2025 Various and sundry (1)

Introduction

This is my “various and sundry” page for 2025, January–March (Q1). It was preceded by 2024 and succeeded by 2025 (2).

For more information on the purpose of these pages, reading order, update policy, notes on terminology, etc., see the category description.

For the other pages, see the category navigation.

The entries

Lock-in effects and the survival of big government, welfare states, etc. (2025-03-27)

A key problem with diminishing the scope of big government (be it in a sense paralleling, say, “big pharma” or in a sense of government-that-is-big), welfare states, and similar, is that there is a lock-in effect that can align the interests of large and/or powerful groups with the survival or even increase of big government (and so on)—even when it is objectively too big or objectively does more harm than good to society at large. Indeed, this can be the case even when the net and/or long-term effect on the groups at hand is negative.

Consider e.g. the public sector and public employees: In a typical Western nation, they make up between a few and many percent of the overall workforce. In countries like Sweden, we can move into the tens of percents, because of the large and mostly “public” healthcare and education sectors. What if we simply wish to trim the blubber, those employees who are redundant in a non-euphemistic sense? Well, we would have a great number of newly unemployed, who obviously would very strongly oppose such trimming—and, likely, an even greater number who oppose it because they, before the fact, fear that they might be among the newly unemployed. To boot, many of them know that they will have worse chances than most in the private sector and/or that they will be forced to work harder, face promotion based on performance instead of length of employment, and similar, once they do find a private sector job. To boot, almost all might see “someone I know” kicked out—potentially, many such “someones”. Etc. They, then, have a lock-in effect that gives them incentives to preserve the system of which they are a part because they are a part.) (And, if off-topic, many are staunch big-government proponents and might see even a trimming of blubber as a negative and/or have a very different take on who is or is not blubber than a big-government opponent.)

If we go beyond merely trimming the blubber and actually try to make meaningful cuts to reduce the scope of government to a more defensible and conscionable level, the number of potential protesters grows larger and larger, the more meaningful the cut.

What, now, if a head of government (a governing party, whatnot) sees himself faced with loud protests from even just one single percent of the workforce? More often than not, he will cave to the protests—and this even if he is opposed to big government.

Of course, this is made the worse, because a combination of big government and an extensive welfare state likely means that the newly unemployed would next receive unemployment benefits (by whatever name and in whatever form is locally relevant). This considerable drain would nullify portions of the intended savings until they were back in the workforce. (And, again, chances are that they would have greater problems re-entering the workforce than someone with a private-sector background—and even someone with a private-sector background often has reduced incentives to urgently look for work in an over-extensive welfare system.) Maybe worse, from the politician’s point of view, we might see a rapid rise in various unemployment statistics, which, yikes!, might make the head of government look bad.

But how many heads of government (etc.) are actually opposed to big government? Chances are that it is a minority (potentially, a small minority) as less/more governmental power means less/more power to them. Ditto e.g. leading civil servants and the more so, the more leading. (Consider someone like Sir Humphrey Appleby of the aforementioned “Yes Minister”.) Now, what happens if someone who might actually prefer big government makes a lukewarm inquiry to a leading civil servant about making cuts and is told that there are no cuts to be made and that still making them would lead to disaster? I leave the answer as an exercise to the reader. (Also note some related side-questions, like how, whether, and with what effort a head of government could prove the leading civil servant wrong—a question that shows how valuable a DOGE-style approach can be.)

From yet another point of view, chances are that at least some politicians deliberately abuse the public sector as a quasi-Keynesian anti-unemployment measure, where the hard-to-employ can be given a salary for some amount of work, while the unemployment insurance and whatnot is nominally kept unburdened, and while those pesky unemployment statistics look better than with fair unemployment. Indeed, I very strongly suspect that a similar idea is behind various mandatory gas-heater and smoke-alarm checks in Germany, where the poorly qualified are given busy work at the (hidden) cost of the rest of the population. (And make no mistake: Such measures do come with a cost, and a permanent cost at that. In the long term, it will almost always be better to let unemployment happen and to see that as many as possible are re-employed in the private sector as soon as possible—and at conditions matching their performance and the actual value that they create there.)

Or consider a public “pay-it-backwards” pension scheme (also note the previous entry): Given that such a scheme is in place, it is very hard to get rid of. To affect a near-immediate (by the standards of pension schemes) switch to a scheme, whether public or private, where every one pays for himself or where every generation pays for itself, we are left with choices like reneging on promises to those who already “payed backwards” for others, having the generation of the switch simultaneously “pay backwards” and pay for it self (carrying a double burden), and letting the metaphorical money presses run hot—so much easier and politically more expedient to just leave things be and to let someone else handle an even worse situation a few decades later. A gradual switch is easier to defend, but it still means that a great set of victims have to both “pay backwards” and for themselves. The degree of double payment is lesser than with an immediate switch, but those affected more numerous and the process slower. Likewise, any voter who pushes for a transition is effectively volunteering for double payments, which gives voters incentives to not push for a transition.

Or consider government-enforced special rights/privileges/restrictions/whatnot relating to guilds and quasi-guilds (including bar associations in the U.S. and those relating to IHKs in Germany): If such guilds and quasi-guilds have high barriers to entry, this is a disadvantage to those who strive to become members, while they become an advantage as soon as the prospective members lose the “prospective”. For someone on the inside to work on lowering the barriers, to make entry easier for others, would effectively devalue the own time and money once spent on overcoming them and stand a great risk of reducing own future earnings. Likewise, chances are that many on the inside will fight tooth-and-nail against an outsiders proposition of a lowering. (And if politicians consider a change, will they send requests for feedback to random apprentices or to the head of the guild?)

A particularly interesting thought is how higher education can be seen as an example of a mechanism in the “guild family”. For some professions, this is obvious, because legal and/or guild requirements exist. However, there is a general push well beyond these cases, which either is a further special case or a case that illustrates a similar principle. (When we leave the area of government interference, we often just have a similar mechanism in a more general context. However, government interference, including mandated formal qualifications for ever more professions and/or at an ever higher level, seems to continually grow more extensive.)

Etc.

Welfare state as cause or consequence (2025-03-26)

A common Leftist sentiment seems to be that having a welfare state causes a nation to be wealthy and its people to fare well. This, however, is contrary to what can be expected from basic economic considerations—and, indeed, it seems that welfare states comparatively soon run into problems with economic growth and international competitiveness. My native Sweden, e.g., is one of the earliest and best known welfare states, but ran into severe problems no later than the 1970s. (I have not done the legwork, but I suspect that this might have been the 1960s, had it not been for the effects of the strong German economy. The disease that caused so visible symptoms in the 1970s was certainly not new.) Indeed, in much of the modern Western world, further economic growth has not only been low for decades, but would have been even lower without the increased free trade and the great scientific and technological advancements during these same decades (which have taken place independently of or despite the welfare states; other factors yet might be relevant, e.g. increasing education levels). To boot, chances are that growth has been artificially inflated through e.g. a monetary policy that can give a slowing economy a temporary boost in exchange for a future price, a survival of businesses that are uncompetitive and should either have gone bankrupt or shaped up, and other problems. This low growth is, to a considerable part, a result of the welfare state.

Instead, I would argue that economic success greatly increases the probability that a welfare state will be created. Consider factors like:

1. The less well off the broad base of tax-payers is, the more likely are protests against tax increases, because these hit the harder, the lesser one’s margins—but without tax increases, the welfare state is going nowhere. (Where I use “tax” in a wide sense that includes e.g. various mandatory insurance contributions.)

2. Those who have seen an increase in living standards (again, in a wide sense) tend to look for further increases (to a higher degree than before the original increase), implying that someone who promises them more in return for a vote has stronger chances once the ball of economic growth and whatnot gets rolling. (This effect is counter-intuitive but has a long history. Note e.g. variations on the “Tocqueville effect” and the “hedonic treadmill”.) To make matters worse, politicians can find themselves in a bind of having to deliver ever more in order to not lose votes again in the next election—just like a raise at work often brings an increase in “employee satisfaction” that is very temporary.

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   Side-note:

   This with the obscuring factor that the groups that are promised some improvement (“Pauls”) are often smaller than those who pay (“Peters”), implying that the cost per Peter is smaller than the gain per Paul. In the overlap with the previous item, it might then be possible to buy the votes of the Pauls without having the Peters go to the barricades. The problem is that as such improvements or “improvements” accumulate, the sum of the costs might reach heights that would have caused loud protests, if presented in one go. (More generally, welfare states often have a “boiling frog” issue.)

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3. Many who see their wealth grow are also naturally charitable, they see a possibility to exercise their charitability through, say, contributing to a welfare program, and vote accordingly—while failing to realize that what is voluntary for them is involuntary for others, that what feels good in the now might prove a problem tomorrow (and that there is no way of one-sidedly cancelling a tax payment in the manner of, say, a yearly charity donation), that the government is likely to use the money at hand very inefficiently, etc.

Tesla and Leftist violence (2025-03-22)

As I have noted repeatedly, political violence is predominantly a Leftist phenomenon—no matter what Leftist propaganda wants us to believe. Recently, we have a slew of further examples, where merely owning a Tesla car, let alone a Tesla dealership, can lead to attacks and vandalism, because of the Tesla->Musk->Trump connection (and/or because Musk has made himself sufficiently unpopular with the Left, regardless of the Trump connection). Indeed, as weapons like guns and Molotov cocktails appear to be in use, replacing “vandalism” with “terrorism” is sometimes (often?) warranted.

Also note how, again, we have examples of Leftist violence that are far worse than anything that non-Leftists did during the J6 events—yet how the Left-dominated media gave the latter far more (and often grossly misleading) publicity.

Failure to discriminate among dwarfs / When is a dwarf not a dwarf? (2025-03-22)

Among the many recent controversies over the 2025 live-action version of “Snow White”, we have an interesting case of both a failure to discriminate and a demonstration of how important it can be to understand the right implication of a word (and, by implication, how important it can be to use the right word):

Some, including Peter Dinklage, have complained about dwarfs and e.g. stereotypes. (Say, with the drift that the 1937 animated movie was an unenlightened horror and that the new movie would have a duty to do things better.) However, the word “dwarf” has different meanings. The more original and the stricter sense refers to a type of mythological or fairy-tale creature—and not even, if we go back far enough, one that was necessarily small. Looking at the fairy-tale “Snow White”, the dwarfs are clearly intended to be such fairy-tale creatures. The same, in my interpretation, both as a child and today, applies to the 1937 movie, even aside from the fact that the original fairy-tale imposes a natural interpretation of fairy-tale creatures. (I have, however, never seen the 2025 movie.)

Dinklage, in turn and unless he has mislead us considerably, exemplifies a different and secondary meaning—a human who has a “dwarfism condition” (for want of a better phrasing). These, then, are not fairy-tale creatures and to conflate the one with the other would not be much better than objecting to portrayals of fairies (in the creature sense) because “fairy” is occasionally applied to homosexual men. Or consider protests against the 1937 portrayal of the witch because she does not match the self-image of modern Wiccans and/or modern pretend-witches. Or, in a direct analogy, consider protests against movie portrayals of giants because of humans with “gigantism”. Or consider if a portrayal of trolls (fairy-tale) as e.g. goat- or man-eaters would be condemned, because it would paint trolls (Internet annoyances) in a bad light (or “even worse light”). Etc.

Moreover, it can be argued that this secondary meaning is unfortunate and misleading, and that the word “dwarf” is better avoided when it comes to these humans. Moreover, there was at least some period (I do not know how it is today), when the “human dwarfs” objected to the use of “dwarf” for them as offensive and tried to push alternate terms, e.g. “little people”. (A term that I consider misguided for other reasons, but be that as it may.)

As an aside, the portrayal in both the fairy-tale and the 1937 movie was more positive than many earlier portrayals of dwarfs (in the proper sense). Note e.g. how often dwarfs in Nordic and/or Germanic mythology were greedy evil-doers, more comparable in nature to the witch than to the likes of Disney’s Doc and Happy.

More on confiscated devices (2025-03-21)

A potentially quite important point around the unethical and civil-rights violating confiscation of devices like smartphones (cf. e.g. an earlier entry on this page) for spurious reasons (maybe, even, to the degree that they exist, non-spurious reasons):

Such a confiscation can prevent or render pointless any attempt to document an arrest, a house search, an act of police brutality, or similar, which removes a potentially very important safe-guard against rights violations and related problems.

We might e.g. have a citizen using a smartphone to film how police officers open a cupboard and do not find a few ounces of heroine, how they use unjustified violence against a family member, or how they refuse to show a search warrant when asked to do so. Filming completed, the smartphone is confiscated and the film is now (a) no longer accessible to the citizen, (b) at risk of deletion or malicious editing by the police.

Biden, “autopen” controversy, and validity of pardons (2025-03-17)

According to recent revelations, Biden (or someone else, in his name) has signed a great number of important documents, including his ill-advised last-minute pardons, by “autopen”.

This raises a number of questions, including (a) whether a signature as such, in any given context, is and/or should be the legally binding aspect or whether it is/should be nothing more than a ceremonial step (and Biden does not appear to be the first POTUS to use autopen signatures), and (b) whether any given autopen signature indicated the will of the (unlike his predecessors) befuddled Biden or of someone else.

In a next step, Trump has apparently publicly declared the aforementioned pardons to be “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT”, which raises further questions, including (a) whether Trump is just blustering or is considering serious action, (b) whether such a declaration is of legal value.

In the case of both paragraphs, I currently make no statement about what the law/precedence is (I lack the expertise and this sounds like a SCOTUS case waiting to happen). I do note, however, that my personal view of the “should” is that signatures are likely best viewed as ceremonial—but that a lack of awareness by the POTUS of what is signed by autopen in his name must have a disqualifying character. (And Trump alleges exactly such a lack of awareness.) I also express my personal belief that several of these pardons were highly unfortunate, and my hope that the likes of Fauci will be prosecuted after all, be it through an invalidation of poor pardons or some other mechanism (e.g. by the finding of a violation of a state law, which is not covered by presidential pardons, or by some international court, for once, doing the right thing).

In yet another step, there is a particularly interesting complication during the time that a pardon was viewed as valid: What if someone pardoned made good-faith statements post-pardon that could break his neck if the pardon is, indeed, found void (or otherwise undone)? Say, for the sake of argument, that someone commits a crime, denies it in face of allegations, is pardoned pre-trial, makes a public confession (potentially through indirect means, e.g. the writing of a self-incriminating autobiographical work), has his pardon found void, and is later convicted, in part, because of that confession. (But note that a confession alone is rarely taken as conclusive evidence and that different rules might or might not apply for confessions to, say, a TV camera relative a confession to a police officer or a court room.)

