true. Wokesters are highly suggestible. Furthermore, most of these folks don’t really care about social justice. They care about appearing to care about social justice. They care about other people’s esteem. They care about fitting in. They echo what everyone else around them says, because being a mindless copycat means other mindless copycats will like them and they’ll keep their friends and their jobs. And they care about social fashion.

There's truth to that, and yet, dear reader, be careful.

So they won’t spout lingo like ‘cisgender’ if that might risk an eye-roll at parties. They won’t want to seem behind the times. If we convince them that woke is over, that their BLM lawn signs are passé, that maundering about ‘white privilege’ is boring and old hat, they’ll drop the whole patriarchy / neurodiversity / heteronormativity et al package in a New York minute. We just have to persuade them that woke is unhip. Which it always has been, but some people are slow.

You're more likely to see the vanguardists banding together, avoiding the most trivial form of sectarianism, when they perceive themselves as out of fashion.  The best thing to do with the purveyors of inclusive euphemism, for example, might be to shun them.  That might be sufficient to get the preference cascade moving in a new direction.

IV. ADVENT.

Strong Towns contributor Tiffany Reed captures the essence of the thing.

Advent is the season of waiting, reflection and anticipation in the weeks leading up to Christmas. It’s a season during which Christians are encouraged to practice penance and reflection as they think about Christ’s arrival as celebrated in the traditional Christmas story. But it’s also a joyful, active season. Advent waiting is not like waiting at the doctor’s office for your name to be called. It doesn’t look like sitting passively and thumbing through magazines, staving off boredom.

It’s more like the kind of waiting we embody when we’re eager for a friend to show up for dinner. We don’t know exactly what time they’ll arrive, but until then, there’s lots of bustling about, making the home lovely, cooking a meal, tidying up. In a similar vein, Advent waiting is full of actions that communicate hope. It’s why we decorate and plan special meals. It’s why we put up lights and buy gifts. It’s why we sing.

One could argue there could be no real Christmas if there wasn’t Advent first — if we didn’t have a chance to build up the anticipation.

With some practical advice for carrying the good cheer into the upcoming year.

1. Meet Your Neighbors
2. Make Your Corner Beautiful
3. Speak Hopefully

And bet on emergence.  Take an active role in your own redemption, if you will.

RENT SEEKING, DRESSED UP FOR RADIO.

I never tire of mocking arguments that run along the lines of "There is too much money in politics.  Let's use more public money to fund politics."

TAKING STOCK OF HURRICANE SEASON.

The scary warnings the usual suspects issued at the beginning of hurricane season held up in part.  "The first day of June is the administrative start of the hurricane season, and the doom-sayers are doing what they normally do.  NOAA Predicts 'Extraordinary' Atlantic Hurricane Season as Ocean Temperatures Soar."

Hurricane season in the northern hemisphere is over, and the term "margin of error" comes to mind.

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially ends on Nov. 30, showcased above-average activity, with a record-breaking ramp up following a peak-season lull.

The Atlantic basin saw 18 named storms in 2024 (winds of 39 mph or greater). Eleven of those were hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or greater) and five intensified to major hurricanes (winds of 111 mph or greater). Five hurricanes made landfall in the continental U.S., with two storms making landfall as major hurricanes. The Atlantic seasonal activity fell within the predicted ranges for named storms and hurricanes issued by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center in the 2024 August Hurricane Season Outlook. An average season produces 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

Above average for named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes, but a major anomaly none-the-less. "2024 season came roaring back despite slowdown during typical peak period."  Or, as we noted, "The opening three months of the 2024 hurricane season turned out to be extraordinary, in a boring sort of way."

THERE OUR TANK ROARS, AMIDST THE STORM WINDS.

Eighty years ago, Allied forces were rallying to the relief of Bastogne and the liquidation of the Bulge.

To this day, tankers train whether it storms or snows, which is why we're not singing those words auf Deutsch.

Trains contributor Larry Ground recalls a move from Southern training grounds to Fort Drum.

The past months had been busy for the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga. A year earlier, the unit was regular infantry with jeeps and light trucks. Now the division worked feverishly exchanging light equipment for tanks and armored personnel carriers. Even the unit’s name was updated — 24th Mechanized Infantry Division.

The next step for the new mechanized division was a major training exercise. Fort Drum, N.Y., was selected for a January 1980 event. Located close to Lake Placid, the site for the upcoming Winter Olympics, Fort Drum would provide a different climate. There might be snow, something many of the soldiers had not experienced.

