The importance of D.O.G.E.

Donald Trump has asked Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead what is basically an audit of the entire US Federal Government.  There is much consternation about this in the expected circles - no doubt due in part of the proclivity of Musk and Ramaswamy to stir the pot and troll their opponents.

I mean, the Department of Government Efficiency?  D.O.G.E.?  Srlsy?

 Fun and games aside, this is a really important project.  It's not just that Elon says you can reduce the Federal budget by $2T/year - nice though that would be.  Instead, it circles back to something that Trump has been talking about for years.  Remember him asking why we can't get a growth rate of 4%?

I wrote this a long time ago, and updated it 6 years ago for the age of Donald Trump.  I think that it's even more important today, with D.O.G.E. explicitly intended to address the issues I called out.

(last ported 2 January 2018)

Why Donald Trump will transform America

Donald Trump understands something that nobody else knows, and he is doing something about it.  If he accomplishes what he is setting out to do, it will completely change America.  To understand what this is, we need to look at what's changed in the past few decades, and before.

Something unprecedented happened during the eighteenth century, something that is a sharp dividing line between the modern world and what came before. The Industrial Revolution transformed first Britain, then Europe and the United States, and then the world.

It started with cloth making, where initially water power drove a set of rapidly evolving machine types that made cloth literally thousands of times easier to make. Prices plummeted, and consumption rose by a factor of 12 between 1770 and 1800. People's lives began to change, as now underwear was affordable to more than just the wealthy.

Then came steam and iron. James Watt invented the first really successful steam engine, but it was only unleashed when Henry Cort approached him with a "grand secret". Up until then, Iron was frightfully expensive, because manufacturing basically had to heat the molten ore until the slag floated off. Cort had figured out how to use Watt's engines to drive huge hammers to beat the slag out of the metal. He could make fifteen tons of wrought iron in twelve hours. Iron production soared by a factor of 150 between 1740 and 1852. The price of iron plummeted, to the point where it entirely changed architecture.

Something was in the air - creativity had been unleashed, and continued in the nineteenth century, infecting industry after industry: Bessemer and Steel, Tennant and industrial chemicals (chemicals manufactured in ton weights, like chlorine bleach), railroads, electricity, internal combustion, aviation, the communications revolution of telegraphy-radio-television-Internet.

 

What was striking about this was that each industry would exhibit precisely the same growth characteristics. The "S" curve described a slowish initial takeoff, an exponentially rising growth period, and then a slow tailing off. All of these industries followed it in turn: cotton, iron, steel, railroads. What was key to the miracle that occurred between 1720 and 1990 was that as one reached the top of the curve and began to falter, a new industry emerged to drive things forward. Income per capita went from around $450 in what would become the United States (in 1700) to $18,300 in 1989.

In many ways, this seems to be spinning down. More and more industries seem to be in the top flat part of the curve. Fewer new industries are emerging with robust growth to pick up the slack. People look towards the future and do not see a doubling of real per capita national income.

We are told that the people are ignorant, and aren't smart enough to know what they're talking about. We're told this by an Educated Class with complex computer models of the financial system. We're asked, what do the hoi poloi know of the grand sweep of the world economic system?

I think that the feeling of dread is well justified, by a good view of the forest rather than the trees. And after all, the financial models didn't predict the 2008 collapse or the stagnation that followed, so a little more humility might be called for. But in general, the critique is correct - people don't know what's causing this, just that they're unhappy. They see a change, which makes them unhappy. They don't know the cause.

Immodestly, I would like to say that I think that I do. It's related to the size of government, but the usual arguments over which side of the Laffer Curve we're on, or what the optimal rate of marginal taxes are pretty much beside the point. Something is slowing the system down, and it's not the 35% that the Fed.Gov takes off the top (OK, a little, but that's a second order effect).

Let's think about fast and slow. The Empire State Building was built in a little over 15 months. The World Trade Center (Tower 1) took 52 months, and that was in 1970. Most recently, One World Trade Center took 7 years to complete.  We're slowing down; we're not as good at what we used to do.

The reason for this is regulation (and its bastard child, litigation). That's the problem. We have buildings full of people that make us stop what we're doing, fill out forms in triplicate, and then wait months or years before we are allowed to pick up where we stopped. Think for a minute what this does. It pushes some of the middle of the S-Curve into the flat part, reducing the overall value of the industry, as resources get sidelined instead of being engaged in production. More damagingly, it pushes the next S-Curve to the right, increasing the time that it takes to bring a new industry online. Most damagingly of all, it possibly completely eliminates some S-Curves from appearing at all, because the risk is too high to attract investors.

It's not the tax rate, it's the regulation rate that's making the economy run down. Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in great haste after Enron's collapse, has all but destroyed the high tech IPO market. Think of that as S-Curves that never came into existence.  The Silicon Graybeard posted about this 7 years ago:

Although the legislators and regulators never consider this, every regulation consumes some amount of time and money to comply with.  The new Finance Reform bill has been estimated to required the development of 250-300 new regulations.  Every regulation slows down, hinders and costs every honest business real money.  Despite the widespread talk of corrupt CEOs and general lack of corporate ethics, I've been working in the manufacturing industry since the mid 1970s, and every company has had an active, if not aggressive, ethics compliance program with requirements for training and seminars every year.  There are exceptions but most companies do their best to be honest and law-abiding.  Government seems to think it's mere coincidence that countries with lower tax rates and lower regulation attract business, and they demonize companies for moving to countries where the environment is better.  

