The War on Merit

The war on merit surrounds us. It has infiltrated American institutions to the point where genetic makeup is a more important qualification than merit. Admissions to the best universities, gifted and talented programs, advanced placement courses, hiring and promotion policies, sensitivity training-- all of them have produced a cohort that looks like America but that cannot function effectively.

The war on merit is damaging the nation, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. After all, major American universities and bureaucracies and media conglomerates have been filled with people whose primary skill involves policing thought. They do so because that is what they know how to do. They do not know enough to entertain opposing points of view, so they complain and censor. Of late they have been working to take over the American mind.

The war on merit has been going on for decades now. It is not about to stop any time soon.

One notes, in the margin, that companies in Silicon Valley, for instance, still hire mostly on the basis of merit. For now, the tech grandees of the West Coast are happy to talk the talk, while conspicuously not walking the walk. Or better, they have been consolidating their power by censoring conservative voices, promoting the leftist ideology that they were taught by their leftist professors at Stanford and Harvard. 

The tech titans are sucking up to the left, in roughly the way shopkeepers used to buy protection from mob bosses. They do not realize that they are riding a tiger and that once they fall off, as they inevitably will, it will not be a happy day. 

In any event, Michael Mandelbaum has written a cogent essay making the case for meritocracy. He takes some inspiration from a fine book by one Adrian Wooldridge, and explains that when cultures reject meritocracy they inevitably fail. They might do so by hiring and promoting on the basis of heredity. But they might also do so by hiring and promoting on the basis of race, gender and ethnicity. In both cases, they are hiring for genetic composition, not by any measurable achievements. One adds that they also hire on the basis of ideological commitment, that is, devotion to groupthink.

Mandelbaum opens thusly:

How should a society allocate its most important, lucrative, and prestigious positions? In most places, for most of history, the question had a simple answer: by heredity. Monarchs and aristocrats held almost all the society’s power and wealth and passed their positions on to their offspring. Over the last two hundred years a different system came to supplant hereditary privilege. The new system distributes positions through evidence of cognitive and intellectual skills as measured by performance on competitive, standardized examinations. It is called meritocracy.

As you know, meritocracy began in imperial China a thousand years ago:

The first appearance of such a system came a millennium ago in China. Beginning in the 10th century and lasting until the beginning of the 20th, officials in the provinces and at the imperial court were chosen by a protracted and rigorous series of nationwide written examinations. Candidates had to demonstrate, inter alia, their mastery of classic Chinese texts, which was perhaps useful for managing a large land-based Asian empire before the modern era but is of dubious relevance to a contemporary industrial society.

Interestingly, it first appeared in the West during the French Revolution. As part of the war against a hereditary aristocracy, revolutionaries introduced the idea of merit, as a function of fairness and efficiency.

Meritocracy came later to the West. It became established for the first time with the French Revolution, one of whose slogans—“a career open to talents”—captures its essence. The sixth article of the Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man, issued in 1789, concisely defined the concept: “All citizens … are equally admissible to all public offices, positions, and employments, according to their capacity and without any other distinction than that of virtues and talents.”

France still determines admission to its finest schools on the basis of a competitive examination.

During the past two centuries, meritocracy extended to other countries:

In the 19th and 20th centuries it spread, at an uneven pace, throughout the Western world and beyond. Competitive national examinations became important rites of passage in Great Britain, France, and the United States through the 11-plus, the baccalaureate, and the Scholastic Aptitude Test, respectively, channeling young people to schools and then onward to prestigious careers.

Among those who reacted against meritocracy was Mao Zedong. He wanted people to advance in society on the basis of their commitment to his thought, and to his Communist ideology:

In the mid-1960s the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong unleashed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, in which millions of students attacked people in authority, especially teachers. Schools and universities closed and examinations were suspended. Mao declared that China should rely on people who were “red”—that is ideologically fervent—rather than “experts” whom meritocratic procedures had selected. The Cultural Revolution turned the country upside down. By some estimates several million people died and millions more had their lives disrupted or ruined.

Of course, some people have abused the standardized exam system. This is probably less prevalent than one imagines, and one understands that if tutoring helps prepare children for the tests, many poorer Americans have pooled resources to hire tutors for groups of children. One should not think that this is the province of the wealthy.

Since Asian students invariably make it to the top of their classes, it makes very little sense to blame this on white privilege.

Anyway, Mandelbaum makes this point:

People who rise to the top have found ways to use their positions to assure success for their offspring, for example sending them to rigorous preparatory schools too costly for most parents to afford and not numerous enough to serve the entire population. At the same time, climbing up the meritocratic ladder has become more difficult. In this way, meritocracy is not functioning as it is designed to do.

