From the Mercatus Center:

Looking-Glass Politics

Jul 14, 2020
With the collapse of the private sphere, potent private emotions collide with public affairs
Martin Gurri, Visiting Research Fellow

An unconquerable anger has gripped the democratic world. The public seethes with feelings of grievance and seems ready to wreak havoc at any provocation. The spasm of fury that swept the United States after the death of George Floyd cost 19 additional lives and $400 million in property damage. …

Many books and articles have tried to explain this surge in anger. … The Harvard Gazette’s recent “Why America Can’t Escape Its Racist Roots” can stand in for an Amazonian stream of similar articles.

Anger is a huge story and thus a fat analytical target. Most of these explanations have some merit to them. However, all take it for granted that the anger is justified—the analyst’s job is simply to discover a cause commensurate with its enormity.

… Arnold Kling, to my knowledge, stands virtually alone in suggesting that the tide of political anger need not have matching political causes. He has wondered, instead, whether extreme private emotions have been diverted by the web into the public sphere. Kling brings up an interesting number: 150. Roughly speaking, that is how many persons you can remember before names, faces, and situations begin to get fuzzy. It’s often called the “Dunbar number,” after British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who first identified this cognitive boundary in a 1992 paper, and it probably represents the hard-wiring in our minds of some maximum hunter-gatherer band size.

Has this Dunbar number theory ever been tested? It’s quite popular, but I mostly see it used in an “As everybody knows” sense.

Each of us carries along, in our everyday activities, a band of 150 people whom we can identify with fair accuracy. This humble Dunbar world provides the stage for the drama of most human lives and is the source of the most authentic human emotions. From ancestral times, the pursuit of happiness has played out almost entirely within this domain.

Kling has noted a strange development: the shock of the digital has brought the Dunbar world to the verge of collapse. Historically, he writes, the “sub-Dunbar” public concerned itself mostly with “family, friends, and co-workers.” Elites in the “super-Dunbar” world ran the “government and large organizations.” He goes on:

But new media have caused the two spheres to collide. The public feels itself on the same playing field as the elites. Anyone can comment on Twitter. So people who never used to think much about the super-Dunbar world are now trying to take part in it.

Ultimately, Kling concludes, “you feel a lot more sense of ownership of what’s going on in public life, and you care about it a lot more.” Strong personal feelings have been torn loose from the private sphere and become attached to the distant world of events.

Or, perhaps, the opposite has happened as well: elites in the “super-Dunbar” got exposed to criticism when they went on Twitter, and thus went crazy. For example, the insanity in the mainstream media of the last 4 years about the threat supposedly posed by the Alt-Right (compared to the complete lack of attention to the much larger Antifa) may be largely due to journalists being laughed at on Twitter.

A lot of people can’t deal well with criticism. They feel like they are about to be attacked by a mob and murdered when they get a few dozen tweets making fun of them. I think that’s a better application of this Dunbar Number: If people get 76 negative responses on social media, they worry, “Oh, no, the majority of my tribe of 150 has spoken out against me! I will be made an outcast and forced to wander alone in the wilderness.”

The Floyd protests fit into this pattern. The terrible events in Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis, were local and fleeting but took place before a battery of cell phone cameras—and at once became global and searchable. The public experienced a digital murder. Because it was visual, it felt personal. Because it felt personal, the most violent emotions were aroused. Floyd seemed like a member of one’s private circle: an idealized friend. Because his death was searchable, it turned into a recurring nightmare, a wound that could not heal.

Social media rage, which feeds on itself, soon forgot the actual events and demanded cosmic and abstract judgments. This was not about George Floyd after all. This was about a monstrous injustice called “systemic racism.”

OK, but once again, is there any evidence that elites of the “Super-Dunbar” dealt more rationally with the George Floyd whoop-tee-doo? How many of them came out and said:

“Look, there are 20,000,000 black guys in America. That’s a huge number. There is always one of that 20,000,000 doing something knuckleheaded and winding up dead. You can’t let yourself go insane over some drugged-up bouncer in Minnesota. We may feel emotionally like we live in a tribe of 150, but we don’t. It’s actually a huge country, so restrain your out-of-control emotions and think sensibly. It’s just the power of The Megaphone to make you believe that George Floyd or Emmett Till is representative. Don’t fall for the statistically nonsensical Narrative.”

I sure haven’t heard many elites from the “super-Dunbar” pointing that out.

Egg and sperm banks like to open offices near famous colleges in order to conveniently harvest the gametes of students most in-demand by their customers. This may sound like the Pseudoscience of eugenics, but, well, you aren’t supposed to think about that.

