The Great Escape

Wretchard:

As the northern hemisphere begins to emerge from the worst of the pandemic, political punditry is focusing on two issues: how to reopen the economy and how to decouple from China. The two subjects are related because a large part of the Western economy is joined at the hip with Beijing. To a substantial degree, China produces what America consumes. Each country's holdings in the other are enormous. They are bound by innumerable contracts, deals, projects and cross-posted personnel that are not easily severed.

This system of cross-dependency was consciously pursued to vaccinate the world against a repetition of the two world wars. However, globalization also significantly eroded the independence and freedom of action of individual nations, though not each to the same degree. It permitted asymmetries to arise between the more aggressive and secretive regimes at the expense of those which, perhaps naively, adhered more closely to the posted rules.

The Great Firewall of China, currency manipulation, the infiltration of network equipment, island grabbing in the South China Sea and technological espionage are examples of asymmetry which the great economic interests were willing to turn a blind eye to to preserve existing deals, though the populist uprising in the West served notice that things could not continue that way forever. When the coronavirus erupted in Wuhan in mid-December 2019 and Beijing misled the world to catastrophe, the model was no longer viable.

So what now?

Perhaps nothing will prove more difficult to salvage from the train wreck than individual rights, the fundamental building block of subsidiarity, which are being eroded at an unprecedented rate. The need to track the whereabouts of literally every citizen in the name of "contact tracing" the public means government will demand to know exactly where you've been and who you've ever met with. Scrupulous records will be kept on the public's biometric profile to make offices habitable again.

Or not. Death is preferable to the loss of liberty; and governments that insist on that deserve to be destroyed. George Washington fought his revolution during a smallpox epidemic. We don't have to accept the loss of freedom, as long as we are willing to accept the risk of death.

Stranger on the Shore

Some good un-fake news

Boris Johnson has been released from the hospital.

Easter Fake News

BB: “Roman Authorities Investigating Jesus For Violating Stay-In-Tomb Order.”

Happy Easter

A selection of verses.

Old number 236

Holy Saturday

Are there hymns for Holy Saturday? My experience has always been that no Mass is said, and so no hymns are sung. We have only secular comforts.

Well here is one of those. It's a mournful song, but the singing itself means something.



And here is Elvis -- I don't think I've ever posted an Elvis piece before, in spite of all the rockabilly I've put up over the years. It's secular, except for being addressed to the Lord; and you can imagine a similar objection being raised in the face of the crucifixion, by a man who would have preferred a different cup.

Good Friday

I don’t have any great words this year, but it is right to mark the occasion. Endure the fast, have faith that better things will come.

Go in Peace

A deliberate lack of subtlety, the analyst suggests; or perhaps a declaration of intent.

California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.

Speaking on MSNBC, Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California “as a nation-state” to acquire the hospital supplies that the federal government has failed to provide. If all goes according to plan, Newsom said, California might even “export some of those supplies to states in need.”

“Nation-state.” “Export.”

The analysis is entirely partisan as usual, but California going its own way is a perfectly acceptable solution.

UPDATE: The sound is different here.

What would we do without the press

 This would make a better press conference:

 

A Conservative Revolution

This is a good piece. Bdoran will be pleased that its constitutional critique goes beyond the Bill of Rights, and invoked especially Article I Section 8.

Encryption is Good

We should oppose this law, and any other attempt to force government backdoors into our encyrption.

By the way, if you don't already use Signal, it's a pretty good system. From what I can tell, it's as secure as anything is -- which is to say, not perfectly.

Better Watch Out

This report that people are 'panic buying' baby chickens reminds me of a story about my grandmother. This was my mother's mother.

One time there was a special deal on baby chicks, so that they could be had for a penny apiece. She bought a dollar's worth, that is a hundred baby chicks, on the assumption that many of them would die before attaining adulthood. As it happened, every single one of those chicks grew into full-grown adult chickens. As a consequence, she had to kill and pluck a hundred chickens that year.

That's the sort of thing that can happen if you don't watch out.

Masterful Storytelling

The brilliance of this cartoon is that you don't need to see the setup to understand the dynamic. No words are required, either. This was very well done.



I've been thinking about the old cartoons lately, and how well they were able to express things. This is a good example.

Return of the Hyborian Age

Holy Week

I guess I clean missed Palm Sunday this year. Truly, Lent seems to be going on longer than usual. Officially Easter is on Sunday.

Maybe we'll have a miracle. It happens, I've heard; maybe I've even seen one or two. Maybe more than one or two.

Breaking ranks

For a nice change of pace, one of the President's political opponents responds to him like a human being. Earlier I predicted that, if chloroquine proved effective, the press would switch instantly to complaining that President Trump didn't provide it quickly enough. It looks like we have an intermediate step to get through, which is to suspect that he's making money off of supplying it to needy people.

Since We're Doing Language Warnings Today....

...a cautionary tale from Twitter on the use of Zoom.

With appropriate music.

Liberties Lost to be Restored

We have much work to do.

Guns are Durable Goods

The British don't seem to grasp that.

Royal bodyguards responsible for keeping the outcast Prince Andrew and a number of other royals safe have had their guns swapped out for cheaper tasers, it has been reported.

The royal protection officers assigned to Princess Anne and Prince Edward have also allegedly lost their firearms as part of a drive to reduce protection costs for minor royals and politicians, the Sun reports.

So you're going to replace the firearm you already paid for with a taser you're buying new? It's not like you have to replace these things very often. Even with regular training fires they last a long time, and can be maintained at relatively low costs.

It's a false economy in another way, too: how much is the ransom for a kidnapped royal going to cost?