Some even maintain the fiction that accepting a pardon would be tantamount to a confession of guilt (I emphatically do not). If this fiction was applied in such a case, the now-revoked-pardon could ultimately be what brings the pardoned to fall: By accepting, he acknowledges guilt and, when the pardon is found void, he might now be convicted based on that acceptance.

As I noted in an entry on limitations on pardons from 2025-01-21, there are risks when pardons are too blanket and/or too vague on what crimes/accusations/whatnot are covered. Because self-incrimination is of particular importance when the pardoned has not yet been convicted, the above gives further reasons for limitations. Indeed, with the extreme blanket pardons given to e.g. Hunter Biden, we might have a scenario where the pardoned confesses to a crime of which he was not even officially suspected at the time of the pardon.

Anti-Trump lawfare revisited (2025-03-16)

To revisit the question of potential further lawfare against Trump (discussed on 2025-02-18), I note that the sheer amount of lawsuits has reached ridiculous proportions, so that it seems as if any and all executive order, DOGE action, whatnot, is immediately brought to a halt or reversed by some judge or other. (This “seems” is no doubt beyond what actually happens, but even the “seems” is telling of how extreme the issue has become.)

While any opposition to such lawsuits must tread carefully, lest a legitimate exercise of the judicial system is hindered and/or rights otherwise impeded, what goes on right now is simply too much, something hindering the exercise of a solid democratic mandate for certain actions and in a manner that goes beyond what can be justified.

A particular problem, as has been noted more-or-less from day one by other commentators, is the idea of individual and lower-court federal judges presuming to make dictates that have a U.S.-wide effect. This poses a severe problem of potential (and, I believe, manifested) abuse; can have absurd consequences, should questions present themselves where several federal judges find differently in separate processes; and has a strong possibility of violating the separation of powers in an unconstitutional manner—at worst, the executive branch could be entirely dependent on the approval of the judicial branch, even individual judges within the judicial branch. This the more so, as (a) this presumption invites “court shopping”, (b) many legal actions relate to Washington D.C., these are naturally filed with the local district (or, maybe, other local) court, with a considerable current majority of Democrat-appointed judges.

In the short term, the suggested restriction of the effect of court orders to parties of the case seems prudent; in the long term, a reform to have a single court (or some few courts) specialized on a narrow set of issues seems equally prudent. Such a court could then deal with greater expertise and be given U.S.-wide authority in a more official and natural manner, with any appeal going directly to the Supreme Court, in order to shorten the road to certiorari. (What criteria should be used to define that “narrow set”, is a tricky question that I leave open for now. One of several preliminary possibilities would be to focus on conflicts relating directly to or at most “once removed” from the POTUS. Another to focus on constitutional issues relating to the executive branch and/or conflicts between the branches.)

Another significant issue is the many organizations (e.g. the ACLU) that proclaim to work for e.g. civil rights, are now highly active versus Trump, but were almost entirely silent versus the Biden regime and the COVID countermeasures, where they had far greater reason to be active, were they actually serious about civil rights (as opposed to e.g. furthering a Leftist or hindering a non-Leftist agenda for ideological or political reasons).

Misguided equity claims / equity vs. personal choice (2025-03-15)

A common issue with a certain type of Leftist is that this-and-that is rejected for “not being equitable” (or similar) in a manner that negates personal choice, different life priorities, etc. At an extreme, some seem to take impossible and anti-human attitudes like that a human’s sole purpose of existence would be to serve the collective (“because equity” or “from everyone according to his ability”) or that “yes, you may have as much money as you can earn—but you are not actually allowed to use that money, because it would be inequitable if you do”.

Consider e.g. the idea that it would not be “equitable” if someone with money could pay for a medical treatment, out of his own pocket, that is not covered by a public and mandatory healthcare system (which are common in many Left-dominated countries). Ditto, when someone wants to pay for a private health insurance with better coverage than the public one, for another physician than the one appointed by the public healthcare system, etc.

Now, if we lived in the type of caricature society that many Leftists seem to postulate, where success in life is solely a matter of who our parents are or were, there could conceivably be some justification to this; however, in real life, whether someone does or does not have a certain amount of money is more often a matter of factors like life priorities, e.g. that the one has chosen to spend more of his time (ultimately, the one true currency that we have) on making money than the other. Why then should he not be allowed to take some of that time-traded-into-money and trade it back into time through spending it on healthcare? This the more so because (a) there might well be a connection between his failing health and the original trade, say, that a high workload, few vacations, and much stress has brought on decades of hypertension, (b) his hard work is quite likely to have financed and subsidized the public healthcare considerably (relative an “average Joe”) through more taxes paid, insurance fees that depend on earnings instead of coverage and risk factors, or whatever might apply in the country at hand.

Indeed, as with much of the Swedish Left, this often reflects a “drop everyone down to the same level” attitude—not the “raise everyone up to the same level” attitude that is pretended. (A Leftist attitude that it only matters that everyone has the same, even at the cost of many or most being worse off than before, has a long history in Sweden and is far from unheard of in other countries.)

To return to priorities: What if the one has different healthcare priorities than the other, has a different take on a medical issue than the one dictated by the government, or similar? Consider something as simple as a screening for some specific type of cancer, assume that a blanket policy is in place that such screenings are only to be had once a certain age has been reached, and that someone had a parent die from that type of cancer before the age of screening. Should he now be forced to forego a potentially very sensible earlier screening because of a stubborn one-size-for-all policy? What if someone has a severe medical problem and prefers a “do or die” treatment with a 50–50 chance of rapid recovery resp. rapid death, while the government only allows a treatment with next to no chance of recovery but a decent chance of another ten years to live? (Or vice versa.) Etc.

From a completely different angle: When there are limits on individual choice, individual spending, individual whatnot, this can hamper medical progress, through making the field of medicine less lucrative for physicians (ditto, m.m., medical researchers and other relevant groups), which makes medicine a less likely career choice, through treating first-rate physicians (researchers, etc.) equally with third-rate ones, which lowers motivation and gives incentives to do other things than practice medicine, through cementing a certain set of opinions as a dubious permanent orthodoxy, through reducing the probability of investment in new technologies that do not have the government’s stamp of approval (and might, in a catch-22, never be developed to the point that they get that stamp because they lack that stamp), etc.

Medicine, however, is only one example of this type of flawed, ignorant, and narrow-minded Leftist thinking. Consider e.g. the idea that personal performance should not be reflected in salaries/wages—only simplistic criteria like job title and years of employment. At an extreme, I have heard anecdotal claims of teachers berating parents for letting their kids read more advanced books than the teacher has given the rest of the class, because this would be “inequitable” (“a social injustice” or similar).

Illegal immigrants necessary as maids and whatnots? (2025-03-15)

On repeated occasions, I have heard Leftist claims that illegal immigrants would be vital to the U.S. for purposes like being maids, gardeners, and filling other usually low-paid/-status positions.

This is a very shady argument, beginning with the fact that, with reservation for the numbers of each available, the only advantage that might arise from using illegal immigrants over legal immigrants is that the former might be willing to work at more-favorable-to-the-employer conditions than the latter, e.g. at lower hourly rates (possibly, below the legal minimum), for longer hours at some fix pay, with less willingness to take a stand on some employment condition, while (often, illegally) foregoing various social-security schemes, whatnot—i.e. what the Left otherwise likes to condemn as evil exploitation. (Arguably, in an abuse of the word “exploitation”, but the meaning is clear.)

In as far as this willingness arises through a fear of deportation or other disadvantages arising from the vulnerable position of illegal immigrants, there is indeed reason to raise ethical arguments against this. In as far as the underlying issue is a need to work around government-caused problems, e.g. excessive minimum wages, the solution is to remove these problems—not to accept illegal immigration.

From another point of view, the presence of illegal immigrants has a detrimental effect on wages, working conditions, and whatnot, through allowing what, in some sense, is employment below the natural market rate. (In part, because the workforce simply is larger; in part, because of the deportation and whatnot risks.) Without illegal immigrants, wages/conditions/whatnot would improve, making such positions more palatable to others. Admittedly, this could come at the cost of some wealthy-but-not-rich citizens having to do more household chores on their own, but when is that a concern to the Left? Answer: When one of these wealthy-but-not-rich citizens is a Leftist who hypocritically relies on illegal immigrants for such services.

This gives a segue to the question of “Why immigrants?” (be they legal or illegal). Why, for instance, should a poor U.S. woman turn down a job as a maid that some poor Mexican woman readily accepts? (Ditto, say, their respective husbands as gardeners.) This is too big a question to address in so short a text, but I do note complications like misguided pride, poor government incentives (why should someone work, who can have the government pay the bills?), distortions of market forces, and, again, the risk that the presence of illegal immigrants drives the wages/conditions/whatnot down in a manner that artificially reduces palatability. Some such explanations go back to a flawed attitude in the refusing worker; others to systematic political and other errors that should be corrected. And, not to forget: To some part, the issue might be exaggeration by the Left to push illegal immigration. Many citizens do turn down jobs for poor reasons, but whether so many that the rest would not fill the positions opened by removing illegal immigrants, that is a different question. (A question to which I do not know the answer.)

Finally, there is (as is so often the case in the U.S.) a failure to differentiate between allowing illegal immigrants to stay and/or work at their leisure and allowing more legal immigration. These, however, are two very different issues. If (!) illegal immigration would, in some sense, be necessary even after adjusting for my above remarks, this is something that could easily be remedied by allowing more legal immigration. If (!) immigrants are truly needed, then (barring, cf. above, “evil exploitation”) there is still no need for them to be illegal. Indeed, this focus on the “illegal” part (in this context and in others) makes me suspect that the true intent is merely to justify a passive attitude towards illegal immigrants in order to get more immigration without having to bother with pesky hurdles like democracy, lawmaking, division of powers, and whatnot.

Those who want more immigration should simply say so, work to change laws and policy for what is considered legal and illegal immigration to better match their own preferences, and acknowledge that illegal immigration is illegal and should be treated as such.

Men, trans-x, and who to blame / importance of terminology (2025-03-13)

In the wake of Trump’s election victory, sanity seems to be slowly returning to issues like what a man or woman is, who should be allowed to compete in a women-only competition, and similar.

However, even the Republicans seem to be falling wholesale into a trap—as have a great many members of the “resistance” over the last few years: framing the problems caused in e.g. women’s sports as a matter of men doing something evil against women. Yes, the likes of Lia Thomas are men, but their being men is not what causes the problems. Instead, it is that they are “trans” and/or are cheaters (try to take advantage of a loophole, whatnot), which causes the problems.

The framing in terms of men plays right into the hands of Feminists and their anti-male and men-are-oppressors-women-are-victims rhetoric, and sets society up for further problems down the line. Indeed, much of the woke movements, including trans-mania is ultimately an off-shot of Feminism, using the same ideas, methods, rhetoric, etc., adapted for a new group and in light of the successes of Feminism.

Blaming men is the more tasteless as the likes of Lia Thomas are, in a sense, defectors. What if evil deeds committed by a cold-war US-to-USSR defector had been used to condemn those who remained loyal to the U.S.? The situation is quite similar.

Moreover, blaming men glosses over the fact that the asymmetry in male and female cheating is to a large part (maybe, wholly) a matter of opportunity. There are simply far more areas of performance, including swimming, where men, on average or when looking at a sufficiently small apex, have a natural advantage over women than vice versa. A woman who wishes to compete with male swimmers does not have the type of unfair biological advantage that a man (even a man with an artificially lowered testosterone count) has among female swimmers, her incentives to switch fields to get an advantage are next to nil (but she might e.g. have an incentive to take on a greater challenge), and her presence in the field will only distort the competition to the degree that she is good enough to be competitive despite biology.

From another angle, terminology is very important. Consider e.g. the seemingly harmless shift from using “sex” to using “gender”: What harm could come? Is it not worth the benefit of reducing the risk of confusion with “sex” as an abbreviation of “sexual intercourse”?

As it turns out, quite a bit of harm came through blurring the issue of biological sex (and the fact that words like “man”, “woman”, “he”, and “she’ are a matter of exactly biological sex) vs. self-identified/-chosen gender or gender role. At an extreme, the complete fiction of “gender assigned at birth” (which, in reality, is “sex determined at birth”) only became possible through the abuse of “gender” for “sex”—and, in turn, opened the doors for an extreme relativism. For instance, I recently read about some school book for young children that touted approximately “When you are born, doctors assign you as male or female. Sometimes they get it right; sometimes they get it wrong.”—which, in a natural conclusion, would raise the question why anyone would, at all, bother with an assignation of any kind. (Unfortunately, I did not keep a reference or exact quote.) What actually happens, however, is that the sex of the newborn is determined in a manner that is almost always correct.

Northvolt bankruptcy (2025-03-13)

As of yesterday, Northvolt, once a celebrated up-and-comer, model company, environmental rescuer, and European champion against China and Tesla, filed for bankruptcy in Sweden. This following a long period of trouble, which included great problems in keeping up with the Chinese, quality issues in the batteries actually produced, a “Chapter 11” filing of a U.S. subsidiary last year, and a handful of mysterious deaths that caused negative publicity, suspicions of wrongdoing, and various investigations.

To this, I note that:

1. Northvolt long gave me the impression of having more hype for the future than substance in the now. Such companies are somewhat common, but for them to succeed in the long term, they need deep pockets, a continual influx of new money, and/or a willingness among investors to see years of losses before substance is delivered—if it ever is delivered, at all. If not, chances are that the bubble of hype will burst too soon.

   This the more so, when a newcomer tries to take on an established competition. Northvolt, e.g., was founded by a former big-shot at Tesla and tried to compete with Tesla in the field of batteries—and then there are those pesky Chinese (who, in doubt, do much or most of the work on Tesla’s batteries too). Amazon, in contrast, did have a great amount of “brick and mortar” competition when it was founded, but it had a much freer field in the online world, giving it both a unique selling point and a chance to be the first big player. Nevertheless, to return to the previous paragraph, Amazon likely needed more than a decade before the accumulated profits over the company history turned positive—maybe two decades, if opportunity costs through failure to invest money elsewhere are considered.

   (And who has the deepest pockets in the world? Arguably, Tesla-founder Elon Musk.)

   Worse, Northvolt was a hype based on a hype—that of electric cars. Because the promises of the electric-car hype have not (yet?) been fulfilled, there is less demand for car batteries than might have been projected when Northvolt was founded, searched for investors, and/or built its hype. Chances are that Northvolt was over-hyped even with those projections—but when those projections failed? Not good. (Imagine if the Internet had grown much slower than it did and what that might have meant for Amazon.)