As SiGraybeard points out, Big Business excels at managing the top end of the S-Curve, and they have big offices capable of dealing with the paperwork. Big Business doesn't mind regulation - in fact, if you believe (as I do) that Regulatory Capture is the equilibrium state of any government agency, Big Business uses regulation to hobble small but dangerous competitors. They get the Fed.Gov to do their dirty work, while they extract maximum value from the end phase of their old products. We pay for that in higher prices and lack of better alternatives.

Scale this up to cover the entire economy, as the government has tripled in the post war period, and it becomes obvious why we can't build skyscrapers any more. They don't seem to have trouble with this in Dubai - it's us that keeps us from doing it.

Regulation stifles innovation - quick, name the last revolutionary program that came out of the Department of Education. That effectively transfers wealth from future generations (our children and grandchildren, who will have lower standards of living). The recipients of that transfer are government employees - those folks that read and file your application (in triplicate) and the Big Business that captures the regulatory agency.

We have made so many layers of cruft - allowed so many barnacles to grow on the bottom of the ship - that we're noticeably slowing down. People feel it. People are nervous, because they think it's going to get worse. And while the recent Congresses and the Obama Administration poured gasoline on that flame with Health Care "Reform" (written by Big Pharma, the Insurance Companies, and the AMA), I'd like to point out that the Republicans ran Congress and the White House when Sarbanes-Oxley passed.

One way to look at things is that it's been a good long 300 year run. Too bad it's over, nothing lasts forever. Get used to stasis, with fewer and smaller S-Curves, and get used to declining living standards as Big Business and a bloated government take ever more from National Income, immizerating the masses.

A different way to look at things is government regulation didn't give people affordable underwear, or bleach to keep them clean. Get out of our way, and we'll do it again. The tax rates are annoying, but the buildings full of fussy balls-and-chains telling us that we'll hear back from them in 3 to 6 months are infuriating.

This is what Donald Trump knows.  He knows that there are winners in this game - the Ivy League, the Non-Governmental Organizations, "Big Green" (The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace).  Trump knows that they all hate him, and are engaged in a scorched earth campaign to destroy him. He also knows that the losers in this game are the working classes, who vote for him.  

So what do you think is his motivation?  Is it to change governance to unleash economic growth, rewarding his supporters and humiliating his opponents?  Or is it to fade quietly into the background, sitting in the corner and thinking about his many failings?  To ask the question is to answer it.

This is the big thing that Trump knows that nobody else does.  It's a big idea, which seems to be how he likes to think.  It's transformative.  So far, he has quashed nearly 2000 regulations in his first year, and seems only to be getting started.  And all the geniuses who hate him are so focused on his tweets that they have no idea what's hitting them.

Note: This post is based on one I did 7 years ago.  It's taken this long for a politician to come on the scene who looks like he wants to do something about it.

UPDATE 2 January 2018 22:17: Even the New York Times recognizes this in an (inadvertently) hilarious story.  It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at their attempts to spin soaring business confidence due to reduced regulation under Trump.  Almost every person quoted is a former Democratic administration aparachick, and there are precisely no quotes from business leaders who think that reduced regulation helps business expansion, hiring, and wage increases.  And there's this, of course:

There is little historical evidence tying regulation levels to growth. Regulatory proponents say, in fact, that those rules can have positive economic effects in the long run, saving companies from violations that could cost them both financially and reputationally. Cost-benefit analyses generally do not look just at the impact of a regulation on a particular business’s bottom line in the coming months, but at the broader impact on consumers, the environment, public health and other factors that can show up over years or decades.

Oooooooh kaaaaaaay.  [rolls eyes]

Enjoy the Democratic infighting

There seemed to be a lot less attention to my recent post about fighting between various Democratic coalitions than to the one about Preference Cascades. That's too bad because we are seeing that fighting right out in the open, and it explains a lot about why things are happening.

Exhibit A: the firing of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.  Sure, it was the Right Thing to do, but when has anyone in Washington DC done the Right Thing?  Instead, let's look at coalitions and their current dynamics.

Cheatle was firmly in Biden's coalition, seemingly close to "Doctor" Jill herself.  But now Sleepy Joe is gone and doesn't have the stroke to protect his coalition members.  It seems that Kamala was key in pressuring Cheatle to resign - Kamala is constructing her own coalition and needs to show the world that she's the one with stroke.  Also, she needs the assassination story off the front pages, so this kills two birds with one stone.  Plus, it opens up a position in the bureaucracy that she can dangle in front of people she wants to join her coalition.  It's a threefer.

Exhibit B: The Far Left coalition is throwing its weight around, rioting in Washington's Union Station and the Capitol, and tearing down and burning American flags:

Sansour was direct. She warned the Democratic Party might lose the Muslim and Far Left votes in November. “Let us be clear. Our votes are still to be earned.”

The dynamic here will be familiar to Europeans, looking at smallish but influential parties like the Greens. Sarsour is looking after her own coalition, trying to maintain the money and plum positions she can offer to supporters in return for their support.

