Craig Pirrong's Blog, page 4

Is It Any Wonder That Graduates Are Unemployable Socialists When They Are Taught By Vicious Ideologues?

Not long after I posted my Schumpeter/Elite Overproduction piece, the FT ran an article titled “It’s a bad time to be a graduate.”

It’s a bad time to be a graduate https://t.co/5MXrnL2Fex | opinion

— Financial Times (@FT) July 6, 2025

The gist:

From North America to Europe, university leavers are struggling to find suitable work. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates in the US has for the first time been consistently above the national level since the Covid-19 pandemic. In the EU, the employment rate of 15- to 25-year-olds has fallen over the past two years. Even the crème de la crème are struggling. The percentage of MBA students from Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan without a job offer three months after graduation has risen sharply since 2021

(Note this is not strictly a western problem. It is a major issue in China as well).

The article concludes:

A surfeit of underemployed elites is bad for society and the economy. To ensure it does not become a feature, education must evolve from being a ticket to a job to a toolkit of skills for a changing world.

Skillz! What a concept!

Yes, specific job-related skills are important, but generalized critical thinking skills are even more important. But those are something that modern academia fails to impart, and has done so for years.

The article also mentions that the fraction of jobs advertised that require a college degree has dropped. This indicates that not only is the knowledge/skills acquired in an education deemed increasingly irrelevant to the extent it even exists, but that the signaling value of post-secondary education has also dropped. The most likely explanation for this is that grade inflation, dumbing down of coursework, etc., have reduce the correlation between individual characteristics (e.g., generalized intelligence) and the cost of completing a degree. Something that anyone can get with no differentiation (e.g., grades) is worthless as a signal.

These are some symptoms and effects of the devolution of university education. A related, and disturbing, phenomenon is the increased ideological slant of the modern academy. Three examples from just the last couple of days.

First, Zorhan Mamdani’s father–a professor at Columbia, where Zohran lied about his race in a failed attempt to get in—gives a disquisition on American history:

Zohran Mamdani's father believes:

??The Allies and Nazis had the same goal
??Abraham Lincoln was Hitler's inspiration
??White people are the oppressors, America is the root of all evil
??BLM is the resistance

Blah blah blah. Another wealthy leftist who hates America. Now we… pic.twitter.com/jbRFVjov38

— MAZE (@mazemoore) July 5, 2025

That is so disgusting and bizarre that it is self-refuting.

The next example is from my alma mater, The University of Chicago:

Eman Abdelhadi: “F*** the University of Chicago… but it’s my best shot at power.”

At Socialism 2025, @UChicago professor Eman Abdelhadi called her employer “evil colonial landlord."

Use it. Organize it. Seize its structural leverage.

“We don’t have power… but I work at one… pic.twitter.com/Mes06SYMEp

— Stu (@thestustustudio) July 6, 2025

Of course, as is de rigeur, Abdelhadi wants to use that power to advance the Palestinian cause, among others.

Why the University of Chicago gives “power” to someone who boasts of her hate for it, and her desire to exploit its reputation for her own twisted ends, is beyond comprehension.

In a similar vein is my, er, “colleague,” University of Houston Poli Sci prof David McNally, in remarks apparently delivered at the same socialism conference where Abdelhadi ranted. (Unfortunately not the late Baltimore Orioles All-Star lefty Dave McNally).

“University of Houston Would Become George Floyd University”

At Socialism 2025, University of Houston professor David McNally laid out a radical vision for what happens when an “insurgent social movement” seizes control of a university. His words weren’t abstract.

“Let’s assume… pic.twitter.com/4UfYxeEzD8

— Stu (@thestustustudio) July 6, 2025

He also wants to seize power at the university in order to advance his far left agenda. And his keffiyeh of course signals his pro-Palestinian (and therefore anti-Semitic) bona fides.

Bring it, dude. See how that works out for you. Look for me. I’ll be on the other side of the barricades.

Given that such individuals have achieved prominence at prestigious universities, and presumably spread their poison in the the classroom, is it any wonder why (a) a large fraction of college graduates are unemployable, and (b) many are unthinking leftists seduced by the siren song of socialism?

Universities need to be torn down to the studs, if not razed to the ground. The rot is far too deeply embedded in the walls for merely cosmetic changes to be worth the candle.

Joseph Schumpeter: The Prophet Who Foresaw Zohran Mamdani and the Woke Movement Generally

The victory of Zohran Madmani–excuse me, Mamdani–in New York City’s Democratic primary has unleashed a torrent of commentary. In particular, it has sparked euphoria on the left, who see it as the harbinger of a successful “resistance” to Trump and the dawning of an overthrow of American capitalism.

Much of this is overwrought, and wishcasting rather than forecasting. Matt Taibbi called it socialism’s “American Normandy”: It is more likely socialism’s Anzio, an initial success that will wind up being a strategic and tactical dead end.

Most importantly, New York City generally, and its Democratic Party electorate in particular, are hardly representative of the country at large. Indeed, outside the media bubble and other urban socialist outposts this Mamdani is largely viewed as the winner of a Best of Freak contest. He and his ilk are political pustules concentrated in small enclaves of major cities–many of which are dying, in large part because of them. The perverse rank choice–excuse me, ranked choice–voting system also exaggerates his appeal. Furthermore, his main opponent was Me Too poster boy and grannie killer Andrew Cuomo, who is about as popular as chlamydia.

Mamdani’s win, and the exaggeration of its importance in the media, is attributable to a particular social class that dominates certain precincts in big cities and most of the media. You know the type. Identitarians. Wokies. Highly credentialed “elites” who are inveterately anti-American, anti-Western, anti-freedom (except for the freedom of perversion), and anti-capitalist.

These attitudes are largely a consequence of “elite overproduction,” combined with the technology that now produces the “elite.” The basic idea is that the production of “educated,” credentialed individuals in excess of the career opportunities that provide the financial remuneration and status that these people believe is their due because of their innate superiority creates a class of resentful people who conclude that the system is inherently unjust and should be overthrown.

The concept of elite overproduction was recently popularized by Peter Turchin, but Joseph Schumpeter had it figured out way before–decades in fact. In his seminal Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Schumpeter posed the question: “Can capitalism survive?” He answered in the negative, but not for the classic Marxist reason that the internal contradictions of capitalism produced an immiserated proletarian class that would overthrow it. Instead, the internal contradiction was that capitalism produced a class of decidedly non-proletarians who were hostile to it and who would undermine it from within.

Schumpeter struggled with finding the right label for this class, finally settling on “intellectuals.” He also struggled with identifying its defining characteristics, but it’s a you-know-it-when-you-see-it kind of thing. And when you see Mamdani fans, you know they are the type Schumpeter had in mind.

In particular, look at Chapters XIII (especially section II) and XIV of CSD. They read like a crystal ball for the Era of Woke generally and Mamdani specifically. There is too much to quote so I’ll just pull out a few.

But in the case of capitalist society there is a further fact to be noted: unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

“The very logic of its civilization” means that because of its incredible fecundity, capitalism can support a large number of individuals who can pursue intellectual pursuits rather than toil for subsistence through the production of goods or services.