From the Harvard Crimson, a long, informative article that details how much Harvard students can make as egg and sperm donors.

Inheriting the Ivy League: The Market for Educated Egg and Sperm Donors

BY SONIA F. EPSTEIN AND POLINA N. WHITEHOUSE, CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
APRIL 30, 2020

… The premium some intending parents place on elite education has great import in the U.S. fertility industry, which to a great extent is governed solely by the demands of the free market — a stark contrast to the situations in other countries, like Canada, where it is illegal to compensate egg and sperm donors beyond reimbursing any expenses they incur. On their websites, American sperm and egg banks tout as badges of honor the names of their donors’ prestigious colleges and universities — including, in nearly all instances, Harvard’s.

Intending parents, meanwhile, are willing to pay. While it’s illegal to sell human tissue in the U.S., compensation for gamete donation is legally taxable income. Five-digit compensation sums for egg donors with specific traits, like extensive or brand-name educational backgrounds, are fairly established practice, with some compensation values edging up and above $100,000. Sperm donors, who often donate continuously over several months, are usually compensated by-donation and can earn $1,000 or more per month.

With Black being capitalized but not white, isn’t it time to extend reverential capitalization to 2020’s most important part of speech, the pronoun. Just as a collection of 19th Century sermons might read:

And the Lord smote His foes.

Shouldn’t 21st Century sermons in the newspapers capitalize the pronouns of the better races? For example:

Michelle Obama blamed Her low-grade depression on trump and his racism.

iSteve commenter James Speaks suggests that Stalin’s “kto kgo” could use some updated capitalization:

who Whom – an example of racism

versus

Who whom – for when, say, BLM burns down a white business.

Alan D adds:

To show proper disrespect to himself, a white man should use a lower-case “i” instead of “I”.

Just look at the trend in St. Louis pic.twitter.com/85YbKIehRR

— Forest Dweller (@yukatapangolin) August 8, 2020

Homicide statistics in St. Louis, next door to Ferguson, MO, were perhaps the first fairly big city to reflect the Ferguson Effect of rising homicide numbers in the First BLM Era. If you stare closely at this graph of homicides in the city of St. Louis, you can that homicides were notably more frequent from late 2014 through spring of 2020 than in the half decade before BLM debuted at Ferguson (August 2014).

But in St. Louis, the Ferguson Effect is dwarfed by the Floyd Effect in June (33 homicides) and July (54) of 2020.

Here are annual homicides in the city of St. Louis

2011 115

2012 113

2013 120

2014 (Ferguson 8/2014) 159

2016 188

2017 205

2018 186

2019 194

2020 (so far) 160

From St. Louis Today:

Feds launch St. Louis anti-crime initiative as homicide rate climbs

Robert Patrick , Rachel Rice Aug 7, 2020

ST. LOUIS — A controversial federal initiative targeting violent crime will bring 50 federal investigators and a $1 million grant to St. Louis, U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen said Thursday.

Jimmie Edwards, St. Louis public safety director, said he sought federal help after a surge in homicides and other shootings in St. Louis in the last two months. Edwards said there were 32 homicides in June and 53 in July, and an understaffed police department had a backlog of suspects being sought for those crimes, including 20 homicide suspects and several dozen more being pursued for crimes “just as heinous,” he said.

“Violent crime in St. Louis is intolerable lately,” Jensen said at a news conference Thursday. Jensen said that the federal investigators will be supplemented by Missouri Highway Patrol staffers, and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt will lend two prosecutors to handle cases.

Jensen said Operation Legend will target violent offenders, gangs, so-called “active shooters” and fugitives. There will also be additional resources to respond to shooting scenes.

He declined to say how long the program will last, saying he didn’t want people to wait out the enhanced federal presence.

Responding to criticism of the program elsewhere, Jensen said the investigators will not be protecting federal property or responding to protests. Operation Legend is not “protection of federal buildings, protection of federal properties,” he said. “It’s not riot police. It’s not officers wearing fatigues. This is purely a violent crime effort. An effort to reduce the terrible murder rate we have seen lately.”

Critics have questioned the legality of the federal response to protests in Portland, Oregon, and said it led to more violence.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner

Who is backed by George Soros’s money.

said in a statement that she is “concerned about bringing more federal agents to the City of St. Louis given their recent behavior in Portland, Oregon, where officers stopped people without probable cause and interrupted peaceful protesters without warning. My office will hold law enforcement agencies accountable if they violate the rights of people who live in our community.”