I think I need to update my list of the coalitions in the Democratic Party's ongoing civil war:

• The Bidens (fading fast)
• The Clintons
• Nancy Pelosi/Gavin Newsom
• The Obamas
• The Far Left 

All of these are jockeying for power right now.  We will see a lot of seemingly random events transpiring between now and at least the Democratic Convention that are anything but random.  They are about power and coalition building - and tearing down an opponent's coalition.

Quite frankly, that last is the Democrat's biggest problem - none of these factions really like each other very much.  The best that you can say is that they see the other factions as useful to their goal to get and keep power.  As more and more backstabbing occurs (as it must, there's only a month to the Convention and the time to strike is now or never), there will be less and less loyalty that they can count on from other factions after the convention.  90 days from then to the election doesn't give a lot of time to rig the results.  

That will take a deep level of commitment, which will be really, really hard for them to achieve. So enjoy the infighting. It will be going on for a while yet.

UPDATE 25 JULY 2024 11:53: This would be inexplicable without thinking about rival factions jockeying for position inside the Democratic Party: 

House Republicans and six Democrats voted on a resolution condemning President Joe Biden and his border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, for failing to secure the border.

Which faction(s) do they support? Well, not Biden's or Harris'.

The preference cascade has begun

A Preference Cascade is when a large portion of the population begins to realize - despite relentless government and/or media propaganda - that a lot of other folks think like they do and that the propaganda is, well propaganda.  This is almost always catastrophic for The Powers That Be, because Preference Cascades tend to accelerate.  As this progresses, formerly reliable underlings begin to think that TPTB are going to lose, and start to refuse to stick their necks out to protect the current order.

It's one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win - and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner.  It's quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.

At the extreme, the security services join the preference cascade.  They smell an emerging winner and want to be on side when that happens.  At this point, things get pretty grim for TPTB.

I think we're at that stage now - well, not the up against the wall shooting stage - but a cascading loss of confidence and loyalty in the Democratic Party itself for Joe Biden.  This will shrink the Margin of Cheat except in the most blue of blue states, and given that it looks like New York and New Jersey may be in play, there may not really be a lot of blue left.

In other words, everyone is starting to realize that the propaganda was just that - propaganda.

Add in the drop in contributions to the Democratic Party (the preference cascade is hitting the donor class, who are realizing that this "investment" may not have a return, and hedge their bets by contributing to Trump).

Now add in the media, who start to see that they are better off trying to help the Democratic Party, rather than mean old Joe Biden.

The question is not whether Trump will win, but whether the Preference Cascade will give him coattails, and how long they will be.

My guess is that the Preference Cascade is in full swing in the Secret Service, as competent and dedicated agents there start to wonder when (not if) to throw their corrupt bosses under the bus.  There's a lot coming out about this Charlie Foxtrot in the SS, so that suggests that the lack of loyalty to Joe Biden is advancing nicely there.

Once the Preference Cascade begins, TPTB have precious few tools to counter it.  For example, cracking down on leaking from within the Secret Service will do nothing but convince the undecided there that TPTB are untrustworthy and have to go.

Which will make Donald Trump only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms.

Ponderings

Big Country muses on the war in Ukraine and how Russia is refurbishing mothballed tanks.  Quantity, he says, has a quality of its own, and it seems that it's surprisingly easy to refurbish old armor. 

That got me pondering.  Last light Dopey Joe gave his State Of The Union address and called for an Assault Weapons ban.  Vlad seems to be thinking that the future is now, and an old tank tomorrow is worth much more than a bunch of new stuff next year.  In this very same vein, doesn't that suggest that anyone who hasn't already bought an AR-15 should go out right now and get one?

Palmetto State Armory has an AK-47 pattern rifle for $619.

And ammunition should be bought by the hundreds (or thousands) of rounds.  Remember, a US Army combat load of ammo is around 200 rounds per soldier, and they get resupplied.  A thousand rounds today is better than more next year.

LOL [snort]

U.S. Tanks In Ukraine Already Destroyed After Being Easily Recognized By Their Rainbow Camouflage

Hat tip: Mike at Cold Fury.

A note to the NFL

You may think that we've forgotten how you let everyone take a knee during the National Anthem.

 We haven't.  Not watching your dumb sportsball, you un-American jerks.

That's some Top Shelf mockery, right there

Seen at Western Rifle Shooters:

Also:

This is also pretty effective culture war insurgency.  Consider:

1. It's funny, and not just to us Deplorables.
2. The humor comes from an obvious core of B.S., recognized even by non-Deplorables.
3. It forces people to consider that the same sort of weak arguments are used for gun control.

Full marks for effective mockery.

[stands]

[clap] [clap] [clap]

I'm tempted to make one up myself, along the lines of "You can have my Viking Range when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!"

 

So Mikhail Gorbachev est mort

The Press is falling over themselves to talk about what a guy he was, and how the Soviet system was (in the WaPo's term) "a seven-decade experiment born of Utopian idealism". Well OK then.  Remember, I did not read Pasternak but I condemn him ...

Oh, and the cartoon at that last link?  The one with two Gulag prisoners working in the snow and with the caption that said I won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  What was your crime?  You know, the cartoon that won a Pulitzer Prize?

Yeah, the WaPo would never publish it today.  Scratch a journalist, find a commie.

And so, here's a (err) toast to Mikhail Gorbachev, from back in the day when truth could still be spoken.

