Linky Friday: Once More Unto The Breach Edition

As always, the opinions presented in Linky Friday are for discussion purposes, and are solely those of the individual authors.

[LF1] What’s in a Name? Attacking the language anti-woke critics use forestalls the real conversation by Oliver Traldi

The name-game effort is sort of counterproductive for the defenders of wokeness in several ways.

First, it allows a cottage industry to prosper on the other side, too. Everyone who comes up with a new name and frame for this thing, whatever it is we’re talking about, seems to blow up. They start making money off of books, media appearances, and even donations from fanatical supporters.

Second, it pushes back any effort for a systematic explanation and evaluation of what’s going on from the woke side. What is the woke academic theory of the relationship between Kimberlé Crenshaw and Robin DiAngelo? Is one a kind of bowdlerization of the other? Are they both effects of the same cause? Or is there no relation at all? Which parts of the things anti-woke writers inveigh against are good and which are bad?

For those defenders of wokeness who agree with people like me on a lot of individual cases of this stuff, what should be done? Should we ignore them because they don’t add up to a broader phenomenon? Should we pretend they’re good so that we don’t jeopardize important related goals?

There is a bigger point to be made about language control, too. Pro-woke writers are often seen defending the idea that definitions change naturally, or even that they should be changed artificially, as social mores change, and that invidious associations should not be read into technical terms like “whiteness.” But these principles go out the window when the various names of wokeness are put on the table. The whole theory of language changes: now it’s something top-down, something that should be left to the experts, the people who have “done the reading” and can lecture about it.

But why? Just as language can change to favor them, so it can change to disfavor them. Unless the woke theory of language is simply that linguistic changes are valid if and only if they aid woke political projects—an insane theory, but not far off from what I sometimes see advocated—they need to explain more.

Sometimes old friends text me a link to some tweet or article and ask me if I think it’s “peak woke.” I think we have passed peak woke in terms of elite opinion, psychological commitment, and interpersonal sanctimony, and it is on the downswing. But in terms of institutions, it is more or less at its peak. This puts its defenders in a rough position: They end up arguing for things they don’t really like. They should stop doing that and just tell us plainly where the distinctions ought to be drawn.

[LF2] The Madness of Naomi Wolf by Liza Featherstone for The New Republic

The other day, after Wolf was kicked off Twitter for promulgating anti-vaccine claptrap, I took my copy of The Beauty Myth off the bookshelf to remind myself why she mattered to us back in the day. It’s the U.K. edition, and the cover shows a black and white photo of a naked woman with an entirely bandaged face sitting pensively under an end table that precisely frames her body. The copy, it turned out, wasn’t even mine—it belongs to my oldest friend, Emily, and, thrillingly, was inscribed by the author: “To Emily, Love and Hope, Naomi Wolf.”

The Beauty Myth was the kind of book we talked up, borrowed, and never gave back. It made feminists out of many of my contemporaries and helped inspire the feminist Third Wave, which included the Lesbian Avengers, abortion rights organizing, Take Back the Night marches, “pro-sex” feminism, and much more. It’s still taught in high schools; several years ago, I overheard a group of New York City schoolgirls discussing it on the subway with passion and righteous indignation. I was moved and proud that the 1990s feminism of my own youth was still alive and raising the consciousness of today’s young women.

Yet it’s easy to understand why my friend Emily has not, in recent decades, demanded the return of her signed copy. With each subsequent decade, Wolf has injected a little more madness into the cesspool of weird that we sometimes call “the discourse.” In 2012, she wrote a silly book all about her vagina and not much else: Vagina: A New Biography. (The less said about it the better.) Her most recent book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, about the relationship between the repression of homosexuality and societal attitudes toward divorce and prostitution, came out in 2019; a central argument was based on a historical error so embarrassing that the publisher was forced to unpublish it. (Wolf misunderstood the term “death recorded” to mean that a convict had been executed, when in fact it means the person was pardoned or their sentence commuted.) Still, to fangirl is pleasurable, and for that reason I preferred not to examine my youthful icons too carefully. Remaining loyal to the Naomi Wolf of the early 1990s, I chose to ignore her present-day existence for years. That is, until her recent turn to anti-vax insanity.

Wolf has tweeted that she overheard an Apple employee (who had attended a “top secret demo”) describing vaccine technology that can enable time travel. She has posited that vaccinated people’s urine and feces should be separated in our sewage system until their contaminating effect on our drinking water has been studied. She fears that while pro-vaccine propaganda has emphasized the danger the unvaccinated pose to the vaccinated, we have overlooked how toxic the vaccinated might be. And as the journalist Eoin Higgins reports, she is headlining an anti-vaccination “Juneteenth” event this month in upstate New York. (Yes, the organizers chose that date to suggest that vaccines are slavery.)

