Pun Salad

• Good question. Philip Klein wonders: Can People Just Stop Talking about ‘the Jews’?.

  This is the season in which most of the major Jewish holidays are clustered together (today and tomorrow are also a holiday, Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, during which we celebrate the Torah upon the conclusion of the annual cycle of reading it). This year, the holidays have coincided with some colorful discourse on Jews — about what we control, whom we are ungrateful toward, how we spread sexual depravity to Christians, and how annoying it is that you just can’t talk about Jews anymore without somebody raising a fuss.

  To elaborate a bit further, the most recent round of Jewish discourse in popular culture seems to have begun when Kanye West, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, surmised that Jared Kushner made a peace deal between Israel and Arab states for financial benefits, saying, “I just think that’s what they’re about is making money.” West said a lot in that interview, so it was easy enough to chalk it up to some beef he had with the Kushner family, and perhaps it would have been forgotten amid all the other nutty stuff West says. But just to leave no doubt that he did in fact have a problem not only with Kushner but with the Jews, he later tweeted that he was going to go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” In the tweet, he pushed the Black Hebrew Israelite narrative that claims that they are the true Jews, and then complained, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

  Good advice: if you have something really insightful to say about the Jews, write it on a piece of paper, wrap that paper around a brick, and throw it in the nearest river.

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• What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. That's Ecclesiastes 1:9, and Peter Suderman shows how it applies today: Biden's New Industrial Policy Will Fail, Just Like Industrial Policy Always Fails.

  There can be no mistaking the intention of the Merchant Marine Act, the 1920 law more commonly referred to as the Jones Act. Passed in the aftermath of World War I, when demand for shipping services had increased dramatically, its purpose was laid out in the text of the statute itself, which declared the law "necessary for the national defense and for the proper growth of its foreign and domestic commerce." The intention was to make sure that in times of war or another national emergency, America had a high-quality merchant marine fleet "ultimately to be owned and operated privately by citizens of the United States." 

  When it was passed, the law provided subsidies for the construction of a domestic shipping industry, while imposing various employment rules and other shipping regulations. It has been amended in the century since, but it continues to prohibit foreign-flagged ships from traveling between U.S. ports, and many of its wage and labor regulations are still in effect, making it beloved, almost obsessively, by unions. 

  Fun fact: Pun Salad's first post on the Jones Act was over five years ago, and somehow this abomination still exists. I'm beginning to think this blog doesn't have the clout I imagined.

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• What's that you say? Ars Technica chalks up a free market win: Cheaper hearing aids hit stores today, available over the counter for first time.

  Today, Americans can buy cheaper hearing aids for mild-to-moderate hearing loss from a range of common retailers, including Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart, without a prescription—finally making the critical health devices more affordable and accessible to the estimated 28.8 million adults who could benefit from them.

  The US Food and Drug Administration estimates the change could lower the average cost of obtaining a hearing aid by as much as $3,000. As of today, Walgreens is selling an over-the-counter model similar to hearing aids that range from $2,000 to $8,000 per pair at specialty retailers for just $799 per pair on its shelves, the White House said Monday. Likewise, Walmart said that, as of today, it is selling over-the-counter hearing aids ranging from $199 to $999 per pair, which are comparable to prescription hearing aids priced at $4,400 to $5,500 per pair.

  This should go in our "government 'solves' a problem that it created in the first place' file.

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• Sour on the state of the world? Bjørn Lomborg should cheer you up: Good News, the World Is Getting Better.

  It’s easy to believe that life on Earth is getting ever worse. The media constantly highlight one catastrophe after another and make terrifying predictions. With a torrent of doom and gloom about climate change and the environment, it’s understandable why many people — especially the young — genuinely believe the world is about to end. The fact is that while problems remain, the world is, in fact, getting better. We just rarely hear it.

  We are incessantly told about disasters, whether the latest heat wave, flood, wildfire or storm. Yet, the data overwhelmingly show that over the last century, people have become much safer from all these weather events.

  Indeed, in the 1920s, half a million people were killed by weather disasters, whereas in the last decade, the death toll averaged 18,000. This year, just like 2020 and 2021, is tracking below that. Why? Because when people get richer, they get more resilient.

  Something to keep in mind when someone decrying economic growth starts yammering in your ear. (Man, I hate it when that happens.)

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• I'm good with weak. Arnold Kling makes The Weak Case for Democracy.

  Government’s primary job is to try to ensure that all disputes are resolved peacefully. Disputes about property rights, for example, should be resolved without the use of force or threats to use force. I think that democracy is the form of government most likely to do this job.

  The worst states are those like China or Iran, where issues that would be resolved peacefully elsewhere are settled by violent repression on the part of the government. In states that are less repressive but are autocratic, civil war is an ever-present threat, particularly when a leader dies.

  In theory, any form of government can resolve disputes among citizens peacefully. But before the United States was founded, the death of a leader always created the potential for a violent dispute over succession. The best thing that I can say about democracy is that it provides for peaceful succession of leaders. That is what I am calling the weak case for democracy.

  But click through to read his debunking of the "strong case" for democracy: " that it gives expression to the popular will." Boooo.

This was Robert Heinlein's first juvenile novel, published in 1947. In its alternate post-WW2 timeline, the United Nations (and, in theory, only the United Nations) holds nuclear weapons "for peacekeeping purposes". Rocket travel is commonplace, but apparently only suborbital. As the book opens, three young boys (Art, Morrie, and Ross) are testing their own rocket in a remote field. It blows up, but never mind that: on their way home, they discover a bloodied unconscious man and it turns out it's Art's uncle, famous Manhattan Project physicist Dr. Donald Cargraves!

He recovers quickly, only to enlist the lads in an audacious scheme: to use his mad nuclear skillz in a rocket that will take them to the Moon! After some parental haggling, it's on: off to the desert to build, test, and launch Cargraves' unique design. They are working "on a shoestring" budget, buying an older freight rocket at scrap prices, using Cargraves' connections to get fissionable material, and after a few months of welding, they're off. There have been some intrusions and sabotage along the way, but they make it.

Only to run into (spoiler ahead) Moon Nazis. Apparently they figured out the same thing Cargraves did, only slightly quicker. (I guess Wernher von Braun stuck with the Nazis in this alternate future.) And their nefarious plans involve raining down nuclear destruction on Earth. As soon as they get rid of these pesky intruding Americans.

Well, it's all pretty ludicrous. The Nazi stuff is cartoonish. But in a fun way. Cargraves is the classic Heinlein Sage, many pages devoted to his semi-cantankerous dispensing of knowledge, philosophy, and opinion to the kids.

Back in 2014, George F. Will observed that when colleges "make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate." A lot of people got mad about that observation, including the guy in charge at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who yanked his column from their pages forevermore.

But this book, by Wilfred Reilly, illustrates Will's point from another angle: when you're the victim of a "hate crime", you get sympathy, publicity, and (who knows) you might even get cash via the GoFundMe route.

And sometimes that's deserved. Reilly goes out of his way to point out that a lot of "hate crimes" aren't hoaxes. But—geez—a significant fraction of them are.

And some have unknown status, but smell bad. I remember the Stoke Hall Stairwell Swastikas which caused a furor back in 2017 at the University Near Here. This was widely publicized as a racially-tinged incident. Wouldn't "antisemitic" have been a more plausible speculation? But never mind that: if you check the first link above, you'll notice the swastikas were all drawn backwards. You'd think Nazi students bent on defacing a stairwell wall would have a better grasp of their symbols.

Reilly fills the book with anecdote after anecdote of fake hate crimes. University stories make up a lot, as George Will might have predicted. And generally follow a pattern: the initial claims are taken uncritically as true by administration, faculty, and students; in response, programs are instituted, meetings are held, speeches are given; news media play it up as another example of America's fundamental bigotry; further investigation (usually by the cops) raises doubts; eventually the truth comes out; nobody learns anything.

Not that all hoaxes are promulgated with a leftist slant. (The book's subtitle is misleading about that.) Reilly devotes a chapter to detailing whites making false claims about blacks, alt-righters making false claims against lefties, and the like. When you're of a certain mindset, never mind your race, sex, or religion, the appeal of fake victimhood can be seductive.

Reilly is an academic, at Kentucky State U. But this is not an academic book; Reilly writes more like an acerbic in-your-face blogger. (I sympathize.) And he can be genuinely funny, when not being outraged. When telling the story of the teenage Israeli hacker who made thousands of fake threats against Jewish institutions: "This kid seems to have been one lab accident away from becoming a super-villain."

This book was published back in February 2019. Jussie Smollett's "hate crime" was in January of that year, meaning it was too late to be included. But it's fascinating to see how closely the story of Jussie's hoax followed the arcs of previous hoaxes. (Too bad that he didn't read this book first, he might have avoided some obvious blunders.)