More Tab Clearing, of the Donald Trump variety

Isegoria has a nifty definition of class structure in America.  Donald Trump is about the only one who has the first class in mind:

Rob Henderson explains social class through the example of where your name goes:

Working class: Your name on your uniform
Middle class: Your name on your desk
Upper middle class: Your name on your office door
Upper class: Your name on the building

You will notice that the folks who own the Media are all in the last class.  Gosh, I wonder why they hate Trump's guts? /sarc

Mike at Cold Fury thinks that Ron DeSantis is wimping out:

DeSantis, Abbott, and any other non-Vichy GOPe governors with stones enough to do so could render all Real Americans a great service, as well as etch their names with honor and glory in the annals of American liberty forevermore, by announcing their firm intention to end all cooperation and/or contact with FBI goon squads currently skulking about in their sovereign States—effective oh, say, five minutes ago or thereabouts.

Srlsy, Mike really thinks he's wimping out:

The Leftard camel has been allowed to poke its big, ugly snout way too far into the tent already for my liking, and I can’t even begin to imagine that DeSantis is in agreement with those assholes on this particular topic. Any and every time they can be dealt a defeat, regardless of its perceived import, they not only should be, they must be, just as a matter of principle.

I don't know that I agree.  DeSantis has been an astonishingly effective Governor and gets the daily dose of hate in the Florida newspapers as his reward.  He is particularly effective in dishing out punishment, not a bunch of hot air posturing.  This is what has made the Florida newspapers to melt down on a daily basis.  DeSantis is establishing a reputation as a doer, not a talker - at least with me.

Scott McKay at The American Spectator thinks it's not Trump or DeSantis, it's Trump and DeSantis:

The issue isn’t whether Trump or DeSantis is the GOP nominee in 2024. Both would be fine. Seriously. Trump is starting to get to the outer edge of what you’d look for age-wise in a president, but he’s also been through the wars and he’d be able to leverage that experience to hit the ground running and efficiently do the things that are controversial until they aren’t early in his second term.

And DeSantis is younger and smoother than Trump, having had a good deal more experience with politics and government.

But — and I’m going to harp on this, because it’s a point I make in my book The Revivalist Manifesto, which you should buy and read thoroughly — political eras are formed in America not on the basis of one election but rather five or six in a row. The Democrats kicked off the first era of our political history with Thomas Jefferson’s rout of John Adams in 1800, and they didn’t lose a presidential race until 1824, by which time Democratic politics was American politics. Ditto for the second era, which began with Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 victory; the GOP didn’t lose a presidential election until 1884. And the third era, which is coming to a miserable end, began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s rout of Herbert Hoover in 1932; it was 1952 before a Republican again won a presidential race, and Dwight Eisenhower was necessarily so timid when it came to domestic policy that by the end of his tenure the John Birch Society was convinced he was a communist mole.

The point being, it takes a generation for the concrete of a new political era to cure. And that means it’s less important whether Trump or DeSantis wins in 2024 than that one of them does. And furthermore, what’s more important than that is the standard both of them set for Republican politicians up and down the governmental food chain.

Trump is a wrecking ball, and knows where and how to start disassembling the Imperial Bureaucracy.  DeSantis is the guy who can put it back together in a way to cause even more pain to The Right Sort Of Folks.  Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law.

A modest proposal to the Governor of Florida

Item the first: no Florida Law Enforcement personnel are allowed to work with the Gestapo FBI, under penalty of being dismissed from Florida employment, unless authorized by the Florida Governor.

Item the second: any Gestapo FBI Agent executing law enforcement actions on any citizen of Florida without authorized (by the Governor's office) are subject to arrest by the Florida State Police and prosecution under Florida law.

Actually, it would be nice if instead of "Gestapo FBI" it was "any Federal law enforcement employee".

Sure, sure, the Fed.Gov will fight this in (Federal) court.  Maybe the Federal Court will (shockingly!) rule in favor of the Fed.Gov.  This will just give the Florida Governor another bite on the same apple.  A Federal Court might issue a ruling, but (in Andy Jackson's wording let them now enforce that ruling).  Florida law enforcement will of course not enforce it, and for any Federal law enforcement you would need to refer to Item the First and Item the Second.

Next step, look at how many illegal aliens are apprehended in Florida and then released: these all need to be bussed to Washington D.C.

The Next, Next step is to look at all Federal property in Florida and seize sufficient property to compensate the citizens of the State against Federal impositions.  

This is a dance that can play out over years, to the detriment of the Democrats.

Quote of the Day - Combat Mindset edition

Bitter Centurion posts about the Combat Mindset, amplifying my thoughts on the matter and getting QotD: 

Because at the end of the day, it's all well and good to have the gun on you. It's even better to get the trigger time and put lead down range and be able to hit gongs on demand with razor sharp speed and accuracy. But if you don't have your mind right when it's time to slay the dragon, that gun is nothing more than extra weight on your belt that doesn't do you or anyone else any good.

You really should read his entire post which has a lot of practical experience.  And you should read the comments which are a good - if dismaying - view into the Reindeer Games being played with police forces by Woke politicians.

We know what Red Flag enforcement looks like

I've seen how this movie ends:

I've linked several times to posts over at the blog Dispatches from TJICistan.  TJIC is an outspoken (some might say extremely so) advocate of smaller government.  He's also a firearms owner in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.  While he owns guns, it appears that he's no longer allowed to possess any:

ARLINGTON (CBS) – A blog threatening members of Congress in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting has prompted Arlington police to temporarily suspend the firearms license of an Arlington man. 