Joining Fort Stewart soldiers would be units from the 194th Armored Brigade (Separate), Fort Knox, Ky., as well as units from Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Huachuca, Ariz.; and Scott Air Force Base, Ill. The equipment move was a logistical challenge. All of the division’s heavy equipment would need to be transported nearly 1,100 miles from Fort Stewart to Fort Drum.

Rail transportation is often best for deploying a large, mechanized infantry or armored unit. Soldiers routinely train on all aspects of loading and unloading such rail movements. Experienced noncommissioned officers and railroad personnel provide supervision and hands-on training.

A few things have changed since the war, for instance Sarge didn't say "I want eight volunteers, you, you, and ..."  Mr Ground was not subject to that call in any event.

Routinely, in the early 1980s, a detachment of soldiers traveled along to provide security and logistical support. For the rail movement between Fort Stewart and Fort Drum, eight soldiers would serve as rail guards or “supernumeraries,” the military term for personnel accompanying shipments by rail or sea. Six served as guards, one would be the cook and a sergeant was in charge of the detail. A caboose was provided by the railroad, which had room to sleep four at a time — more or less comfortably — a simple kitchen setup, a toilet, and a coal-burning stove.

The supernumeraries boarded the train at Fort Stewart and stayed with it to Fort Drum. The rail movement was tentatively scheduled to begin a week before Christmas. Transit time was estimated at three or four days, putting the eight soldiers in Fort Drum a few days before Christmas and nearly two weeks before the rest of the unit was due to arrive via Air Force transports.

In the end, the first sergeant had no trouble getting volunteers. It was a chance at an adventure, operating as a small team on an important mission. It would mean being away from family over the holidays, but that was part of military service. Being a staff officer in the division logistics office, I did not volunteer, but monitored the train’s progress from Fort Stewart.

In the same way that battle plans rarely survive their first encounter with the enemy, train movements, particularly of extra trains at Christmas, rarely survive their first hours with the dispatcher.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Friday short takes is ready for a long winter's nap.  The next post will appear to your wondering eyes after Three Kings.

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

THAT AGED POORLY.

As Oktoberfest season was winding down, I wrote, "All I want for Christmas is the regular order appropriations.  We're likely to have more shutdown theater.  "Speaker Johnson says House will not approve ‘Christmas omnibus’."  Unfortunately, there are a few Advent candles yet to be lit."

There's still one Advent candle to light, and the House has not yet approved a "Christmas cromnibus," but not for the reasons the Speaker anticipated.

Some things, though, are as dependable as Rudolph's red nose.  "Democrats like to print money and buy off preferred constituencies, and yet, the track record in this century suggests Official Washington prefer these shutdown dramas to regular order."

And so it is playing out.

MINNESOTA, LAND OF TEN THOUSAND KARENS.

No, I did not retrieve "A Woman Moved To A Blue State For The First Time And Is Calling Out The "Stark Differences" Between Living In A Republican Vs. Democrat-Leaning Area" from The Onion or The Babylon Bee.  Now, the lady in question posted on Tik Tok, for whatever that's worth.

Lindsey Bales describes "blue state privilege" as the disparity where people living in Democrat-leaning states have greater access to certain resources, such as abortion, that should "just be the standard quality of life," compared to those living in Republican-leaning states.

In a recent TikTok, Lindsey (@officialnancydrew) talked about her experience moving to a blue state after only living in red states — Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas. In the video, which has over 600K views, she begins by talking about moving to Minnesota and how different it is, thus introducing the topic of "blue state privilege." "Y'all have it soooo much better here," she wrote in the caption.

Lindsey explains that she recently lived in the South, where she was terrified of getting pregnant again after having a high-risk pregnancy. She also alludes that her husband couldn't receive a vasectomy: "My husband couldn't get a snippy-snippy done because it wasn't on his insurance. Because they don't play that way."

There's more along similar lines, should you wish to share her wallow.

WHY NORMAL PEOPLE DESPISE THE FAUX-SOPHISTICATES.

Astral Codex reviews, in his inimitably elaborate style, Tom Wolfe's (the latter-day cultural critic, not the ferroequinologically-minded novelist) From Bauhaus to Our House.  It's too long to quote from at any length: his send-up of trendy academic methods, though, is worth a few observations.