That is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for this group–which Schumpeter believed can be characterized as a social class–to be inherently oppositional to capitalism and the bourgeoisie. In addition, the internal logic of capitalism incorporates open inquiry and criticism (parts of “creative destruction”) and a belief in freedom (especially freedom of expression), and therefore finds it difficult to fend off its intellectual critics:

From this follows both the unwillingness and the inability of the capitalist order to control its intellectual sector effectively. The unwillingness in question is unwillingness to use methods consistently that are uncongenial to the mentality shaped by the capitalist process; the inability is the inability to do so within the frame of institutions shaped the capitalist process and without submitting to non-bourgeois rule. Thus, on the one hand, freedom of public discussion involving freedom to nibble at the foundations of capitalist society is inevitable in the long run. On the other hand, the intellectual group cannot help nibbling, because it lives on criticism and its whole position depends on criticism that stings; and criticism of persons and of current events will, in a situation in which nothing is sacrosanct, fatally issue in criticism of classes and institutions.

Furthermore, and crucially, there is a mismatch between the attributes (I hesitate to say “skills” or “abilities”) of the members of this class and their expectations regarding income and status:

Third, it may create unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type. The man [an anachronism!–see below] who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. His failure to do so may be due either to lack of natural ability—perfectly compatible with passing academic tests—or to inadequate teaching; and both cases will, absolutely and relatively, occur more frequently as ever larger numbers are drafted into higher education and as the required amount of teaching increases irrespective of how many teachers and scholars nature chooses to turn out. The results of neglecting this and of acting on the theory that schools, colleges and universities are just a matter of money, are too obvious to insist upon. Cases in which among a dozen applicants for a job, all formally qualified, there is not one who can fill it satisfactorily, are known to everyone who has anything to do with appointments—to everyone, that is, who is himself qualified to judge.

I say anachronism because today women are far more likely to fit this description than men.

He continues:

All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into that social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator’s typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions especially in a rationalist and utilitarian civilization. Well, here we have numbers; a well-defined group situation of proletarian hue; and a group interest shaping a group attitude that will much more realistically account for hostility to the capitalist order than could the theory—itself a rationalization in the psychological sense—according to which the intellectual’s righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism simply represents the logical inference from outrageous facts and which is no better than the theory of lovers that their feelings represent nothing but the logical inference from the virtues of the beloved.1 Moreover our theory als accounts for the fact that this hostility increases, instead of diminishing, with every achievement of capitalist evolution.

I could quote further, but that gets at the gist of it. Elite overproduction, avant la lettre. (It is rather discreditable that Peter Turchin’s book on elite overproduction, End Times, does not mention or cite Schumpeter. The Austrian was obviously decades ahead of him).

Relatively recent developments in the “elite” production technology have only exacerbated these tendencies. An especially important one is the superabundance of student loans. This has had three perverse effects. The first is simply that it subsidizes the production of the credentialed. The second is that it has caused an increase in the output of those with “unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type.” Namely, all those with expensive but useless degrees, “studies” degrees most especially. (Note that Mamdani has a degree in African Studies. No wonder he has never held a job. Never). Third, those who cannot get employment with compensation or status that they believe their credentials entitle them too are saddled with a crushing debt burden that reminds them daily of the fundamental injustice of society.

Student loans are not the only issue regarding “elite” production technology. Another is its self-reinforcing, reflexive nature. Academia has become infested with oppositional intellectuals who through their control of their institutions indoctrinate students with their resentful ideologies. Resentful intellectuals produce more resentful intellectuals who cannot achieve income and status commensurate with their inflated self-worth. It is the academic version of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice:

Another factor is the feminization of higher education. (Apropos my comment regarding the anachronism in Schumpeter’s analysis). Women tend to be disproportionately represented in the “intellectuals” produced in studies, humanities, and soft social sciences programs that contribute most heavily to the discontented intellectual class. Moreover, women are more likely to be hostile to the competitive, not to say Darwinian, features of capitalism.

It is amusing that Richard Swedberg’s introduction to the version of Schumpeter I have at hand dismisses Schumpeter’s negative answer to “can capitalism survive?”

In short, in areas where Schumpeter perceived a threat to capitalism, there is no apparent threat at all or, alternatively, a very minor one. To illustrate this, let us look at two of the alleged causes for the demise of capitalism: the role of intellectuals in capitalist society and the relationship of property owners to their property. According to Schumpeter, as capitalism develops it gives rise to an increasing number of intellectuals who are basically resentful and hostile to capitalism. The argument, however, does not accord well with our observations; rather, most intellectuals appear fairly well integrated into the various institutions in which they work, and the vocal intelligentsia changes its political opinions at regular intervals, usually oscillating between pro-capitalism and indifference to economic questions, and only rarely lapsing into anti-capitalism. In any case, it is simply not correct to state that Western intellectuals in general have been hostile to capitalism and that they are likely to be hostile also in the future.

Dude. How wrong can you be? This judgment was a dubious characterization of conditions when written (in 1976). It is utterly delusional now.

Consider “most intellectuals appear fairly well integrated into the various institutions in which they work.” Uhm, yes, they are, but not in the way Swedberg meant. As a result of the march through the “various institutions”–especially academia, journalism, and government–they have reshaped those institutions into anti-capitalist bastions. It is pro-capitalists like me that are not well-integrated, to the extent we are tolerated or even exist. (Don’t bother to look in English departments, etc.). Or “the vocal intelligentsia changes its political opinions at regular intervals, usually oscillating between pro-capitalism and indifference to economic questions, and only rarely lapsing into anti-capitalism.” I agree that the vocal intelligentsia changes its positions at regular intervals, from left to more left to even more left. And rather than oscillating between “pro-capitalism and indifference to economic questions,” anti-capitalism has been trending strongly. Yes, there is sometimes “indifference to economic questions” in the sense that modern leftist intellectuals are not obsessively focused on them like 20th century classical Marxists were, but their ostensibly non-economic critiques about race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., identify inequities on these dimensions as the inevitable consequences of capitalism.

That’s the essence of the Gramscian, Frankfurt School turn from traditional Marxism. The proletariat did not behave as Marx predicted, so the critique of capitalism, and the strategy to overturn it, pivoted to race, gender, sexual orientation, and most lately to transgenderism.

Schumpeter did not predict the exact manifestation of the intelligentsia’s non-classical-Marxist attack on capitalism, but he predicted the hostility and coherently explained why it would–and alas has–happen.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy is much richer and more expansive than an exposition on elite overproduction, its causes, and its consequences. But that section was especially prescient, and resonates 82 years after it was written. No more so than when witnessing New York City’s recent election.

Post-Iraq Syndrome

In the years after Vietnam, many (and arguably most) Americans suffered from a form of PTSD, Post-Vietnam Syndrome (“PVS”). The main symptom of PVS was to respond to each possibility of an American use of military force with the cry “It will be another Vietnam!”

Gulf War I largely cured the nation of this syndrome. In large part precisely because the US military had learned lessons from Vietnam. The Weinberger-Powell doctrine was formulated with the Vietnam experience specifically in mind. Go in with overwhelming force and with clear, well-defined, and somewhat limited objectives.