It was the headline “1 down and 534 to go” that caught the attention. “One” refers to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in the rampage, while 534 refers to the other members of the U.S. House and Senate.

Police are investigating the “suitability” of 39-year-old Travis Corcoran to have a firearms license

Let's ignore for the moment how many people were investigated for making similar comments about George W. Bush.  Let's look at the "logic" being exercised by the Arlington Po-Po, shall we?

They claim that Corcoran is so dangerous that, while he has done nothing more than put up a blog post, he must be restrained from possessing firearms.  However, it appears that it's not worth it for the police to follow him, or stake out his place, or arrest him.

Huh?

Look, guys, if you think that his speech rises to the level of an actual threat of specific harm to specific persons, he should be in jail.  If you're not sure, then do the leg work to establish whether it is or not.

Ah, I was so young and optimistic, 11 years ago.  After all, we had ferocious conservative Republicans ferociously conserving things.  But even then it was clear where this would go:

It would be one thing if the law were applied equally to all.  It's not, and it will be applied disproportionately to us, because we hold views considered by some in power to be Double Plus Ungood.

Divemedic says the same, in fewer words.  He also has some suggestions on a strategy you can use.

Thanks to the GOP, we're all TJIC now.

There's a reason that they're called the "Stupid Party".  And there's a reason that the Democrats are called the "Evil Party".

But no more mean tweets, amirite?

The Queen Of The World saw this on the Book of Faces.

 

When do The Powers That Be respect International Law, and when do they not?

It seems that one of Trump's Defense Secretaries has a new "tell all" book coming out, and in it he talks about how Trump wanted to bomb the drug cartels in Mexico and how awful that was.

I mean, what a shocking, awful, disgraceful violation of International Law - sending an attack into the territory of a sovereign ally.  Unthinkable!  I mean, he probably wouldn't have even let the government know he was going to attack!

Sort of like this:

That's Barack Obama his own self, saying that he basically knew he was violating International Law, for good reasons.  And what was the reason?  3,000 dead Americans, and the Pakistani government unwilling or unable to do anything about the perpetrators on their soil.

So what was Trump's reason?  Oh, wait:

More than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in the U.S. in 2021, more than in any other year on record, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics Wednesday.

So Osama bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and was killed ten years later.  That's 300 a year, or about one a day.  The cartels kill 100,000 each year, or about 275 Americans a day.  But it was awesome that Obama violated International Law and it's The Worst Thing Ever that Trump even thought about it.

It makes you suspect that all this pious bloviating from the "Elites" is a bunch of hooey.  And it makes you wonder if they think that 275 people from Youngstown, Ohio and similar places in the hollowed out "Fly Over" America are less valuable (and less worthy of protection) than one person working high finance in the World Trade Center.

Actually, I don't wonder at all.  It does make me wonder if J.D. Vance is right: "If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with this deadly fentanyl?..."

Man, Trump sure hired a bunch of snakes in the grass.

This is the most important blog I've read since The Archdruid Report

Dominic Cummings has a substack where he posts the most insightful musings that I've read since I ran across The Archdruid Report back in 2016.  His post about how to reboot the Government Agencies is an absolute must-read. 

He is very thoughtful, and probes deeply.  I think his criticism of Donald Trump is mostly fair:

And Trump showed:

1. He does not understand power in Washington.

2. He doesn’t have a CEO mindset or skillset in the Bezos/Gates/Jobs/Musk sense of being able to execute at scale and speed.

3. Like Boris Johnson, his insecurities mean he can’t face his lack of skills and trust/empower anyone to build the team to run the administration for him.

4. He has some showman skills, a good nickname game and a sporadically good twitter game. But like Johnson, he prefers to spend his time babbling about and at the media rather than the (often mind-numbing) problems of institutions and incentives you need to focus on to change big things.

This combination meant Trump made a lot of noise but got very little done.

He could not control the government. He was sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes idiotic, often right in his complaints that the media were lying, but very little he said mattered because his words did not connect to power. He annoyed the swamp but he couldn’t drain the swamp — not the tiniest corner.

This is a very short overview of his thoughts on what would avoid these pitfalls:

So, the most important thing for the next GOP candidate and their team to appreciate is this: if you want to have a serious effect, if you want to have a chance of dealing with serious crises, if you want to bend the arc of culture rather than just have a cool-sounding job, then you should generally not be trying to ‘take over the institutions and run them’, you should not develop a traditional ‘reform’ agenda, instead, like Lincoln and FDR, you need to be the once-every-~70 years sort of a President who actually controls the government.

This means appointing people to many parts of DC not to ‘reform’ the department/agency but to close it while someone else runs the startup to replace it (if it needs replacing) operating on completely different legal and management principles and staffed by completely different sorts of people. This does not of course mean closing everything — there are parts of the regime that can carry on pretty much as before — it means closing and reopening those parts necessary to control the important parts of government, such as the Pentagon.

 Highly, highly recommended, even though it is a very long - dare I say Borepatchian? - post.

Hat tip to Isegoria, who finds the most interesting stuff.

They say it's not Fedposting

But it is.  Forewarned is forearmed. 