The Artist was a genius, brimming with bold new ideas that the common people could never understand! The Artist defied the norms of bourgeois society! The Artist was part of some official collective with their own compound in a trendy part of the city! The compound produced manifestos explaining why their vision of Art was better than everyone else’s!

This romantic vision was so powerful that you could become a well-regarded artistic movement just by doing the collective, the compound, and the manifesto especially well. Whether or not you produced art was of secondary importance - the sort of question that a bourgeois who didn’t understand your true genius would ask.

At the same time, Europe’s intelligentsia was falling in love with socialism. There was an inevitable wave of new socialist art compounds, each writing a manifesto explaining why their new artistic movement was the one that truly threw off the shackles of capitalism and represented the proletariat.

Preeminent among these was Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in Germany in 1919. Their big idea was “starting from zero” - since all previous art had been contaminated by capitalism, we needed a hard reset where people started by (eg) contemplating what color and shape really were, then gradually building a new socialist art from the ground up. This new art must eschew ornamentation, associated as it was with kings and nobles who had money to spare on gold trim or sculpted curlicues. Real socialist art would be brutally functional, the sort of thing a poor worker might build. If this sounds harsh, remember that this was right after World War I, the old order stood infinitely discredited, and starting from zero must have seemed pretty appealing.

Epistemically closed hothouses are always like that. The role of some self-despising rich guy making it all possible generally gets hidden away, and the history of starting from zero tends to develop amnesia where Thermidor and Brumaire are concerned.  And so it will be when the culture-studies types turn on each other.

Imagine for a moment the 2024 equivalent of Bauhaus. Someone has just started the woke artists’ collective, claiming to perfectly encapsulate all the principles of wokeism and be the wokest people around. What happens next? Obviously every other group of woke people accuse them of being racist, and they have bloody internecine feuds for the next twenty years, right?

Right. No sooner had Bauhaus developed their new socialist architecture designed to utterly remove all traces of bourgeois influence from design forever, then all the other socialist artists said: “I dunno, seems kind of bourgeois”.

Look no further back in time than the Duke English department, circa the beginning of this century.

NOBLE FRAGMENTS.

Too often for my liking, the land under an amusement park is more valuable subdivided for townhouses or condominium complexes or maybe a big box store.

Cold Spring Shops has not documented a related phenomenon, the parting out of vintage hand-carved carroussels, as a well-rendered horse is easier to put on display near the suit of armor or grandfather's clock than the entire ride, unless you have lots of real estate and a penchant for preservation.  Thus the individual carvings are worth more sold separately than the intact ride would be.

BASIC RESEARCH OUGHT TO HAVE TESTABLE IMPLICATIONS.

Power Line's Steven Hayward calls attention to sponsored research funding in New Zealand, apparently informed by that maxim.

This week, in an announcement that stunned New Zealand’s research community, the country’s center-right coalition government said it would divert half of the NZ$75 million Marsden Fund, the nation’s sole funding source for fundamental science, to “research with economic benefits.” Moreover, the fund would no longer support any social sciences and humanities research, and the expert panels considering these proposals would be disbanded.

Universities New Zealand, which represents the nation’s eight universities, called the planned disinvestment in social science and humanities “astonishing.” It was among several academic groups and many scientists calling for the government to reverse the unexpected decision.

In announcing the change, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins said the fund should focus on “core science” that supports economic growth and “a science sector that drives high-tech, high-productivity, high-value businesses and jobs.”

That closing sentence is an invitation to rent seekers.  That, though, is not what has set the boffins off.

Paul Spoonley, a sociologist at Massey University and the convener of the fund’s social sciences panel, says it’s a mistake to exclude social science. “The idea that somehow the economy doesn’t involve people seems to me a very strange one,” he says. Other researchers fear the cuts will disproportionately slash research by New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori scientists.

Spoonley says the decision also goes against New Zealand’s current science policy of encouraging interdisciplinary research to ensure the nation can anticipate societal impacts of technological developments. His own research themes cover New Zealand’s demographic challenges, including an aging population and declining fertility, and the rise of extremism. “All we need to do is go back to [the mosque shootings in] March 2019 to realize how significant understanding extremism is,” Spoonley says.

If queer theory and radical chic and "indigenous ways of knowing" are but half as prevalent in New Zealand academe as they are in the States, it is as likely that Serious Thinkers are enabling extremism as they are in understanding (and perhaps hypothesizing methods of taming) it.