And yet, nowadays we are obsessed with the ideology of equity and inclusion, and this goal cannot really coexist with meritocracy. The war against inequality has always been a war against merit:

… meritocracy has increasingly become associated with economic inequality. Meritocratic systems are not, and are not designed to be, egalitarian in every way. While they do provide equal opportunity, unequal outcomes invariably result because people have different talents and abilities. Some will do better than others, but the winners will earn their success through their own efforts and that success, at least in theory, will benefit society as a whole since the best-qualified people will fill the most important positions.

Apparently, the notion that different people have different talents and abilities, that they might have different goals in mind, has become heresy. And yet, Mandelbaum makes the important point that in a meritocratic system, winners earn their success. When you impose diversity quotas you create the assumption that those who have succeeded have really not earned their successes.

Mandelbaum argues thusly:

Economic inequality has reached levels unseen for more than a hundred years. This has generated popular resentment at the economically successful and therefore at the social practices to which they owe their success. Wooldridge considers that resentment, in combination with the calcification of the meritocratic process and other developments, to be responsible for the upsurge of populism in the Western world over the past decade that brought Donald Trump and other previously unlikely figures to power and caused Great Britain to leave the European Union.

Again, the argument against merit, in this country, aims at disparate outcomes. Asian students excel; minority children do not. Thus, meritocracy has been imposed by white supremacists. Incoherent thinking, you think.

Finally, especially in the United States but in other countries as well, meritocracy faces opposition on the grounds that it is unrepresentative in that the pool of winners it yields does not contain the numbers of people from some groups that is proportional to these groups’ share of the total population. It follows, according to this criticism, that “offices, positions, and employments” should be allocated according to ethnic and racial group membership rather than by individual merit as measured by tests. 

This proposition has for several decades influenced the admissions policies of America’s selective institutions of higher education; it has spread to the wider society; and it plays an increasing role in the public policies of the Democratic Party. It brings with it three considerable drawbacks.

What are the problems with diversity quotas. Mandelbaum outlines them here:

There is something to be said for a police force having at least some members from the racial and ethnic groups for which it has responsibility regardless of test scores. There is far less to be said for selecting neurosurgeons or virologists on the basis of their race or ethnicity. Indeed, a society that does so consistently has every chance of degrading its neurophysiological health and retarding the development of therapies for diseases such as the coronavirus. It is no accident that China built the second-largest economy in the world, to the benefit of hundreds of millions of poor Chinese, and placed itself on the cutting edge of technological innovation only when it abandoned the Maoist system of allocating positions and embraced— again— meritocracy.

As it happens, the rage toward diversity has infested medical schools. It will surely soon infest science departments in universities. The result will be, less innovation and less efficiency. Keep in mind, the smartest people are likely to innovate. If you cull their ranks and replace them with less capable people, your nation will suffer. The point is almost self-evident, but people rarely make it. 

Putting more capable people in more important jobs produces more economic growth:

In addition, since, as Wooldridge notes, meritocracy is associated with rapid economic growth, abandoning it is likely to make societies that do so less wealthy; and because East Asian countries have become the most enthusiastic practitioners of selection by merit, they will become not only wealthier but also, in the case of China, more powerful than the West.

The war against merit is reactionary thrust away from the work ethic and back to heredity and ideology:

The flight from meritocracy also has the perverse and ironic consequence of restoring the system of allocating positions that, over the decades, meritocracy supplanted. Apportionment by group membership gives pride of place once again to heredity—albeit ethnic and racial—rather than achievement. The anti-meritocratic policies of recent years in fact restore to a prominent social role the hereditary principle that dominated traditional Europe, the overthrow of which was regarded in the West as a powerful and welcome sign of progress. They also violate one of the central precepts of Western public life, namely, that people should be judged and treated as individuals. In the name of what its advocates call social justice, therefore, racial and ethnic quotas reinstate a practice that Western societies, over the course of several centuries, had come virtually unanimously to consider unjust.

Finally, a policy of allocating positions and opportunities by group membership threatens to turn the societies and economies of the countries that adopt it into racial and ethnic spoils systems, with each constituent group striving to elbow aside all the others. This is a recipe for the kind of bitter conflict based on tribalism that plagues much of the world but which Western societies have managed for the most part to avoid since World War II.

A racial and ethnic spoils system…. Add to that an ideological spoils system, because if you are going to wreck the economy you do well to indoctrinate the populace, to convince them that while you are imposing destitution on the populace, you are pursuing a higher ideal.

The New Trend in Mental Health Gyms

It’s the latest thing in therapy. Thus, I feel duty-bound to report on it. In truth, I do not find it half bad. Surely, it is better to do “emotional push-ups” than to imagine that there is a pill for every form of mental distress. And certainly, exercise regimens and yoga meditation have been shown to be effective in dealing with many different emotional issues. 