In the past few weeks, as the prospect of a US attack on Iran became increasingly likely, PIS–Post-Iraq Syndrome–was clearly in evidence. “An attack on Iran will result in another debacle like Iraq!” Ironically, this syndrome was particularly evident in a few corners of the right. Those corners which almost certainly not coincidentally give off a pungent odor of anti-semitism.

I heavily discount these fears, and for similar reasons that PVS was unfounded and largely neurotic: the military and the civilian leadership are intent on not repeating the same mistakes.

The methods are different (so far). Trump (like Israel) looks to exploit the US’s overwhelming advantages: hurling thunderbolts from the heavens, a la Zeus, and to avoid mud wrestling with the pigs on the ground. The objectives may seem somewhat similar (eliminate a perceived WMD threat) but the evidence of the threat, and the imminence of the threat, is far greater that it was 22 years ago: no debates about yellowcake or aluminum tubes with respect to Iran. And today Trump clearly eschews any dreams (or delusions) of nation building: note that is rhetoric is completely devoid of George W. Bush’s gauzy fantasies of turning a dysfunctional Middle Eastern nation into a freedom loving Jeffersonian republic.

That is, whereas Bush was internationalist and Wilsonian, Trump is being Jacksonian. You do you, until you threaten us. At which time we will tell you to stop. And if you don’t stop, we will respond with overwhelming force to eliminate the threat you pose.

The mullahs were warned. They blew it off. So Trump blew them up, or their prize toys anyways. If they keep it up, he just might blow them up as well.

Stories circulating right up to the launch of Midnight Hammer reported that Trump was fretting about “another Libya.” In retrospect that appears to be another part of the information operation. But even if not, those fears apparently disappeared. And with good reason.

Yes, Libya has been a violent basket case since 2011, and the country has descended into brutal civil war, but what has happened in Libya has stayed in Libya. If Iran descends into civil war (which will have an ethnic component, given that Iranians/Persians represent a bare majority of the population) it will likely remain largely an Iranian affair. Which, ironically, would reduce the threat that country poses to peace and stability elsewhere.

And it is something that would not cost a Jacksonian a single night’s sleep. Indeed, a Jacksonian would probably sleep better knowing that potential enemies are tearing themselves to bits.

The biggest concern would be the emergence of a Shia analog to ISIS. But that would be a less dangerous adversary than a somewhat coherent clerical regime with considerable state capacity and equally murderous intentions.

The biggest issue is not the possibility of repeating past mistakes, but being so intent on not doing so that you make different ones. Being so focused on not stepping in the same hole again may blind you from another hole into which you fall.

Indeed, Iraq provides an example of that. Post-WWII American and European leaders were so intent on avoiding “another Munich” that they have rushed into fights against tyrants (like Saddam) who are far less dangerous than Germany/Hitler.

Iraq was a carnival of errors. But that in itself provides valuable lessons in what not to do. Those with PIS assume that mistakes will be repeated, that past will become prologue. It usually isn’t. The US/Trump may commit errors going forward, but they will be different ones. It is more constructive to try to anticipate, identify, and warn about those, than obsess about the past.

“Did I say two weeks? Sorry, I meant two days,” or, the MOPs Going Down, Down, Down in a Burning Rign of Fire

Last Tuesday I saw an Iranian born former student at a conference. He asked me what I thought would happen. I responded “Trump will demand Iran immediately agree to dismantle all of its nuclear facilities under US supervision, and if they don’t agree immediately, he will hit Fordow with MOPs.” A couple of days later Trump’s press secretary announced that Trump would decide “within two weeks” whether to order the bombers into the air. At the time, I thought “within” was doing a lot of work, and that was clearly part of the deception operation, for the wheels were already in motion to launch the attack, and had been for weeks.

This operation featured ruses within ruses. Among them were leaks claiming B-2s were headed west towards a staging base in Guam, suggesting preparations were still underway and an attack was some ways off. In the event, the Spirits that dropped the bombs flew east from Whiteman AFB in Missouri.

NB: There were no real leaks about this operation.

Initial indications are that the strikes were overwhelmingly successful, and have demolished Fordow, the most secure of the Iranian sites.

If not, no biggie. We’ll just go back until the job is finished. Iran is defenseless against American and Israeli air power.

Multiple Massive Ordnance Penetrators were deployed against Fordow, as was widely understood to be necessary given the depth of the facility. But marvel at the precision required to put multiple bombs down the same hole

Iran is of course uttering blood curdling threats of retaliation. Yawn.

Mullahs right now be like pic.twitter.com/o0fUtv8c4o

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) June 22, 2025

As I said in a previous post (which had prompted my student’s question), their main real threat is to attempt to close the Straits of Hormuz. But as Trump made crystal clear in his statement last night, any retaliatory response by Iran will result in a massive US response that will make Operation Praying Mantis look like a pillow fight. The main threat would be from mines–so the US will take out every vessel capable of sowing them. The next threat would be from Silkworm antiship missiles. As if the US doesn’t know where every one is and is monitoring (via satellite and UAVs) every time one of the crew manning them so much as scratches his balls.

Note that OPM was conducted before precision munitions. Although the US Navy is smaller now, its productivity is far greater due to its arsenal of PGMs. OPM was also undertaken with considerable restraint. Gloves are off now.

And note that China won’t appreciate a cutoff of oil from the Gulf.

Another potential retaliation vector is terrorism. However, the dismantling of Iranian proxies has reduced this threat in the ME especially. My biggest concern in this regard is that Biden’s open borders policy let in God knows how many Iranian agents.

Which reminds me . . . the Iranians obviously knew the danger they faced when they dispatched teams to assassinate Trump.

The bedwetting epidemic in the US specifically and the west generally is something to behold.

The Iranians removed all the nuclear material before the bombing, so it was useless!!! Uhm, if they knew they couldn’t protect these materials 300 feet underground, they won’t be able to do so wherever they’ve moved them. And if they moved them, we watched them do it. Kicking the enriched uranium down the road will not alter the ultimate outcome.

This will just make Iran more intent on getting nukes!!! Uhm, they were pretty hell bent on it before, so added motivation is gilding the lily. Moreover, intent without capability is irrelevant. Iran spent decades and tens of billions to build the bomb, and they saw it go up in smoke in minutes. If they try to restart, it will go up in smoke again.

There’s no proof the ayatollah gave the final order to build a bomb!!!

I Don't Really Care Margaret, take 100.

She keeps trying to play gotcha & gets her head handed to her over and over again. https://t.co/jtL34Wb9Vs

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) June 22, 2025

Irrelevant. The issue was that they had to prove that they would not. Trump gave them ample opportunity to do so. They refused. That is more than sufficient to prove the requisite intent beyond a reasonable doubt.

I further note that divining intent is far less certain than evaluating capability. Intent without capability is far less dangerous than capability with unknown intent. (Although there is in fact little doubt about intent). Eliminate the capability and uncertainty about intent becomes irrelevant.

What has Iran ever done to us??? This is Israel’s fight!!!

Where the fuck have you people been the last 46 fucking years? Tell it to the Marines . . . whom Iranian proxies killed in the hundreds in Beirut. Tell it to the Americans who fought and died in Sadr City in Iraq. Or those killed by Iranian IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. I could go on (and on) but if I have to tell you this history you are hopeless and IDGAF about your opinion.

