Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Maxwell Tabarrok, at X, asks:
Does anyone have good resources or a blog post on how surgery practice and outcome has improved or changed over the past several decades?
My first thought was that I’ll bet Michael Kennedy can provide some insight on this.
Michael, any thoughts?
“Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” has often struck me as the Bourbon Restoration attempted with rotgut whiskey.”
– Wretchard T. Cat, on Facebook
His earlier comment in the thread provides context: “The key to [the Greatest Generation’s] success was that they did not try to restore the pre-WW2 system. They let the British and European colonial empires die. The world was rebuilt on first principles. Subsequent generations have done the opposite. They’ve focused on preserving the World Order.”
Out of the blue in the week before Christmas, my daughter asked me if I had any idea of how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, early in December, 1941, generally affected the Christmas mood that year. Of course, she knows that I wouldn’t have any personal memories of that period (as I wasn’t even born until 15 years after that event) but I grew up pretty well marinated in memories and memoirs of World War 2 even more so when I sat down to write a novel set in that time period. Yes, the Christmas of 1941 was a nerve-wracking time for more than just Americans, even if a war in Europe had been going on for more than two years. In the Far East, countries and colonies were falling like ninepins to imperial Japanese invasion and occupation all through the first months of 1942. I have gathered so from memoirs; and also from my own memories of the lead-up to Christmas, 1990 and the buildup when operations began before the first Gulf War (the last year that we were in Spain) and how mothers and fathers put on a brave face for small children. They did their best then, as we did that year, to have an absolutely normal, reassuring Christmas, with presents and Santa, carols and a nice meal. In 1941 and for three subsequent years, parents had to explain the sudden absence of older brothers and cousins, younger uncles and fathers, and the necessity of blackouts. Probably later, they had to put a brave face on depressing headlines in the newspaper that yet another island, town or province had been attacked, and might soon surrender just as I and other parents stationed at European bases had to explain Desert Shield; new concertina around the base perimeter, a flightline full to bursting with parked transport aircraft, the long hours that military parents and spouse volunteers were all working.
On New Year’s, I’m always reminded of a thought from the late and very great Neptunus Lex:
“I’ve often wished that you could split at each important choice in life. Go both ways, each time a fork in the road came up. Compare notes at the end, those of us that made it to the clearing at the end of the path. Tell it all over a tumbler of smokey, single malt.”
Also, this song seems appropriate after the year that has passed.
And Ruxandra Teslo offers a suggestion:
We are approaching New Year’s Eve: a time when we should all reflect on what we’re grateful for. It’s easy to compare oneself with others and feel like smth is missing. But why not think about how we have it much better than in the past?
She offers some examples.
Happy New Year to all Chicago Boyz and Grrlz and Readerz!
A poll conducted Dec 13-14 among 2000 registered voters included the question:
Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?
Among respondents aged 18-24, 67% believed that Jews as a class’ are oppressors. Note well: the questions was not about ‘Israel’ or ‘Israelis’ or ‘Zionists’, it was about Jews, plain and simple.
Michelle Tandler responded: “This is extraordinary. How did Gen Z come to believe that Jews are oppressors? Is that being taught somewhere..?”
What is being taught, pretty clearly, is that people are primarily defined by their ethnic and gender identity…there are no individuals, there are only ‘communities’ defined by these demographic categories. The more successful groups are defined as oppressors of the less-successful groups. Even the behavioral attributes required for success are viewed pejoratively; see for example the Smithsonian on ‘whiteness’. If values such as ‘hard work’, ‘rational thinking’, and ‘future orientation’ are considered as ‘whiteness’, then Jews ‘as a class’ certainly exemplify that attribute, regardless of the shade of any particular individual’s skin. And if whites as a class are oppressors, then Jews as a class must be meta-oppressors.
This kind of thing clearly had its origins in academia. As John Ellis notes at the WSJ: “Campus antisemitism grew out of ideologies like “anticolonialism,” “anticapitalism” and “intersectionality.”..The radical left is the cause, most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas.”
Academia, and the K-12 schools which are repeaters of its ideologies, are of course not the only factors in this shocking rise in anti-Semitism. The rise of TikTok, with its emphasis on pre-literate modes of communication and the behavior of its algorithms–are they purposely malign toward American interests?–is surely a factor. See this comparison of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views among TikTok users and users of other platforms…see also this WSJ study of what actually shows up in the TikTok feeds of people registered as 13-year-olds.
Also–given that there are many nations–and not only Muslim ones–where anti-Semitism has been more pervasive and accepted than in the US, it is likely that the presence of large numbers of immigrants and foreign students has played a role in moving the Overton Window to a worse place: ‘Personnel is Policy.’
And, historically, societies in which people lose a sense of hope for the future, that they feel that they are facing pervasive decline, have been especially likely to be prone to anti-Semitism. There are a lot of people in the US today who are not optimistic about either our national future or their personal futures.
While there are all these factors–and doubtless many more–behind the upsurge in anti-Semitism and the support for extreme groups such as Hamas, I believe that the ideology of Indentity Politics is the primary factor. The prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz went so far as to say DEI is the incubator of anti-Semitism.