It’s a few steps better than “listening to Prozac” and it is certainly better than pondering how you really, really feel.

But then, let’s remark the obvious, a point so obvious that Hillary Achauer does not even mention it in her Washington Post article. Every one of these programs and every participant in these activities is female. Dare I say that you are not going to have much business success if you try to market “emotional push-ups” to men. 

And I would point out another aspect of these classes and exercises, one that Achauer arrives at near the end of her piece: group exercise creates a sense of community, one that differs from group therapy where people are encouraged to make a public spectacle of their suffering. When the programs involve gym classes they create sense of camaraderie that spills over into after-hours conversation.

It’s one thing to do exercise to mitigate your feelings of solitude, but it is surely better to combat your feelings of solitude by socializing with others. True enough, it sounds like a sorority for adult females, but just as surely, it provides a level of interaction that therapy, even group therapy does not.

So, the article begins with the case of Olivia Bowser. Interestingly, Bowser had not been using individual therapy to manage her emotions. She had been using exercise. In truth, exercise is certainly good for your mental health, but surely you require more.

For a long time, Olivia Bowser relied on exercise to manage her mental health.

Throughout college, and after moving to Los Angeles for her first job managing digital and e-commerce for a consumer packaged goods start-up, Bowser, 27, wrestled with anxiety, stress and feelings of loneliness. She tried to find a sense of calm and happiness by going to Pilates, Barry’s Bootcamp and SoulCycle six days a week.

So, she became somewhat addicted to fitness classes. While exercise is certainly beneficial, the sense of belonging to a group is just as important:

Looking for answers, Bowser started attending yoga classes at night, using a meditation app and Googling journal prompts. As she began to find relief through these practices, she had an idea. What if she could take what she loved about her fitness classes and focus on strengthening the mind?

So, Bowser, a casualty of women’s liberation, decided to go into business for herself.  She founded an online program called Liberate:

Seeing a need for a studio that focused on mental fitness, Bowser launched Liberate online in May 2020, offering classes led by herself, a certified meditation and mindfulness teacher and yoga instructor, and a team of four other certified instructors. The sessions combine mindful movement — usually about 10 minutes of yoga — with journaling, conversation and meditation. The cost of Liberate is structured like a gym membership: For $19 a month, members have access to live classes, held on Zoom twice a week, as well as an extensive on-demand library of prerecorded classes.

But, you want to know, how does it work? Well, Melanie Prior has one answer:

Melanie Prior, 29, started attending Liberate classes in May 2020. She’d moved back in with her parents at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and was working long hours at a public relations company.

“I was struggling with anxiety and just getting a handle on my mental health, while the world was falling apart and all the things got worse over that year,” Prior said. She began attending the live classes once a week; she liked knowing the class started at a specific time and that somebody was waiting for her to join.

“I also liked it because it was a format to find a good level of connection with other people, but it wasn't like you were sitting in on someone's therapy session or you had to really open your heart up. Everybody can share as much as they want,” Prior said. And the members often benefit from one another’s insights.

The first important point is that the classes provide a level of human connection, something that is sorely lacking in today’s society. While men might find it by going to sports bars and football games, women need something similar for themselves.

Better yet, the nature of the connection has it that the women do not feel compelled to open up to everyone, to share their pain. It is more sociable than traditional therapy.

And then there is another program, called Coa, whatever that means, founded by a psychologist named Emily Anhalt and a marketing executive named Alexa Meyer:

In 2016, Anhalt began doing research, interviewing 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs to come up with the seven things emotionally healthy people are working on all the time, which she called the seven traits of emotional fitness: self-awareness, empathy, curiosity, mindfulness, playfulness, resilience and communication. She created a curriculum around these traits with the goal of giving people a way to strengthen their minds, just like they’d lift weights to strengthen their bodies.

They too went into business:

The two created in-person mental health popups around the United States and Canada, where people were matched with an experienced therapist for one-on-one sessions, and then took a class with Anhalt about emotional fitness.

They set up a space where people could hang out after the class and noticed that the attendees would linger for hours after their session was over. When asked why, the class members said it was because they knew everyone was there for the same reason, and it felt like a safe space to build community.

Note well the last paragraph. After classes everyone would hang out, as would happen in any sorority. It felt safe in the sense that there were no men around and safe in the sense that no one was obliged to share too much.

How did it work for Angie Patel? Achauer explains:

For Angelie Patel, 27, the initial appeal of Coa was the cost.

“I was kind of in disbelief with how inexpensive it was for the impact that was going to have. So, I figured it was worth a shot,” Patel said.

Patel had been through in-depth, one-on-one therapy eight years earlier to address post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from a sexual assault. 

She’d also tried group therapy but never enjoyed the experience.