Jensen said the announcement was not related to Gardner’s victory in the Democratic primary Tuesday, which essentially guarantees her reelection in the heavily Democratic city. He said the plan was in the works for some time. …

After the news conference, Parson, Krewson and other officials exited through the front doors of headquarters where no protesters were gathered and ducked into cars that sped away. Protesters ran into the street in front of police headquarters moments later and blocked traffic.

Protesters attempted to block another car they mistakenly thought was carrying Jensen, but minutes later a line of police officers on bicycles pushed protesters back to let the car pass.

St. Louis is one of eight cities where the operation has been announced.

The operation was first launched July 8 in Kansas City. Sometimes referred to as Operation LeGend, it was named in honor of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot in June while asleep in his Kansas City home.

Officials announced July 22 it would be expanded to Chicago and Albuquerque. Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee were added to the list July 29. Memphis then was added along with St. Louis. …

Critics say that federal and state officials, including Parson and President Donald Trump, are trying to shift the public’s focus to violent crime instead of an economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic and a series of failures to adequately contain the spread of the disease.

With Karen Bass, an obscure L.A. Congresswoman, starting to fade in the Biden Veep hunt due to her Fidel Castro-worship likely being inconvenient in the purple state of Florida, the two most prominent Black Women left appear to be Obama Administration foreign policy maven Susan Rice and California Senator Kamala Harris.

Neither appear to be close to 50% sub-Saharan by DNA.

Harris is half Tamil and her Stanford economics professor father is from the Malcolm Gladwellish mulatto middle-class of Jamaica. (Rice is also half-Jamaican.)

Rice has a white husband and her Trump-supporting son, the president of the Stanford Young Republicans, is pale (although he has slightly sub-Saharan features).

She is from W.E.B. Du Bois’ Talented Tenth (or, more likely, Talented One Percent).

Rice isn’t an absurd choice for VP. Unfortunately, her track record is poor: Libya, 2011. From Wikipedia:

As the 2011 Libyan Civil War progressed, the United States and its allies offered a choice for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his aides: step down from power or face an international response. Rice offered some of the toughest rhetoric toward Gaddafi, criticizing his denials of atrocities against his own citizens as “frankly, delusional”.[55] In a closed-door Security Council meeting in April 2011, Rice reportedly stated that Gaddafi loyalists engaged in atrocities, including terrorizing the population with sexual violence, and that Gaddafi’s troops has been issued Viagra.[56] Together with National Security Council figure Samantha Power, who already supported the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who came to support it, the three overcame internal opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, to have the administration advance a UN proposal to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and authorize other military actions as necessary.[18][57]

On March 17, 2011, the UK, France and Lebanon joined the U.S. to vote for United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 while Brazil, Germany, and India joined permanent Security Council members China and Russia in abstaining. Rice and Clinton played major roles in gaining approval for the resolution.[18][58] Clinton said the same day that establishing a no-fly zone over Libya would require the bombing of air defenses. Rice said, “we are interested in a broad range of actions that will effectively protect civilians and increase the pressure on the Gaddafi regime to halt the killing and to allow the Libyan people to express themselves in their aspirations for the future freely and peacefully”.[59]

The No-Fly Zone obviously meant that the mighty U.S. was committed to the overthrow and murder (as it turned out, by sodomization) of Col. Qadaffi. In turn, the murder of Gadaphee, who had made a deal with Italy’s Berlusconi to reduce sub-Saharan migration thru the Mediterranean, led to to the ensuing migrant crisis.

So Rice’s record of decision-making is catastrophic.

On the other hand, Rice’s private life appears to have been decorous: her one marriage at age 28, two kids, still married.

In contrast, Kamala Harris started her career by learning the true essence of politics while serving in various positions under master politician Willie Brown.

From the New York Times news section:

Abolish the Police? Those Who Survived the Chaos in Seattle Aren’t So Sure

What is it like when a city abandons a neighborhood and the police vanish? Business owners describe a harrowing experience of calling for help and being left all alone.

By Nellie Bowles
Aug. 7, 2020

SEATTLE — Faizel Khan was being told by the news media and his own mayor that the protests in his hometown were peaceful, with “a block party atmosphere.”

But that was not what he saw through the windows of his Seattle coffee shop. He saw encampments overtaking the sidewalks. He saw roving bands of masked protesters smashing windows and looting.

