Left Jabs

   Depending on where you live, gas prices are way up. No surprise. Thanks to Trump’s tariffs, his wars, and his general malevolent incompetence, we now pay between $4.00 and $4.25 per gallon in Michigan, and that fluctuates according to whatever pump-and-dump scam Trump has going on in world markets. There are states that pay more, and states that pay a lot more. Four-dollar gasoline is a real hardship for millions of Americans, many of whom are now, as a result, cutting back on food and medicine, which aren’t getting cheaper either. This is the logical consequence of a war that started stupid and got stupider as time went on. Now in its fifth month. So imagine if gas were twice that and threatening to go much higher. That’s what many Russians are paying on the black market — one of the few dependable sources — right now. And when it comes to hardship, Russian hardship is exponentially harder than ours. This is the logical consequence of a war that started ...

   Once again, Democrats are dealing with the S-word. Socialism.  Not the economic theory. Not the Marxian doctrine. Not state ownership of the means of production. Nothing nearly so intellectual. No, they’re dealing with the word itself, and this time it’s not Republicans using it as a bludgeon to beat Democrats into submission, though that will certainly continue, probably forever. Rather, it’s Democratic candidates embracing one of the most politically charged words in the English language. This is not a risk-free proposition, and I hope they know what they’re doing. In the last few years, New York City has emerged as ground zero for a new brand of progressivism that labels itself socialist, but really isn’t. It’s more related to the social democrats of Europe, which is to say it’s about capitalism with regulatory guardrails and, presumably, a social conscience. Starting with the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, and her sweeping asi...

   I admit, I’m obsessed. It’s summer, I thought about taking the week off, then decided to write about what’s really interesting me these days. That would be the World Cup. The decline and fall of Western civilization can wait a week or two. I have no wish to talk down to my readers, some of whom are quite soccer-savvy, but most are casual viewers at best. It’s those ambivalent Americans that I’d like a word with. I’ve been watching World Cups every four years since the nineties, which for an American in my age group has been, shall we say, lonely. But this time it’s happening in this country, and the country seems to be responding. We’re looking at a genuine multicultural phenomenon, Trump-free so far. But I’m more interested in the games themselves, and World Cups past have tended to be more about the theatre than the soccer. Not so this time. The matches so far have been as good as the theatre, and there’s no shortage of theatre, right on the field. ...

   You'd think there might be a certain tension between Fox News and Fox Sports. Yes, they inhabit the same headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Near Times Square, the facade boasts a garish outdoor digital display, a giant chyron wannabe, permanently circling the building, shouting the latest headlines. It can be read for blocks. But the same building is not the same universe. At Fox News — still a misnomer — the universe is one of perpetual danger. Their evening lineup of propagandists provides their reprogrammable viewers with an endless succession of warnings about the perils of white replacement, open borders, and the erosion of European Christian values. At Fox Sports, on the other hand, the universe is a showcase of diversity, a place where multiracial, multicultural, immigrant-flavored competition is a simple fact of life, worth no more notice than air. The disconnects abound. Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters are avatars for the Great Replacement...

   If you’re watching any of the World Cup, but don’t generally follow soccer, you might sense a certain cultural disconnect between the names on the backs of the jerseys and the countries they play for. Bukayo Saka and Eberechi Eze, for example, are big stars playing, not for the Nigeria of their parents, but for the England of their birth. Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams are young but already iconic figures, and — their names notwithstanding — they play for Spain. Alexander Pavlovic and Nathaniel Brown are not typical German names. You wouldn’t assume Ousmane Dembele and Rayan Cherki are French, or that Manuel Akanji and Granit Xhaka are Swiss. Anthony Elanga and Dejan Kulusewski play for Sweden. You get the idea. This is diversity with a higher profile than usual. But it’s also diversity with an element of subversion. For the next month, an untold number of Americans will be tuned to an open celebration of some of the very people their government is te...

   There’s a slow-motion panic brewing around the declining birth rates of wealthy nations. The replacement rate of a population — commonly understood to be a minimum of 2.1 children per woman — is indeed plummeting across the industrialized world. It’s being felt most acutely in Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and China, where the replacement rate hovers around 1.0, and where the respective governments are actively alarmed. All sorts of incentives are being tried to get couples to have more babies — generous childcare, parental leave, cash bonuses — but with little success. There is some urgency. As a society gets older, its resources grow increasingly strained. The young have always subsidized the old, but when there are too many old and not enough young, the healthcare and pension systems get overused and underfunded. When there aren’t enough people to supply a workforce, industry moves elsewhere. Schools get shuttered, towns get hollowed out,...