“My original group therapy experience was like, ‘You’re broken we’re trying to fix you attitude,’ ” Patel said, “whereas with Coa, it was ‘You have all this potential for growth and we’re going to help you out there and give you the tools you need to get there.’ ”

After the eight-week course, Patel said she feels like she has a better set of tools to deal with new challenges and often refers to her notes when facing difficult moments. Patel said she also developed strong friendships in the course and has stayed in touch with her new friends on social media.

Now, Patel had already done individual therapy. But, now, through Coa she had made new friends and this is clearly the best solution to feeling alone and bereft and rejected. Good.

Fired for Having White Skin

Fired for the color of their skin. It was not about opening up job opportunities for people of color. The Art Institute of Chicago just fired its volunteer docents, because nearly all of them were wealthy white women. Misogyny, anyone.

At a time when we are looking for stories that will make it look like the country is emerging from its woke mania, the Chicago museum comes along to dash our hopes. 

In many ways, this form of racial bias is at the basis of the new wokeness. After all, one Ibram X. Kendi, a man with a big academic title and no intelligence, has recommended reverse racism as a cure for racism. So, the Art Institute went out and hired a consulting firm that could show it how best to institute policies that manifested bigotry.

Is this the proverbial canary in the coal mine? Are we entering an era where people are hired and fired solely on the grounds of race. And besides, while we do not expect the fired docent core in Chicago to protest their firing, how long will it take before people who have earned their positions resent being fired (or not promoted) for being the wrong skin color. If  you think this is going to end well, you have been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes.

It’s not exactly like putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum, but today’s America is putting morons in charge of cultural institutions.

Besides, docents are unpaid volunteers. Firing them does not open up job opportunities.

The Daily Mail reports:

The Art Institute of Chicago fired more than 150 volunteers and suspended its decades-old docent program after the famed museum hired a woke consulting firm that advised the cultural institution to ditch the 'wealthy white' guides and  prioritize 'equity and diversity.' 

Even worse, the mostly elderly docents, who are well-versed on the the exhibits at nearly 150-year-old museum on Lake Michigan, were terminated by email on Sept 3 because it wanted to 'rebuild our program from the ground up.' 

How did the morons who run the museum arrive at this point:

The museum - featured prominently in the 1986 hit film Ferris Beuller's Day Off - hired The Equity Project, a Colorado-based consulting firm, which found the program was outdated and would often skew towards wealthy white women and had too many barriers preventing people of color from entering the program.

'Sometimes equity requires taking bold steps and actions,' said Equity Project executive producer Monica Williams. 'You really have to dismantle and disrupt the systems that have been designed to hold some up and others out.'

Obviously, the fired docents are not going to picket the museum. And yet, contributors and donors should immediately stop supporting the museum. And the general public should boycott it.

The docents, mostly elderly white women, responded with a protest letter:

The docents responded with a letter of protest that pointed out that the position requires twice a week training for 18 months, five years of research and writing and ongoing further training.  

Conservative media has shown outrage. Chicago columnist John Kass called the plan proof that 'Idiocracy' has come to America, a reference to a Mike Judge film from 2006.   

'What the Art Institute did to its docent volunteers—not all wealthy and white—was shameful indeed. They love art. They study art,' he wrote. 

'And those of us who've been fortunate to visit the masterpieces there and listen to the docents don't think about docent demographics. Only racists think about skin. We think of their knowledge and passion and ability to communicate.’

Of course, you know and I know that the next step will be to judge artistic merit on the basis of the artist’s skin color. OK, strike that. In fact, it has been happening already, thus undermining America’s claim to be the world art capital.

Celebrating International Pronouns Day

A commenter on my last post suggested that I was becoming a tad pessimistic. The point was well taken, and worth making. Finding cause for optimism in today's America has become an increasingly daunting task. 

Our declining nation is infested by wokeism, to the point that nations around the world believe that our best days are behind us. When France, in the person both of its leading left-leaning politicians and its storied intelligentsia, thinks that we have lost our collective minds, well then, perhaps we have.

Foreign countries, especially our allies, have a vested interest in evaluating our current conditions, beginning with our state of mind. If they see us on a fast road to decline they are going to reconsider their alliances.

Anyway, the Blinken State Department, led by a man that John McCain thought was a threat to everything we hold dear,  has been trying to find something that would restore American greatness and allow the nation to command international respect.

Please note that Binken’s No. 2. Wendy Sherman has a distinguished record in negotiating nuclear weapons acquisition. She was part of the team that negotiated the deal that gave North Korea access to nuclear bombs and was part of the team that negotiated the deal that gave Iran eventual right to nuclear weapons. Tell me that you do not find that record something worth celebrating.