Why Government should never be allowed to control your Health care

Hospitals in Germany, UK, and Israel refuse life saving transplant to 3 year old because his parents had not been vaccinated.

Politico EU reports that a 3-year-old Cypriot boy was denied a heart transplant by a hospital in Germany allegedly because his parents weren't "fully vaccinated".

And it wasn't just Germany. The boy was turned away by hospitals in the UK and Israel for the same reason. Finally, a Greek hospital was found to do the transplant, but the story is going viral anyway as the latest example of COVID restrictions run amok.

Remember what the lefties like to say: Government is just the set of things that we all agree to do together.

[spit]

Why do you need an assault rifle?  Because some governmental flunky might want to tell you that your kid is going to die because you committed crimethink.

C. W. McCall - Convoy

Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy ...

The #1 song from 1975 (and #98 on Rolling Stone's top 100 song list) is suddenly current again, as the longest truck convoy in history rolls into Ottawa.  The big rigs have been joined by smaller trucks, pickups, and cars, so there may be 100,000 vehicles involved.  Canadians have donated around $8M to pay for the trucker's gas as they flip the middle finger to the hosers in Parliament.

Good.

Convoy (Songwriters: Bill Fries (aka C. W. McCall), Chip Davis)

Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen, c'mon? Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon. Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy...

Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June
In a Kenworth pullin' logs
Cab-over Pete with a reefer on
And a Jimmy haulin' hogs

We is headin' for bear on I-10
'Bout a mile outta Shaky Town
I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck"
"And I'm about to put the hammer down"

'Cause we got a little convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a little convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA, convoy

Ah, breaker, Pig Pen, this here's the Duck. And, you wanna back off them hogs? Yeah, 10-4, 'bout five mile or so. Ten, roger. Them hogs is gettin' in-tense up here

By the time we got into Tulsa Town
We had eighty-five trucks in all
But they's a roadblock up on the cloverleaf
And them bears was wall-to-wall

Yeah, them smokies is thick as bugs on a bumper
They even had a bear in the air
I says, "Callin' all trucks, this here's the Duck
We about to go a-huntin' bear"

'Cause we got a great big convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a great big convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA, convoy

Ah, you wanna give me a 10-9 on that, Pig Pen? Negatory, Pig Pen; you're still too close. Yeah, them hogs is startin' to close up my sinuses. Mercy sakes, you better back off another ten

Well, we rolled up Interstate 44
Like a rocket sled on rails
We tore up all of our swindle sheets
And left 'em settin' on the scales

By the time we hit that Chi-town
Them bears was a-gettin' smart
They'd brought up some reinforcements
From the Illinois National Guard

There's armored cars and tanks and jeeps
And rigs of ev'ry size
Yeah, them chicken coops was full'a bears
And choppers filled the skies

Well, we shot the line and we went for broke
With a thousand screamin' trucks
An' eleven long-haired Friends a' Jesus
In a chartreuse micra-bus

Ah, Rubber Duck to Sodbuster, come over. Yeah, 10-4, Sodbuster? Lissen, you wanna put that micra-bus right behind that suicide jockey? Yeah, he's haulin' dynamite, and he needs all the help he can get

Well, we laid a strip for the Jersey shore
And prepared to cross the line
I could see the bridge was lined with bears
But I didn't have a dog-goned dime

I says, "Pig Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck
We just ain't a-gonna pay no toll"
So we crashed the gate doing ninety-eight
I says "Let them truckers roll, 10-4"

'Cause we got a mighty convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a mighty convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?

Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA

Convoy! Ah, 10-4, Pig Pen, what's your twenty?
Convoy! Omaha? Well, they oughta know what to do with them hogs out there fer shure. Well, mercy
Convoy! sakes, good buddy, we gonna back on outta here, so keep the bugs off your glass and the bears off your...
Convoy! tail. We'll catch you on the flip-flop. This here's the Rubber Duck on the side
Convoy! We gone. 'Bye,'bye

 

The Managerial Elite's funeral pyre

The Right Sort of people are losing their minds:

For me, at least, it’s hard to read any of the literature of [the 1920s and 1930s] without getting a potent sense of déjà vu. The same autumnal sense of an era past its pull date, the same spectacle of people and institutions going through motions that stopped functioning a long time ago, the same plaintive voices wondering why the world just doesn’t seem to make sense any more—it’s all present and accounted for, the familiar backdrop for the last few decades of public life in the United States and a good many other industrialized nations. The sole remaining questions are what combination of crises will topple the hapless ruling class from its position, and how soon that inevitable moment will arrive.

Yet admitting that the managerial class has turned out to be incompetent at running societies is unthinkable, to members of that class. It’s not just a matter of status panic, either. The entire collective identity of our managerial aristocracy is founded on the idea that they’re the experts, the smart kids, the people who really know what’s what. They justify their grip on the levels of collective power by insisting that they and they alone can lead the world to a sparkly new future. That’s the theme of the slogans under which they seized power, and it remains the core of their ideology and their identity: “We can make the world better!”