One fascinating thing is the muted international response–there has even been praise from some European quarters. The Saudis issued a statement that gives new meaning to the phrase crocodile tears. The Russians left their response to the narcoleptic drunk Dmitri Medvedev. China issued a boilerplate “international law blah blah blah we call on both sides to reach a ceasefire blah blah blah.”

A related fascinating thing is the fact that multiple Arab countries let Israel, and now the US, use their airspace with impunity and without a peep.

Yes there will be some volatility over the coming days. How much depends on how stupid the Iranians are. Past experience shows that they can pretty damned stupid. But they’ll be the ones who will pay the price for their stupidity. They keep finding out, but keep fucking around nonetheless. So be it.

Jason Voorhees Now Flies an F-35 and Has Lots of Friends

The latest installment of the Friday the 13th horror franchise is in limited release, available only in Iran.

In the early hours of Friday 13 June 2025 local time, the Israeli Air Force launched a series of devastating strikes against a wide range of targets in Iran. These were supplemented by another horror movie trope: the drones are coming from inside the house! The Israelis had special forces units operating within Iran that launched drones that mainly targeted what’s left of Iran’s air defenses and its ballistic missile launchers.

It all started with what is arguably the most devastating and comprehensive decapitation strike in history. Virtually the entire Iranian high command was wiped out. Apparently they had gathered at a single location, lured there by an Israeli operation. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander General Hossein Salami was among those sliced thin.

They're going to need a bigger wall. Much bigger. pic.twitter.com/6kBb6HNrdk

— streetwiseprof (@streetwiseprof) June 14, 2025

The intelligence necessary to pull off this simultaneous whacking of virtually the entire Iranian command echelon is beyond amazing.

And NB: no mullahs were apparently targeted. This had to have been a deliberate choice.

The lack of any coherent response for hours no doubt reflected, as intended, the chaos that occurs when a military’s “brain” is hit. (JFC Fuller, one of the pioneers of mobile warfare, included going after the enemy’s “brain” in his Plan 1919, the progenitor of the indirect approach in offensive warfare).

The Israeli AF focused on Iran’s nuclear assets, starting with Natanz and then proceeding to Fordow and others. Natanz and Fordow are buried deep below the earth, and it is widely believed that Israel does not possess the deep penetrators necessary to destroy them. Who knows? We have no idea what the rather ingenious Israelis have developed on their own, or what the US gave them.

Furthermore, Israel also whacked many of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists. Going after both the nuclear hardware and meatware that the mullahs dream of deploying against Israel.

Last night Iran struck back with a ballistic missile and drone assault on Israel, specifically Tel Aviv. The Israeli MoD building was hit, as were multiple civilian sites. Iron Dome, supplemented by US sea-based and ground-based anti-missile weapons, destroyed most of the incoming missiles. US aircraft assisted in shooting down drones.

The scale of the Iranian barrage was relatively muted. They had threatened to launch 1000, but only 200 or so showed up. This presumably was due to the Israeli targeting of Iranian missile infrastructure and equipment.

No loss of Israeli manned aircraft has been reported. Iran’s air defenses were scourged last year, and weakened further in the latest assault. Israel has unchallenged air supremacy and can strike whenever and wherever it wants, for as long as it wants.

All demonstrating the utter futility of attempting to build an expensive offensive capability (nukes) without the ability to defend it.

The Mossad operation within Iran was pretty amazing, and would have seemed even more so if Ukraine had not done something similar a few weeks back. I wonder if Israel was concerned/pissed to be pipped by Operation Spider Web.

How did Mossad do it? Well, it helped that the head of Iran’s anti-Mossad counterintel force was . . . an operative of Mossad. Said individual has been exfiltrated to Israel.

Those crafty Jews!

It is endlessly amusing that people (notably the Iranians) who go on and on about the Jews being evil geniuses who control the world with their diabolical plots are thunderstruck when the Jews pull off one of those diabolical plots.

The US is not involved in kinetic operations in Iran. Yet. (Intel–who knows?) But events have set off massive speculation about American involvement, knowledge, and approval.

Trump says he knew. Well of course he did. And of course he approved–Israel would never have dared to do this behind the US’s back. The withdrawal of non-essential personnel from US Middle East diplomatic posts immediately prior to the strikes indicates clearly that we knew the shit was about to hit the fan. The remarkable thing is that the Iranians apparently failed take the hint.

The entire history of the last two months also looks very different in the aftermath of this operation. Trump was engaged in negotiations, and saying nice things about their progress. But he gave the Iranians warnings that there was the easy way (come to a deal) or the hard way (the way we are seeing now). He told the Iranians that production of weapons grade nuclear material would not be permitted: the Iranians said that it was their right to produce them. He gave them two months.

But Iran chose to listen to the idiots in the US and Europe dismissing Trump’s credibility, and put on the TACO trade, thinking that Trump would not push the issue.

Very bad idea.

The entire narrative about Trump supposedly losing patience with Netanyahu, distancing himself from Israel, etc., now looks very different in retrospect. Now it looks like part of a massive deception operation.

The Iranians believed what they wanted to believe. They ignored what Trump said point blank would happen if they persisted in their obduracy.

Hopium is apparently not haram. They played a stupid game, and this is their parting gift–quite literally, for many of them.

One other interesting angle here is that Israel required (and continues to require) extensive use of Arab airspace. Arab nations are tut-tutting about the strikes, but actions speak far louder than words.

What next? Well, the smart play would be for Iran to capitulate to American and Israeli demands. They have no viable military option. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. And the longer they wait, the worse it will get for them.

But we’re talking about the Mullahs here, and they will probably think that they are Eisenhower, and faced with an unsolvable problem will expand it. How? Attempting to do something in the Straits of Hormuz is about their only option.

That would be unlikely to have a lasting effect. And it would be an engraved invitation for US involvement to destroy the Iranian Navy (can you say Operation Praying Mantis? I knew you could!) and all anti-ship missile installations along the Straits and in the Gulf. Another battle the Iranians can’t win. Not to mention it would piss of the Chinese, who get most of their oil via the Straits.

The Iranian missile response brought an Israeli strike on Iranian energy assets, namely the Pars gas field and some oil refineries. Fucking around in the Gulf would just lead to a major ramp up in such attacks, and not just by Israel.

Oh, and the mullahs would likely be put on the target list.

Iran is checkmated. It should have realized the state of the board was decisively against it when its proxies were largely dismantled. It should have taken the deal that was on the table and resigned.

But in their monomaniacal obsession with destroying Israel with nuclear weapons, they sowed the wind. They are now reaping the whirlwind.

Happy 250th Birthday, United States Army!

Happy Birthday to the United States Army! 250 years of distinguished service and sacrifice at home and in every corner of the globe.

My familial connection to the United States Army goes back almost to the very beginning of its history. My 5th great-grandfather, Peter Bonham, enlisted in the 3rd Virginia Continental Line on 8 February 1776 and was mustered out on 2 February 1778. He was promoted to sergeant and eventually ensign. During his enlistment, the 3rd participated in the New York Campaign, and the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Germantown, and experienced the deprivations of Valley Forge. Perhaps the latter convinced him not to re-enlist.