Read on, and judge for yourself how likely that might be.

The cuts and priority changes suggest officials don’t realize commercially viable research is often underpinned by discoveries in fundamental science, says Nicola Gaston, co-director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology at the University of Auckland.

Heather Zwicker, a cultural studies researcher at the University of Queensland, says the blunt action also fails to recognize the importance of the humanities and social sciences to New Zealand’s economy and social cohesion. Zwicker is president of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, which represents 44 universities in New Zealand and Australia. It has called for an immediate reversal of the decision.

University of Waikato demographer Tahu Kukutai has a new Marsden grant to compile a database of 19th century iwi and hapū (tribal groups) and kāinga (homes) to better understand New Zealand’s population changes during colonization. She is particularly concerned about the loss of funding for Māori-led research such as hers. This year, Māori made up 13% of all Marsden-funded investigators. Take away the humanities and social sciences panels, and this drops to 5.5%. “This decision defunds Māori research and researchers by stealth,” she says.

Demography, and its laymens' companion, genealogy, at least deal with evidence, and, in principle, getting the facts right, and validating hypotheses.  Whether that is true elsewhere in the humanities is debatable.

WHAT WILL THE EXIT CONDITIONS BE?

Last February, characters in a Tom Clancy novel were in a better place.

Early in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I asked, "Might there still be a compromise in the Tom Clancy style available?"  A year into the trench warfare, the Tom Clancy outcome still looked better than what the peaceniks were contemplating.  "In Command Authority, the Russians gained Crimea and everything east of Mariupol, with relatively little loss of life.  The territorial outcome Mr Gerson advocates is similar, only with the puppet oblasts of Lugansk and Donetsk picked over and destitute."

That post concluded, "Whether the western, more Catholic bits of Ukraine west of the Dnieper will eventually become a separate state, part of the European Union, and potentially part of a future Atlantic Alliance remains to be seen."

MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO GO AWAY.

The motor vehicle has always been caught up in the culture wars.

The F-150 of [1977] was smaller than its current version, and the Suburban and assorted Jeep knock-offs were utilitarian, intended to be a cheaper version of the Land Rover for going bushwhacking.  These days, whenever commentary about the size of those land yachts and the hazard they pose to pedestrians comes up, it quickly degenerates into slanging matches about whether the skippers of those land yachts or their critics have the lowest testosterone.  And thus serious policy analysis goes by the board.

Nothing changes.

A driver took to Reddit to vent about the size of modern trucks — especially the position of their headlights — and how they can create dangerous situations.

In the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, the user showed themselves [c.q.] parked directly across from a newer truck model, with the headline "All these new truck headlights are eye level in my wagon."

"These new truck headlights are one of the most mildly infuriating things ever," they said, "Not only are they brighter than ever, they are fkn eye level to anyone not in a big ass truck. Dangerous."

Sure enough, a parked truck's headlights were directly in the middle of the poster's windshield, creating the potential for blinding the driver if they were on the road.

The continued growth of trucks has been a major issue in recent years. Rather than getting smaller and more efficient, pickup trucks have been swelling and getting heavier, making them far less efficient than their predecessors. But on top of the environmental impact, these massive trucks are just plain unsafe.

We've known about the annoying placement of those headlights for years, and we called attention to the possibility that people in bigger pickups and sport-utes take long chances, thus making them dangerous even to pedestrians and motorists the operator can see.

The post, however, quickly went astray.  Note that the photograph is from the interior of a station wagon.  Then a commenter really stepped in it.

"It sucks so bad we've hitched all our transportation to autos and they're so poorly regulated we're in an arms race with other drivers," one commenter lamented after someone noted they'd been forced to get a bigger car just to be safe on the road.

Dear reader, maybe "they're so poorly regulated" is a call for the government to go away.

With the car companies working to make even the big sport-utes and pickups fuel efficient (heck, the current Cold Spring Shops crossover gets almost as good mileage as our three previous Golfs and Rabbits), perhaps now is the time to abolish all the fuel economy standards and mandates, because a family sedan or station wagon that exceeds an automobile-specific fuel economy standard still, using contemporary construction techniques, be less guzzling than that crew-cab Ram or three-row Navigator with two pull-down video screens for the kiddos.

