Cruel Summer

Today’s Ruminant finds Jonah deprived of air conditioning in the middle of brutal D.C. heat, ...

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Today’s Ruminant finds Jonah deprived of air conditioning in the middle of brutal D.C. heat, baffled by inexplicable decisions made by figures across the political spectrum. With the Taliban advancing in Afghanistan, progressives arguing that ACTUALLY, kids don’t need to master math and reading, and President Biden considering vaccine mandates for interstate travel, there’s plenty to be annoyed about. Tune in also to hear Jonah’s thoughts on liberal nostalgia, socioeconomic divisions, and the propensity of the politically-obsessed to freak out about minor things. Oh, and bring a squeegee.

Show Notes:

– The Morning Dispatch breaks down the Afghanistan situation

– An emergency Dispatch Podcast on Afghanistan

– The Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Honor Among Nations

– International community, eh?

– Trump’s enduring delusions

– Frederick M. Hess on Oregon’s “soft bigotry of low expectations”

– David Brooks reflects on Bobos in Paradise

– The Wednesday G-File

– Sombart on socialism

– Jonah on royalty, real and imagined

– The Remnant with Jonathan Adler

– Biden contemplates vaccine mandates for interstate travel

– Amy Coney Barrett upholds Indiana University’s vaccine mandate

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Comments (35)
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  1. Jon

    One of your best. Together with the CW Cook interview- your best tag team weekend podcasts. BTW as a Floridian couldn't agree with him more. DeSantis is the best governor in the current Republican crop. And- aside from saying the smart stuff so Trump doesn't go after him (as a threat)- he's actually nothing like Trump. He's competent, actually knows how to get things done, while fights back and supports his views and doesn't back down- the manner in which he does does not compare to Trump. The reason they are taking their aim at him is because he not only is likely a top candidate for the 2024 nomination- but they see how he can keep the Trump coalition together and- even get back many of those suburban women.

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    Ben Connelly

    You know Bobos was my favorite David Brooks book too (really enjoyed it, didn’t like the others much, didn’t read On Paradise Drive) but now that you mention it, you’re right that he was wrong and that it fits with what he has been trying to see in America for 2 decades. At the time I read it I thought it was brilliant but then again I was too young to actually experience what he was talking about. My dad told me that when I read it it was already obsolete. I don’t like the way some people hate David Brooks, but I don’t think he’s right most of the time and I have not been impressed with his writing or analysis in years.

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    Sad Trombone

    I agree with your wife. I think you'd get a lot more traffic if you renamed the Wednesday G-File the G-Spot.

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  4. linda

    Gawd, I love this opening. No matter how tired or how down the day has gone it always makes me smile or laugh out loud. That works.
    Jonah's last bit about people drawn to the end times reminds me of my grandma. She was a child of German immigrants who was looking for land in a community of German immigrants. They settled in Camas Prairie, Id. They had Indian squatters who settled for a season but were migratory. After they were ready to move on they offered up one of their babies as payment. You were suppose to praise the babies fine features and then humbly decline.
    The most memorable to her were the End Times squatters. For some reason they defined the best place to be lifted into the sky to heaven was on her family's land claim. Unlike the Indians they killed no livestock so her dad didn't really care. The time came and went. Still no Rapture. Dang. Wait a few days. Still no rapture. Then they went home.
    Reminds me of the Trumpster wait for him to ascend the throne tomorrow....and still no rapture.
    I am a Christian and believe in the rapture but not oddballs and fakes and assorted fruit cakery.

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    Jake

    Whether it's the longings for the 1930s, 1960s, the era of 3 networks, the fairness doctrine, or the era before social media, all of it is the nostalgia for progressive hegemony. They can no longer just call all conservatives and libertarians social darwinists unquestioned and unchallenged. Not that it is stopping them from winning

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    1. linda

      Whine about it if you must but you have never experienced an entire extended family stop dead in their tracks to watch Perry Mason in the middle of a family reunion. That actually happened and it was magnificent! 35 or so people stopped arguing about politics and poker because Perry was on the tube.

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      1. Richard Fulmer

        A lot of TV shows that I loved as a kid seem pretty awful when I watch them today. No so Perry Mason. It was a great show that stands the test of time.

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    AC Kansas

    Jonah, really good Remmnant. Much like you said liberals see the 1930s and 1960s with longing, do you think conservatives see the 1950s and 1980s the same? If so, since each era is separated by 30 years (a generation essentially), were the 1990s supposed to be another height of liberal power? Because the Republican takeover in 1994 seems to cast doubt on that. Was the cycle broken? Is it still broken?