So, it has found something to celebrate: International Pronouns Day. These people have completely lost their minds. Don’t believe me? Witness the story, as told by the New York Post:

The US State Department was widely mocked on social media Wednesday after tweeting about “International Pronouns Day” and sharing a link to an article that detailed why many people on social media share their pronouns to help others avoid “accidentally assuming an incorrect gender based on a name or an appearance.”

“Today on International Pronouns Day, we share why many people list pronouns on their email and social media profiles. Read more here on @ShareAmerica,” the department’s official Twitter account posted, linking to a July blog post by Share America.

Because the one thing you were worrying about in your everyday life is the chance that you might misgender someone by using the wrong pronouns. After all, in our latest piece of gender-based confusion, when people who undergo biochemical and surgical mutilation, and who are poisoning their bodies with cross sex hormones, feel miserable, they convince themselves that the reason is-- someone called them by the wrong pronouns. Eeks.

Nations around the world are laughing at us. Thanks be to Antony Blinken. Of course, those who understood the foolishness of this exercise ridiculed the enterprise. 

Critics took to social media to mock the post, with many accusing the department of prioritizing “International Pronouns Day” over foreign policy.

“If I’m Xi Jinping, I take one look at that tweet and then invade Taiwan… At this rate we should probably just go ahead and learn how to write our pronouns in Mandarin. Oh yea, btw, what were the pronouns of all the Americans you abandoned to the Taliban?” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, referring to the chaotic US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan where US forces were unable to evacuate all Americans and Afghan allies from the country before the withdrawal deadline.

“This is what they were likely focused on while leaving Americans behind to fend for themselves against terrorists in Afghanistan. Screw They/Them,” he added in a separate tweet.

Rep. Ronny Jackson summed it up nicely in a tweet:

“China successfully tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, Afghanistan is now a terror super-state, Central American countries are sending a FLOOD of migrants to our border, and THIS is what the State Department prioritizes!? What is WRONG with these people???” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tx) tweeted.

Think about it this way-- what other language lends itself to this depravity? Do you really think that other nations around the world are going to go despotic and mess with language-- a losing game in all cases-- in order to pretend to be enlightened and woke.

Chicago Succumbs to Organized Retail Crime

In many of America’s large blue cities the 2020 insurrection has never really stopped. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd organized criminal gangs, inspired by Black Lives Matter protests, decided that lawlessnes should become a way of life. They set about systematically to loot and pillage retail establishments throughout their cities, thereby encouraging more and more retailers to close up shop. It is worth mentioning that cities lose money when looters do not pay sales tax.

It is not just the covid pandemic that is hollowing out urban storefronts in places like San Francisco and Chicago. Pro-criminal prosecutors have let the looters know that they will not intervene to stop shoplifting. 

The results are visible in Chicago. One understands that the mayor Lori Lightweight and the State Prosecutor Kim Foxx are basically responsible for destroying their cities. If you criticize them you will be called out as-- a racist.

The Daily Mail reports:

Chicago is the latest city to be hit by rampant shoplifting and its Magnificent Mile, the once highly-populated retail destination, is now dotted with empty storefronts as businesses are being driven away by the brazen thieves.

The city has been plagued by a string of robberies and a wave of crime in the past few months, as some say that the city's 'soft-on-crime' policies embolden the thieves. The issue may only grow worse as at least 50 cops have been put on unpaid leave for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Shoplifting cases grew more common following a December 2016 motion from State's Attorney Kim Foxx that mandated Chicago prosecutors only issue felony charges for theft of property over $1,000.

Her office said at the time that the move was meant to shift focus to the driving factors of the crimes instead of low-level offenses. In turn, however, thieves know they can grab armfuls of merchandise without being stopped by store security.

Apparently, no one cares. Public safety and the value of real estate-- thus tax revenue-- have been taking serious hits:

'It's a serious problem, and we have to address it,' Alderman Brian Hopkins told CBS Chicago, explaining that the issue affects commercial real estate as well as public safety.

'The commercial brokers tell us that when they get potential interest from a tenant, that's one of the first questions they ask, is what's happening in Chicago to stem the tide of retail shoplifting rings that have been operating with impunity downtown? And we don't have a good answer right now for that.'

Hopkins added, 'I think we have to look at prosecution. Clearly there's a feeling running through the criminal elements that there are no consequences here. We have to look to the courts, and I think we have to just look to all the players in this drama to get Chicago to what it once was.'  

Of course, it’s not just a feeling. There are no real consequences to looting. One understands that the new policies are singling out certain groups and giving them a right to pillage. It’s almost as though pillaging is a more modern form of reparations, owed to certain people. 

While the national Democratic Party is ginning up the outrage against the January 6 demonstrators, members of inner city minority communities have been allowed to rob, loot, steal and pillage, at will.

On Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, a number of major retailers have closed down.