Seriously.  A few weeks ago I saw an advertisement for a three-row sport-ute that looked like an O Scale station wagon in an S scale world, and in the past few days people on the Trump transition team have been pointing out the foolishness of the electric car tax preferences and subsidies.  The current bundle of subsidies, tax preferences, and fuel economy and safety standards might have done little or nothing to reduce vehicular pollution, congestion, and pedestrian deaths, although they surely have generated a lot of rents for the car companies, as evidenced by their lobbying in favor of the policies staying in effect.

COURTESY OF FRED'S TWO FEET.

Just in time for Christmas.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has adopted a plan set forth by the California Air Resources Board to phase out all gas-powered and EV automobiles and replace them with Little Tikes Cozy Coupes no later than 2035.

"California now has a groundbreaking, world-leading plan to achieve 100 percent zero-energy vehicle sales," Newsom said in a statement. "By the year 2035, every new car sold in California will be a Little Tikes Cozy Coup."

While the Little Tikes Cozy Coup was already available for purchase in several exciting models, the line of vehicles was expected to be significantly expanded in the next decade. In addition to the standard model, drivers can expect to see new models joining already existing favorites like the Princess, Cozy Truck, and T-Rex. All options come with a standard vehicle warranty and the assurance that you are saving the environment.

And we'll all be better persons for it.

Opponents of the executive order argued that this would cause California's economy to collapse due to the infeasibility of commuting and the inability to transport goods via freight.

"We are all going to die," California State Senator Scott Wilk said succinctly.

But Gavin Newsom said naysayers just hate the environment. "Think of all the good this will do," he said, elaborating on the plan during a press conference. "You have to push it along with your feet, so you're going to get in amazing shape. And say goodbye to fatal car accidents. You can't push these things more than four miles per hour, tops."

Everywhere, though, there are tradeoffs. "At publishing time, plastic manufacturing more than quadrupled to keep up with the demand for Little Tikes Cozy Coups, leading to severe adverse environmental impact."  And the sort of environmentalist wacko who thinks of trucks as toxic has yet to weigh in.

LET'S DOUBLE DOWN ON FOOLISHNESS.

In the wake of the recent national elections, some of the people who argue with but then vote for Democrats have argued their loss of the Senate majority and the presidency stems from a failure to appeal sufficiently to the leftmost elements of their coalition, meaning the people who vote for Democrats despite losing the argument.  There are more such arguments out their, but I grow weary of taking them on and might not engage between now and year's end, or beyond.

Higher education, though, suffers from the same delusions.  Despite higher education's credibility going the way of Our President's brain, there are still people who want to continue the anti-intellectual appeal that has brought scorn down on them.

LOOK FOR THE SIMPLEST EXPLANATION.

Chicago Tribune sports pundit Dan Wiederer asks the obvious.  "‘Why does he get to save his job?’ Ryan Poles is in line to hire another Chicago Bears coach. But should he be?"  He wrote that after the supposedly moribund 'Niners ran all over the Bears, but before the Vikings, whose color rush uniforms might make good camouflage for Finnish snipers, did with the Bears what real Finnish snipers do with a different sort of bear.

THE WNBA, TRASHING ITS VALUE PROPOSITION.

Free Press contributor Joe Nocera offers a provocative proposition.  "Women’s basketball has never seen such a talent. Players—and owners—who refuse to acknowledge that reality are practicing their own form of racism."  The talent is Iowa graduate Caitlin Clark, who has been dragged into the culture wars whether she wants to be or not.

In its 27-year existence, the WNBA has languished in relative obscurity, with most basketball fans viewing it as inferior to the men’s game. A WNBA playoff game almost never drew as many as 1 million viewers before Caitlin Clark arrived, while a typical NBA playoff game had more than 10 million viewers. Salary caps for entire WNBA teams was $1.4 million—not much more than the $1.1 million minimum salary for a single player in the NBA.

So you would think the league and its players would be overjoyed to have one of their own on the cover of Time.

But as was the case for most of her first season as a pro, nothing is simple when it comes to Caitlin Clark and the WNBA. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that there’s nothing simple when it comes to Caitlin Clark and the subject of race.

You see, Clark, 22, is not just the first women’s basketball player to grace the cover of Time, she’s the first white women’s basketball player to make the cover. And despite everything her presence has meant to the league—the increased TV ratings, the standing room–only crowds at every arena the Indiana Fever played, the infusion of excitement around the league—there has always been an undercurrent of resentment among many of the league’s black players. (A little more than 63 percent of the league is black.)