2. Overlapping, many seem to have favored or invested in Northvolt for reasons not founded in a business mentality, e.g. because batteries are needed for electric cars, which, in turn, would be needed because of global warming, or because Europe needed to be competitive with U.S. and the Chinese. (Also cf. the first paragraph.)

   However, fighting for the environment or battling the Chinese does not pay the bills, wages, and salaries, it does not give a return on current investment, it does not leave money for further and future investment, whatnot. Earning a sufficient amount of money, on the other hand, does pay the bills (and so on). As is, Northvolt turned into a fiasco, it achieved precious little for the environment, and it lost a great deal of money for others—money that could have been spent much better, be it with an eye at profits, the environment, or the Chinese. And, yes, this includes tax-payers’ money and money from public pension funds (“AP-fonderna”).

   In a twist, I would not rule out (but have not investigated the matter) that the environmental net-effect of Northvolt was negative, because activities like building a “gigafactory” come with an early environmental cost that is only paid off over time—and only if it is used successfully for purposes like enabling electric cars for sufficiently long. (And assuming that the net-effect of going electric is sufficiently beneficial, which, at least with current technology and the current level of evidence, is not beyond reasonable doubt. Also note that electric cars are similar to gigafactories in that there is a big environmental cost early on that has to be repaid over time.)

3. A particular complication is that Northvolt might simply have been too ambitious, trying to do too much too fast and in parallel, instead of focusing on something manageable and making sure to do it right. (Once a profit is earned on a core activity, there is always the option to branch out. Vide, again, Amazon.) That saying about biting of more than one can chew seems apposite.

   The bet on lithium-metal batteries might be a good specific example: This technology is either losing outright (Betamax, as it were) or will not win sufficiently soon to save Northvolt. What if Northvolt had gone with the less ambitious choice of, at least for now, building the more established and cheaper lithium-ion batteries?

That mythical “liberal arts” degree (2025-03-02)

Every now and then, I encounter someone broadly Conservative lamenting the decline of the liberal arts in the U.S. college system, how the U.S. is going to hell because of that decline, how the Leftist takeover only happened because of that decline or because students were pushed away from the noble liberal arts to those deplorable STEM fields, or some variation on similar themes. (This includes quite a few pieces on Minding the Campus^e.)

The bigger picture of what type of education should be provided where (when, to whom, by whom, at what cost and price, whatnot) would require several pages (and I can see value in several perspectives on the issue); however, a few more specific observations:

1. What is meant by “liberal arts” can vary considerably from speaker to speaker, context to context, etc. Even within the context of the U.S. college system, the meaning is not clear, and that meaning is not necessarily historically accurate or internationally uniform. (For compatibility with the complainers, I stick to the family of meanings common around U.S. colleges in this text, and, usually, somewhat narrowly in a “pre-Left” tradition.)

   A particular complication is that the students can make so many individual choices that two degrees that both are considered “liberal arts” and both are from the same year and the same college, need not be comparable. (I stress that I do not find this choice a bad thing—I merely stress how it makes the term “liberal arts” problematic in the context of e.g. “We need more liberal arts!”.)

   At an extreme, “liberal arts” borders on meaningless in many modern uses.

   Looking at the complainers, some have a fairly narrow take, e.g. with a “great books” approach, while others seem to view it as “anything that is not STEM” (and, maybe, some other more scientifically, technologically, and/or professionally oriented fields).

2. It was to a large part through the malleability and wishy-washy-ness of the U.S. curricula and softer sciences that the Left managed its takeover of academia. (With parallels elsewhere.) This to a considerable part coincided with the areas considered liberal arts (and, otherwise, non-STEM).

   The liberal arts, then, were not the bulwark that would have kept the Left out, had it been maintained—it was the open gate through which the Left marched with far too little resistance.

   Likewise, the decline of the liberal arts was more caused by the Leftist takeover than it was the cause of the takeover.

   In contrast, the STEM fields/degrees/whatnot, which are often maligned and almost invariably seen as inferior by the complainers, are those where the Left has had the greatest problems with gaining ground—and have often succeeded only through backdoors, including pressure from administrators and the already captured non-STEM portions of academia. (E.g. in that proponents of the pseudo-scientific gender-studies nonsense rage and rave about the number of men and women being portrayed in STEM history or try to force an outright anti-scientific “gender perspective” on a field like physics.)

3. The U.S. system seems to, partially, teach things to its college students that many Europeans learn (or, as is often the case in education, are supposed to learn) in high school. While it is unreasonable to push the average high-school student through material at a tempo and a level of an average college student, at least parts of the liberal-arts curriculum would be better kept at the high-school level. This would partially moot the points that the complainers make.

   ---

   Side-note:

   High school also ends later in e.g. Sweden and Germany than in the U.S., which (a) makes this easier, (b) implies that the average college/uni student is closer to an adult level than in the U.S. (And, with few exceptions, also is a “legal adult”, through being 18 or older, even as a freshman.)

   To boot, academic standards are higher, both now and in the past. (Notwithstanding that these countries, too, have fallen victim to various forms of academic inflation and Leftist perversions of higher education.) I note e.g. the oddity that knowing a second language is often a graduation criterion for Ph.D. (!) students the U.S., while it is a graduation criterion for high-school students in Sweden and Germany. My own school years saw mandatory English beginning in year 4 and a mandatory additional language beginning in year 7, and I graduated high school with nine years of English and six of German.

   ---

4. Fundamentally, learning (especially, with an eye at understanding) is best done through the student’s own efforts, based on books and other readings, own experimentation and investigations (in fields where appropriate), and, above all, own thinking. The idea that college would be the best way to gain an education, be it with regard to the liberal arts or more generally, is deeply flawed.

   ---

   Side-note:

   The above listing of means should not be seen as complete. It is, for instance, very possible to gain value from a discussion with a professor or “just” a fellow student (who might have a deeper insight, a different set of insights, even if not deeper, a different perspective on an issue, or similar). However, chances are that more value can be found in a book by a great thinker (or even by a, in some sense, “better” professor)—and neither discussions nor books gain any true value without the application of own thought. Books and discussions can be sources of “food for thought”, but the value is only gained through the student’s actual digestion of that food.

   (Lectures, in turn, are almost always inferior to books, a means for those who cannot read and think sufficiently well on their own to gain, or pretend to gain, something of an education.)

   ---

   What institutions like colleges can do is to certify that a certain level of accomplishment has been reached (or, in doubt, effort spent), which might be very valuable in fields like medicine but only rarely in the liberal arts. (One potential exception is when someone is looking for an academic career in the liberal arts.)

   My own studies of liberal arts are more extensive than those provided by a typical U.S. college—and they have mostly taken place “on my own time” and at home. (Depending on exact definitions used, “far more” might be better than “more”.)

5. While learning is best viewed as a life-long process, this applies especially to the liberal arts and/or the values that the complainers suggest that a study of the liberal arts would provide, making the idea of coming in a raw diamond and, four years later, leaving a brilliant particularly misguided here.

6. The particular and recurring idea that the liberal arts, unlike STEM, would teach the students how to think, is absurd. Indeed, it is likely a sign that the complainer at hand has had very little serious exposure to STEM (in general) and topics like mathematics, logic, and computer programming (in particular). To e.g. prove a mathematical theorem, one has to think hard and deep, consider special cases, see issues from different perspectives, etc.—and if this is not done well enough, someone else will just poke a hole in the work. Computer programs do not do what they, in the eye of the programmer, are “supposed” to do—they do what they are actually written to do. Etc.

   To succeed in such fields, a great ability to think deeply, sharply, critically, out-of-the-box, whatnot, is required, and this ability translates to other fields, including to the liberal arts. The reverse does not apply to anywhere near the same degree.

   ---

   Side-note:

   Philosophy is a partial exception, in that it can require a great deal of quality thought to do well. However, philosophy, unlike math, usually lacks the benefits that come from being provably wrong, which makes a major difference to the development of self-insight, humility, “meta-thinking”, whatnot.

   (And, of course, philosophy is just a small part of the overall curriculum for the average liberal arts student.)

   ---

7. The true problems are not related to e.g. liberal arts vs. STEM, but to a willingness to let ideology trump science, activists trump scientists, administrators trump professors, etc.

   With regard to specifically liberal arts, the true complaint of the complainers, although they often seem not to realize it, is that the Left has imposed an attitude of “everything old is unenlightened”, “no more Dead White Men in the curriculum”, “Western civilization is evil”, or similar, which implies that, say, reading Plato and Shakespeare would be a waste of time, unenlightened or, at an extreme, a White-supremacist hate crime. This can certainly help the Left with its continuing agenda, and it is certainly bad for the education levels of modern generations, but it is not where the problems began.

Trump–Zelenskyy negotiation failure (2025-02-28)

Among the big news items of the day is a complete breakdown of the Trump–Zelenskyy negotiations that attempted to find a peaceful resolution to the Russian invasion.

While I am in two minds about the correct way to proceed, be it from a global, a U.S., or a Ukrainian perspective, the events of the day do re-enforce my skepticism towards Zelenskyy, both as a leader and with regard to whether he truly wants what is best for the Ukrainian people. (Or, as is often the case with politicians, maybe he does wants what is best for the people but has a very flawed view of what that is.)

And here I am of one mind: It is not the job of Zelenskyy to win a war, to restore the pre-war borders, to send Putin packing, whatnot. His job is to do what is best for the Ukrainian people—period. Now, this best might very well entail, say, winning a war, but, if so, winning that war is a means to an end. Zelenskyy, however, seems to view it as an end in it self. Worse, an end so important that the Ukrainian people can be sacrificed in order to achieve it.

To this, note e.g. the immense suffering of the Ukrainian people during these slightly more than three years of warfare; the immense damage done to the Ukrainian economy, infrastructure, whatnot; a Ukrainian casualty toll that is headed towards the one-million mark; and the great problems that Zelenskyy has with recruiting new soldiers without resorting to gross violations of civil rights.

As a thought experiment, look at the Ukraine today (and/or imagine it after yet another few years of warfare) and compare this with the worst that could reasonably have happened, had Zelenskyy immediately capitulated when the invasion began. It is hard to imagine that things would have been worse. (Although, in all fairness, I can understand how a Ukrainian could look back at the Holodomor and other Soviet/Communist atrocities and fear for the worst, even should that fear be uncalled for.)

Now, I am not saying that this is what Zelenskyy should have done, because just going belly-up is rarely a good idea. However, there comes a point when a peace is so direly needed that even unfavorable terms might have to be accepted as the lesser evil—maybe, even, when an outright capitulation must follow. Should Zelenskyy actually win, chances are the win will go far beyond the mark of a Pyrrhic victory (one that the victor cannot afford a second time) and amount to a victory that did more harm than good. But chances are that he will not win, at all, and that every day of additional fighting is just further pointless misery and destruction.

Austrian coalitions (2025-02-27)

According to today’s news, the next Austrian government will be a coalition between the Conservative ÖVP, the Social-Democrat SPÖ, and the Liberal NEOS. This matches exactly the type of unholy alliance that I complained about with regard to Germany a few days ago (and on quite a few earlier occasions).

The Austria history of such anti-democratic nonsense is, if anything, worse than the German.

(With an eye at my wish to leave Germany: Austria might seem a good candidate because of the common language and currency, but other commonalities, like such unholy alliances, are a strong deterrent.)

Disclaimer: The labels are taken from news reporting. I lack the depth of knowledge to judge whether these are accurate or whether we have cases of, say, Austrian-RINOs and the type of pseudo-Liberals so common in the U.S.

The 2025 German elections: Friedrich Merz (2025-02-25)

A few words on Friedrich Merz, who is likely the next chancellor:

Looking at his nominal opinions on many issues, including freer markets, less “welfare” state, and non-abolishment of nuclear power, he seems like a reasonable candidate—and, before the election, I found myself toying with the idea of what might have been, had the Merkel-era been the Merz-era. (Around the millennium switch, CDU was in a power struggle between Merz and Merkel, which the former lost.)

In reality, he seems inconsistent and lacking in judgment, including having a paradoxical aversion to Trump, which should not have been present, were he serious in his opinions.

Worse, his first action as chancellor presumptive is to attempt to form a coalition government with SPD—exactly the type of bullshit action that characterized Merkel and which, in that alternate reality, I had hoped never to have seen.

In conclusion, I am not optimistic about the next four years.

(Whether the situation will be so poor that I act on my long-standing thoughts of leaving Germany again, cf. an older entry, is yet to be seen. If nothing else, the problem of “where else to go” remains.)

The 2025 German elections: Further notes on AfD, wasted votes, etc. (2025-02-25)

A few points that I forgot or could not fit in during yesterday’s extensive writings:

1. The votes, in some sense, wasted through the 5% bar to parliamentary representation (cf. one of yesterday’s entries) is currently the lesser problem relative the votes, in a similar sense, wasted on AfD.

   In the current elections, more than 20% of the vote went to a party that is artificially removed from any realistic opportunity to governmental representation, while the same votes divided even mostly onto CDU/CSU and FDP might have brought an outright non-Leftist government or, failing that, a CDU/CSU–FDP–GRÜNE government, which would at least have had far better proportions between the non-Left and the Left than the now likely CDU/CSU–SPD coalition.

   AfD will, of course, have influence during regular votes, but this might not amount to much, if CDU/CSU and SPD pull sufficiently in the same direction. (Which, to make matters worse, will likely involve considerable compromises to cater to SPD. Ditto, if CDU/CSU caters to the other Leftist parties on individual issues.)

   Looking at the 2024 elections mentioned in the previous entry, AfD might typically have had around a third (!) of the vote—and a third of the vote is then wasted. (Plus whatever votes might have been lost to local bars to parliamentary representation.)

   ---

   Side-note:

   From other perspectives, even worse results can be achieved, e.g. that any vote for a later non-governing party could be argued as partially wasted in a system like the German or Swedish (even when a potential of participation-in-government was present at the time of the vote).

   With unholy alliances like between CDU/CSU–SPD, it might even be argued that the entire vote is lost, because two sufficiently large parties can then choose to ignore the will of the voters, as long as they do not jeopardize their joint majority in seats. (Something, which could happen in Germany by the next election, but which has hitherto not been an issue in post-WWII politics. That there have been governments that are not a CDU/CSU–SPD alliance is not because the option was not there—the option simply was not exercised.) In such scenarios, the will of the voter would, on the outside, determine who is the senior and who the junior partner.

   (I have written on these topics in the past, but am uncertain where and how much.)