Top chain stores that closed their doors on the Magnificent Mile: 

Macy's

Uniqlo

Disney Store

Gap

Forever 21

Tommy Bahama

Express

Apple

Dylan's Candy Bar

Na Hoku

Roots

Topshop

Columbia Sportswear

Stores throughout Chicago's Magnificent Mile are doing the same as Macy's closed its 170,000-square-foot flagship store in Water Tower Place last spring, Japanese retailer Uniqlo closed its 60,000-square-foot store in August and the Disney Store closed its 7,000-square-foot location on Michigan Avenue last month.

In the past few years, Gap, Forever 21 and Tommy Bahama have also closed stores on the Magnificent Mile. The vacancy rate has skyrocketed from 11 percent in 2019 to 19 percent this year, according to ABC 7.

The evidence is available on tape.

Late last month, a gang of shoplifters was filmed brazenly ransacking UIta Beauty store in the Windy City's Norridge suburb over the weekend. Footage showed a gang of three hooded thieves emptying its shelves of expensive Christian Dior and Armani makeup into black trash bags.

It was shared on social media Monday, with the shocked cameraman, who hasn't been named, saying: 'Look at this, this is insane,' as he films the theft unfolding before his eyes.

It came as CWB Chicago reported Chicago's stores have been targeted by three different organized crime gangs. One of those gangs has been targeting upmarket designer stores on the city's Magnificent Mile, whose businesses were hit by looting in summer 2020 during riots in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

The second has targeted at least three Ulta Beauty stores - although it's currently unclear if that is the same gang filmed at the Norridge location. And a third gang has been raiding Walgreen's drug stores to steal cigarettes.

The first shoplifting crew was stealing from high-end Chicago stores between the Magnificent Mile and Rush Street, according to CWB Chicago. Twelve men were seen involved in a raid of 35 handbags at Bottega Veneta on September 27 - which go for thousands of dollars each- and left in two separate cars, including a gray Honda CRV.

The same crew allegedly attempted to steal from Salvatore Ferragamo an hour before but left after they were believed to be recognized by the store's security guard. They already reportedly stole $43,000 worth of the store's merchandise in August and injured the security guard during the theft.

Chicago is not alone on this score. 

Chicago's pattern of crime and shoplifting mirrors that of other cities like San Francisco, in which Walgreens announced that it is shuttering another five of its stores because of rampant shoplifting by thieves who sell the items outside the drugstore chain's doors. 

The national chain has closed 17 of its 70 San Francisco locations in the past two years because of the shelf raiders, who have swiped everything not behind lock and key.

Thefts in the chain's 53 remaining stores are five times the average for their stores elsewhere in the country, according to company officials.

San Francisco and Walgreens officials have cited 'organized retail crime' - in which the thieves sell the swiped merchandise outside the stores - as a main reason for the most recent closures.

'Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,' Walgreens spokesperson Phil Caruso told the Daily Mail last Wednesday.

'Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average.'

Blue America has become lawless. The people in charge do not care. They must see the looting as a righteous response to a lack of diversity in America’s institutions. In the meantime, Mayor Lightweight is about to fire a large number of police officer for the serious crime of not taking the Covid vaccine.

Climate Change Hysteria

When it comes to science, some opinions are weightier than others. You do not establish scientific fact by polling citizens or even by polling scientists. You do not establish it by trotting out a motley band of celebrity high school dropouts and overwrought adolescents. 

Surely, we know that scientific research is based on skepticism. There is no such thing as settled science. The latter is merely a euphemism for dogmatic belief. The notion that people who disagree with the consensus view about climate change are “deniers” is decidedly unscientific.

Ginning up mass hysteria about an impending climate apocalypse has nothing to do with science. 

For that reason, we grant more authority to some scientists than to others. Among the most consequential climate scientists is one Richard Lindzen, retired professor of  atmospheric sciences at MIT. Lindzen is internationally recognized as one of the world’s leading climate scientists. For that reason his views are rarely reported. 

Now, the Tablet site offers up some of Lindzen’s thinking about the current debate. He believes that the current mania about global warming, along with our earnest efforts to shut down power grids and to jack up the prices of oil and gas are signs that our civilization is self-deconstructing. He even suggests that our competitors in the Middle Kingdom are happily cheering from the sidelines. 

Lindzen opens with the data about warming:

From a minimum in temperature around 1960 (basically the end of a modest cooling trend beginning around 1939, which led to concerns over global cooling) until 1998, the global mean temperature anomaly (the index used to describe the Earth’s temperature) did increase by about 0.5 degrees Celsius. That’s a small change compared to the typical change between breakfast and lunch, though the net increase since then has been relatively insignificant (except for a major El Niño in 2014-16) and appreciably less than predicted by all climate models. It should be noted that the increase was small compared to what was happening in any given region, and temperatures at any given location were almost as likely to be cooling as warming. Despite the fact that increases of CO₂ thus far have been accompanied by the greatest increase in human welfare in history, and despite the fact that there have been large increases in the Earth’s vegetated area largely due to increases in CO₂’s role in photosynthesis, governments seem to have concluded that another 0.5 C will spell doom.