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    CynthiaW

    Jonah has a good point about our not having vocabulary to discuss the actual divisions among Americans. The words I use for the "elite"/non-"elite" divide are "special people" and "regular people." These categories represent attitude and behavior rather than ideology or belief, and I think they are easily recognizable.

    On the other hand, the so-called massive left-right divide among the regular people often disappears when you ask people what they actually believe and support, in detail. Are we looking at simple personality differences, perhaps the remains of old geographic differences related to where your parents or grandparents grew up?

    Is it something like a sports rivalry, where the *only* point is to identify Our Group and Other Group in order to have someone to fuss about?

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      Aylene Wright

      Some people are now even claiming "the Afghan government only had support among urban elites, the populace in the countryside support the Taliban". Well first of all I think most in the countryside who "support" the Taliban do so in a "I'd rather support them than get my head chopped off" way. But even if there was some truth to this, the insistence on using the "Urban Elites vs. Salt of the Earth Country Folk" framing even for Afghanistan of all places, I find to be quite lacking in imagination.

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        CynthiaW

        It's like M. Jouffrey was saying in the discussion of the G-File. We describe situations in ways that allow us to "understand" the situations as if they just happened to fit our preconceptions.

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    Sam Elder

    I've heard Jonah repeat this misconception a couple of times, so I figure it's worth clarifying: The term "Latinx" is not just intended to be inclusive of males and females, but was much more about being inclusive of non-binary individuals, whom previous terms like Latina/o and Latin@ left out.

    This is also why the term is not that popular among Hispanics -- most of them are not non-binary or care that much about being inclusive of non-binary individuals. It's also why you'd see a list from the Oregon governor like "Latino, Latina, and Latinx" -- it's basically saying "males, females and non-binary individuals of Hispanic descent".

    You don't have to love the term -- I definitely don't -- but it's still better to understand what its actual intended purpose is if you're going to comment so frequently on it.

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    1. anonvet

      The point is that precious few actual people use the term to self identify. It's an academic/activist term pretty much only used by academics and activists. And I've heard this acknowledged multiple times recently on NPR and Ezra kleins podcast. So it's kind of common knowledge at this point.

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        Sam Elder

        Everyone knows it's an activist term, but there seems to be a misunderstanding of which set of activists use it. In this case, it's gender-based activism advocating against the gender binary of the Spanish language, not race-based activism advocating for those who use the Spanish language. Mistaking the former for the latter is the source of much of the pointing and laughing -- it's like "you aren't even reaching your target audience" when no, that wasn't the point at all.

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        1. Richard Fulmer

          Either way, it’s one more example of “colonization” by a Left that demands that everyone adheres to their definition of morality while, at the same time, declaring that all cultures and moral codes are equally valid.

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        Aylene Wright

        If nonbinary people of Spanish/Portuguese/Native/Black/Asian descent from South and Central America wish to call themselves Latinx, that's one thing. But that's not the context for 99% of the uses of the term, rather Latinx is meant to refer to ALL people of any gender identity of Spanish/Portuguese/Native/Black/Asian descent from South and Central America. So it's basically the equivalent of calling all people with uterine who have birthed children "birthing people" even when most of them identify as "mothers".

        It's not just the reactionary Right making the mistake when that's how the progressives are using the term, too.

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          Sam Elder

          I'm not sure where you're getting "99%" from, but suffice it to say that the very example from Oregon that Jonah commented on in this episode used "Latino, Latina, or Latinx", indicating that the latter is specifically geared towards those who don't fit into the standard gender binary, not meant to be representative of everyone in the ethnic/racial grouping. Skimming the Wikipedia entry, all of the most vocal advocates for the term have emphasized its inclusivity of nonbinary individuals. We already had Latina/o and Latin@ before, and the criticism is that those terms reinforced the binary.

          I think the more appropriate analogy is to the word "partner" when referring to a significant other. Yes, there are some activists who wish that no one used the gendered terms (husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend) and everyone used "partner" so there would be no assumption of a different type of relationship when the term is used. But that's a small minority, and when most activists are advocating for the term "partner" to be used as the general term (e.g. in contracts), they aren't implying that people shouldn't use the gendered terms in regular usage or referring to themselves as individuals. They just estimate that those with husbands or wives would also be fine, say, filling out contact information for their "partner". In the same way, those attempting to use "Latinx" by itself in surveys want to avoid the "Latino/Latina/Latinx" monstrosity and hope that Latinos/Latinas would just be fine using the more inclusive term.