Young white men wielding guns

The NYT won’t call them Antifa yet in the hopes that readers assume these are the terrifying white supremacist wreckers they’ve heard so much about and thus not be offended by this article by not getting the point.

would harangue customers as well as Mr. Khan, a gay man of Middle Eastern descent who moved here from Texas so he could more comfortably be out.

The CHAZ/CHOP zone on Capitol Hill was the gay district, so the gay business owners are mad.

To get into his coffee shop, he sometimes had to seek the permission of self-appointed armed guards to cross a border they had erected.

“They barricaded us all in here,” Mr. Khan said. “And they were sitting in lawn chairs with guns.”

For 23 days in June, about six blocks in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood were claimed by left-wing demonstrators and declared police-free. Protesters hailed it as liberation — from police oppression, from white supremacy — and a catalyst for a national movement.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the Black Lives Matter movement is calling to defund the police, arguing that the criminal justice system is inherently racist.

NYT in December 2020: Remember what we told you about the “killing” of George Floyd? Well, never mind …

… That has left small-business owners as lonely voices in progressive areas, arguing that police officers are necessary and that cities cannot function without a robust public safety presence. In Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, Ore., many of those business owners consider themselves progressive, and in interviews they express support for the Black Lives Matter movement. But they also worry that their businesses, already debilitated by the coronavirus pandemic, will struggle to survive if police departments and city governments cannot protect them.

On Capitol Hill, business crashed as the Seattle police refused to respond to calls to the area. Officers did not retake the region until July 1, after four shootings, including two fatal ones.

Now a group of local businesses owners — including a locksmith, the owner of a tattoo parlor, a mechanic, the owners of a Mexican restaurant and Mr. Khan — is suing the city. The lawsuit claims that “Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public” resulted in enormous property damage and lost revenue.

The Seattle lawsuit — and interviews with shop owners in cities like Portland and Minneapolis — underscores a key question: Can businesses still rely on local governments, which are now rethinking the role of the police, to keep them safe? The issue is especially tense in Seattle, where the city government not only permitted the establishment of a police-free zone, but provided infrastructure like concrete barriers and portable toilets to sustain it. …

Many are nervous about speaking out lest they lend ammunition to a conservative critique of the Black Lives Matter movement. In Portland, Elizabeth Snow McDougall, the owner of Stevens-Ness legal printers, emphasized her support for the cause before describing the damage done to her business.

“One window broken, then another, then another, then another. Garbage to clean off the sidewalk in front of the store every morning. Urine to wash out of our doorway alcove. Graffiti to remove,” Ms. McDougall wrote in an email. “Costs to board up and later we’ll have costs to repair.” ….

One mid-July morning in the neighborhood, workers in orange vests were mopping off the sidewalks and power-spraying graffiti off the sides of buildings. Two window repair guys said they had their hands full for weeks. Shattered street lamps were being unscrewed and replaced.

A confusing array of security teams wandered around, armed with handguns and rifles. Some wore official-looking private security uniforms. Others wore casual clothes and lanyards identifying their affiliation with Black Lives Matter. A third group wore all black with no identifying labels and declined to name their group affiliation.

When a tall man in a trench coat and hiking boots walked over to question Mr. Khan, the man spread his coat open, revealing several pistols on harnesses around his chest and waist. He presented a badge on a lanyard that read “Black Lives Matter Community Patrol.”

His name is Rick Hearns and he identified himself as a longtime security guard and mover who is now a Black Lives Matter community guard, in charge of several others. Local merchants pay for his protection, he said as he handed out his business card. (Mr. Khan said he and his neighbors are now paying thousands of dollars a month for protection from Iconic Global, a Washington State-based private security contractor.)

Mr. Hearns has had bad experiences with the police in his own life. He says he wants police reform, but he was appalled by the violent tactics and rhetoric he witnessed during the occupation.

He blamed the destruction and looting on “opportunists,” but also said that much of the damage on Capitol Hill came from a distinct contingent of violent, armed white activists. “It’s antifa,” he said.

So, we are finally told that the armed white guys are “antifa” (but not Antifa) 1,337 words into the article: the usual NYT practice of delaying un-PC facts until after most readers have gotten bored and moved on from the article.

“They don’t want to see the progress we’ve made. They want chaos.”

Many of the business owners on Capitol Hill agreed: Much of the violence they saw and the intimidation of their patrons came from a group these business owners identified as antifa, which they distinguished from the Black Lives Matter movement. “The idea of taking up the Black movement and turning it into a white occupation, it’s white privilege in its finest definition,” Mr. Khan said. “And that’s what they did.”