   ---

2. Then, the paradoxical main effect of votes on AfD, which are largely rooted in a justified rejection of Leftist, quasi-Leftist, “German RINO”, whatnot, government, is that these rejected groups are kept in power, and, for the umpteenth time, anti-democratic, unethical, and unholy alliances follow. Note, especially, that the removal of these 20% of the vote, in combination with the strong German aversion to minority government, makes unholy alliances the more common, because the 50% mark must now be exceeded from within the remaining 80% of the vote (and it grows even worse, when seats are counted, due to that 5% bar).

   This is the more unfortunate, because the COVID-countermeasure era showed more-or-less worldwide how important it is to keep the Left out of power—many who might have been able to plausibly claim ignorance before it, can certainly not do so today. Ditto to keep out parties who favor big government, take civil rights lightly, etc., even if not outright Leftist. The success of AfD made exactly that possible, had (in particular) CDU/CSU taken its responsibility. Instead, again, we have the paradox that this success keeps the Left (etc.) in power.

   A truly wasted opportunity. Worse, a truly wasted series of opportunities.

3. A further paradox is that the fact that AfD is kept out of government might have made it stronger and made various problems worse. The voters certainly see the anti-democratic choices of the established parties and become more dissatisfied as a result. If we say, for the sake of argument, that AfD is a “bad” party, it would have been far better to include it (not SPD) in government when it was smaller, so that this growing dissatisfaction that feeds AfD would have been kept in check.

4. While no political system is without its problems, the separation of elections of executive and legislative used in the U.S. system increasingly seems superior to both the German and the (very similar) Swedish systems. (Even without considering the separation of powers, checks-and-balances, whatnot, that is much more thought through in the U.S. system.)

   Indeed, over the last few German elections, even a U.K.-style first-past-the-post system seems a better alternative.

   ---

   Side-note:

   However, if a somewhat U.S.-style system is instituted, additional measures to avoid an effectively two-party system might be needed.

   Note that I do not necessarily extend the first-past-the-post claim to more general situations than those of the last few elections—especially, again, with an eye at the risk for a two-party system. A hitch is that the vote-distribution of the last few elections would have been less likely to arise with a first-past-the-post system, which would have made the benefit of applying a first-past-the-post count lesser than with the results as they actually were.

   ---

The 2024 (!) German elections: Update and a few words on AfD vs. BSW (2025-02-24)

On my 2024 “various and sundry” page, I wrote about three state-level parliamentary elections, but never got around to a final update—largely, because the process of forming governments was so lengthy.

To give that update:

1. Sachsen/Saxony:

   CDU was the largest party (measured by number of seats achieved), narrowly followed by AfD. Together, they would have held an overwhelming majority of the seats, each being slightly larger than the remaining parties put together.

   Instead of doing the right thing, from both a political and a democratic view, by pursuing such a coalition, CDU chose to begin negotiations with the Social-Democrat SPD and the far Left BSW.

   Ultimately, a minority coalition CDU–SPD resulted. This despite the fundamental incompatibility between CDU, when sticking to its ostensible values and politics, and SPD; despite SPD only reaching a quarter (!) of the seats that AfD did; and despite this unnecessarily resulting in a weak government.

   ---

   Side-note:

   A common argument by German politicians in favor of a coalition government, even between natural enemies, is that it would result in a strong government. Indeed, earlier today, I found that CDU/CSU is using exactly this motivation to start negotiations with SPD on the federal level, pointing ever more strongly to the predicted CDU/CSU–SPD coalition. (Cf. an earlier entry + addendum.)

   This is a flawed reasoning (outside exceptional circumstances, e.g. wars), because a strong government that implements the wrong policies is worse than a weak government; however, by the politicians’ own, typical, reasoning, a CDU–AfD government would have been better than a CDU–SPD one on that count alone.

   ---

2. Thüringen/Thuringia:

   AfD was, by some distance, the largest party, followed by CDU. Together, they would have have held an overwhelming majority.

   Instead, yada, yada, a minority coalition CDU–SPD–BSW resulted—and one additionally in close consultation with the far Left Die Linke.

3. Brandenburg:

   AfD was, like in Saxony, the second largest party, but now narrowly behind SPD.

   Unlike in the previous cases, no non-Leftist majority was doable, and a SPD–BSW coalition resulted. This matches a seeming pattern that CDU is very open to include SPD in its governments, but that SPD prefers to look to the rest of the Left and far Left for support. (But I caution that this is a subjective impression—I have not kept statistics on the matter. The CDU preference of SPD over specifically AfD, however, is indisputable.)

(I draw on German Wikipedia, in addition to and in verification/correction of my own memory. Note respectively: Landtagswahl in Sachsen 2024^w:de, Landtagswahl in Thüringen 2024^w:de, Landtagswahl in Brandenburg 2024^w:de.)

In all three cases, note that AfD was considerably larger than BSW and, by reasonable standards, a lesser evil. Nevertheless, BSW partnered in two out three governments; AfD in none.

A particular complication is that much of the official condemnation of AfD is based on migration-critical stances. BSW, however, has a similar take, which makes the preference of BSW look very hypocritical. Likewise, a portion of the official condemnation is for alleged influence of neo-Nazis on AfD. However, these neo-Nazis have no continuity to the NSDAP, while BSW (and die Linke) have a continuity with SED—and, if in doubt, a continuity over a much shorter time frame. To boot, the influence of the SED on the BSW is stronger (likely, far stronger) than any neo-Nazi influence on AfD—the name-giving Sahra Wagenknecht, e.g., joined the SED during the DDR-era and was a member of the successor organizations until just a few years ago. (BSW=Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht/Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht.) Then we have the slight issue that actual political positions, policies, etc. matter more than who has what influence—the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

In reality, I suspect, the problems are to a large part that (a) AfD is critical of the political establishment in a different manner than the far Left parties (cf. similar issues around Trump in the U.S.) and (b) CDU/CSU has lost a great many voters to AfD, which it tried to combat by echoing Leftist hate propaganda until the point that it could no longer back down. (While AfD is an unavoidable target for the Left’s often outright Fascist “anti-Fascism” and its hateful condemnation of anything even tangentially, indeed, even by imagination, related to Nazism/Fascism, and no matter what greater evil might have to be swallowed instead. As always: Fascist is as Fascist does.)

The 2025 German elections: Losses for the rainbow coalition / FDP and karmic payback (2025-02-24)

The still current government, the “rainbow coalition” of SPD, GRÜNE, and FDP, saw losses throughout, with 9.3, 3.1, respectively, 7.1 percentage points lost.

This coalition only arose through (again) the absurd aversion of the non-Left to AfD relative greater evils on the Left. A particular disappointment is that FDP joined the Social-Democrats, as it, under the same party leader, Christian Lindner, had taken a strong stance against such bartering as late as the election before that (2017).

In this coalition, FDP did not achieve very much, and the party dropped from one of its highest proportions of the vote in 2021 to outright missing parliamentary representation in 2025. (The effective drop in “votes that count”, cf. an earlier entry, is then not just 7.1 but 11.4 percentage points.) Karmic payback?

The 2025 German elections: Leftist extremism (2025-02-24)

While media keep harping about AfD and “Rightwing extremism”, they are absurdly forgiving of the far more troublesome Leftwing extremism that plagues Germany. At the same time, the claims by e.g. Trump that this election would be a “Rightwing” triumph are very dubious. (If in doubt, cf. an earlier entry, because a coalition government including the Social-Democrats seems likely.)

In particular, the far-Left Die Linke (the party formerly known as SED) gained 8.8% (!!!) of the overall vote. In other words, almost every 11th voter went for this atrocity. A further (just shy of) 5% went for BSW, an off-shot of Die Linke, which appears to equally qualify as far Left. (Reservation: I have yet to familiarize myself with the party program of this newcomer.) In sum, this is more than every 8th (!!!) voter.

The Social-Democrat SPD took every 6th voter, despite an outdated Leftist worldview and politics, and its very poor performance as the “senior partner” in the (still current) government elected last time around, including an economy that fails to grow and regain the ground lost during the COVID-countermeasure era. A particular sign of its anti-individualistic, nanny-ing, and generally deplorable worldview is how it (represented by health minister Lauterbach) pushed for mandatory and population wide COVID-vaccinations at a time when COVID had mostly blown over, it was clear that vaccines did little good outside risk groups, and there were legitimate concerns about vaccine side-effects.

The we have GRÜNE with more than every 9th vote: While its focus on “green” issues makes it hard to classify entirely on the outdated and misleading Left–Right scale, it goes mostly Leftwards, often very strongly so, on non-green issues. (The classification problems are similar, but not identical, to those around AfD.) At least portions of it might be best viewed as far Left, not just Left. It is certainly highly problematic through the large issues with environmental fanaticism and a lack of though and insight. Tellingly, its decades long, fanatical, hatred of and fight against nuclear power has almost certainly made GRÜNE harmful to the environment in the net, through prolonging and intensifying the use of fossil fuels in a manner well above what is actually called for.

In sum, well over 40% of the vote went to Leftwing parties (and, to boot, at least partially Marxist parties) that no-one sane, rational, intelligent, and well-informed should ever vote for—and almost 14% to far-Left parties.

Moreover, while the support for the Left diminished from the previous election, the support for the far Left increased, and the drop in support for the simultaneously non-AfD and non-Left parties dropped by almost as much as the support for the (overall) Left. (A drop that, notably, saw the disappearance of FDP from the Bundestag, leaving CDU/CSU the sole representative.)

The 2025 German elections: The troublesome 5% bar (2025-02-24)

As can be seen, a very great portion of the vote was lost, with approximately one vote in seven not counting. This is a result of the use of a comparatively high “barrier to entry”, at 5% of the vote, with a great multitude of parties—and something particularly unfortunate as some “traditional” Bundestags-parties (notably, FDP) sometimes are above, sometimes below this limit, which makes a vote for them very hazardous and harms their chances.

While some barrier might be needed, 5% simply seems to high. My native Sweden, e.g., has one at 4%, while having fewer parties (and the fewer parties, the higher a bar is justifiable). It might even make sense to simply allow every party in that would gain a seat according to the allocation procedure used (sans bar). The number of parties would not be prohibitively large, especially as the influence of any given party that barely makes it in would usually be quite small.

A particular problem is that the bar favors the large and established parties, which reduces the political competition and cements the “we, the politicians” thinking so common in Germany. Here, the hitch is that it is ultimately the large and established parties that decide what the bar should be.

The 2025 German elections: Likely government (2025-02-24)

Germany has a weird obsession with majority governments—it is seen as a virtual disaster, should the respective governing alliance not have more than 50% of the seats. (And it is extraordinarily rare that a single party breaches 50%, implying that coalitions are par for the course.)

As the CDU/CSU group is the clearly largest one, with 208 seats, it is the most natural core (“majority partner”) in the next government; however, the mathematical means to exceed 50% of the seats are poor.

The most natural way would have been a coalition with AfD—and the one most closely matching the will of the people. However, under the weight of Leftist propaganda and a German obsession with “Right”-this-and-that as evil incarnate, this is unlikely to happen.

The next best mathematical way, would be yet another anti-democratic, unholy, voter betraying, and grossly unethical CDU/CSU alliance with the Social-Democrat SPD. This, I fear, will be the actual outcome.

Depending on the exact outcomes, there is some small possibility that a CDU/CSU and GRÜNE (“greens”) alliance could work. While this would be slightly better, it would not be good.

Otherwise, a coalition involving more than one “junior partner” would be needed and then, likely, involve Die Linke (in addition to GRÜNE), not only far Left but a re-branding of SED—the East-German dictator party.

On the upside, there is no way for the Left or far Left to form a majority government without including either of CDU/CSU and AfD. The former would bring us back to CDU/CSU as senior partner; the latter is exceedingly unlikely to happen.

It could, however, be that a rare minority government is attempted, because of the strength of AfD. If so, Left and far Left might be given preference. (CDU/CSU is the largest party, which would normally give it precedence, but it falls well short of having 50% of even the non-AfD seats.)

The 2025 German elections: Raw results (2025-02-24)

The preliminary results are:

While the results are preliminary, the, likely, only potential and non-trivial change that might take place is that BSW could move beyond the 5%-mark and gain representation.

I use German Wikipedia^w:de (oldid=253620985) as the source, reduced to the fields and parties of interest to me. Party labels are as in the source. I have added a separate entry for the joint CDU/CSU totals.

In addition to the above, a single seat went to SSW, a local party in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, directed at the large Danish minority in the area. It gained access through special rules for local success, has minimal national relevance, and will not be discussed in the continuation (unless something unexpected gives it greater relevance).

Note that BSW is a new contender and that deltas should be seen against an implicit 0 for not participating, as opposed to an explicit 0 for not having gained any votes.

Note that percentages are of the vote, note the seats, and that a very large proportion of the vote was “lost”. (Something that I will address in a later entry.)

While I have not looked into the details of seat allocation, changes that lead to a smaller Bundestag (at a fix 630 seats) have been made, which explains e.g. why CSU gained in percentage of vote but lost a seat and why the sum of all parties lost seats.

Preliminary note on the 2025 German elections (2025-02-23)

Today, we have elections to the German federal parliament (Bundestag)—a topic that I have not given due space, as time has flown by so fast and I have failed to do some writings that I had intended to do. This includes open letters to some non-Leftist parties, encouraging them to abstain from any and all anti-democratic cooperation with Leftist parties, to (should they gain power) take DOGE-style measures against government bloat and civil-service overreach, to work to clear up the malfunctioning and disastrously over-expensive social security systems of various types, to remove obstacles to free markets (including the hampering of free competition caused by the likes of the IHKs), and similar. (I might or might not do something similar after the fact—but so much to do and so little time.)

While it is too early in the day to know what the outcome will be, I fear that the result will be yet another anti-democratic coalition government that keeps a Leftist party in partial power, because the non-Leftist parties refuse to cooperate with AfD (a lesser evil than the Social-Democrats, let alone “Die Linke” and BSW; the more the shame, as AfD and the nominally conservative CDU are at or close to a simple majority, should they cooperate).

With neither a coalition with AfD nor a Leftist party, CDU might miss government entirely, in favor of a Left and far Left coalition between the Social-Democrats, the “Greens”, and the two SED successors (“Die Linke” and BSW). These would likely fall well short of 50%, even jointly, but would likely be larger than any coalition of non-Leftist parties that excludes AfD.

Of course, even if some non-Leftist coalition wins (with or without AfD), it would be headed by CDU, with a great risk of yet another tepid, Merkel-style, German-RINO government. (Merkel, herself, is gone, but there has been no truly convincing signs of the very drastic changes in course that are needed. Some course changes, yes; sufficiently drastic such, no—not even close.)

