Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

1. For all the Trumpists, language and argument is not an attempt to understand the world and persuade others but rather an attempt to destroy understandings of what is and to dominate others: Gabriel Schoenfeld: Trump Supporters Say the Darndest Things: "Readers may not be aware but before Roger Kimball became a fanatical acolyte of Donald Trump, he was a fanatical hater... bitterly complaining of the rallies where Trump 'encouraged a whipped up crowd to extend their right arms in Nazi-like salute while pledging allegiance to the Great Leader'.” Many more such depictions of our 45th president as an aspiring führer can be found in the prolific output of this eminent conservative intellectual.... To judge by his response to my review of Hanson’s book, Kimball seems to have forgotten that he specialized in such Nazi references... right up until the moment he abruptly switched from worrying about the impending Trump Third Reich to hailing Trump for his 'salubrious and morally uplifting' presidency. I don’t believe it is an ad hominem argument to raise questions about the quality of a mind that would produce such extraordinary gyrations...

2. One of my hobbyhorses: a "semi-skilled" worker is an unskilled worker with a union: Kate Bahn sends us to: Byron Auguste: Low Wage, Not Low Skill: Why Devaluing Our Workers Matters: "Such jobs require optimizing time tradeoffs, quality control, emotional intelligence and project management. They are not low skill, but they are low wage. Why does this matter? When we stereotype or lazily assume low-wage workers to be  “low skill,” it reinforces an often unspoken and pernicious view that they lack intelligence and ambition, maybe even the potential to master “higher-order” skilled work. In an economy that is supposed to operate as a meritocracy—but rarely does—too often, we see low wages and assume both the work and workers are low-value...

3. Alan Krueger's suicide is horrible and tragic news. All sympathy to his family. He was a light that shone very brightly for good into many dark corners. זיכרונה לברכה: Noah Smith: Alan Krueger Led a Quiet Economics Revolution: "Nor did Krueger restrict himself to the academy... chief economist at the Department of Labor... assistant Treasury secretary... chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers later in the Obama administration.... Krueger’s work defined what a modern economist should look like. He relentlessly focused on issues of practical, immediate importance. He constantly concerned himself with the betterment of the lives of poor and working people, but refused to naively assume that programs designed to help these people always had the intended effect. He was always aware of relevant economic theories, but never let himself be bound by them. This eclectic, humble, humanistic but practical approach has set the tone for an entire generation of young economists. He was taken from us far too soon, but his impact on economics, and on the world, will last for a very long time to come...

4. Benjamin Wittes: ‘Speaking Indictments’ by Robert S. Mueller III: "Bob Mueller has already told a remarkable story. He’s told it scattered through different court filings in a variety of cases, indictments, plea agreements, stipulations of fact. We decided to distill it, to organize it, to put it all in one place, to tell the story of the Russia investigation orally, to let a remarkable group of speakers read the speaking indictments that Mueller has issued. So here’s the story of the Russia conspiracy, distilled to a brief audiobook in seven chapters. What you’re about to hear is all taken nearly verbatim from actual Bob Mueller filings. We’ve cut a lot, moved stuff around, and changed a few words here and there to make it sound more like a narrative. We have changed the meaning not at all...

5. I am the view that a surprisingly large chunk of American (and British) political history from 1990-2020 may well turn out in historians' future judgments to revolve around Rupert the Kingmaker, in a role analogous—but in a really weird way—to the role of the Earl of Warwick in the Wars of the Roses. As David Frum once put it: "We thought that Fox News worked for us, but then we learned that we worked for Fox News". Thus the Murdoch succession—the transition from Rupert the Decider to Lachlan the Decider may well be a key moment. Rupert thinks it is a huge joke to boost his fortune by scaring the piss out of his viewers and so glueing their eyeballs to the screen so they can be sold fake diabetes cures and overpriced gold funds. Rupert thinks this is a huge joke even though—or, rather, especially because—it leads to him getting lots of side-eye from his peers. Lachlan is likely to value the side-eye less, if it all, and value being one of the great-and-good in good standing more: Steve M.: Is This Why Fox Suspended Jeanine Pirro?: "I don't believe there'll really be major changes at Fox. I think the hope is that small, insignificant steps will bamboozle investors and advertisers. But we'll see...

6. "The... value of names... was changed into arbitrary.... Inconsiderate boldness, was counted true–hearted manliness: provident deliberation, a handsome fear: modesty, the cloak of cowardice: to be wise in every thing, to be lazy in every thing. A furious suddenness was reputed a point of valour. To re–advise for the better security, was held for a fair pretext of tergiversation. He that was fierce, was always trusty; and he that contraried such a one, was suspected. He that did insidiate, if it took, was a wise man; but he that could smell out a trap laid, a more dangerous man than he. But he that had been so provident as not to need to do the one or the other, was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or that could persuade another thereto that never meant it, was commended.... To be revenged was in more request than never to have received injury. And for oaths (when any were) of reconcilement, being administered in the present for necessity, were of force to such as had otherwise no power; but upon opportunity, he that first durst thought his revenge sweeter by the trust, than if he had taken the open way. For they did not only put to account the safeness of that course, but having circumvented their adversary by fraud, assumed to themselves withal a mastery in point of wit. And dishonest men for the most part are sooner called able, than simple men honest: and men are ashamed of this title, but take a pride in the other...": Neville Morley: Lawful Neutral?: "Victor Davis Hanson, and the use of ‘consensual’ to describe attempts at doing without the active consent of the governed is a neat trick.... Hanson['s]... first chapter explicitly presents The Two Americas as an echo of Athens v Sparta, sophisticated coastal elites versus rough unlettered rural folk, with the majority of Greek poleis rooting for the later. Hanson presents himself as the detached observer, who lives among the real people of the countryside on his ancestral estate but knows his way around the world of the city–and so his choice to side with the ‘Spartans’ is based on full knowledge and understanding of both sides, not the ignorance of knowing no other way of life (a fault of the clever Californian and Beltway elites as well).... His depiction of a divided America is Thucydidean not only in its chosen tropes but in authorial self-conception: he... recognises, even as he recoils from... the charisma and power of a Cleon, despising and desiring at the same time his rough anti-aristocratic manliness; Cleon’s methods are not those of Thucydides’ class, but they promise to have the desired effect on the corrupt status quo, simultaneously too democratic and anti-populist. This Thucydides is Chaotic Evil: dedicated (even if just as cheer-leader) to... the triumph of individualism and naked self-interest.... As Thucydides described and this modern Thucydides exemplifies, every action is praiseworthy insofar as it benefits one’s own faction and hurts the enemy, and reckless vulgarity and self-interest are redefined as the traits of an off-putting Homeric hero...

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