This meme, which I’ve seen being circulated on social media, lays out a view of the Democratic positions and worldview versus those of the Republicans.
Trump
Trump’s Secret Superpower
I’m willing to bet a double-batch of our famous-quality gourmet Christmas gift fudge (which my daughter and I make only at Christmas to give to neighbors and friends) that Donald Trump’s secret superpower is the ability to make his enemies run mad and implode, all on their own. What other explanation is there for Elizabeth Warren’s triumphant announcement that an analysis of her DNA proved that she was really part Native American, or what used to be called Indian that is, part Cherokee as she has claimed for years! Take that, Trump-monster! seemed to be her attitude, as she flung the winning hand of cards on the table … and then the announcement crashed in flames, once everyone got a good look at the minuscule proportion of so-called Native American DNA involved … and hearty horselaughs resounded in the halls. So, one of her ancestors, six to ten generations in the past might have been from the North or South American aboriginal community. One teensy, teeny single drop … but apparently sufficient to be hired and described by a couple of her previous employers as a woman of color. White and blond of color and wouldn’t have been out of place on a Hitler Youth recruiting poster in her younger days. Kind of makes one wonder about the validity of the concept of “white privilege” when all the trendy political figures are trying to trade on an identity as an ethnic minority. Is Senator Warren’s political career well and truly sunk? Probably not in Massachusetts; after all, they kept reelecting Teddy Kennedy for decades. But on the national level? Always possible, I’d concede, but having become a laughingstock all across the political spectrum would be a challenge to come back from.
Quotes of the Day
Via Instapundit, exerpts from this column by Reihan Salam:
The study should also make progressives more self-critical about the way in which speech norms serve as a marker of social distinction. I don’t doubt the sincerity of the affluent and highly educated people who call others out if they use “problematic” terms or perpetrate an act of “cultural appropriation.” But what the vast majority of Americans seem to see—at least according to the research conducted for “Hidden Tribes”—is not so much genuine concern for social justice as the preening display of cultural superiority.
For the millions upon millions of Americans of all ages and all races who do not follow politics with rapt attention, and who are much more worried about paying their rent than about debating the prom dress worn by a teenager in Utah, contemporary callout culture merely looks like an excuse to mock the values or ignorance of others. . .
[. . .]
In a democracy, it is difficult to win fellow citizens over to your own side, or to build public support to remedy injustices that remain all too real, when you fundamentally misunderstand how they see the world.
. . . which links to this column:
Shortly before the 2016 presidential election, The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat observed that though the left has always had a disproportionate presence in the commanding heights of culture, “the swing toward social liberalism among younger Americans and the simultaneous surge of activist energy on the left have created a new dynamic, in which areas once considered relatively apolitical now have (or are being pushed to have) an overtly left-wing party line.” This, he argued, has engendered a sense of panic and resentment among those who don’t embrace social liberalism, and as a consequence, “the feeling of being suffocated by the left’s cultural dominance is turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion.” At the time, I recall that Douthat’s argument was widely ridiculed, especially among those who found the notion that Donald Trump might win the White House risible. That has changed.
[. . .]
What is new, I would argue, is the second development: that the number of people who are susceptible to elite influence has grown larger. Here is where I must tread lightly, as what follows is necessarily impressionistic. I get the sense that the most aggressively “woke” young people are precisely those who find themselves in the most fiercely competitive environments. Status and prestige matter to everyone, of course, but they matter to some more than others. Most of all, they matter to those who find themselves in precarious industries where one’s reputation counts for a great deal and, just as importantly, to lonely, unattached people who long to feel valued and desired. Delayed marriage and child-rearing ensure that many more young people spend many more years in the mating market and, by extension, orienting their lives around fulfilling their own social and sexual appetites over the care and feeding of children. This is especially true among children of the culturally powerful upper-middle-class, who’ve been trained to fear downward mobility in a stratified society as much as our primitive ancestors feared being devoured by toothy predators. The result is what you might call a culture of “competitive wokeness.”