A particular source of uncertainty is the German 5%-limit for parliamentary representation. Several smaller parties might land above or below this limit, and which do or do not could strongly affect the ultimately balance.

Attacks against free speech and lack of context (2025-02-21)

A particular issue with some types attacks against free speech (whether malicious or well-meaning-but-misguided) is that they take place with too little context.

Consider the German issues discussed in an entry from 2025-02-19. One point in the news reporting was that something as trivial as a re-post of someone else’s content could make someone vulnerable to “hate speech” accusations—but what, e.g., if the re-posting was made for purposes like giving an overview of public opinions on a particular topic and was one of several representing different camps? Clearly, context is needed. (And, at the same time, we have to factor in both the risk of a malicious prosecutor/whatnot who deliberately suppresses such context and of an incompetent one who simply fails to include what objectively must be included.) Or take that “racist caricature”: What if, again, a caricature was posted to show the takes of others without taking sides? What if the alleged racism was merely caricature (note that caricatures typically work by exaggerating physical characteristics)? How can a caricature, at all, be racist? Etc.

Or consider my own writings: I have a published word count far exceeding that of the Bible. Now assume that someone malicious, or someone who does not understand the importance of context, cherry picks individual quotes. Certainly, enough could be found to paint an extremely distorting picture. Indeed, in some cases, even the overall page text surrounding a particular sentence might not be enough, e.g. because an important disclaimer has been put on another page and merely linked. A particularly important point when it comes to topics like racism/sexism/whatnot is whether someone does or does not understand individual variation. I am intensely aware of it, but large parts of the Left seems to have an enormous blind spot here (be it because they, themselves, fail to understand its importance or because they fail to understand that their opponents understand the importance). Indeed, I take individual variation for so granted that I might simply have failed to include a disclaimer about it in a context where some malicious interpreter, or one who does not understand individual variation, could begin to shriek about “Sexism!!!”, “Stereotyping!!!”, or “Prejudice!!!”. (More, the main reason that I include disclaimers about individual variation is my fear that exactly such abuse would follow if I do not. Else, they would usually be redundant, because anyone with a brain should understand, even without such disclaimers, that a claim like “men are taller than women” does not imply that each and every individual man is taller than each and every individual woman.)

Or consider such simple traps as use of irony or humor, which could very well look like a statement to be taken at face value without the appropriate context. (The more so in writing.) Indeed, here the overall opinions of the speaker or his intended audience might be needed for a correct interpretation. For instance, someone on the Left might well speak of the “great philosopher Marx” and intend it as a laudatory claim about Karl Marx, while I could conceivably use it about Karl with an ironic intent or, more likely, to jokingly refer to Groucho. For that matter, I once jokingly referred to Helmut Kohl, a tall 300-pounder, as “Germany’s greatest statesman” (or some such) in a private conversation—and was taken at face value, because the joke about his physical size was not understood.

Failing to hold the line vs. charging (2025-02-20)

Image two countries, A and B, with a shared border and a long border conflict. Whenever A has the superior military power, it promises to stand fast and to not let B infringe further upon its territory—but with not one word on reconquering previously lost territory. As time goes by, B still infringes further, moving some border markers here, erecting a small village there, whatnot—and is, again and again, met with “OK, you can have that. But not one step further!”, while no true counter action is ever taken. In the end, A sees the border pushed back by a few hundred yards per year.

A few years go by and the military tables turn, B now has the superior military power—and proceeds with a policy of “CHARGE!!!”, pushing the border back by a full mile a year.

A few more years go by and the military tables turn again, and A promises to stand fast—lather, rinse, repeat.

This well describes how I experience politics in many countries, where the Left charges at any opportunity, pushing the country at hand further and further Leftwards, while the non-Left fails to charge, nominally satisfied with merely keeping a border where it is and, in reality, failing to do even that. This even during long periods of rule, as with the wasted years of the German Merkel-era and the equally wasted years of the U.K. Cameron-through-Sunak era.

Only on very rare occasions does the non-Left truly take a stand resp. truly counter-charge, as with Reagan, Thatcher, and, right now, Trump. These occasions seem to follow when the Leftist mismanagement has reached a point of being unbearable, as with the economically disastrous situations of the late 1970s and the woke horrors and the destruction of civil rights of today, instead of being the state of normalcy that they should be.

The German Censors ... idiots (2025-02-19)

At some point, I published an old joke by Heinrich Heine, to which I intended to include a link in the previous entry. Unfortunately, I could not find the point of publication and, instead, re-post it here. (Quoting a version from English Wikipedia^w

A very interesting question is whether the German laws are so idiotic, or, indeed, the German censors such idiots, that this literary quote is actionable. If so, it would be proof that the situation has grown intolerable and unconscionable, incompatible with basic civil rights and a functioning democracy.

German censorship and anti-democracy mentality (2025-02-19)

Even as someone living in Germany (and having some knowledge of the deplorable German attitudes towards free speech), I am very disturbed by the recent reporting around a CBS ride-along with German law enforcement in fighting alleged “hate speech” on the Internet. (Cf. e.g. a German ([1])^e and an English^e language source; note that I have not seen the actual TV broadcast.)

Not only is the general attitude troublesome, but the reactions are utterly out of proportion: If it is a crime to make a certain type of posting on the Internet, then that crime is perfectly visible, documented, and prosecutable based on the posting it self. Nevertheless, the reaction of law enforcement is to perform extremely dubious searches of private homes and confiscating devices—both actions that are out of proportion and with too low a possible connection, while being potentially massively damaging to the victims (something which is, apparently, acknowledged by the interviewed investigators).

Here, there are very strong reasons to believe in a hidden agenda. Two obvious candidates are (a) to deliberately create a “chilling effect” for the purpose of reducing the “risk” of even legal, but disapproved-of-by-the-government, speech, and (b) to gain access to data for purposes like investigating others who might have been in private communication with the victim (without, themselves, having posted anything on the Internet) and finding evidence of other crimes (be they related to alleged “hate” or of a different nature).

This is the more troubling through the apparently extremely low threshold. For instance, [1] gives examples like having posted a “racist caricature” (“rassistische Karikatur”)—but what is considered racist by Leftist activists is often detached from reality. (And while media often claims that this or that is “racist”, they only rare give concrete and specific examples. Also note that what is considered “hate” is often equally detached from reality.) To boot, such criteria introduce extreme subjectiveness. To boot, such criteria can get in the way of normally-considered-legitimate humor. To boot, such criteria could make caricatures of a type published for hundreds of years, including in mainstream papers, illegal. (Consider the common depiction of Obama with big ears that could very easily be construed as “Obama is a monkey!”, with a follow-up of “Any depiction of Blacks as monkeys is a hate crime! Racism! Racism! Racism!”.)

It is also the more troubling in light of the overly restrictive and highly problematic German defamation laws (another apparent trigger of interest for the investigators): In Germany, it might be easier to get away with theft than with calling a thief “thief”—and certainly easier to get away with being an idiot than calling an idiot “idiot”. Here note the particular problem that Germany (as virtually everywhere else) has a massive problem with politicians who lack in competence, honesty, insight, a willingness to serve the people, whatnot. What if no-one dare call these politicians out, because the police might show up at 6 A.M. turn the house upside down, and abscond with valuable and urgently needed electronic equipment?

A slightly puzzling issue is that the “crackdown” filmed was supposedly directly mainly at anti-Semitism, which is a mostly Leftwing phenomenon, while actions like these are usually directed at the “Right”—which in German defamatory political propaganda is more-or-less equated with nationalism and racism, as opposed to Conservatism and Libertarianism. (But such defamation has, to the best of my knowledge, never been prosecuted.) I have not looked into the details, but I would not rule out that this is yet another attempt to push exactly such anti-Right defamation.

An extremely troubling point is how a quote “Meinungsfreiheit hat auch ihre Grenzen” is given: Freedom of opinion [sic!!!] also has its limits.

The hell it does! There might or might not be limits on what speech is allowed in a democratic country—but never, ever on what opinions we are “allowed” to hold. Never, ever!

If this attitude reflects the speaker’s approach to his work, as opposed to an ignorant or sloppy formulation, he should be immediately removed from any position that deals even tangentially with related issues. (The attribution in the text is unclear. I suspect that one Matthäus Fink is intended as the speaker, but cannot say this with certainty.) Indeed, even if the claim is a result of ignorance or sloppiness, great doubts must be raised as to whether someone like that can conscionably be employed in a position relating to censorship, free speech, whatnot. (But, sadly, I cannot rule out that this paragraph will be found defamatory and lead to legal attacks on me.)

Lawfare or not (2025-02-18)

An interesting question is to what degree the current judicial moves against Trump should be considered lawfare or a more legitimate exercise of legal options. To a large part, this will depend on the detailed motivations of the parties that choose to involve the judiciary. Consider questions like whether someone makes a complaint because he genuinely believes that the complaint is justified or whether he is pushing ahead in bad faith and the hope that he will meet a sufficiently sympathetic judge (here, also note the issue of “court shopping”). At an extreme, someone could go to court in the near-knowledge that he will ultimately lose, but with the hope that the court proceedings will cause sufficient additional delays to further his cause, that much manpower that Trump et al. could use better will be wasted in court, etc.

In light of the many cases of clear bad faith behind previous per-/prosecution, and much executive-internal resistance against “Trump 45” in bad faith, I have little doubt that much happens in bad faith now too; however, it does not follow that each and every action is in bad faith and legal tests must be allowed. Something like an altered jus soli/sanguinis approach is certainly something that ultimately should be tested by the SCOTUS.

A particular family of potential bad faith revolves around DOGE, where complaints are raised that Musk (or his co-workers) would make decisions in a manner that would require a senate-confirmed appointment per the “Appointments Clause” (which has not taken place)—while it appears that Musk only makes recommendations that are or are not implemented on the say of Trump in a perfectly kosher manner.

An interesting difference to the last time around is that much of the hindrances that were raised within the executive and legislative branches now has moved to the judicial branch, which is a good sign that Trump is winning the battle. Certainly, he has a much stronger internal GOP support; certainly, he has a better understanding of how recalcitrant, self-serving, and/or activist civil servants can cause problems.

On the downside, even delays-by-court can prove very costly, in that Trump’s window to act is limited to four years, that there is no guarantee that his successor (even if Republican) will continue to rein in excessive, poor, and/or Left-pushing government, and that Trump can be additionally hampered, should the 2026 mid-elections not be favorable. (To the last, note that it is quite common for the party holding the presidency to lose ground in the mid-elections.)

Some points around VAT (2025-02-16)

In addition to some points mentioned in an earlier entry, Trump seems to push an angle of “VAT is as bad as tariffs and deserves the same treatment” with regard to his reciprocal tariffs. This is only partially correct, however:

On the one hand, VAT does artificially increase prices for the buyers and it does artificially give the government of the importing country a fat profit at the cost of both the businesses involved and the exporting country—very much like tariffs.

On the other hand, tariffs only hit imports, while VAT hits local products equally, which implies that the distortion of competition is far smaller. (At least two reservations: VAT is often not uniform over all products and such non-uniformity can have a distorting effect at least on a trade-balance and international-competition level. Local producers that rely heavily on imports for e.g. raw materials and components can be hit similarly by tariffs as their foreign competitors.)

However, VAT is problematic and if reciprocal tariffs were to bring its abolishment, I would be very happy. (But also very surprised.) Consider, in particular, how it perfidiously hides the amount of tax paid from naive tax-payers in a manner that income tax does not, the (at least in Germany) disproportionate administrative efforts for businesses, and the way that it distorts the natural price/supply/demand configuration of various markets and the misallocations and whatnots that can follow.

A particular complication is that VAT is nominally a Value Added Tax, making it reasonable that the tax should be imposed where the value is added. (Given that it is imposed at all—I certainly do not argue that VAT, as such, would be reasonable.) In reality, at least in its modern application, it is a tax on the consumer by his country of residence and (to some approximation) the country where he earns his money. It is then not truly a tax on the value added through the efforts of various producers—but a second income tax. (This with some exceptions, notably, when someone earns money in another country than his country of residence.)

German Left–Right distortions / upcoming elections (2025-02-09)

With the approaching German parliamentary elections, the videotext of ARD seems to untiringly report demonstrations “against the Right” (“gegen rechts”).

Here two problems on different levels manifest:

Firstly, if we look at the actual respective text behind the headline, the demonstrations are not actually against the “Right” but against (alleged!) “Rightwing extremism” (“Rechtsextremismus”). This is symptomatic for how mainstream media, including the very strongly Leftist-dominated public broadcasters, try to blur the critical difference between “Right” and “extreme Right”—something the more problematic as the alleged “extreme Right” usually has far more in common with the Left, let alone extreme Left, than with the rest of the “Right”. (See e.g. a text on political scales for more on this.)

Secondly, Germany actually has a massive problem with the extreme Left. Not only are direct descendants of the DDR-ruling SED in governmental power in several states, but the ruling SPD follows and suggests policies that belong (following Reagan) on the ash heap of history. Indeed, in the combination between SPD and the “German-RINO” rule of Merkel, Germany has taken a number steps backwards during my 27 years here, including severe damage to the economy, to civic rights, and to energy production, similar to those pushed by the late Biden regime, while nothing has been done to resolve long-standing and systematic problems in the extended Leftist family, like the anti-competitive influence of mega-guilds (IHKs, etc.) and the poorly functioning and cripplingly expensive social-security systems.

A particularly interesting thought is what would happen if these headlines (and/or the underlying texts and/or the nominal claims of the demonstrators) were to be more drastically reformulated. What, e.g., if a move not just from “Right” to “Rightwing extremism” was made, but to e.g. “xenophobia” (without that spurious “Right” in any shape), or the focus was shifted from the “against what” to the “by whom”, e.g. in that we had headlines speaking of demonstrations by the “far Left”, “Leftist populists”, or whatever might apply.

Of course, the excuse for protests against the “Right” is often the defamatory claim that being “Rightwing” would be a matter of e.g. xenophobe/racist sentiments, while the events after October 7 have shown, again, that anti-Semitism comes predominantly from the Left—and while matters like more general xenophobe/racist sentiments have nothing to do with Left and Right. Likewise, a common defamatory claim is that there would be issues with “Rightwing” violence, while political violence, as is usually the case, is a predominantly Leftwing issue.

Looking specifically at AfD, a common target of such protests, it is notable that AfD has largely arisen as a protest movement against government excesses, the contempt for the citizens that German politicians continually demonstrate, repeated anti-democratic coalition governments that artificially let the Left into power, etc. Protests against AfD are, in their core, less a matter of any Left–Right or e.g. immigration issues—it is a matter of condemning dissent from the political narratives of “big government” and Leftwing parties. Large portions of the people object to the disaster that is German politicians/politics—and the result is a political campaign against those portions. (Again, similar to the situation in the U.S. during the COVID-countermeasure era and the Biden regime.)

