Got to Go…

So Trump bailed early on the G7 and flew back to DC. He has put the NSC on standby in the Situation Room and the air is apparently full of Air Force tanker and other support aircraft crossing the Atlantic.

What does it all mean?

A friend of mine (jokingly) points out that Trump hates these G7 meetings and that perhaps he was using the Iran crisis as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

“Sorry guys, JD called and said I am needed back in DC. Have fun.”

My friend said that perhaps what JD called about was that what was going down in the Situation Room was in fact a poker game and that the boss was needed back pronto, if only to bring the McDonalds.

Maybe Trump did stage this all to get out of the G7. The end result is the same, for the remainder of the G7 everyone is going to realize that without the US there, whatever they say or do is irrelevant.

Trump was telling them, in so many words, that when it comes to the world the US is important and that they aren’t. Nobody needs Carney back in Ottawa or Starmer in London.

Given the meeting was in Alberta, maybe Trump even told Carney not to mess up the next US state before he gets back.

Random Thoughts (13): LA Burning Edition

Taking a step back from the unfolding story in Los Angeles to look at the bigger picture, some thoughts:

One, Trump’s superpower is that he is perpetually blessed with the right enemies. The Left, from its politicians to the media to its street muscle, unerringly finds itself on the wrong side of the 80/20 divide.

Two, as a case in point it looks like Newsom is going to sue Trump over the latter’s unilateral deployment of the National Guard to the Los Angeles area to protect federal property. So rather than be laser focused on dealing with downtown LA going up in smoke, he wants to play legal games about his right to refuse federal assistance sent as a response to the mayhem?

Go Gavin!

Sadly, though, the general rule is when LA burns, we get more Californians moving to Arizona. Maybe if Trump did a Governor Moeur and deployed the National Guard to the Colorado River….

Three, John Yoo has a post regarding the legality of Trump’s deploying the National Guard to LA without the consent of Governor Newsom.

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LA Story

Watching the events of LA over the past few days, I realized that we are in the middle of a story. Not a news story as such, but a planned narrative being produced by the Left. Each chapter providing the material to move the plot to the next.

First is the prologue. The return of Trump despite the best attempts by the Left to bury him. The running eight year narrative that he is the Orange Hitler that will destroy democracy. That his policy of reversing the previous four years of open borders by mass deportations is the equivalent of crimes against humanity.

Second are the riots that started last week. Nothing like that just “happens.” Well, maybe not never, but very rarely. The first thing to look for when these things happen is the pros behind it all, the hard men. Large events take organization and expertise, which means money. During the campus post-10/7 protests, especially at Columbia, numerous observers pointed out that a number of participants didn’t look like your normal undergraduates. That was your professional cadre.

Then there are the preprinted signs. I doubt, from my own experience, that they were printed on short notice and out of the protesters’ pockets. They knew ICE was coming, if not that day then sometime in the future, and they prepared an ambush.

Data Republican has been analyzing the groups involved and outlining their various funding lines. She didn’t base her analysis on some special inside knowledge, but instead simply looked at the names on the protest signs and used open-source materials.

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A Plague of Credentialed Terrorists?

The WSJ has an article titled The Alienated ‘Knowledge Class’ Could Turn Violent, subtitled: Societies that exile their intellectuals risk turning them into revolutionaries. It happened in the 1970s.

The author cites the Weather Underground  in the United States, the Red Army Faction in Germany, and  the Red Brigades in Italy, and notes that many members of these organizations were highly educated, middle- or upper-middle-class young people. These weren’t the oppressed proletariat of Marxist theory, but the disillusioned children of privilege and university lecture halls.  He goes on to assert that:

A similar dynamic could take root in the U.S. As the Trump administration downsizes public agencies, dismantles DEI programs and slashes academic research funding, it risks producing a new class of people who are highly educated but institutionally excluded. History suggests this group may become a source of unrest—and possibly violence.

He is certainly correct that highly educated people have played a leading part in many revolutionary and terrorist movements…he could also have cited the example of Russian revolutionaries between the mid-1800s and the early 1900s, and many of the terrorist leaders in today’s Middle East…not to mention the Khmer Rouge.   And yes, it’s the educated (or at least credentialed) people who don’t obtain the positions to which they aspire, and that they think they deserve, who are most likely to become involved in such movements.  Speaking of the causes of sedition in a kingdom, more than four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon said one such cause could arise when more are bred scholars, than preferments can take off. (extended quote)  A modern translation of the preceding might be when more people get PhDs than have any hope of getting tenure.

Eric Hoffer, in the late 1950s or early 1960s, speaking about the ‘underdeveloped countries’, as they were then called, said:

Nothing is so unsettling to a social order as the presence of a mass of scribes without suitable employment and an acknowledged status…The explosive component in the contemporary scene is not the clamor of the masses but the self-righteous claims of a multitude of graduates from schools and universities. This army of scribes is clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated. They hanker for the scribe’s golden age, for a return to something like the scribe-dominated societies of ancient Egypt, China, and the Europe of the Middle Ages. There is little doubt that the present trend in the new and renovated countries toward social regimentation stems partly from the need to create adequate employment for a large number of scribes…Obviously, a high ratio between the supervisory and the productive force spells economic inefficiency. Yet where social stability is an overriding need the economic waste involved in providing suitable positions for the educated might be an element of social efficiency.