To people in this world, traditionalism must look like a dead end. A commitment to it will do nothing to improve your status in ferociously competitive environments, as those who’ve already scrambled to the top of the ladder tend to hold traditionalist ideals in disdain. Besides, to embrace traditionalist ideals would be to reject the terms of the social tournament to which you’ve chosen to dedicate your life—to decide that devotion to family and community ought to trump individual achievement. If you were to find yourself in this hyper-competitive world, well, you’d be foolish not to emulate the highest-status people you could find. Thanks to social media, you can access their opinions on all and sundry in an instant. The result is a kind of swarm effect in which high-status moral entrepreneurs declare the right position to take on a given issue and then, within minutes, hordes of epigones scramble to adopt and enforce the new orthodoxy. If you’re a good enough enforcer, you might soon find yourself in a position to dictate the new party line.
I think we need more activism, to raise awareness about the high costs of social media, divorce, and late marriage among educated women.
Making iPhones in the USA?
Trump’s proposed tariff increase on Chinese imports would affect Apple products including the Apple Watch, though apparently not the iPhone itself. Here is Apple’s response.
And from President Trump:
Apple prices may increase because of the massive Tariffs we may be imposing on China – but there is an easy solution where there would be ZERO tax, and indeed a tax incentive. Make your products in the United States instead of China. Start building new plants now. Exciting!
There has been much discussion for some time about the economic feasibility of building Apple products–especially the iPhone–in the United States, and considerable new commentary in the wake of the tariff controversy. In 2011, then-President Obama asked Steve Jobs what it would take to make iPhones in the US. Steve’s response was that, basically, the problems were more about skill levels and cultural factors–in particular, he is said to have mentioned a need for 30,000 manufacturing engineers.
This strikes me as a very improbable requirement. Manufacturing engineers are the people who design and improve manufacturing processes: I can’t imagine why you would need 30,000 of them for all of Apple’s product lines combined, let alone for the iPhone alone. (It’s possible that the term “manufacturing engineers” was a misquote of what Jobs actually said, or the Jobs was speaking very loosely–indeed, he apparently went on to say that the people in question could be educated in trade schools. Maybe he meant toolmakers…although also, 30,000 toolmakers sounds like an awful lot for iPhone or indeed all of Apple…or shift supervisors, or something of the sort.
There was a Quora discussion in 2016 on the topic: How much would an iPhone cost if Apple were forced to make it in America? Out of all the responses, which were of various quality, Forbes chose in January of this year to reprint one that seems to me to be rather extreme: In the $30,000 to $100,000 range…assuming it could be made at all.
The author quotes Apple CEO Tim Cook on the skills gap between China and the US:
… the reason is because of the skill … and the quantity of skill in one location … and the type of skill it is. The products we do require really advanced tooling. And the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do are state-of-the-art. And the tooling skill is very deep here.
In the U.S. you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room. In China you could fill multiple football fields.
The author says:
Tooling engineering is a highly skilled position that requires years of training and experience. It is an “analog” type skill that combines artisanal craftsmanship with precision engineering skills. And as Mr. Cook alludes to later in the talk, the Chinese have developed and scaled these skills over the last three decades while the U.S. and other countries have gone the other direction and de-emphasized them.
(The author also talks about the fact that the iPhone supply chain is now largely centered in the Far East, which is true–but “moving iPhone manufacturing to the US” does not imply that every single component or subcomponent or raw-material element in the periodic table would need to come from the US.)
It is certainly true that the US over the past couple of decades has deemphasized manufacturing-related skill sets: but I doubt seriously that the problem is so severe as to make the US manufacturing of a product like iPhone infeasible. After all, cars and trucks are made in the US, and they involve quite a lot of production engineering and tooling. Airplanes and jet engines, too, are made here, and I’d expect that the production engineering challenges for a GE or P&W jet engine equal or exceed anything involved with making an iPhone. And there are plenty of other products and components manufactured in the US as well.
Seth Barrett Tillman: Some Reflections on Trump and his North Korean Condominiums
On Omaha Beach, the French have put up two monuments—one traditional and one more modern. The beach itself is open and used. People traverse the beach and dip their feet in its cold water. Small children play in the sand. There is ample parking for tourists. There are places to buy souvenirs. And not so distant from the epicentre of the beach and its monuments—people have private homes. Maybe some of those homes are condominiums—I don’t know. What this means is that at some point, temporally and geographically, the mourning and the monuments must run out. Yes, the dead are buried. But the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.