Antifa, which stands for anti-fascist, is a radical, leaderless leftist political movement that uses armed, violent protest as a method to create what supporters say is a more just and equitable country. They have a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest, including the current protests in Portland.

But Rep. Jerry Nadler said Antifa was just a myth!

When the occupation in Seattle started in early June, Mayor Jenny Durkan seemed almost amused. “We could have the Summer of Love,” she said.

After President Trump took aim at the governor of Washington State and Seattle’s mayor on June 11, Ms. Durkan defended the occupation on Twitter as “a peaceful expression of our community’s collective grief and their desire to build a better world,” she wrote, pointing to the “food trucks, spaghetti potlucks, teach-ins, and movies.”

The lawsuit by the small-business owners, filed by the firm Calfo Eakes on June 24, seizes on such language, pointing out that the city knew what was happening and provided material support for the occupation. …

The American news media has recently engaged in what Bible translators call “reverential capitalization” when it comes to Blacks but not to whites in order to show which caste is highest ranking. But what about sex? How come nobody has yet demanded reverential capitalization for Women?

A newspaper article might soon read:

Joe Biden’s potential vice presidential nominees include Susan Rice, Karen Bass, and Kamala Harris, who are Black Women, and Elizabeth Warren, a white Woman, plus longshots like Pete Buttigieg, a Gay white man, and even Sherrod Brown, a straight white man.

Former President George W. Bush will release a book of 43 portraits of immigrants in conjunction with an exhibition on the value of American immigration at the George W. Bush Presidential Center that will feature the paintings https://t.co/7ON3QGcjgy

— CNN (@CNN) August 7, 2020

Poetry magazine was founded in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe, one of the great literary editors of American history.

In June 1915, Poetry unveiled a new poet to the world with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

One of Monroe’s innovations was that poets should be paid a non-negligible amount of money. She did a lot of fundraising, such as talking wealthy Chicagoans into paying for 5-year subscriptions upfront. She actually preferred traditional 19th Century verse, but was brilliant at picking the best of cutting edge modernist poetry.

Then in 2003, philanthropist Ruth Lilly of the Eli Lilly fortune donated 9 figures into the Poetry Foundation, which publishes Poetry magazine.

Its current endowment of approximately a quarter of a billion dollars is approaching half the size of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s legendary lucre. So, not surprisingly, the Woke have had their claws out for all that Poetry wealth. Hence, an announcement by Poetry magazine:

September Pause, October Return
BY THE EDITORS
Dear Reader,

We’d like to share some updates on the next issues of Poetry magazine.

This September, Poetry is breaking from its legacy of continuous publication and will not print a monthly issue for the first time since its founding by Harriet Monroe in 1912.

Magazine staff made this decision to put people before production. We are acting in part out of necessity, and in majority out of respect to our community, poets, and staff. The manifold violence of our world demands more from us. The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine must be agents of antiracism to build a more loving, supportive, and inclusive community.

We cannot escape Poetry’s history, which we have exalted and continue to profit from. We are committed to understanding that history better in order to dismantle its structures and reparate the magazine’s debt to Black people, Indigenous people, other people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, disabled people, and other marginalized groups of people who have been exploited, sidelined, and tokenized in support of white dominant culture. This pause is a necessary part of Poetry magazine’s reckoning with the deep-seated white supremacy of our organization.

We know one missed issue is a small gesture symbolizing our desire to do better.

We will use this interim period to:

Interrogate and reconfigure the magazine’s editorial processes, power structures, and hiring practices, in coordination with staff, consultants, and community input

I love how the Woke use the verb “interrogate” because it always reminds me of Gestapo Major Hochstetter in Hogan’s Heroes:

By the way, has anybody noticed the influence of Eliot on Dr. Seuss? Consider the famous opening to Prufrock:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

Pure Dr. Seuss that couplet:

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

Although Eliot is a famously highbrow poet, it strikes me that his poetry is a lot easier to grasp if you assume his main theme is plain old sexual frustration:

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”

🚨WANTED for ASSAULT:

On 8/6, at 11:57AM, an unidentified male individual stabbed a 40-year-old female victim in her back while exiting the W 72nd St & Broadway station in Manhattan. Any info on him call/DM @NYPDTips at 800-577-TIPS. pic.twitter.com/mvC5DEFWzS

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) August 7, 2020

This looks like a scene from a Brian DePalma movie.

This stabbing took place at lunchtime at 72nd and Broadway, which is in the heart of the very expensive, very peaceful Upper West Side of Manhattan (prototypical native: Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim).