Pun Salad

For longtime Connelly readers: this is cover-billed as a "Ballard and Bosch" novel. More accurately, it's a "Ballard, Bosch, and also another Bosch" novel. It's mostly Renée Ballard. Harry Bosch does make some critical appearances. But I think his daughter Maddie actually shows up on more pages.

There are multiple plot threads. First, Ballard returns from her morning surfing to find that her car's been burgled, with the perpetrator stealing her wallet, cop badge, and gun. This is terrible news, because she has enemies in the department just waiting for her to make a mistake like this, using it to stymie her career. So she has to solve this on her own… or maybe call in some assistance from an ex-cop who had similar battles in the past! And it's not long before her off-the-books investigation leads to much more serious criminality.

Second thread: Renée heads up the LAPD's "Open-Unsolved Unit", tasked with using new investigative techniques on crimes that stumped previous investigators. And they have discovered a DNA link to the "Pillowcase Rapist", who had a reign of terror over LA a couple decades back. That link turns … complicated, uncovering a lot of scandalous and unsavory behavior in Pasadena.

And one plot thread doesn't start up until page 147 or so, and I won't spoil it. But it's a biggie.

One cute thing when Renée is searching through a storage locker, and finds a book collection containing "several authors she recognized, including some she had even read: Child, Coben, Carson, Burke, Crumley, Grafton, Koryta, Goldberg, Wambaugh,…"

Notice anyone conspicuous by their absence? Yes, I guess in the parallel universe where Ballard and the Bosches exist, Michael Connelly cannot.

(For Tom Petty fans: yes, it's the hardest part. Says so on page 142.)

I approached this book with some trepidation. I haven't had a lot of luck with nonfiction authors whose first names begin with Y. Good news: this one, by Yascha Mounk, is pretty good; his prose is clear and interesting, and he makes a lot of sense.

His title is taken from an interview he did with a German TV news show, referring to the unprecedented influx of immigrants of different religions, races, and ethnicities into democratic countries worldwide. He noted the accompanying stresses on previously monocultural countries, many of which were becoming more authoritarian in response. And he dubbed the overall process "a historically unique experiment."

Well, that did it. Opponents of immigration seized (yes, seized) on that word "experiment". And they pounced. Boy did they ever pounce. Because when you've got an experiment, that implies experimenters. Who are the white-coated pulling the strings clandestinely? It's a conspiracy, I tells ya! Using our countries as guinea pigs!

Mounk denies a conscious conspiracy. The mass migration is the result of unforeseen forces, and took everyone, even those in charge, by surprise. Fine. But now what? Are we (here in the US) doomed to follow many European countries into authoritarianism? (Usually this is dubbed "right-wing" authoritarianism, but that seems inaccurate.) Or can we look forward to increased animosity and possible violence between the incoming minorities and the intolerant majority?

Yeah, "probably" on the authoritarianism, "maybe" on the violence. But Mounk makes the argument that bad things need not happen. His arguments are straightforward; examples (good and bad) are drawn from worldwide history.

I'll just mention one bit: one chapter is titled "Demography isn't Destiny", and it's dedicated to debunking the notion that US population trends will inevitably relegate white people into permanent minority status, and that will, in turn, put the Democratic Party in the unassailable driver's seat, forever. Mounk calls this "the most dangerous idea in American politics"; it's a recipe for that resentment and possible violence mentioned above.

This book was written in 2022. Given the 2024 election results, his argument here seems prescient, especially given the inroads the GOP made into the people-of-color vote.

Now Mounk is a Democrat, and I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that his "what is to be done" concluding chapter doesn't reflect that. Although (good news) he rejects the dreadfulness of race-conscious government programs, that just means they should be aimed at everyone. And paid for by taxes on (who else but) the rich. We need to improve the education of minorities? Why, just send their government schools more money!

This seems to be aimed at reassuring his fellow party cohort: hey, I'm still one of you! I wish he'd look at tearing down some of the government-created barriers to social mobility: mostly regulations that protect incumbent positions at the expense of strivers: land-use restrictions, occupational licensure, environmental rules, business regulation, etc. And (of course) a hefty dose of school choice policies, giving low-income families the freedom to escape dysfunctional government schools. (A freedom better-off families have always had.)

But in other bad news, Jacob Sullum reports: Trump's Pick To Run the FCC Wants To Restrict the Editorial Discretion of Social Media Platforms.

To his credit, Carr is a foe of Network Neutrality, which is pissing off some of the right people. (Example, Karl Bode at Techdirt: Trump Tags Brendan Carr To Dismantle What’s Left Of Broadband Consumer Protection At FCC)

But apparently, as Sullum details, that's not due to Carr (or Trump) having a principled bias against big-government regulation. That goes out the window when you can use "regulation" as a weapon against your political enemies.

The right answer is provided by Thomas W. Hazlett in Reason's "Abolish Everything" issue: Abolish the FCC.

The FCC was a bad idea back then, created amidst the increasing popularity of progressive/socialist/fascist reactions against free-market liberalism. Time for it to go, not look for new ways to boss private companies around.

Also of note:

• Newsflash: Old dog still performing old tricks. James Freeman notes that Biden Still Hasn’t Learned.

  How much damage can a president do in two months? America may be about to find out as the man considered mentally unfit to be prosecuted or run for re-election embarks on a mad dash to advance a failed agenda.

  Fatima Hussein, Matthew Daly and Collin Binkley reported on Friday for the Associated Press:

  Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at least some of the outgoing president’s legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

  Also in the works: another unconstitutional end run around Congress on student loan "forgiveness".

• We have met the enemy and he is us. Kevin D. Williamson fingers Public Enemy No. 1. And that would be the Federal Debt. Excerpt:

  At the end of Trump’s first year in office, federal debt was 102 percent of GDP; by the time Joe Biden was elected, debt was 122 percent of GDP. Pandemic-related spending accounted for much of that spike, sure, but the debt was on its way up in the years leading up to COVID-19, too. The Biden administration has been no great shakes on spending, but it is worth pointing out that debt as a share of GDP is slightly lower today than it was at its peak during the first Trump administration. Of course, presidents are not uniquely responsible for debt and deficits—Congress has a say, too. But what congressional Republicans mainly have said to Trump is: “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

  How many days in a row have I been saying this? We'll see how that turns out.

• Ssh. Don't tell them. If the MSM were smart, they would listen to Megan McArdle: Liberal media bias is hurting Democrats. Really.

  I used to spend a lot of time complaining that liberal media bias hurt Republican politicians and conservative causes. I no longer make that argument.

  Oh, I still agree with conservatives that the mainstream media is biased toward the left. It could hardly be otherwise, given the political leanings of journalists: A 2022 survey showed that fewer than 4 percent identified as Republicans. In the worst cases, this leads to reporting that treats “Republicans like a crime beat and Democrats like friends in need.” More commonly, it subtly affects what stories journalists choose to cover, what angle they take, whose experts they give more credence and whose feelings they are careful not to hurt.

  This effect has grown pronounced over the past decade, in part thanks to pressure from progressive staffers at media organizations. But along the way, something ironic happened: I started to believe that media bias had stopped helping Democrats. Instead, it started to hurt them, along with the institutions themselves.

  During this election cycle, I watched in astonishment as left-wing critics complained that the mainstream media was botching this election by “sanewashing” Trump, failing in our duty to cover “not the odds, but the stakes” and trading in false equivalence. I was not astonished that progressives wanted us to spend more time criticizing Trump and less time pointing out the flaws of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. I was amazed because they were talking as if this might affect the election’s outcome.

  I assume Megan's under no illusions that her criticisms will affect the trajectory of MSM distrust in the general population.