I have no way of knowing which of these engagements Bonham participated in, given the sketchiness of the records and the fact that there was considerable leakage of manpower from Continental regiments while on campaign. For example, at Trenton the 3rd was down to under 300 men. He was listed as sick in June and July of 1777, but was on the rolls for the rest of the year (when Germantown and Brandywine were fought), and his promotions suggest he was a dependable soldier. The absence of evidence of absence during those battles is consistent with, but not proof of, his participation therein.

Another 5th great grandfather, Edward Hatfield, served in the 3rd Maryland in 1778-9.

Other direct ancestors served in the Army in the War of 1812, the Civil War, and World War I. My aunt’s husband served in World War II, and was horribly wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.

The country is marking the anniversary with a large military parade in DC. I emphasize “country” because pathological partisans think that because the anniversary falls on Trump’s birthday, the parade is an unprecedented exercise in vanity and an act of monarchical excess meant to honor him. Hence the moronic “No Kings Day” protests occurring throughout the country.

Many of the usual suspects are wailing that the parade is something out of a totalitarian state, like Russia, North Korea, or China.

(I can’t embed McFaul’s post because the wuss blocked me almost 10 years ago after I smacked him around. And I’m not surprised that an academic bedwetter like him wouldn’t “like” military display, whatever the country putting it on).

Then there are the pedo and pedo adjacent types at The Lincoln Project:

No, this isn't North Korea you're seeing.pic.twitter.com/WXkCtk6Trt

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 13, 2025

I could go on. And on. And on.

The only question is whether these people are historical retards, or their partisanship blinds them.

This wasn’t North Korea, etc.:

Nor was this:

Nope, not this either:

Those were parades post-Civil War (the Grand Review of the Armies in DC), WWI (in NYC), and WWII (ditt) respectively. And here’s from the First Gulf War in DC (ironically in front of the Lincoln Memorial):

The last three images are from a Mother Jones (“a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs“–good to know!) piece which at least–unlike the McFauls and TLP groomers of the world–recognizes that the US does have a tradition of military parades but carps that “normally they are after military victories and such.”

For one thing, their own photo gallery gives the lie to that. This is from the Army Day parade in 1939:

Army Day. Not that different from the Army’s birthday. But actually way less significant than the Army’s 250th birthday.

The piece also includes several photos from inaugural parades. Were those displays of monarchical vanity?

No, the vanity on display here is that of the pompous No Kings Day posers (most of whom appear to be boomers, making the demonstrations look more like an AARP gathering).

By making this about their political obsessions, they are disrespecting the United States Army, the millions of Americans who have served in it, and the million plus who died serving in it during its illustrious history.

So screw them, and all hail to the United States Army!

And mark your calendars:

13 October 2025: 250th Birthday of the United States Navy.

10 November 1775: 250th Birthday of the United States Marine Corps.

I hope there are parades for them too.

Restoring the Names of (Mostly) Bad Generals

Trump announced that he will restore the names of ex-Confederates to U.S. Army bases. In a speech to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort, er, Bragg he tried to make it clear that it was not an homage to the Confederacy, per se, but to the heritage of the US military: “We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It’s no time to change. And I’m superstitious. I like to keep it going, right? I’m very superstitious. We want to keep it going,” 

I always considered the name changes to be performative, PC bullshit. I ain’t superstitious, but I do honor the legacy of the hundreds of thousands of GIs who passed through those bases and associate the base names with their histories as bases rather than the individuals for whom they were named.

The main objection I have to the base names is that most of the generals they are named for were, with a few exceptions, pretty lame.

Braxton Bragg. “The most hated man in the Confederacy.” A past master at winning smashing initial successes (Perryville, Murfreesboro/Stones River, Chickamauga) then retreating (in the first two cases) or getting smashed later (the last, at Chattanooga), all the while engaged in hammer-and-tong battles with virtually all of his subordinates.

Leonidas Polk. His first name was purely aspirational, not to say false advertising. He was one of the subordinates whom Bragg battled with. He opened the war with a colossal blunder, occupying Columbus, Kentucky while that state was neutral. This opened the way for the US to move into the state and ensure its loyalty. He didn’t improve with experience. His record as a corps commander was littered with failures, and his politicking was highly destructive to the Confederate cause in the West. Elevated far beyond his capability and experience (he had resigned soon after graduating from West Point to become an Episcopalian minister, eventually rising to bishop) because of his friendship with Jefferson Davis. Killed by a shot fired by Hubert “Leatherbreeches” Dilger at Pine Mountain, Georgia. There is a small monument marking the site where he was killed. That should have been enough.

George Pickett. Largely a non-entity as a division commander. His fame stems from a disastrous attack (which was not his decision to make, though he was enthusiastic about it–before it collapsed in flame and blood) in which he was not in overall tactical command and his troops comprised less than half of the attacking force. He performed credibly during the Bermuda Hundred/Petersburg campaigns, but was in command when the Confederates suffered the crushing defeat at Five Forks. Although Sheridan probably would have overwhelmed him even if he had been present, the fact he was lunching (on shad) miles to the rear when the attack was launched was not a good look: seeing him a few days later, Lee disdainfully said “Is that man still with the army?” Ironically, he had had his best performance of the war on the previous day, at Dinwiddie Court House. After the war, he descended into bitter alcoholism.

John Bell Hood. An excellent division commander, a cipher as a corps commander, and a disaster as an army commander. The Peter Principle on steroids. Franklin and Nashville were catastrophes.

Ambrose Powell Hill. Very high variance, and another Peter Principle poster boy. Often excellent as a division commander, he bailed out Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain and saved Lee at Antietam. But he rashly attacked at Mechanicsville/Beaver Dam Creek and was driven back at Second Manassas and Fredericksburg. His record as a corps commander was poor, most notably at Bristoe Station when his rash attack resulted in a bloody repulse, drawing from Lee the rebuke “Let us bury these poor men and say nothing more of it.” His corps performed well at Petersburg, but for the most part he was not exercising tactical command: his division commanders (notably William Mahone) were the stalwarts. Hill’s erratic performance was largely due to his poor health–specifically, the periodic outbreak of syphilitic symptoms. Being fatally shot during the final Union assault at Petersburg was probably a blessing.

 John Brown Gordon. Among the best of the lot after Lee–at least during the war. Rising from regimental to brigade to division to corps command, he excelled at every level. Towards the end of the war, he was Lee’s most reliable subordinate. He is the most dubious politically because of his post-war Senate career, during which he was a notorious Lost Causer. His memoir is largely fiction.

Edmund Winchester Rucker. Wait? Who? He was a minor figure whom even many of those with a pretty good knowledge of the Civil War may not recognize. He was nominated for a brigadier generalship, but the Confederate Congress never approved it. His most important service was as a brigade commander under Nathan Bedford Forrest, notably at Brice’s Cross Roads.

Robert E. Lee. No comment necessary here.

The algorithm for choosing these base names was clearly “pick a notable general from the state in which the base is located (even if they sucked).” Rucker wasn’t even an Alabamian (being a Tennessee native) but he became a prominent business figure in the state well after the war: there were no prominent generals from Alabama (though Gordon had started out in the “Raccoon Roughs” of the 6th Alabama) so Rucker won out because of longevity and wealth. Hood wasn’t a Texan (born in Kentucky) but he rose to fame as commander of the Texas Brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia.