In contrast, democratically minded politicians would have changed their course and distanced themselves from past errors. Sadly, Germany does not have an equivalent to Trump who stands a realistic chance of turning matters around. Should the nominally Conservative parties win, chances are that politics will be more “German-RINO” than Trump—again.

Personally, I have long contemplated leaving this increasingly far Leftist disgrace for some other country, and should a Leftist victory in the elections manifest, I might see the final straw. (The sadder, as I originally, partly, moved to Germany to escape the Swedish Leftism.) The problem is where to go. Countries like the U.S. and Italy are currently heading in a better direction, but that could change very quickly again. Based on language and proximity, the U.K. might have been an option, but the U.K. has disastrous Leftist problems of its own right now. Etc.

Achieving something vs. doing something (2025-02-08)

An unmentioned sub-issue in the previous entry is that politicians are often keener on being seen as doing something than on actually achieving something.

This is a topic worthy of deeper treatment at some later date. For now, I merely point to:

Firstly, how spending X million on some presumed worthy cause might appear more tangible than setting up a set of goals and striving to reach these goals. If in doubt (barring impoundment...), spending X million is usually easier than reaching goals. (“We spent X million on [cause]! Yay us! Vote for us again!”)

Secondly, once goals are reached (which they rarely are, in politics) the proponents of the cause at hand either have to shift the goal posts or abandon the cause. In contrast, spending X million can be done again and again and again—if in doubt, the failure to achieve actual change from spending X million can be a good excuse to spend even more money the next year. (Provided that voters are sufficiently easily manipulated.)

Law of the land? Rule of law? (2025-02-08)

Recently, there have been several protests by Leftists against Trump and various Trump nominees for defying the law of the land, not respecting the rule of law, or similar—in a manner that makes even freedom of opinion impossible. (And which is extraordinarily hypocritical, considering much of what went on during under Biden and still goes on in, say, California.) Note e.g. Russ Vought, his doubts about the constitutionality of the “Impoundment Control Act”, and the supposition that this would disqualify him from the intended position as director of the “Office of Management and Budget”.

Firstly, there is a difference between holding a particular opinion and acting upon that opinion. I admit, that many Leftists, themselves, have great problems in this regard, with that common the-end-justifies-the-means mentality, which makes any act justifiable that furthers a particular opinion or a goal related to that opinion. Even inside the Left, however, this is not a given, and the extrapolation of this attitude to the non-Left is not admissible without further proof. What matters is not whether someone, e.g., considers a law constitutional but how he will actually approach matters relating to that law.

Secondly, laws are subject to scrutiny and the mere opinion that a law is constitutional does not make it so. When it comes to personal opinion, not even the SCOTUS can limit what is acceptable—and, indeed, the SCOTUS has reversed it self on quite a few occasions and on quite a few important matters. Even in a more practical application, it is vital that those who, in good faith, consider a law unconstitutional can work towards having that law stricken, be it through a legislative change or through a ruling by the SCOTUS. To then argue that “Congress says” or “a lower court says” is not helpful (except to the degree that a particular act would unlawfully go against a ruling in a lower court, which is a matter for the courts to handle—not Congress).

Looking specifically at the Impoundment Control Act, the portion of it under dispute is horrifyingly stupid—that the Executive is not allowed to not spend all the money Congress has appropriated for a given task, even should that task have been satisfactorily solved with a lesser use of money. (Also note the previous entry and issues around waste of money.) Worse, it seems reasonable to suppose that the true Leftist interest in the act is to maintain or grow government further, which is in direct opposition to the best interests of the people, and might well thwart portions of the agenda that Trump was elected to implement. Certainly, the act is very problematic from a division-of-powers point of view, and I would (as a layman) not be surprised to see the SCOTUS favor the Trump camp on this issue.

In a next step: If the Impoundment Control Act is not set aside in a manner that causes further court proceedings, how is the matter ever to reach the SCOTUS? Chances are that it never would and that, therefore, the opinions of lower courts or, worse, Congress would have the same practical effect as that of the SCOTUS—an absurdity.

USAID, UNRWA, and abuse of tax-payers’ money (2025-02-08)

While governments are very keen on abusing their power to e.g. rob Peter to buy the votes of Paul or to implement some agenda that is to the disadvantage of Peter and/or that Peter disapproves of, there are some particularly problematic issues illustrated by e.g. recent reports around USAID and Trump’s intervention against it.

Any government spending abroad, to the (real or claimed) advantage of foreigners, etc., must be viewed with great scepticism: A typical Western country (the U.S. most certainly included) has a massive problem with too high taxes, too much spending, and too high debt—how, then, can spending on other countries, on foreigners in those countries, whatnot, be justified?

Examples can likely be found, e.g. when a certain spending is an investment with an expected payout exceeding the investment to a sufficient degree, but how often is this actually the case?

Worse, charity projects have a long history of not even achieving what they set out to achieve but to fatten various pockets of politicians, civil servants, and whatnots along the way. Why then should the government cut out individual choice, individual judgment on costs, benefits, and risk, and other matters better handled by the individual, in favor of government spending of tax-payers’ money?

Worse yet, much of the USAID spending appears to have had no (even spurious) objective justification whatever—instead, it has been a matter of abusing tax-payers’ money to push Leftist or far Leftist agendas on a global level. In what world should the tax-payers have to accept such abuse?

More generally, anyone who is entrusted with someone else’s money has a fiduciary duty, be it a legal or an ethical one. Spending that does not fall within a sufficiently narrow frame or is not expected to be sufficiently in the interest of that someone else, is simply not conscionable. With governments, this is the more, not the less, important, because governments give the tax-payers very little choice—to the point that the “entrusted” is an on-paper claim by the governments that hardly matches the views of clear-thinking tax-payers.

At the same time, this propaganda spending parallels an internal problem in many or most countries, that Peter’s money is used for the purpose of telling Peter what he should believe, how he should behave, what he may or may not say, or, even, how he should vote—and very, very often to the outright disadvantage of Peter. (To tie in with the above, this can include direct or indirect pro-tax propaganda, that the government uses tax-payers’ money on attempts to persuade the tax-payers that they should enjoy paying taxes.) Such an abuse of money is not only grossly unethical but also risks a perpetuation of certain beliefs (even when flawed) and certain regimes.

Looking further at recent news, we have the UNRWA, which has (at least, partially) been captured by Islamist and anti-Israel/-Jew interests—to the point that some employees were involved with the atrocities of October 7. The UN, in general, certainly has a long history of anti-Israel positions. However, if a government gives money to either of the two (or any other specific UN organization or any of a great number of other organizations), there is no guarantee what the uses will be. Even a government that is opposed to, say, anti-Semitism might then find it self supporting it monetarily. The Biblical Peter, of course, was a Jew and a great number of metaphorical Peters will be so today. We then have Peter being robbed to further his enemies. (With similar remarks applying to other groups of Peters and other abuses.)

Then we have the issue of interference with foreign countries: Even the Democrats have been known to complain about foreign interference in U.S. domestic matters—but how is the abuses of USAID any different?

Ranked-choice voting vs. voter-ID (2025-02-06)

A recurring theme around U.S. elections are Democrat manipulations in order to achieve Democrat victories by “extra-democratic” means. Two of the main complaints from the Republicans include too lax voter-ID laws and ranked-choice voting.

These two cases are radically different, however, in that there is no automatic (and obvious-to-me) mechanism by which ranked-choice voting would favor the Democrats. There has been a few cases (notably, in Alaska) where the Democrats have had a leg up through this approach, but the issue seems less to be a systematic advantage and more that the Republicans had not adapted to the approach. (In reverse, consider e.g. the 1992 POTUS election and the possibility that Bush would have beaten Clinton, if sufficiently many Perot votes had counted to his advantage in a ranked-choice system—something which would have favored the Republicans.)

In contrast, weaker voter-ID laws make it easier for those ineligible to vote to still vote, for one voter to vote twice by taking the place of someone else, and similar, and (at least in the current political landscape) this favors the Democrats in a systematic manner through the demographics of ineligible voters, the repeated attempts by Democrats to cheat, etc. (With the reverse applying to stronger voter-ID laws.)

From another point of view, strong voter-ID laws are beneficial in their own right, and regardless of what party is affected how, because they ensure that voter eligibility (etc.) is respected. If someone, for instance, wants to extend the right to vote to non-citizens, the way to do so is to suggest a change of law, have that law put to a parliamentary vote (or put to the vote of the people), etc.—not to ignore existing law by making the law unenforceable. (Potentially, with modifications, but following the same principle, if and when a change of the constitution of this-and-that is needed.)

This, while ranked-choice voting has a mixture of advantages and disadvantages, which can lead to better or worse results, depending on issues like exact implementation, voter awareness of how to handle it, whether all parties have adapted to it, and, of course, the exact constellation of votes in the election at hand.

DEI and its consequences (2025-02-01)

The 2025-01-29 “Potomac River mid-air collision” (using Wikipedia’s naming) gives another example of how important it is to see claims in their right context (cf. the previous entry):

The issue of whether DEI contributed to the crash has been raised. Superficially, it might seem that DEI might be relevant if some of the immediately involved decision makers (pilots, air-traffic controllers, and others that might have directly contributed) were hired/promoted based on sex, race, ethnicity, whatnot.

However, a bigger issue is whether DEI measures might have contributed to problems like understaffing. Notably, I have seen several claims that exactly that had happened with air-traffic controllers, that an artificial lack of air controllers had been caused by a failure to hire “non-diverse” applicants with the right qualifications even with positions remaining open (as opposed to merely preferring to hire “diverse” applicants while still filling all positions).

Now, I do not vouch for these claims being true (I have not done the legwork), but they do show the right type of thinking needed, that one has to look beyond the immediate and “obvious” potential connections and consider the many less immediate and less obvious connections that can exist. Similarly, what if some other profession has a problem with filling empty positions or filling positions with competent applicants because the “non-diverse” are reluctant to even apply, e.g. because they foresee lesser chances of being hired or a worse career (if they are hired) than they could have somewhere else?

Even looking at decision makers, it is not enough to look at the immediately involved. What, e.g., if (!) the apparent pre-mature absence of an air-traffic controller went back to a poor decision by a manager who was promoted for DEI reasons? (I have no knowledge that points to this and merely use the situation for illustration of possibilities to consider.)

In reverse, however, we also have to consider that apparent signs of DEI need not be so. For instance, it appears that the helicopter was flown by a woman. However, it would be wrong to conclude that a woman would automatically be a DEI case. It could be that she had gone through the exact steps that a man would have gone through, qualified in the same manner, etc., and either did not contribute to the collision or contributed in a manner that could equally have happened to a man with the same background and qualifications.

Trump’s trade tariffs (2025-02-01)

It appears that various trade tariffs and/or tariff increases take effect around now. While these have been met with great scepticism from various observers (and while I am, myself, a proponent of free trade), they must be evaluated in light of three usually overlooked or ignored points:

1. At least some tariffs (and/or the threat of them) are not intended mainly as a source of income or as a trade intervention. Instead, they serve as means of exerting pressure to achieve a change in unwanted behavior: Play ball or be hit by tariffs.

   (Where it is important that the respective country at hand will be worse hit by tariffs than the U.S., because it is more dependent on trade with the U.S. than the U.S. is on trade with it.)

   Now, if the other country does play ball, there will be no tariffs and none of the damage that the tariffs could do would come into being.

   ---

   Addendum:

   (2025-02-04)

   While it is too early to tell what the end results will be, it is notable that the tariffs towards both Mexico and Canada have been postponed, exactly because the two decided to “play ball” when it came to issues around border control.

   ---

2. Criticism is often raised based on the silent assumption that everyone else would engage in free trade, and that the U.S. would deviate considerably from international norms. In reality, a great many other countries interfere with free trade, be it through tariffs, export subsidies, unfair competition, whatnot—and much of the U.S. tariffs is simply intended to create a balance, to reduce the risk that some other country gains an unfair advantage at the cost of the U.S., to give other countries incentives to lower tariffs (“play ball”), etc.

3. Other sources of government income bring harm too. If we look e.g. at Trump’s suggestion to replace income tax with tariffs, any harm done by tariffs has to be viewed in light of the benefits that can ensue from lowering income tax. For instance, if a tariff makes some products more expensive in the stores, having more left of a paycheck will give more money to use for purchases. (Which is not necessarily to say that the net effect would be neutral or positive—just that both sides of the equation must be considered in sufficient depth and with an eye at a fair overall evaluation.)

   Whether gains from tariffs will be sufficient to replace (as opposed to lower) the income tax in today’s world, seems dubious, but Trump definitely has a point about the historical situation (look e.g. at “The Federalist Papers” or seminal texts on Economics from a similar time period). Moreover, an ethical argument can be made, in that income tax can be seen as a more intrusive measure that violates the rights of the citizens to a higher degree, interferes more with “pursuit of happiness”, etc.

Old and new speculation around Biden et al. (2025-01-26)

Before and during the Biden presidency, I had some speculations (some published; some not) about why so poor a candidate as Biden had been picked to run for POTUS. These speculations often seem less plausible looking back.

Most notably, I suspected that Biden and Harris would prove a backdoor to somehow smuggle Hillary into the presidency: her primary failure against Obama and election failure against Trump did not make her seem likely to ever get there without some type of artificial help. At the same time, she seemed to be obsessed with the idea of being the first female POTUS (pre-Obama: the first POTUS not to be a White man) and the Clintons still have a great amount of influence within the Democrat party. So, wait a bit, get Hillary into the line of succession (likely, by replacing the hopeless Harris as veep in an Agnew–Ford manner), and then give Biden the boot over his weakened mental faculties (Nixon–Ford).

The failure of this scenario to manifest is not conclusive evidence against it, as it might e.g. be that the lie that Biden was mentality fit proved too painful to reverse or that Hillary had insufficient support to force the switch. However, the likeliest explanation is that this switch was, after all, never the Democrat plan.

Of course, a similar switch did ultimately take place (and did prove extremely painful), in that Biden was re-nominated in the 2024 primaries and then booted in favor of Harris, who would have been extraordinarily unlikely to gain the nomination on her own. (Witness her fiasco in 2020, her poor performance in office and with media, and repeatedly reported problems between her and her staff.) However, on the balance, this seems to have been nothing more than an attempt to avoid the looming loss of Biden in the election (as opposed to a way to get a first female or Black female POTUS).