It has often been stated that a social order is likely to be stable so long as it gives scope to talent. Actually, it is the ability to give scope to the untalented that is most vital in maintaining social stability…For there is a tendency in the untalented to divert their energies from their own development into the management, manipulation, and probably frustration of others. They want to police, instruct, guide, and meddle. In an adequate society, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them. This requires, first, an abundance of opportunities for purposeful action and self-advancement. Secondly, a wide diffusion of technical and social skills so that people will be able to work and manage their affairs with a minimum of tutelage. The scribe mentality is best neutralized by canalizing energies into purposeful and useful pursuits, and by raising the cultural level of the whole population so as to blur the dividing line between the educated and the uneducated…We do not know enough to suit a social pattern to the realization of all the creative potentialities inherent in a population. But we do know that a scribe-dominated society is not optimal for the full unfolding of the creative mind.

(from The Ordeal of Change)

And in 2020, the Assistant Village Idiot linked an article from The Economist, titled Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?, and said:

People with advanced degrees who are not prospering are often deeply resentful, certain that something must be wrong with “The System”*. I have worked with them for years, MSWs who believe that in a just world they would be  entitled  to the salaries that other people with their number of years of education get.   Other measurements, such as relative value to society, difficulty of the task, level of risk, and the like do not factor in…That they may have been lied to by the educational establishment or their upper-middle-class expectations (“For a good job, get a good education”), that they may have made poor economic decisions due to Following Their Dreams,  or that they may have chosen one of the easiest of Master’s degrees to pursue does not occur to them. It is largely political, cultural, and attitude training.  

In my post linking the above, Advanced Degrees and Deep Resentments, I said:  I don’t like the title of the Economist piece…“Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?”…which confuses intelligence with credentialism, but I think the point about highly-degreed and resentful people is spot-on.

In the WSJ article, the author goes on to say:

Today, a similar form of status frustration is building. The postwar expansion of higher education has created a surplus of advanced degree holders. People with doctorates far outnumber tenure-track positions. Many members of the American intelligentsia face precarious employment, rising debt and declining institutional pathways. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s agenda has disproportionately harmed the “knowledge class”: policy analysts, researchers, educators and civil servants who once found stability in public institutions.

This is more than a mere bureaucratic shake-up. When large numbers of educated, politically engaged people lose access to institutional influence, they often seek alternatives. For now, most are channeling their frustration through protests, digital activism and ideological writing. But under certain conditions—state repression, widespread disillusionment or charismatic leadership—radicalism can escalate. We already see hints in environmental sabotage, anarchist organizing and violent clashes involving Antifa and far-right groups. These remain on the fringe, but so were the Weather Underground and the Red Army Faction in their early days.

President Trump’s policies could intensify this dynamic. By hollowing out state infrastructure and devaluing educational institutions, the administration risks creating a surplus of ideologically driven people with no outlet for their talents. Many are trained in critique, moral reasoning, and systems thinking—the very profile of earlier generations of radicals. Most won’t resort to violence, but history shows that a small, committed vanguard can inflict enormous damage.

and

The question is whether political leaders will mitigate or exacerbate the risks. Defunding and demonizing higher education may offer short-term political gains, but doing so carries long-term dangers. By targeting perceived left-wing strongholds, some on the political right may cultivate the very radicalism they fear.

This sound to me perilously close to blackmail…give these credentialed people their desired jobs, or they will destroy our society.

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Tariffs and the Industrial Distribution World

That last tariff post sparked an interesting comment thread so I thought it would be appropriate to throw in my $.02 on the subject.

For those who may not know, I own an HVAC distributor, which is a subset of industrial distribution.

Almost all residential and light commercial HVAC products sold in the USA are touched by Mexico (if not made there entirely), and all are touched by other countries. No vendor in the space will be immune.

So far I have a bunch of letters from a bunch of vendors saying “hey man, we might have to do something about this” blah blah. I had one vendor that announced a price increase since a lot of their stuff is made in China, but they called me on Friday and said “nah”. One vendor gave me a “tariff surcharge” three weeks ago. I called them up and gave them the riot act and they removed it (since none of the tariffs had even taken effect).

Speaking of surcharges, we won’t accept them. We must have a general price increase to keep our costing and accounting in order.

I imagine most of the rest of the industrial distribution world will be facing these same issues.

We will have a mix of responses from our vendors. Some manufacturers will absorb part of it, some all, some none, etc. I’m expecting some supply chain issues as I imagine some manufacturers will “slow walk” production outside of the US if they sense a solution to the tariffs will be coming.

This is about the last thing my industry needed after covid, the onset of A2L refrigerants, and industry consolidation. But as always with any type of disruption, I look at this as an opportunity. But more hard work ahead.