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        2. anonvet

          I'd be surprised if the average white NPR listening liberal understands Latinx to have anything to do with non binary people. I mean, I look for this sort of thing and I just thought it was a goofy way of getting out of Latino/Latina.

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            CynthiaW

            I remember when the media discovered "Latina" and started using it all the time, as if gendered words were a totally new toy. This was in the late 80s, I think, well before the Supreme Court gained a "wise Latina woman," as if a "wise Latina man" was a thing then, although I'm sure it is now.

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      Jake

      Use “Latin”. It’s like there’s already a word.

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        CynthiaW

        The "problem" with both Latin and Hispanic is that they don't make the political - or is it religious? - statement of faith in the non-existence of mammalian sexual dimorphism.

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        1. linda

          Oh my Gawd, I never thought about the dimorphism. Now I am shamed.

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            CynthiaW

            Science.

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      CynthiaW

      Use Hispanic.

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      1. Icarus213

        The plural of which is Hispanix

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          Dr. Livesey

          Theirspanix

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          CynthiaW

          Or Hispanices.

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  9. anonvet

    I just don't get TD's take on Oregon. It seems to me what conservatives should be upset about is that there is a test (or "project") for the three RRRs in the first place. If you need one of those for graduating seniors, what does that say about the high school diploma to begin with? Isn't the conservative approach to say, wow, if you need a test like that in the first place, it proves your system is broken. Maybe figure out how to fix the system and make the diploma meaningful again instead of adding a test...

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    1. Richard Fulmer

      I honestly don't remember opposition to standardized testing being a "thing" on the right, though I admit that as a (small "L") libertarian I'm not linked into all of the various nooks and crannies of the right wing.

      Focusing on education rather than political "gotcha" games, do you believe that high school graduates should be able to read, write, and do basic math? If so, how - short of testing - do we determine whether our graduates can read, write, and do basic math?

      I agree, however, that the system is broken. Perhaps a path toward fixing it is to ask how it is that our schools can turn out fantastic football players while failing miserably to teach the basics. What are coaches doing that teachers aren’t? For one thing, they discipline their players, and they cut players who are disruptive. For another, they practice rote learning - making their players practice the basics until their reactions are automatic. Also, coaches who fail are fired and replaced. Finally, the Department of Education isn't constantly sending in new theories of how the game should be played and requiring coaches to alter their game plans accordingly.

      So, here's my recipe for improving our public schools:
      • Stop forcing children to go to bad schools
      • Stop preventing parents from sending their children to the schools of their choice
      • Stop letting teachers’ unions prevent schools from firing bad teachers
      • Stop promoting students to the next grade even if they haven’t learned the material
      • Stop putting self-esteem above accomplishment
      • Stop adding fad courses to the K-12 curricula that leave less time for students to learn the basics
      • Stop teaching children that the deck is stacked against them and that they have no hope of bettering their lives or those of their loved ones through their own efforts

      What's your plan?

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    2. ExploreOK

      This is just bad logic. If you're not continually testing your system, you're leaving yourself open to failures.

      This is true for parts and materials manufacturing, and even the tools used to make those parts.

      If your system is working, then you won't have to throw out tests in the name of 'equity'. And if your system isn't working, then you need to do the hard work to fix it.

      The same tests you claim are worthless are the ones that allow you to claim "Maybe figure out how to fix the system and make the diploma meaningful again instead of adding a test..."

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    3. anonvet

      And I would be willing to bet that when Oregon originally added that test, conservatives made that very complaint. But I am too lazy to research it...

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    Adicesa14

    I listened to this immediately following Sarah & Steve’s podcast with Senator Cassidy and Tom Joscelyn. So, I was depressed to begin with. The opening topic (Afghanistan) deepened the depression. It’s not your fault. It’s the fault of a series of dreadful leaders.

    There’s no way anyone can suggest a better gift to an enemy than Biden’s 20-year ‘911’ anniversary withdrawal announcement. It is the single most ridiculous Presidential utterance of which I’m aware. Most probably, he thought it was profound!

    The meritocracy has never existed in a pure form in America. For a long time, the elites were served first, then a meritocracy for everyone else except certain minorities. Now, the elites are served first, a quota of favored minorities are served next, then the meritocracy applies to the remainder (remnant?).

    Not only does the ‘left’ get distressed when things don’t go their way; they get apoplectic when the ‘right’ adopts their tactics.

    It’s sad that some conservatives don’t understand that Conservative Supreme Court Justices should rule on the law or procedure, not in favor of conservative issues. This would be like Progressive Justices incorrectly (in my judgement) ruling in favor of their issues based on “the living Constitution.”

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