In the weird world of identity politics, though, political purity trumps any value proposition.

A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, and the league’s MVP, said it straight out to Time—Clark’s race was a “huge” reason for her popularity. “It doesn’t matter what we all do as black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson said. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” More than once during the season, Clark was blindsided by a black opponent for no obvious reason except, well, the obvious reason.

Soon after the Time magazine cover was on the newsstands, Sheila Johnson, the black owner of the Washington Mystics, echoed Wilson, telling CNN that the only reason Clark was getting the acclaim was because she was white.

“I feel really bad because I’ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented and they never got the recognition that they should have.” Wilson added, “Why couldn’t they have put the whole WNBA on the cover and say ‘The WNBA is the league of the year?’ ”

A commenter on X quickly pointed out that 31 percent of the Mystics attendance for the entire season came from the two games they played against Clark’s Indiana Fever. Indeed, the Mystics last game against the Fever drew close to 21,000 fans—an all-time record for the WNBA. Several games had to be moved to larger arenas to accommodate all the people who wanted to attend.

Good grief. Mr Nocera notes that sometimes it might be best to let the kids play, and leave the culture studies to the obscurity of the Antioch College common room.

I’ve been watching women’s basketball since the mid-1990s, and I can say with confidence that I’ve never seen any woman play basketball the way Caitlin Clark does. She is a truly transcendent talent, who can shoot practically from half-court—her shooting is what initially dazzled fans—and who throws some of the most gorgeous passes you’ll ever see. To my mind, she’s the female Larry Bird. Why does she fill up arenas? Because she’s fantastically fun to watch. Her presence in the WNBA is lifting all boats.

To put it bluntly, black players—or black owners—who refuse to acknowledge that reality are practicing their own form of racism.

Yes, it took a while for her Indiana team-mates to figure out some of those passes, occasionally of the Brett Favre improvisational type.  In the Time interview, she offered comments that might have been a potted version of what comes out of the Antioch common room, and got lit up accordingly.  That was an unforced error, but perhaps, that's a reiteration, let the kids play.

Caitlin Clark is a 22-year-old woman from West Des Moines, Iowa, who is one year out of college and finds herself, unwittingly and unwillingly, the center of ongoing controversies over race. She knows how to win on the court. But in the culture war—caught between black resentment and white scorn—she doesn’t stand a chance.

I started watching the WNBA when my then-favorite player, Diana Taurasi, joined in 2004. So I know what I see when I watch Caitlin Clark: not an avatar of the culture wars but simply a preternaturally gifted basketball player who happens to be white. As for her “privilege,” well, what would you expect from a young college graduate? Let’s let her grow up a little. She didn’t ask to be part of any culture war; all she wants to do is play basketball. Give her a little grace.

Twenty years on, Diana Taurasi is still playing. You might have to have a Ph.D. in semiotics to determine whether she, by virtue of her birth in Argentina to Italian emigrant parents, qualifies as a woman of color.  Let her play too.

MAYBE GET SOME RECOGNITION CHARTS.

I've seen people getting worked up on social media over sightings of drones spewing vapors into the atmosphere.  You don't have to have video review, dear reader, to recognize that if there's a green light on the starboard wing and a red light on the port wing and a flashing belly light, it's an airplane, and those are contrails.  Furthermore, it might be prudent to have at least rudimentary knowledge of the stars, there are, for instance, two configurations to the north that look sort of like sauce pans, and near that is one that looks like a W, and this time of year there's this prominent grouping of three stars with some bright ones above and below in the south most of the night.

It's probably more fun to engage in speculation.  But don't get carried away.  There are some fairly large logistics drones with tilt-rotor capabilities that the military have been improving on for years.  Now, it might be that our military types are testing some capabilities.  "So, one possibility is that the U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center is testing advanced drones from PteroDynamics or some other contractor(s) and perhaps want to see if other U.S. military facilities can detect them and how quickly."  Why you do that over New Jersey when you have the likes of Nellis and Area 51 and Roswell with a lot of open space doesn't make much sense.  It might be that some other military is testing some capabilities.  After that Chinese balloon episode, maybe we don't want to believe our government.