Southern politics clearly played a role. There was no Fort Longstreet–even though he was far more prominent and successful than any of those above except for Lee–because he was considered a traitor for becoming a Republican, criticizing Lee, and saying that the South should reconcile itself to the loss of the war. P.T.G. Beauregard was more prominent and successful than Polk, but he was an enemy of Jefferson Davis, so no fort for you! No Fort [Joseph E.] Johnston for the same reason.

A coda on Fort Polk. It should retain its name if only because of its appearance in the famous speech by Patton: “Thirty years from now when you’re sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, ‘What did you do in the great World War Two?’ You won’t have to cough and say, ‘Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Fort Polk.'” (In the movie version of the speech, Patton says “shoveled shit in Louisiana,” but some soldiers who heard the speech specifically recalled him saying “Fort Polk”).

Nancy Pelosi Commits a Gaffe by Agreeing with SWP

In yesterday’s post I wrote “the ones carrying out the most violent acts–consist largely of a cadre of leftist revolutionaries abetted by lumpenproletarians looking to loot and experience the frisson of violence.” And Nancy Pelosi agrees!:

PELOSI: “Be careful when you see a burned car or a broken window, it may be the exuberance of the moment!”pic.twitter.com/zXqeRtVI2q

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 10, 2025

Sayeth Nancy:

There is a gathering, a large gathering of people. The anarchists see it as an opportunity and they move in. So [you] always have to be careful, whether you see a burned car, a broken window, whatever it is. It may be the exuberance of the moment, but it may be the anarchist setting in. I heard one of the former police chiefs of Los Angeles speak about this on Sunday.

I would say that those supposedly acting “in the exuberance of the moment” fit my description of “lumpenproletarians looking to loot and experience the frisson of violence.” So Nancy and I are totally on the same page.

Karen Bass also gaffed by giving away the game in her acknowledgement of the existence of “a rapid response network” that activates when ICE moves. Now Bass said these networkers “protest,” but we can see with our lyin’ eyes what “protest” involves.

The only issue is whether these “networks” of anarchists (and I would add communists, whom Nancy neglected to mention but are clearly present) are independent actors, or are as I conjectured the street muscle for supposedly legitimate political actors (in the Democratic Party, and/or its NGO galaxy) who activate them to achieve political objectives.

No doubt Nancy et al would deny this latter possibility. I judge those denials to be implausible, primarily because the Democratic officials never, ever make the slightest effort to deter, impede, or prosecute them, and indeed (usually) deny their existence. Regardless, it is high time to have this issue investigated throughly. The suspicions are of long standing, and the tortured rationalizations of people like Christopher Wray (“Antifa is an ideology not an organization”) only deepen them.

Regardless of who controls (or doesn’t) the anarchists, communists, etc., Pelosi has totally torpedoed the outraged assertions of Newsom, Bass, and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment that activation of the National Guard is unjustified. She just acknowledged the presence of violent insurrectionists whose goals encompass nothing less than the overthrow of the United States government. Which by itself justifies action by the national government, especially if the state and local governments fail to take action.

Thanks, Nancy!

In another demonstration of the lunacy of California Democrats, I give you the right dishonorable Senator from California, Alex Padilla:

BREAKING: California Democratic Senator @AlexPadilla4CA just crashed DHS Secretary Noem’s press conference in LA and was forcibly removed. pic.twitter.com/Q2sUWiImAM

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 12, 2025

They’re not sending their best.

Or are they?

A Week of FAFO: Musk, Karen Bass, and Gavin Newsom

(Political) life comes at you fast these days. Last week the onrushing story was the Musk-Trump blow-up. Now the doppler effect has kicked in, and the frequency is lengthening rapidly, largely replaced by the roar of onrushing news about LA.

With respect to the breakup, proximately virtually all the fault lies with Musk. To put it mildly, he is not a team player, and completely misunderstood his place. He is used to being the sun around which all things orbit, and not used at all to be one of the planets, and not even the most important planet at that. He also utterly failed to grasp that the US political system does not operate like one of his companies, where he dictates what happens.

I share his reservations about the “Big Beautiful Bill” (ugh), but especially given the Republicans’ narrow majorities, and the fact that a good chunk of Republicans are swampers, it is likely the best that can be achieved now.

Ultimately, Musk failed to understand that his popularity–and unpopularity–derived from his association with Trump, and that Trump’s popularity–and unpopularity–has fuck all to do with his association with Elon. Typical of someone on the spectrum, he thought (and probably thinks) it’s all about him, and can’t read the room.

Musk also apparently believed that he could skate past his extreme propensity to overpromise and underdeliver in government as he has time and again in business. He promised trillions in savings, and delivered orders of magnitude less. This apparently resulted in a confrontation with Scott Bessent which led to Musk physically assaulting the Secretary of the Treasury. Again something he could probably overcome in his fiefdoms, but not DC.

We only see the surface ripples of what was going on deep in the administration, but it is pretty evident that his erratic behavior–likely fueled by drugs–also wore out his welcome.

A couple of thoughts regarding his drug use. First, I would not be surprised if the NYT story about it came from within the administration. Second, Musk has security clearances–though not high enough for him to be privy to some SpaceX defense work. If it was you or me, we would have a snowball’s chance in hell at getting a security clearance–even at the lowest level–with such drug use.

For his part, no doubt through gritted teeth, Musk is sort of apologizing.

I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2025

Some?

No doubt the loss of tens of billions in Tesla and the evident risk to SpaceX during the blowup, rather than true contrition, are the primary forces at work here.

Although Musk was the proximate cause of all this, the first mover was Trump. He embraced Musk, and probably benefited from it in the short run. Although he does not emerge from this completely unscathed, its impact on him is limited–certainly far more limited than the effect on Elon. I doubt it shifted anybody’s opinion of him one way or the other. The good thing and the bad thing about being so intensely polarizing is that it takes a helluva lot to change anybody’s mind about you.

But as I said at the outset, that story is past its sell-by date. The new big thing is the LA riots.

And yes, they are riots. Despite the gaslight media’s intense efforts to portray them as “mostly peaceful,” they are not completely so. The fact that some (and even most) participants are not violent does not gainsay the fact that many are.

The gaslight media also fails to point out that “peaceful demonstrators” are witting or unwitting Trojan Horses, precisely because their presence camouflages (to the willingly deceived) and rationalizes the actions of the violent.

The purported cause of the disturbance (and those occurring in San Francisco, etc., and ones threatened for Saturday) is largely pretextual, and ironically politically disadvantageous to the instigators and those running political cover, notably the Democratic Party generally, and LA mayor Karen Bass and CA governor Gavin Newsom specifically.

The “ICE raid” that was supposedly the trigger was hardly directed at run of the mill illegals (like that mounted against meatpackers in Omaha). Instead, it targeted a criminal operation, and netted a collection of hardened criminals.

Not that ICE raids directed at run of the mill illegals are a bad thing! Indeed, the main reservation I have about the ICE strategy of targeting those whose criminality is not limited to their residence here is that it conveys the impression that being a rapist, murderer, money launderer, human trafficker, etc. is a necessary condition for deportation.