Sadly, the Democrats did not have the honesty to admit that Biden’s detractors had been correct for some four years. (Unless they believed their own propaganda: a recurring problem with the Left is that it is so very hard to tell when someone on the Left deliberately lies and when he merely repeats someone else’s lie in good faith.) Instead, they behaved as if his mental issues had been “sudden onset” and as if any similarity with the detractors’ complaints was pure coincidence.

The fact that Biden did remain in office, even after withdrawing his renewed candidacy, is a slight oddity. Again, I can only speculate, but I can at least imagine that there was some trade-off, that if Biden withdrew the candidacy, no-one would invoke the 25th amendment to boot him.

In a next step of speculation, the original choice of Harris could have made sense from Biden’s (or his team’s) point of view, in that she was so weak a replacement that it reduced the risk of a booting.

As for Biden’s health, I do not know what, more specifically, is wrong with him, but it is not uncommon that sufferers of similar problems have “good days” and “bad days”, or “good” and “bad” portions of days. This is important to bear in mind whenever someone loudly protests that ‘I met Biden! He was perfectly lucent! Defamation!!! Defamation!!! Defamation!!!” (even apart from the possibility that some such protesters lie). The point is not whether he was lucent at some given time but whether and how often he might not be lucent, what the implications that has on his decision making, on who really is in charge, on how large the risk is that he is not lucent when a crisis occurs, etc.

What new or newly stated speculation is correct, on that I can only speculate.

Limitations on pardons (2025-01-21)

In light of recent events, it might be a good idea to consider limits on the ability of the POTUS to issue pardons, commutations, and whatnots. (For the most part, I will just use variations of “pardon” below, without a restriction in meaning. Note that the institution of such limits would presumably require a constitutional amendment. Similar limits, unless already present, might make sense on the gubernatorial level.)

Exactly what those limits would be is a tricky question, as there might be unforeseen consequences, as a limit might open loopholes for lawfare, or similar—and I will not attempt to answer the question beyond some speculation.

It might, for instance, be sensible to require pardons to be “narrowly tailored”, in that they are limited to certain specific sentences and/or the specific events from which these arose, or, on the outside, certain types of crimes. For instance, the blanket pardon over a ten-year period given to Hunter Biden was pretty much the opposite of what should have been done. Even assuming that a pardon was to be given at all, it should have enumerated exactly what sentences, on-going trials, crimes under investigation, whatnot were to be included. Moreover, if the motivation was indeed a perceived-by-Joe-Biden political persecution, that enumeration should have been limited to alleged crimes that actually saw a potential of prosecution for political reasons, and would then not include cases where someone else would be equally likely to be prosecuted and where sufficient and sufficiently legitimate evidence was present.

Likewise, it might make sense to limit pardons to alleged crimes of which the POTUS has sufficient knowledge, be it through court proceedings, news reporting, “personal knowledge”, whatnot. What if someone receives a wide and vaguely formulated pardon to remove punishment for a lesser crime and this pardon inadvertently protects against punishment for a hitherto unknown greater crime? What if something believed to be e.g. a negligent killing, post-pardon, turns out to have been deliberate murder? Etc.

Likewise, it might make sense to limit pardons to sufficiently individual cases. For instance, Biden seem to have commuted death sentences in a near-blanket manner and with an eye much more at the punishment than the crime, the circumstances of the crime, the person convicted, a suspicion of innocence, whatnot. While I do not know what his motivations were, a POTUS who uses his pardoning power because he opposes the death penalty would certainly be conceivable. (In such a case, the executive branch would not just interfere with the judicial branch but also with the legislative.) Even with Trump’s pardon of the J6 victims some care is called for: Here, it is a matter of a common greater event, the prosecution was largely politically motivated, and punishments were often out of proportion. This while those sentenced to death shared a punishment, were typically not victims of politically motivated prosecution, and were typically punished in a reasonable manner based on the law. (I say “typically”, because I have not looked into the details and cannot rule out individual exceptions.)

Even so, the behavior of the various J6 victims varied wildly and a too blanket pardon risks freeing someone who did deserve punishment or whose excessive punishment would have been better commuted than fully pardoned. (But it could be argued that the sum of time served, legal costs, “pain and suffering”, reputational damage, whatnot, will already have reached the level of “excessive punishment” throughout, making a reasonable commutation almost equivalent to a full pardon.) Correspondingly, some degree of individual differentiation is strongly to recommend. (I am not aware of to what degree such a differentiation took place, but, going by the news, the pardons were issued with at least some discrimination.)

Inauguration day (2025-01-20)

The Biden-to-Trump switch is a great occasion, something very much needed for both the U.S. and the world, and something that I in 2020 might have seen as an almost impossible development.

However, Biden has continued his last-minute-agenda of pushing poor decisions that prevent or complicate much of the good that could follow. For instance, today, I learn that he has given pre-emptive pardons to Fauci and members of the lawfaring J6 committee. (Whether Birx, likely, a greater evildoer than Fauci, was included was not mentioned. See some earlier entries for some few other examples.) Further pardons were extended to members of the Biden family, with the hypocritical motivation that Biden would fear lawfare against them—while the Biden regime has pushed lawfare against others in a manner that is unprecedented in at least modern U.S. history.

These pre-emptive pardons reduce the probability that a proper investigation of the respective misdeeds takes place, they unfairly remove perpetrators from their punishments (should these ultimately have been found guilty in an alternate reality without flawed pardons; note that not all evil deeds are illegal and that matters of proof has thwarted the punishment of a great many criminals), and they give strong incentives for future abuse of government power, e.g. in that the next Democrat POTUS could bring another slate of extremist lawfare because the perpetrators rely on a presidential pardon to protect them from consequences. Indeed, the pardons of members of the J6 committee are additionally extraordinarily tasteless and outright absurd, because the members wilfully engaged in per- and prosecution of others in an abusive manner, while they, themselves, are now exempt from (at least, criminal and federal) prosecution for their acts.

Trump, in turn, is off to a good start, so far, but seems to be rattling of the executive orders that were already known to be in the pipeline. To analyze them might require weeks, so I will limit myself to one positive surprise (to me) and a negative known that mirrors it:

Mount McKinley is restored to its traditional name, which removes a politically motivated renaming, reduces confusion, and gives hope that various other such renamings will ultimately be undone. (Note, in particular, the many cases of variations of “We cannot have an X building!!! X fought on the wrong side in the civil war!!! Racism!!! Racism!!! Racism!!!”.)

It also reduces the risk of future misdevelopments, where an increasing political pressure might lead to similar issues as with pronouns and someone who has the audacity to say “Mount McKinley” (maybe, because that is the name that he once learned in school and had ever again seen for several decades) might find himself in court for an alleged hate crime.

However, then we have the “Gulf of America” thing. While the motivations are less nefarious than with many woke renamings, it can cause similar problems and it also brings a severe international issue: While Mount McKinley is a part of the U.S., the Gulf of Mexico/America is only partially so, and we might now have issues like the U.S. speaking of “Gulf of America” and other English-speaking countries of “Gulf of Mexico”—and while those countries that use other languages (including Mexico...) are likely to continue with the use of the respective old name, which often amounts to exactly “Gulf of Mexico”.

In a bigger picture, a potential future threat is that consecutive presidents use pardons, executive orders, and whatnots, to simply negate the acts of the respective predecessor. What, e.g., if the next Democrat decides that Mount McKinley must be re-re-renamed to match a Leftist preference?

Biden, Trump, foreign policy, and good riddance (2025-01-16)

As noted in the past, one of the severe flaws of the Biden regime was its failures in foreign policy, including how Trump left the situation around Israel in its best state since decades and Biden allowed it to degenerate to its lowest point since at least the 1970s.

Trump threatened “hell to pay”, unless Hamas had fallen in line before inauguration day (and the beginning of his second term). At virtually the last moment before inauguration day, Hamas fell in line. Indeed, factoring in the weekend, and the respective Jewish, Christian, and Muslim versions/equivalents of the Sabbath, giving it even another two days would have pushed the deadline to its limits. (Inauguration day falls on a Monday, this time.)

An interesting contrast between Trump and Biden can be found in the traditional U.S. ideal of speaking softly while carrying a big stick. Biden spoke softly, while carrying, at best, a little stick. Trump speaks loudly, and has not yet been put in a position to truly use his stick, which remains of unknown size. (No penis-metaphors intended.)

A disturbing point is how Biden tries to take credit, despite the low likelihood of a connection. Not only is the synchronicity between cease fire (hostage freeing, etc.) and inauguration day striking, but:

Firstly, Biden has had some fifteen months to achieve something. He has failed to do so.

Secondly, the involvement of the coming Trump administration has not been limited to bluster and threats. It has also involved diplomatic and behind-the-scenes-efforts (one Steve Witkoff appears to have been particularly important, going by recent news).

This applies even should the eventual resolution largely match suggestions by the Biden regime (as I have heard claimed but have not verified): Anyone can make suggestions—getting the other party or parties to accept them is the trick. This gives a good segue to the topic of Hamas, Israel, and who was the roadblock:

Leftist/Hamas/Iranian/whatnot propaganda continued its anti-Israel spin with claims that Israel would be the roadblock, while all signs that I saw pointed to the Hamas (and/or Iran, depending on how much say the Iranian regime had at any given time). The current caving of Hamas, with this timing, is yet another strong sign that Hamas (and/or Iran) was the problem.

As an aside, Biden has closed out his presidency with further poor or odd decisions than those mentioned in earlier entries, which casts a further negative light on him. For instance, in another dubious foreign policy decision, he has removed Cuba’s status as a state sponsoring terrorism and loosened sanctions. (Because a soft attitude worked so well with Iran...) For instance, he has added further student-loan forgiveness that punishes those who paid their debts, gives poor incentives to future students, costs the tax-payers more money, and risks a further cementing of overly high tuition fees and a borrow-to-study and/or the-government-will-eventually-pay-for-me-so-I-can-just-borrow mentality, which (as with e.g. ObamaCare) not only fails to address the underlying problem—but makes that problem worse. (While we can discuss what is or is not a reasonable tuition fee, there is no doubt that the poorly implemented U.S. system of student aid and loans has artificially pushed fees up and done more to pipeline tax-payers’ money to colleges than to relieve the economic situation of students.)

Good riddance to the worst POTUS of my lifetime. (To date. I sincerely hope that no later comer will exceed him.)

The Soros paradox (2025-01-10)

An interesting point around George Soros, who recently, in a mockery of more worthy recipients, received the U.S. “Presidential Medal of Freedom” (briefly mentioned in an earlier entry):

On the one hand, he has become one of the world’s most famous and destructive Leftist activists.

On the other, I first heard of him in a context where the Swedish Left condemned him as living proof of how evil capitalism and capitalists are: In the early 1990s, he engaged in extensive short-selling of various currencies (including the Swedish Krona), leading to chaos, devaluations, great losses of taxpayer’s money, and whatnot.

California fires and the dangers of Leftism (2025-01-09)

While the ongoing fires, themselves, are a dire problem, it seems that this problem is made worse by government mismanagement in both the immediate now and the accumulation of previous years, including artificial restrictions on the water supply.

This while California has a very high tax pressure and both a very big and very nanny government. Now, where did all that money go? Leftist and far Leftist projects that do the citizens little good and certainly are of no help with fighting or preventing fires.

In this, the situation is typical for Leftism/Socialism/whatnot: The government does virtually everything except fulfill its core obligations—and, to boot, what it does do, it usually does very poorly. Almost always, it does worse than markets, private enterprises, the citizens’ own choices, whatnot, would have done (what applies depends on the case at hand). Often, it does more harm than good even relative complete non-action.

A particularly sad aspect is that many residents appear to have had fires (or specifically wildfires?) removed from their insurance coverage beginning in 2024. While I have not looked into the details of this, it also appears that the reason is governmental limits on charges, that insurers are not allowed to charge enough to (in their estimate) make the policies profitable enough to justify the risk from fires (which are unusually common in California). If so, this is yet another demonstration of the problems that occur when market forces are sabotaged and businesses are seen as charities to be run for the “common good” instead of as businesses. (See several older discussions for more on the general issue, e.g. [1].)

As Reagan observed (with reservations for exact phrasing): The scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help!”.

Will Californians learn their lesson and throw the Left out of power? I doubt it.

Will the responsible politicians take that responsibility? I would be outright shocked, if they did. More likely, they will ignore all subtopics except the causes of the fires, which will be called “!!!Global warming!!!” in a blanket manner and without a shred of proof. Worse, chances are that the fires will be used as an excuse for even more government intervention.

Biden wraps it up / J6 / etc. (2025-01-08)

Recently, we have seen several events relating to Joe Biden, the Biden–Trump transition, “legacies”, and similar.

To look at some of them:

1. Biden seems set on wrapping up his term in a manner that reflects how disastrous that term was, including very controversial commutations of death penalties into life-in-jail and prestigious awards to some of the most undeserving candidates imaginable, including Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. In all three cases, the awards seem intended to reward pro-Left, pro-Biden, and/or anti-Trump work rather than politically neutral accomplishments. (And neither of Liz Cheney and Hillary Clinton has actually accomplished much, as the two have mostly had this-or-that handed to them for being the daughter resp. wife of a far more successful man. Soros, in turn, has certainly been a force of evil in the world.)

   To boot, going by my cursory readings of today, Biden has tried to cement his poor energy policies before Trump can reverse them and extended the freedom from accountability for COVID-vaccine producers to 2029—just when there were signs that accountability would finally improve.

2. The confirmation of Trump as election winner followed on January 6th, but not without various repetitions of long-debunked lies from various Leftist commentators, including patently false claims like that Trump would have instigated a deadly insurrection on the same day in 2020.

3. In the thematic overlap, we have the paradox that the Left tries to raise Biden to the skies while pointing to Trump as a second Hitler. In reality, Biden is closer to that mark than Trump and the Biden-era might go down as the worst four years in post-WWII U.S. history—and largely because of the Biden regime, its complete botching of the COVID-situation, how civil rights were trampled, the economy needlessly destroyed, etc.; through the political per- and prosecution of non-Leftists, including great restrictions on freedom of speech and extensive lawfare; the disastrously misimplemented Afghanistan withdrawal and other foreign policy failures; and, related, the deterioration of the “war and peace” situation of the world.

   ---

   Side-note:

   More accurately, “four years aligned with consecutive inauguration days” or some very similar alignment. It might, e.g., be that even shifting the four years at hand by a few months would give a slightly worse result, because the last two months have been somewhat in the sign of “Trump 2.0”, while the corresponding months four years ago were dragged down by the ongoing COVID-failures (which, of course, began under Trump—no matter how much worse Biden made them).