And star charts are still valuable.  "Some cases are mundane phenomenon being mistaken for something abnormal; apparently Larry Hogan’s video features two stars from the Orion constellation." Larry Hogan is an elected official.  Sure, if Betelgeuse is in an active cycle and the upper atmosphere is busy, you might think there's something moving up there, but if it's bright and orange and there's that line of three stars nearby, R-E-L-A-X.

WHISTLE STOPPING RIGHT PAST EAST PALESTINE.

In 2020, then candidate Joe Biden was on Norfolk Southern metals through eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, and his train rolled right through East Palestine, Ohio.  Who knows, there might have been a few fans and voters trackside to watch.

Two years into the Jarrett regency came a freight train derailment and the senile figurehead figured sending an underling to do for safety vests what Michael Dukakis did for tanker helmets would be gesture enough.  Oops.  "The drive between Butler, Pennsylvania, and the Ohio village of East Palestine is less than 42 miles long. In between are the villages and boroughs of Lyndora, Connoquenessing and Evans City on the Pennsylvania side before you cross the state line directly into the village of East Palestine."

Donald Trump was still in the wilderness, but it's possible that when he showed up there, with a trailer load of supplies and a tab at McDonald's, it got him back to the White House.

On the eve of the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump showed up here in Butler for a rally that was one for the ages. People wondered why.

Seventeen months ago, he showed up in East Palestine after the devastating train derailment spewed deadly toxic chemicals throughout the village and the region. It was a visit President Joe Biden failed to make.

The first time Donald Trump secured the presidency, the more reflective coastal cosmopolitans gave some thought to life in these United States away from the airports and the conference rooms.  Apparently, after 2020's elections, more than a few of them thought they could return to business as usual.

RECOMMENDED READING.

Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn offers his list of "The Best Books I Read in 2024."  I like his criteria for picking books.

These are my favorite books from the year, with my entire reading list linked at the end. I love to read and this is meant to be fun, so please treat it in that spirit.

I know some of you will be disappointed that I don’t read more planning, engineering or urbanism books. I’m sorry, but they rarely interest me. I do read many of these books during the year, but unless I remember them (I generally read them in hardcover and don’t mark them down anywhere), they don’t make my list. So, this post is the actual list of books that I read in the past year.

I read only what interests me.

He offers a familiar bibliophile's complaint.

The older I get, the more I’ve found myself unwilling to spend time on books that I don’t find an immediate urgency around. They might be amazing books, but if it’s not what I’m burrowing into at the moment, I’m very unlikely to dive in.

There's some of that at work here at Cold Spring Shops, where there are lots of books that qualify for a review, but getting excited enough to write one is another matter.

Over there, on the other hand, is a very interesting greatest hits list.  You think Washington politicians are too full of themselves?  Put yourself where Louis XIV ought to go alone.

It was all part of a strategy to raise money while keeping your enemies close, but I can’t imagine being the family that paid big money for the hereditary appointment allowing them to remove the king’s chamberpot each day. Yet, someone did, as others did for hundreds of menial posts, all to have privileged access to the king.

There's much more, concluding (correctly) with modern monetary theory being an "apologia for our current bad economics."

III. ADVENT.

The third Sunday of Advent marks a turn from the contemplation of a fallen world to anticipation of redemption.

The reconsecration of Paris's Notre Dame cathedral might have gotten the redemption theme started a little early.  Early comings of good tidings ought not be dismissed.

Red State's Becca Lower and Victory Girl Nina Bookout put together highlights of the reconsecration.  I'll post some highlights.

First, from French TV, thanks to the first responders who ran toward the flames.

Merci à tous ceux qui ont oeuvré pour le sauvetage, la préservation et la restauration de Notre-Dame de Paris. ❤️#NotreDameDeParis pic.twitter.com/Y0NYG9tt47

— France tv (@FranceTV) December 7, 2024

Second, fittingly, Ave Maria sung by Hiba Tiwaji.

Une magnifique interprétation de "Ave Maria" de Hiba Tawaji ❤️#NotreDameDeParis @PhilharRF @radiofrance pic.twitter.com/1Zf2WMIWdf

— France tv (@FranceTV) December 7, 2024

Amazing Grace rendered by Pretty Yende made its way into the rituals.

BREAKING 🚨 This young lady stunned the world and sang ‘Amazing Grace’ in France at the Notre Dame Cathedral

Jesus Christ truly is King. I am brought to tears 🙏 pic.twitter.com/BikFP3GioQ

— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) December 7, 2024

The song is about redemption, is it not?