But the raid served as a convenient pretext. “Resistance” in LA (and other places) was already teed up, just waiting for an excuse. The ruling class in California has made it abundantly clear that it is hell-bent on defending illegal immigration and illegal immigrants, and battling the Trump administration on this tooth and nail. Any “raid” or series of arrests would have resulted in an outburst, sooner or later. The cells were just waiting for a pretext to activate.

The rhetoric of Newsom and Bass makes it plain that these acts are permissioned. They first denied that anything beyond legitimate protests had occurred, and only when those farcical claims melted in the face of fulsome video evidence did they pivot to the equally farcical “it only occurred because of Trump.”

Yeah, they only occurred because Trump is enforcing laws that the nullificationists in California don’t want enforced.

Bass is just a commie idiot. (Literally the former–more on this below–and self-evidently the latter). Newsom is a more insidious figure not least because of his intense presidential ambitions.

It cracked me up (a sardonic laugh, but a laugh nonetheless) that Newsom has appealed to the right winger’s standby–the 10th Amendment–in California’s lawsuit to stop Trump’s nationalizing the California National Guard to support ICE and defend federal property. This is something the left has tried to read out of the Constitution since, well forever.

I also wonder who Newsom is referring to when he says “ALL of our people”:

?NEW — Amid violent riots in his state, Governor @GavinNewsom promises that "California will keep fighting on behalf of our people — ALL of our people."

Is he encouraging "fighting" on behalf of illegal aliens? pic.twitter.com/GUK9mxgGFB

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 11, 2025

In context, “our people” must include Mexican flag-waving illegal immigrants. Like I say–Gavin the Nullifier! States Rights Gavin (not to be confused with States Rights Gist). A proud inheritor of the mantle of Orval Faubus and George Wallace (but with better hair!).

I also find it amusing that in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s NG order, leftist idiots started bleating about the Posse Comitatus Act.

(McFaul is a complete tool whom Putin fucked with mercilessly, BTW: an example of what happens when giving an academic a real job). I find it amusing because the Posse Comitatus Act was pushed by ex-Confederates who wanted to prevent the use of the Army to protect the civil rights of blacks in the South, as it had tried to do during Reconstruction. Many of the same people who are wrapping themselves in the PCA are the same people who think that the Constitution is illegitimate because of various six degrees of separation from slavery apparently embrace the direct product of dead-ender slave-o-crats. Good to know!

The underreported aspect of all this is that like all other major urban disturbances of recent decades–dating back at least to the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999–is that the hardcore rioters–the ones carrying out the most violent acts–consist largely of a cadre of leftist revolutionaries abetted by lumpenproletarians looking to loot and experience the frisson of violence.

The very professional signs carried by the non-violent types who provide cover for the kinetic action squads were provided by communist organizations. The provision of masks, shields, etc., betrays pre-planning and organization (you don’t get that stuff in that quantity next day delivery on Amazon) characteristic of Antifa and similar organizations. (Hey, Chris Wray: still think that Antifa is “more of an ideology than an organization”, you putz?) Much of the rhetoric is not about something so mundane as ICE enforcement, but is instead maximalist calls for social revolution along communist/anarchist lines.

These types are the street muscle for the left, and the Democratic Party. DOJ, FBI, and DHS have stated that they are investigating the organizational links. The rioters are the left’s equivalent of KKK night riders doing the dirty work of the political oligarchy. One can only hope that a massive RICO prosecution is in the offing–and that it goes beyond the cutouts on the streets to the ultimate funders. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, George Soros, et al). And political enablers.

As I noted earlier, LA’s mayor is a communist of longstanding, going back to her days as the SoCal cell leader of the Cuban Venceremos Brigade, and the winner of twice-a-year all expenses paid trips to Castro’s paradise (back when such travel was illegal). And as The Federalist states, she revealed (inadvertently, not surprising given her stupidity) that the street muscle did not coalesce spontaneously, but was on call for when needed:

She actually let the cat out of the bag on CNN recently, admitting that Los Angeles has a “rapid response network” of agitators, adding, “if they see ICE, they go out and they protest.”

Here’s an example of one of her latter day brigades:

BREAKING – The man seen distributing tens of thousands of dollars worth of face shields in Los Angeles to rioters has been identified as Alejandro Orellana, a known member of the Brown Berets, a radical Latino paramilitary group that are currently embedded in cities across the… https://t.co/504D4tWXMI pic.twitter.com/NWGaswAzcx

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) June 11, 2025

This guy cracked me up. “We need communism! Not the fake communism like Cuba [did Karen approve???] or Venezuela. But real honest-to-God Leninism. You know, when communism worked! Where’s the CHEKA when you need it?”

At the Los Angeles protests, a man who entered the United States illegally was out protesting ICE. He said he’s anti-capitalist and wants the U.S. to become a socialist country similar to the Soviet Union pic.twitter.com/AylAgGSX7r

— Willie Nelson (@WillieNelsonTV) June 9, 2025

A friend suggests that this guy (and others who have cropped up on X and Instagram) are paid actors. Could be! I hope they are making scale! And hey, maybe that guy is just following family tradition. Maybe this is one of his ancestors:

Or maybe this guy:

Same hats, anyways.

Kidding aside, the real energy behind the insurrection in LA and elsewhere is fundamentally revolutionary and anti-American. Something that Newsom and Bass and the gaslight media have to know, but conveniently obscure, focusing instead on Trump and the efforts of the US government to enforce US laws.

I remember back in the Reagan days when (in the aftermath of the Liberty City riots) leftists were warning of (promising?) a “long hot summer.” (I have distinct memories of John Kerry bloviating about this). The talk of “resistance” ostensibly about immigration enforcement is really a threat of a long hot summer of 2025.

Which is exactly why Trump acted so quickly and aggressively in California. He realizes the true scale of the threat, and is sending a message to other mayors and governors that if they fuck around, they will find out, and won’t like it one bit.

The Wizard of Oz as a Metaphor for Modern Science

Emily Oster is a very well-known young-ish economist, who could be fairly characterized as a celebrity/popular economist who writes extensively on parenting and family issues. She recently published a piece in The Dispatch to explain why “it can be extremely difficult, basically impossible, to separate truth from fiction” these days, or more accurately why it has become (in her view) more difficult.

She appeals to a well-known concept in economics, signaling theory. In brief, once upon a time we had a “separating” equilibrium where one could rely on signals of something to determine the quality of opinions being offered. Now, however, we have a “pooling” equilibrium where there are no reliable signals to allow one to determine whether someone’s opinion was likely to be valid, or whether it was quackery.

Why the breakdown of the signaling equilibrium? According to Oster, it is the democraticization of access to scientific information. In the (alleged) signaling era, only specialists had access to scientific and technical information. Now, however:

Over time, access to scientific research has become more democratized. Open access to scientific journals has become more widespread, and there has been a greater push to try to help the general public get access to and understand research findings. This has a lot of benefits, but it has made it far easier for non-experts to appear like experts when they want to.

I was initially favorably disposed to this argument, but upon further consideration I think it misses the boat. To understand why requires a little background on how signaling works (in theory).