   As to “might go down”, I note that there were quite a few bad years in the 1960s and 1970s, with issues like the Vietnam war and the various oil crises. A fair comparison would require much work and might involve apples vs. oranges. (A particular complication is how the increase in living standards over time should factor in. On the one hand, the living standard in 2025 is, on average, far higher than in e.g. 1965; on the other, this is a societal development that tells us little about e.g. the accomplishments of any given president. In the end, it might be necessary to speak of “worst four years” with regard to some specific criterion or set of criteria, with potentially different results for different choices.) From another point of view, the current four years might be the worst peace time years since the 1930s.

   ---

Pro-X vs. anti-Y (2025-01-04)

As a spin-off of the previous entry:

Just like being pro-business is not the same as being anti-worker, there are many false combinations of “pro-X; ergo, anti-Y”, “pro-X; ergo, pro-Z”, etc., be it through sloppy thinking or through Leftist propaganda. (Including some others implied by that entry, e.g. a false equivalence between being pro-business and pro-“big business”.) These can cause great harm and I suggest correspondingly great caution against jumping to conclusions.

For instance, many on the Left (maybe, specifically with the far Left and/or in the overlap between the Left and Muslims/Arabs) seem to believe that someone who is pro-Jew or pro-Israel would automatically be anti-Palestinian or that someone who is pro-Palestinian should draw the “right” conclusions and also be anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, or, even, anti-Jew.

For instance, someone who criticizes immigration policy as too lax or unpragmatic, or who opposes specifically illegal immigration, might soon be slapped with a label of “anti-immigration” (in general) or “anti-immigrant” by the Left.

For instance, and this might be the paramount example, even very justified rejection of Leftist activism, excesses, and whatnot around certain groups is denounced as a rejection of or hostility against the groups or their members—and this even when the activism is not in the interest of the groups and even when the activists lack the support of very many in those groups. This has been taken to a comical conclusion with recent “trans” controversies, where Feminists and trans-activist try to shout each other down with mutual accusations of being “hateful”, “oppressive”, or whatever is the word du jour—and, of course, of being “anti-woman” resp. “anti-trans”.

For instance, to take something less political, many seem to equate being pro-education with being pro-school. I, however, am both pro-education and anti-school. While the earlier examples are likely explained by a mixture of deliberate distortions for propaganda purposes and fanatical blindness, this one might go back to more fundamental misunderstandings. In particular, there seems to be very, very many who believe that schooling and education are the same thing. Further, very, very many seem to believe that school is a good way to gain an education. In reality, both beliefs are misconceptions, to the point that school can be more of a hindrance than a help in gaining an education.

More generalized cases exist. For instance, the BLM-era saw the absurdity that slogans like “all lives matter” were condemned as e.g. racist or were taken to imply that “Black lives do not matter”—as if being pro-human would imply being anti-Black, even though Blacks are humans too. This is the more absurd, as “all lives matter” was an objective improvement over the original “Black lives matter” and the related problems among some adherents, who seemed to wish for a genuine special treatment of Blacks and/or pushed a false narrative of a societal disregard for specifically Black lives that simply was/is not borne out by statistics. (Similar issues apply to e.g. claims about “systemic racism”—they are not borne out by statistics.)

A related problem is the many who think in terms of e.g. “either you are with us or against us”, who mistakenly see an incomplete enumeration of options as complete, whatnot. To assume that all non-negative numbers are positive or all non-positive numbers negative is a mistake—0 is non-negative and non-positive at the same time.

Another related problem is various types of “guilt by association” and premature conclusions based on irrelevant similarities or irrelevant overlap in various preferences. (The worse when pushed deliberately.) At an extreme, my school class was once told by visiting anti-rock propagandists that the band Kiss consisted of Nazis. Sole proof? The styling of the “ss” part of the name.

Being pro-business (2025-01-04)

In my previous entry, I mentioned that “the Democrats are usually viewed as the ‘big business’ party, these days”. This gives a pointer to the topic of what it means to be pro-business, pro-“big business”, and whatnot.

In particular, the traditional Leftist propaganda in many countries that this-or-that non-Leftist party (e.g. the U.S. Republicans or the Swedish Moderaterna) would be pro-“big business”, anti-worker, driven by ruthlessness and a wish for personal profit, whatnot, is typically horrendously wrong. (Even by the standards of Leftist propaganda.)

A complete analysis would take many pages, but consider some important points in brevity:

1. Members of these parties, on the contrary, are often driven by idealism and the good of everyone including a wish to protect the rights of the individual to do as he sees fit with his own time, money, and resources, a wish to ensure that neither individuals nor businesses are reduced to sources of income for the government, and a wish for more economic growth to create the resources necessary for a flowering society. Much of this overlaps strongly with the three, arguably, most basic humans rights—life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

   (With “often”, note that there might be a variation both between parties and individual members of any given party. Broadly speaking, however, those that match the Leftist claims are a small or very small minority, in my experience.)

   This while the Leftist accusers often have non-idealistic motives, such as (politicians) the ability to rob Peter to buy the votes of Paul and (voters) being Paul.

2. It is usually the Left that favors concentration of business endeavors in big corporations (witness e.g. Sweden and the Social-Democrats for large parts of the 20th century), and it is usually Leftist policies that lead to the type of gigantic government contracts that favor “big business” so over businesses in general and over the tax-payers, who have to foot the bill for the contracts. (The previous entry can give some idea of why such a concentration might be favored by the Left.)

   ---

   Side-note:

   While the idea of “big business” is hard to separate from big corporations, favoring big corporations and favoring “big business” is not entirely the same thing.

   ---

   The non-Left, on the other hand, rarely has such preferences and, instead, favors entrepreneurship, self-employment, small and medium businesses, whatnot, for reasons like overall prosperity and “pursuit of happiness”. Yes, a tax break for all businesses implies a tax break for the behemoths—but the true purpose is not necessarily there and, unlikely the Left, the non-Left is unlikely to discriminate on factors like size. (And in as far as the behemoths have a part in the purpose, it is in the form of “lower taxes result in more growth, more employment, more whatnot”—not “More money for the rich!!!”. (Apart from cases like when a politician falls to lobbyists, which is an issue largely divorced from political alignment.)

3. There is a world of difference between being anti-worker and being anti-union. The parties at hand tend to be anti-union, yes, but not anti-worker. (The idea might do more to reveal the “us vs. them” thinking of and/or Marxist influence on the Left than anything else.) Even anti-union positions are usually fueled by the misbehavior and excesses of unions, artificial obstacles to growth, and similar—not the type of hate that some portions of the Left show towards businesses. (See a dedicated page on unions for some details.)

   Likewise, being pro-business and anti-union (let alone anti-worker) is not the same thing.

A particular big-picture issue is “political philosophy” and pro-/anti-takes on questions like free markets. For instance, being in favor of free markets does not automatically imply being in favor of “big business” or big corporations. Often, it is the other way around, because a focus on big corporations can reduce competition and, therefore, the benefits of free markets.

Poor policies and pro-Left effects (2025-01-04)

With the switch of year, a few U.S. states have seen renewed hikes to (often) already very high minimum wages, hitting already weakened businesses in fields like food service.

As with many political decisions, these hikes have negative side-effects and, to boot, negative side-effects that often can give the political Left a paradoxical boost—effectively rewarding it for doing damage.

For instance, it is usually primarily small businesses that fail in situations like these, because they have smaller margins, a lesser ability to find work-arounds, whatnot. Likewise, the implied barriers to entry will be worse for those with little money and their eyes set on, say, opening a small café than those about to open a chain, backed by millions in funding. In the long term, all other factors equal, there will then be fewer small-business owners, a loss of small-business culture and entrepreneurship, a larger portion of the population moved into employment instead of self-employment, etc. In a next step, we will then have fewer voters who have an understanding of business issues, see the employers’ side of the equation, understand based on their own situation how harmful Leftist policies can be, etc. (Notwithstanding a temporary boost of dissatisfaction-with-the-Left through the immediate blow.) We will also have many stuck in employment who either were formerly self-employed or, in a non-hike alternate reality, would have moved into self-employment—and many of these might believe (whether correctly or incorrectly) that they can gain from various political interventions into the employer–employee relationship, including, in another paradox, higher minimum wages. Likewise, the proportion of voters now positive to a strengthening of unions is likely to increase.

For instance, some already in employment will now be out of employment, while those out of employment (those with little or no prior experience in particular) will have greater problems finding employment. The result is more voters who (whether correctly or incorrectly) believe that they stand to benefit from strong “social safety-nets”, government-enforced redistribution of money from the one group to the other, and whatnot, which will be a boon to the Left.

Throwing a wider and much more speculative net, we might even have effects like a Leftist benefit through a larger market share for big corporations (which can be easier to control by political means that a myriad of small businesses; in specifically the U.S., the Democrats are usually viewed as the “big business” party, these days) or through voters spending more time at home and less e.g. eating out (the more isolated the voters, the more they might depend on the likes of MSNBC, the Washington Post, and Facebook for their worldview).

In contrast, it is not a side-effect that some in employment will now earn more because of a minimum-wage hike, which can also be good for the Left. On the contrary, this is the intended “core effect” of a hike, and likely the true main reason why Leftist politicians pushed for hikes to begin with—vote for us and we give you more money at the cost of someone else. (And, yes, here I do assume calculation, as the effect is so much more obvious than with the side-effects above. Idealism might well be present among many Leftist politicians too, but less so than among Leftist voters, the less so, the higher up, and even less so when we look at the likes of “political strategists”.)

Fiction and political schizophrenia (2025-01-02)

Part I / Fat Actor

With a long delay, I am catching up on the 22nd season of “Family Guy” (far from the erstwhile heights of the series), and am again struck by a seeming schizophrenia in many viewed-as-Leftist makers of TV and whatnot. Creator and leading man Seth MacFarlane has a long history of pushing Leftist nonsense (especially, on “The Orville”, which I stopped watching for that reason), has often had an almost direct message that Republicans (and/or some specific Republican, and/or Fox News, and/or whatnot) is evil, and failed to take a stand over the nonsensical un-casting of Mike Henry.

At the same time, when actual values, not labels and political fads, shine through, these often have more in common with the Republicans than the Democrats—something often seen in both “Leftist fiction” (for want of a better phrasing) and actual Leftists, who often seem to have a very poor grasp of who in politics actually believes and tries to achieve what. (As absurd as it might sound, there are those who vote Democrat to support e.g. free speech, which shows an abysmal ignorance.)

There have also been quite a few swipes at Leftist movements (but not or only far too rarely Leftist politicians). For instance, Brian is often depicted as a stereotypical virtue-signalling Democrat/pseudo-Liberal/“Progressive”/whatnot—and usually in a manner that pokes fun at him. For instance, the last episode that I watched, “Fat Actor”, centers on the casting of Brad Pitt to play the notorious-for-being-fat Chris Christie, Peter’s objections to the failure to cast a fat guy for the part, Brad Pitt taking lessons in being fat from Peter (who is fat on the Christie-level) and, ultimately, Peter actually playing the part. The movie flops, because Peter lacked something important—the ability to act. (For consistency with the terminology of the episode, I use “fat” to imply outright obesity.)

It is great shame that this episode came several years after the aforementioned un-casting. It is also a shame that the important theme, the problems with ideologically driven casting, ended up in an otherwise very weak episode.

I have often been left wondering whether this or that “creator” is actually a Republican or otherwise non-Leftist, who tries to balance a mixture of Leftist virtue signalling with “subliminal” non-Leftist messaging. (Judged by “Family Guy” alone, this could apply to MacFarlane, but the excesses of “The Orville” make the idea problematic.) Other than that, I do suspect that many simply are Leftist-by-ignorance, including ignorance of the facts of life/world/humanity/economics/whatnot and ignorance of who actually stands for what in politics.

Part II / Faith No More

After writing, I went back to watching—only to immediately land in a good illustration of various complications and contradictions with the episode “Faith No More” (the last of the season).

Brian goes out with a Christian woman, pretending, with his usual hypocrisy, to take a pro-Christian position in order to get her into bed. During the date, she and various Christians are depicted in a caricatured manner, and, after she takes a “no sex before marriage” position, Brian throws a fit and rants about the alleged evils of Christianity. (Including a spurious equalization of being Christian with being a Republican and/or Trump voter.)

He now uses Stewie’s time machine to go back in time for the specific purpose of preventing the rise of Christianity. He turns Jesus onto a career as a stand-up comedian (here and elsewhere, the episode plays strongly on Jewish, or specifically U.S. Jewish, stereotypes). After his return to the “now”, he finds a world filled with Jews, with yarmulkes galore, the aforementioned Jewish pharmacist suddenly speaking without a lisp and with a deep voice (allegedly, due to the absence of two millennia of persecution), etc.—and is ecstatic.

Ecstatic, that is, until he encounters the Sabbath, the command to turn off all electronic devices for the day, and to walk a few miles to temple. He turns around and sends Stewie back in time to stop Moses, too.

In the new world, free from all religion, he brags about how much better things are, with no arbitrary rules, restrictions, intolerance, whatnot—until God shows up and forces him to restore the original reality.

To just look at the naivety of what a world without Jews and Christians would be like:

Firstly, no Moses would not have implied no religion. (Even discounting that Moses actual existence is not a verified fact, that God, who definitely exists in the “Family Guy” universe, could easily have picked someone else to, say, lead the Jews out of Egypt, and that Abraham might have been a more suitable target than Moses.) On the contrary, humans tend to be religious; there are other religions outside the Judeo-Christian + Islam, with countless millions of followers, even today; and Christianity was only one of several religions that might have had a similar influence on the world in the Roman days—it just happened to be the one that came out on top. Certainly, there is no particular reason to believe that specifically the Jews would have taken over, had we had Moses but not Jesus. In other words, chances are over-whelming that we would simply have had other religions or (on the outside, cf. below) quasi-religions. (This with reservations for differences between the real world and the “Family Guy” universe.)

Secondly, in today’s U.S., the Left is a far greater source of restrictions of an arbitrary nature, intolerance and hate, unquestioning demands for compliance, whatnot, than is Christianity—while lacking many redeeming (no pun intended) features of Christianity. More, large portions of the Leftist ideology/-ies have a quasi-religious nature, both in that they fill a vacuum in those that need a religion but are not allowed to have one (because they have been told that everyone enlightened is an Atheist, that all religion is superstition, that only Republicans are religious, or similar) and in that they have a more-or-less religious nature in terms of strength of belief, resistance to evidence, imposition of “Thou shalt X!” and “Thou shalt not Y!”, etc.