It is worth noting that the increases in carbon dioxide have produce an increase in human welfare-- given that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but contributes to plant growth.

In China the government is building new coal-fired plants, to produce electricity. Are they, Lindzen asks, doing so in order to destroy the planet?

According to the Global Energy Monitor, China is planning the addition of 200 GW of coal-fired generating capacity by 2025. If we assume this is a four-year period and that a large-scale power plant is 1 GW, that would be about one plant per week over the next four years. Why would China intentionally pursue the presumed destruction of the Earth?Moreover, why are the Anglosphere and the EU pursuing hugely disruptive, destructive, and expensive policies intended to reduce their already largely irrelevant emissions?

What are the Chinese thinking? And, isn’t it strange that while they build more coal generating plants they also support climate alarmism in the West:

The answer to the first question is likely to be that China sees the threat of climate change as readily manageable regardless of what one believes about the underlying physics (remember that China’s leaders, as opposed to ours, tend to have technical backgrounds). But they also recognize that climate hysteria in the West leads to policies that clearly benefit China. Indeed, China is actually promoting activities like the Sino-American Youth Dialogue on climate change to promote climate alarm among young American activists.

Lindzen believes that the West is caught up in a religious fervor, that it is punishing itself for the benefits gained from the Industrial Revolution. The interesting part is that many of the Western policies that fight climate change require Chinese manufacturing:

Thus, it would seem that confronted with what is claimed is an existential threat over which we, in fact, have almost no influence, it seems obvious that the correct policy would be to increase resilience against disasters. Instead, the West is proposing to do the very opposite. It is hard to think of good or virtuous reasons for such a policy. Perhaps our policymakers have a pseudo-religious wish to expiate the sin of letting ordinary people reach comfortable middle-class standards of living. The encouragement of such policies by China is undoubtedly one of the reasons; certainly, many of the proposed Western responses (electric cars, windmills, and solar panels) will involve heavy investments in China, which dominates the global solar industry and is already the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles.

Of course, the science is anything but settled:

Debate over this issue has been avoided and even actively suppressed under the fatuous claim that the science is “settled.” Indeed by 1988 Newsweek had already claimed that all scientists were agreed on the subject, even though nothing could have been further from the truth. And the truth has been buried ever since. As former Energy Undersecretary for Science in the Obama administration Steven Koonin compellingly illustrates in Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, the issue remains far from actually being settled. The book relies entirely on the science from the official assessments of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and from similar official U.S. assessment reports. The vicious attacks on Koonin since the book’s release in May indicate the absence of almost any level of discourse. Yet, given what is at issue, the need for an open debate over both our assessment of climate science and the proposed policies is, indeed, desperately needed.

At a time when the nation is caught up in climate change fever, it is good to cast the cold eye of reason on the issues. No one is more qualified to do so than Richard Lindzen. 

The Happiness Gap

This could be the most unkindest cut of all, to coin a phrase. While you were worrying about thigh gaps, a happiness gap has opened up. Some researchers report that conservatives are on the whole happier than liberals. Others have disputed these conclusions and have declared that liberals are just as happy as conservatives.

Thomas Edsall reports fairly on both sides of the issue, as well he should. Unfortunately, the distinction between conservative and liberal does not quite do justice to today’s political spectrum. Some conservatives seem to be more radical than conservative; they want to rip things up, not to conserve them. And some liberals and progressives are clearly members of the radical left, the socialist and even the Marxist left.

Jaime Napier and John Jost suggest that conservatives are more content with things as they are while liberals are more dissatisfied with the current state of things. Those who accept inequality are happier than those who take offense at it, and who complain about it:

Using nationally representative samples from the United States and nine other countries, Napier and Jost note that they consistently found conservatives (or right-wingers) are happier than liberals (or left-wingers). This ideological gap in happiness is not accounted for by demographic differences or by differences in cognitive style. We did find, however, that the rationalization of inequality — a core component of conservative ideology — helps to explain why conservatives are, on average, happier than liberals.

Napier and Jost contend that their determinations are “consistent with system justification theory, which posits that viewing the status quo (with its attendant degree of inequality) as fair and legitimate serves a palliative function.”

Another group of researchers see things slightly differently.

A very different view of conservatives and the political right emerges in Schlenker, Chambers and Le’s paper:

Conservatives score higher than liberals on personality and attitude measures that are traditionally associated with positive adjustment and mental health, including personal agency, positive outlook, transcendent moral beliefs, and generalized belief in fairness. These constructs, in turn, can account for why conservatives are happier than liberals and have declined less in happiness in recent decades.

