Some Current Things
comments on various recent news items
Mamdani’s win in NY
First of all, I think it is another Martin Gurri Moment. The elites get hit once again by the Revolt of the Public. And where Mamdani ran circles around Cuomo was on alternative media.
Speaking of which, I hope you all read Dan Williams on the decline of legacy media. He reprints a lot of fascinating charts from a Reuters Institute of Journalism study of digital media.
Second, I think it will normalize extreme leftism within the Democratic Party. In 2028, how will the party be able to resist nominating a far leftist, perhaps even Mamdani himself?
Third, I think it will normalize extreme hostility to Israel within the Democratic Party. If an Israel-hater can win in New York, why should any Democratic politician anywhere hold back from hating Israel? I’ve been saying for months that what starts out as oddball demonstrations starts to gain a foothold at the next convention and then at the following convention becomes party dogma. In 2028, Israel-hatred is due to reach the party dogma stage.
Tech and Education
Jonathan Haidt gave a platform to Emily Brownlee, M.Ed to deliver a rant against technology in schools. Contrarian that I am, my reaction to her screed was to think the solution is not to ban tech, but to ban schools.
Speaking of which, Scott Alexander gave a platform to an anonymous reviewer of the Alpha School project. It is a long read, and so far I have only skimmed it, but the review is one of the most informative pieces of journalism you will ever read. One point it makes is that the project does not even make use of the latest AI, but it reduces the time that kids have to spend in traditional K-12 schools by more than 50 percent.
StableCoins
I keep expecting to see an op-ed from Ken Rogoff on the issue, but so far I haven’t. Moses Sternstein writes,
Stablecoins bought the third-most T-Bills in 2024, behind only JPM’s money market fund, and China.
For the government, they provide a way to reduce interest costs on debt. Between that and the fact that crime is a primary use case for them suggests that the way to think about Stablecoins is as serving the same function as $100 bills.
Mamdani is Turchin more than Gurri
an activist son of an activist studies professor and of a film writer/director BOTH of them children of british civil servants
that is not a revolt of the public that is a managerial class nepo baby
I am NOT dissing the guy - this is very similar background to Obamas'
I should really write something new about the issue (there is an endless number of examples to choose from): the DNC and Democratic Party politics have zoomed off into the aether. The activists and believers in the party seem to be almost completely divorced from reality at this point.
This might be the natural condition of a society in which wealth and privilege has created a class of people without any concrete experience of poverty or crime or war or struggle. The ironic thing si that their rhetoric is SO adamantly against privilege, yet privilege defines the shapes of their lives, and suffuses every detail. They can't even see it.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-dnc-implodes