This is John Michael Greer, who used to blog as The Arch Druid.  He seems pretty optimistic that the wheels are finally coming off of the Managerial State and that this is probably a good thing:

For the last six years now, accordingly, the failures of the managerial class have become a massive political issue across much of the industrial world. Britain’s Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election both marked important turning points in that process, as significant numbers of ordinary people decided that the experts didn’t know what they were talking about and refused to vote as they were told. The various tantrums thrown by pundits, politicians, and self-anointed influencers since that time haven’t accomplished much, aside from convincing even more people to ignore the increasingly shrill demands of a failing elite.

That’s sending waves of stark shuddering terror through the managerial aristocracy. If the deplorable masses stop bending the knee and tugging their forelocks whenever one of their self-proclaimed betters mouths a platitude, after all, how long will the authority of the managers last? That terror, in turn, gives rise to the displacement activities discussed above. Since it’s impossible for them to admit to themselves that they’ve failed, much less that everyone else is aware that they’ve failed, they find other things on which they can focus their feelings of panic. The Covid virus is one of those. It wasn’t the first and it doubtless won’t be the last, but it’s serving its purpose now, which is to allow members of the managerial class and its hangers-on in the media and the academy to distract themselves from the end of their era of power.

Peter thinks that they are trying to crash the airplane into a mountain - create enough starvation and impoverishment that a desperate population turns to them to fix the crisis they created.  I could see them try this; I don't think that the reaction will be what they think it will be.

The problem is that the only people who will trust them to "fix" their problem are the ones who already trust them.  That is a continually shrinking portion of the public despite the increasingly shrill social shaming that they are doing.  They are not convincing anyone and indeed are doing the opposite:

My liberal friends (and yes, I do have a few still, though most tossed me under the bus as soon as there was any societal pressure to do so) will constantly chide me about my words, or my attitude, and go tsk tsk, how rude! But then when people on their side go bat shit fucking insane, they sit there meekly and stand for nothing, because they know the beast they fed will just as easily turn and eat them too.

Besides, as soon as a democrat stands for principle outside of the narrative, they get tossed. Pick any of them in media, punditry, or academia. Any at all. Glenn Greenwald. Tim Pool. Jordan Peterson. Those were all mushy moderates, until they say hey wait, the left is going nuts, and boom, now the left thinks they are the second coming of Satan-Hitler. The party is currently enraged at Sinema and Manchin.

And I’m not alone in this. Most politically alert non-leftists will tell you the same thing. You belong to a cult which will not abide heresy. You want to show us that you aren’t all authoritarian statist trash, DO SOMETHING.

J.Kb has an outstanding example of their closed - and clueless - world view.  This is the Elite that will solve the Republic's problems?  As John Michael Greer points out, Tomorrowland has fallen.

This so-called "elite" knows nothing of history.  Basically every revolution in history was started by a starving underclass.  While I think that Peter is right that they could very well pitch this country into that sinkhole, they do not seem to realize that each of these revolutions was against the Powers That Be who were running things.  Just how they will harness all this underclass rage against The Man when they're him is beyond me.

They're desperate, and they're out of gas, and it sure doesn't look like their scheme to start revolution in the streets can do anything other than build their own funeral pyre, the Sardanapalus option:

“The Death of Sardanapalus” by Eugène Delacroix depicts the tale of Sardanapalus, a king of Assyria, who, according to an ancient story, exceeded all previous rulers in sloth and decadence.

He spent his whole life in self-indulgence, and when he wrote his epitaph, he stated that physical gratification is the only purpose of life.

His debauchery caused dissatisfaction within the Assyrian empire, allowing conspiracies against him to develop. Sardanapalus failed to defeat the rebels, and then enemies of the empire join the battle against him.

After Sardanapalus’ last defenses collapsed and to avoid falling into the hands of his enemies, Sardanapalus ordered an enormous funeral pyre.

On the funeral pyre were piled all his gold and valuables. He also ordered that his eunuchs and concubines be added to the fire, to burn them and himself to death.

Nobody did romantic doomed fate better than Byron and Delacroix.  Alas, I feat that Hollywood will not be up to this level of artistic achievement for what the "elites" are bringing down on their own heads.

Donald Trump's manifesto for America

Holy crap!  This is breaking news from Donald Trump:

For years, the same feeling has swept you along, oppressed you, shamed you: a strange and penetrating feeling of dispossession. You walk down the streets in your towns, and you don’t recognize them.  You look at your computer screens and they speak to you in a language that is strange, and in the end foreign. You turn your eyes and ears to advertisements, TV series, football games, films, live performances, songs, and the schoolbooks of your children.

You take the subways and trains. You go to train stations and airports. You wait for your sons and your daughters outside their school. You take your mother to the emergency room. You stand in line at the post office or the employment agency. You wait at a police station or a courthouse. 

And you have the impression that you are no longer in a country that you know.  You remember the country of your childhood. You remember the country that your parents told you about. You remember the country found in films and books. 

This country— at the same time light-hearted and industrious. This country— at the same time literary and scientific. This country— intelligent and one-of-a-kind. The country of the moon landing and nuclear power. The country that created cinema and the automobile.This country— that you search for everywhere with dismay. No, your children are homesick, without even having known this country that you cherish. It is disappearing.

You haven’t left, and yet you have the feeling of no longer being at home. You have not left your country. Your country left you.

You feel like foreigners in your own country. You are internal exiles. For a long time, you believed you were the only one to see, to hear, to think, to doubt. You were afraid to say it. You were ashamed of your feelings. For a long time, you dared not say what you are seeing, and above all you dared not see what you were seeing.