In contrast to Napier and Jost’s “view that conservatives are generally fearful, low in self-esteem, and rationalize away social inequality,” Schlenker, Chambers and Le argue:

Conservatives are more satisfied with their lives, in general and in specific domains (e.g., marriage, job, residence), report better mental health and fewer mental and emotional problems, and view social justice in ways that are consistent with binding moral foundations, such as by emphasizing personal agency and equity.

Liberals, Schlenker and his co-authors agree,

have become less happy over the last several decades, but this decline is associated with increasingly secular attitudes and actions (e.g., less religiosity, less likelihood of being married, and perhaps lessened belief in personal agency).

Conservatives tend to have a better grounding in work, in the value of their contributions to the society at large. Liberals and progressives and radical leftists tend to see themselves more as isolated individuals, raging against the machine or chronically discontented with the way things are.

Conservatives generally score higher on internal control as well as the Protestant Work Ethic, which emphasizes the inherent meaningfulness and value of work and the strong linkage between one’s efforts and outcomes, and is positively associated with achievement. Liberals, on the other hand, are more likely to see outcomes as due to factors beyond one’s personal control, including luck and properties of the social system.

These differences have consequences:

Perceptions of internal control, self-efficacy, and the engagement in meaningful work are strongly related to life satisfaction. These differences in personal agency could, in and of themselves, explain much of the happiness gap.

So too, in their view, does the liberal inclination to view morality in relative, as opposed to absolutist, terms, have consequences:

A relativist moral code more readily permits people to excuse or justify failures to do the ‘‘right’’ thing. When moral codes lack clarity and promote flexibility, people may come to feel a sense of normlessness — a lack of purpose in life — and alienation. 

Further, if people believe there are acceptable excuses and justifications for morally questionable acts, they are more likely to engage in those acts, which in turn can create problems and unhappiness.

In more banal terms, conservatives are more likely to play by the rules and to accept the outcomes. Liberals or leftists are more likely to protest outcomes that do not conform to their ideology. It is worth mentioning that such an attitude, as prevalent as it is on the left, does not merit the name of liberal.

Edsall continues:

Liberals define fairness more in terms of equality (equal outcomes regardless of contributions) and turn to government as the vehicle for enforcing social justice and helping those in need. Conservatives define fairness more in terms of equity (outcomes should be proportional to contributions), rely on free markets to distribute outcomes, and prefer individuals and private organizations, not government, to contribute to the care and protection of those in need.

Liberals see their work as having a more charitable purpose, while conservatives tend to accept the verdict of the marketplace. Moreover, conservatives tend to value community ties over individual self-actualization, and thus are less likely to suffer from anomie:

Newman argued that since “family ties and a strong sense of community and connectedness are key ingredients for a meaningful life,” it is possible that “if liberal agendas and ideologies inhibit social bonds and connections, it could lower people’s sense of meaning and purpose.”

Needless to say, these results have been questioned. One group of researchers suggests that it’s all about the style of self-reporting. This means that conservatives tend to say they are happier, even when they are not.

Based on that research, Wojcik, Ditto and four colleagues argue in “Conservatives Report, but Liberals Display, Greater Happiness” that “research suggesting that political conservatives are happier than political liberals is fully mediated by conservatives’ self-enhancing style of self-report.”

Using what they call “behavioral measures,” the authors found that relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs. Our results were consistent across large samples of online survey takers, U.S. politicians, Twitter users, and Linked-In users.

It’s all about the smiley face. What is positive emotional language? Perhaps it means that liberals have been taught to use positive emotional language, regardless of their happiness quotient.

Edsall closes with a Princeton professor who claims that liberalism makes people happier. It's always good to have a contrary opinion:

In “Why Liberalism Works,” Paul Starr, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton, puts the case for contemporary liberalism this way (and I am going to give him the last word):

Historically, liberalism has been defined by a shared, albeit evolving, body of political principles rather than by agreement on the ultimate grounds on which those principles rest. One of those shared political principles is an equal right to freedom, where freedom has been successively understood during the past three centuries in a more expansive way: first, as a right to civil liberty and freedom from arbitrary power; then, as a right to political liberty and a share in the government; and finally, as a right to basic requirements of human development and security necessary to assure equal opportunity and personal dignity.

Shared principles suggests groupthink and ideological conformity. One wonders why and how this makes anyone more happy.

Of course, we are happy to see both sides of the issue. But, the researchers might also have asked whether liberals or conservatives take more psychoactive medication. Are American college students, who tend to lean left, more or less likely to take medication for anxiety or depression? Do the inhabitants of America’s blue cities tend to take more of such medications? And then, there is the matter of self-medication. Do red state or blue state inhabitants tend to take more opioids and narcotics?