Signaling is a model of asymmetric information. Specifically, it is a “hidden type” model where people inherently differ on some dimension, but this is difference is not observable. This is in contrast to a “hidden action” asymmetric information model, where someone’s action–say, driving like a maniac–is not observable to someone with whom he contracts–like an insurance company.

A simple story. There are two kind of people, the smart and the stupid, but you can’t tell by looking at them. However, smart people incur a lower cost to buy some “signal”–like a college degree–than the stupid do. A separating equilibrium exists when the productivity difference between the two (and hence their wage difference) is smaller than the dummy’s cost of getting the signal but bigger than the smart person’s cost. Here, the smart person buys the signal, but it doesn’t pay for the dummy to do so. In this separating equilibrium, you can tell if someone is smart by seeing if they have bought the signal (the degree), or not.

Is access to information by itself a credible signal? Here’s where my skepticism about Oster’s argument arises.

In Oster’s telling, if “the messaging came from your doctor or national organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)” it was reliable because back in the day only those people had access to scientific journals and the like. Now anyone can get them online.

But is it the information access alone that matters? That is, does having an MD, or belonging to the AAP or CDC have signaling value, independent of the value of the information they disseminate when they have privileged access to it, or not?

If it doesn’t, then opening access to information doesn’t matter. There was no additional information being added by the signaling credential.

If it does, then opening access to information also won’t matter, because people were relying on the signal of the credential/affiliation of the source of the information to assess its quality.

In brief, there is a correlation-causation issue in Oster’s argument. Yes, opening access and a decline in the authority of the credentialed have occurred in parallel, but that doesn’t mean the former caused the latter. Instead, something has undermined the reliability of credentialing, professional affiliation, and “expertise” as signals.

A likely explanation of this is the Wizard of Oz effect. Toto has pulled back the curtain, and revealed the little scientist twiddling the knobs of the Authority Machine.

COVID in particular caused a huge decline in the public’s evaluation of the signal conveyed by credentials, affiliation, and professional reputation as an “expert.” It is more than ironic that Oster mentions the CDC as a reliable signaler . That agency did more than anything, and its senior personnel–notably the execrable Anthony Fauci–did more than anyone, to bring science generally, and government-approved science in particular, into disrepute.

But the entire medical community of the United States was actively complicit in the coercion and fraud imposed on the public during COVID. By doing so, they shredded the credibility of the signal of being an MD or running a hospital or a medical research institute.

Climate science (and I use the term advisably) has also served to discredit the reputation of scientists generally.

Now it is quite possible that people are overgeneralizing, and throwing the baby out with the bathwater by distrusting science generally in the aftermath of COVID and decades of climate hysteria: if so, that is another crime to lay at the feet of Fauci et al. But I think it is indisputable that trust in scientific authority, especially the authority of government or government-adjacent scientists has crashed in recent years.

So if we are now in a pooling world where people give no special credence to degreed people in white coats, it is because some (previously) prestigious degreed people in white coats were revealed to be big coercive frauds, just like the Wizard of Oz. Now the degree and the white coat signals a charlatan, not of an oracle.

It is against this background that one has to understand the rather broad support for the war on Harvard, and higher education generally. For universities were at the forefront of bad COVID advice, and COVID coercion.

But they just don’t get it. At all. The credentialed class still lives in the dream world in which their credentials confer status, rather than scorn.

Look no further than the hysterical reaction of scientists to Trump’s recent Executive Order mandating adherence to basic scientific standards. You know, extremely controversial things like being “reproducible; transparent; open about error and uncertainty; collaborative and interdisciplinary; sceptical of its findings and assumptions; falsifiable; subject to unbiased peer-review; accepting of negative results as positive outcomes and without conflicts of interest.”

Outrageous, right? Well, some scientists think so. In a cri de coeur published in the Guardian, a group of scientists (including the especially execrable Michael “Hockey Stick Shtick” Mann), claim that the EO will “destroy American science as we know it.”

As if that’s a bad thing! (More on this below).

Rising from her fainting couch and clutching her pearls, the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists frets that “It all sounds very non-objectional, but it’s extremely dangerous in its details and subtext.”

How’s that for a post-modern, post-truth view of science, with its emphasis on the textual? What is the subtext of reproducibility, exactly? Falsifiability?

The oh-so-concerned scientists claim that since political appointees will judge adherence to the “gold standard” laid down in the EO, science will be politicized, and hence a big step on the road to Lysenkoism. Yes. They really cite Lysenko as their primary example.

First, a huge reason for the aforementioned loss of trust in science is that it is quite obviously already quite politicized. So what these “scientists” really object to is what politician is in control. They have been in control heretofore, and they have been the ones exercising political influence over the direction of science, mainly through influence over the distribution of grants and control of the peer review process.

May I remind you of Michael Mann’s prominent role in Climategate? What he and his confreres object to is somebody raiding their floating crap game. Methinks they doth protest too much. Their protests wreak of defensiveness about what prying eyes are likely to find.

Hilariously, the article contains an unintentional confession of their politicization by stating “the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet and wreaking havoc on our climate” is a “robust, valid conclusion,” when in fact it is a highly politicized and disputed one, and an opinion that Mann specifically has defended not by legitimate scientific arguments, but by obfuscation, conspiratorial attempts to hide evidence (remember “hide the decline”?) and to prevent publication of contrary findings, and malicious litigation. Almost two decades after the Wegman Report utterly demolished the reliability of his hockey shtick, Mann continues to pose as the exemplar of science. He is utterly shameless.

Second, these “scientists” are clearly quite happy to take money obtained through a political process and through government bodies–they just don’t want to have any accountability to those who provide the money.

Which is just another variant of the Harvard Problem.

As for “destroying American science as we know it,” well the problem is that it is now known to be largely extremely dubious, especially in any field that is remotely political (again COVID, vaccines, and climate being the premier examples). Moreover, it is highly doubtful that government largesse produces anything of value remotely approaching the expense.

Going back to Oster, her basic claim is that there are a lot of bad studies out there. Look at the graphs in the linked William Briggs blog post above. Output–measured by number of publications–has skyrocketed, likely due to (a) a reduction in the cost of research (due to increased computational power in large part), and (b) an increase in funding–supply up, demand up, “output” up. But a likely result of this–indeed, a near certainty–is that the marginal and average value of these publications has gone down, likely substantially. That means a higher number of bad studies, which is the real problem that Oster has identified.

Measuring the output of science by looking at expenditures on scientists is ridiculous. The EO is at most a first step in weeding out wasteful expenditure–expenditure that is also likely to be harmful because it produces misleading or actually false information. Requiring adherence to the most basic scientific standards–indeed, the standards that distinguish science from other endeavors of inquiry–will perhaps reduce the frequency of egregious misconduct perpetrated on the taxpayer’s dime, but no more than that. A lot of bad stuff will continue to flow.

So in a way we are in a pooling equilibrium in science and scientific knowledge–a cesspool. Trust the Science is no longer a signal we can trust because too many scientists have proved untrustworthy. Rather than whining about the unfairness of efforts to restore trust like the Executive Order, scientists should be grateful for them, and look in the mirror, see what others see, and reform themselves.

And if they don’t? Well, if they think it’s bad now, just wait.