And then you said it to your wife. To your husband. To your children. To your father. To your mother. To your friends. To your coworkers. To your neighbors. And then to strangers. And you understood that your feeling of dispossession was shared by everyone.

France is no longer France, and everyone sees it.

OK, I admit it - this wasn't Donald Trump.  This is a speech by Eric Zemmour who is running for President in France.  I took out a couple lines and changed a couple more to hide the fact that M. Zemmour is speaking not in french, and not to the French, but to all of us.  Here's the rest of his outstanding speech, unedited and in full:

Of course, they despised you: the powerful, the élites, the conformists, the journalists, the politicians, the professors, the sociologists, the union bosses, the religious authorities.They told you it’s all a ploy, it’s all fake, it’s all wrong. But you understood in time that it was them who were a ploy, them who had it all wrong, them who did you wrong.

The disappearance of our civilization is not the only question that harasses us, although it towers over everything. Immigration is not the cause of all our problems, although it aggravates everything. The third-worlding of our country and our people impoverishes as much as it disintegrates, ruins as much as it torments.

It’s why you often have a hard time making ends meet. It’s why we must re-industrialize France. It’s why we must equalize the balance of trade. It’s why we must reduce our growing debt, bring back to France our companies that left, give jobs to our unemployed.

It’s why we must protect our technological marvels and stop selling them to foreigners. It’s why we must allow our small businesses to live, and to grow, and to pass from generation to generation.It’s why we must preserve our architectural, cultural, and natural heritage. It’s why we must restore our republican education, its excellence and its belief in merit, and stop surrendering our children to the experiments of egalitarians and pedagogists and the Doctor Strangeloves of gender theory and Islamo-leftism.

It’s why we must take back our sovereignty, abandoned to European technocrats and judges, who rob the French people of the ability to control their destiny in the name of a fantasy – a Europe that will never be a nation. Yes, we must give power to the people, take it back from the minority that unceasingly tyrannizes the majority and from judges who substitute their judicial rulings for government of the people, for the people, by the people.

For decades, our elected officials of the right and the left have led us down this dire path of decline and decadence. Right and left have lied and concealed the gravity of our diminishment. They have hidden from you the reality of our replacement.

You have known me for many years. You know what I say, what I diagnose, what I proclaim. I have long been content with the role of journalist, writer, Cassandra, whistleblower. Back then, I believed that a politician would take up the flame that I had lit. I said to myself, to each his own job, to each his own role, to each his own fight.

I have lost this illusion. Like you, I have lost confidence. Like you, I have decided to take our destiny in hand.

I saw that no politician had the courage to save our country from the tragic fate that awaits it. I saw that all these supposed professionals were, above all, impotent.That President Macron, who had presented himself as an outsider, was in fact the synthesis of his two predecessors, or worse. That all the parties were contenting themselves with reforms, while time passes them by.

There is no more time to reform France – but there is time to save her. That is why I have decided to run for President.

I have decided to ask your votes to become your President of the Republic, so that our children and grandchildren do not know barbarism. So that our daughters are not veiled and our sons are not forced to submit. So that we can bequeath to them the France we have known and that we received from our ancestors. So that we can still preserve our way of life, our traditions, our language, our conversations, our debates about history and fashion, our taste for literature and food.

So that the French remain French, proud of their past and confident in their future. So that the French once again feel at home. So that the newest arrivals assimilate their culture, adapt their history, and are remade as French in France – not foreigners in an unknown land.

We, the French, are a great nation. A great people. Our glorious past pleads for our future. Our soldiers have conquered Europe and the world. Our writers and artists have aroused universal admiration. Our scientific discoveries and industrial production have stamped their epochs. The charm of our art de vivre excites longing and joy in all who taste it.

We have known great victories, and we have overcome cruel defeats. For a thousand years, we have been one of the powers who have written the history of the world. We are worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be mastered, vassalized, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced.

In front of us, a cold and determined monster rises up, who seeks to dishonor us. They will say that you are racist. They will say that you are motivated by contemptible passions, when in fact it is the most lovely passion that animates you – passion for France.

They will say the worst about me. But I will keep going amidst the jeers, and I don’t care if they spit on me. I will never bend the head. For we have a mission to accomplish.

The French people have been intimidated, crippled, indoctrinated, blamed— but they lift up their heads, they drop the masks, they clear the air of lies, they hunt down these evil perjuries.

We are going to carry France on. We are going to pursue the beautiful and noble French adventure. We are going to pass the flame to the coming generations. Join with me. Rise up. We, the French, have always triumphed over all.

Long live the Republic, and above all, long live France!

Vive la République, vive la France, et vive le (futur) Président Zemmour.  If the (US) Republican Party - the Stupid Party - and Donald Trump are paying attention, he's someone in Europe - in France for crying out loud - who's  singing from the same hymnal.

Wow.  

But yannow, La Belle France has come back from worse (as have we).  I have proof (with apologies to a Frau Merkel that thought she had ultimately won World War II, and who are no doubt shocked - shocked - to find that they are perhaps being closed down for gambling after they thought they had won it all ...):

Eighty years later, art still has its say.  And just to show that the Cool Kids didn't all live in the 1940s, here's another that says the same thing:

Yeah, yeah, I know - don't play in the street.  But know that you are not alone.