Wolf’s views on vaccines led Twitter to ban her from the platform for peddling misinformation. I don’t think anyone should be banned from Twitter for this reason: What counts as “fake news” can be a matter on which reasonable people may disagree, and I’m sure Twitter’s view of the world doesn’t much resemble mine, either. Still, at least three or four people I love hold ludicrous beliefs about the Covid-19 vaccines, the result entirely of internet conspiracy-mongering. I don’t take the matter lightly. When a public intellectual declines this far, we need to ask: Was she always full of shit?

[LF3] Leveling Up Is Hard To Do by Diane Coyle in Diplomatic Courier

If this “superstar” clustering resumes as the pandemic fades, the momentum toward ever-increasing geographic inequality could become inexorable. We might then have to learn to live with large differences in economic outcomes and even life expectancy across the space of a few miles.

There is no shortage of policy ideas to halt or reverse this uneven trend. Infrastructure investment tops the list, and is needed anyway after decades of failure to maintain or enhance assets that are essential enablers of productivity and growth. But many infrastructure projects – some involving new bridges or expansion of broadband – have not had the hoped-for impact on the places they were intended to help. Such investments on their own will be insufficient. Economically disadvantaged areas need other kinds of public and private investment, including in skills, new technology adoption by businesses of all kinds, health, education, and other key social infrastructure.

But even this wish list of desirable policies will not be enough to trigger a virtuous cycle of growth in “left-behind” places in the absence of better coordination of government policies, public spending, and private investment decisions. An economy is like an orchestra: it will not perform if some sections – the woodwinds, say, or the strings – are missing. In unproductive areas, policymakers need to fix the economy’s entire underlying structure by lining up all its parts.

Policymakers must therefore break with the conventional pattern of clever analysts devising a strategy and handing it over to others to implement. Public-interest technology, sometimes referred to as “govtech,” demonstrates the integrated approach that will be needed. As recent books focusing on the United States and the UK make clear, digitizing public services to make them more efficient opens a path to redesigning the processes involved, rather than simply replacing paper with bytes.

The key change in perspective needed to deliver better outcomes more cheaply and efficiently is to design policies from the viewpoint of users and administrators, rather than that of the policy analyst. An abundance of evidence from the US and the UK shows that talking to the people involved reveals vital information. In many cases, the barriers to a government service’s uptake or success may lie in a completely different policy domain, whose analysts would otherwise never imagine that their contribution could be useful. For example, the lack of a bus service or after-school childcare may affect an unemployed person’s ability to take part in a training program. The powerful logic of designing a digital process uncovers the analog landscape through which people are forced to navigate.

[LF4] Major League Baseball is headed for a lockout. Is Ted Cruz the only one who can stop it? by Bill Shaikin for LA Times

In 2017, after his hometown Houston Astros won the World Series, Sen. Ted Cruz rode in the team’s parade. He posted a picture of himself alongside Astros shortstop Carlos Correa and the championship trophy.

And, when Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) ripped the Astros as “miserable cheaters” during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing last year, Cruz gallantly rode to their defense.

“The scurrilous lies about the Astros, I think, should be stricken from the record and forgotten by all,” Cruz said.

This is Dodgers territory, so we side with Sasse, but we respect Cruz for sticking up for his team.

Fans might not have the chance to support their team next year. The 2022 season is in jeopardy and Cruz could be the unlikely person to save it.

In April, after Georgia adopted laws that voting rights advocates say make it harder for people to vote, MLB moved the All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver.

“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

In response, Cruz and two other senators introduced a bill to revoke the league’s antitrust exemption.

“If Major League Baseball was going to allow itself to be politicized, there was no reason they should get special benefits nobody else gets,” Cruz said in an interview with The Times.

Since 1950, according to Indiana University professor Nathaniel Grow, Congress has held more than 60 hearings to debate the exemption, never repealing it. History suggests the exemption will stand, the All-Star game will be played in Denver, and Cruz will have accomplished nothing more than to throw a few verbal darts at the league.

If Cruz truly wants to take action to punish Manfred and the league’s owners, he can.

[LF5] Hunting Leaks, Trump Officials Focused on Democrats in Congress from The New York Times

As the Justice Department investigated who was behind leaks of classified information early in the Trump administration, it took a highly unusual step: Prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, aides and family members. One was a minor.

All told, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee were seized in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the panel’s top Democrat and now its chairman, according to committee officials and two other people briefed on the inquiry.

Prosecutors, under the beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, were hunting for the sources behind news media reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Ultimately, the data and other evidence did not tie the committee to the leaks, and investigators debated whether they had hit a dead end and some even discussed closing the inquiry.

But William P. Barr revived languishing leak investigations after he became attorney general a year later. He moved a trusted prosecutor from New Jersey with little relevant experience to the main Justice Department to work on the Schiff-related case and about a half-dozen others, according to three people with knowledge of his work who did not want to be identified discussing federal investigations.

The zeal in the Trump administration’s efforts to hunt leakers led to the extraordinary step of subpoenaing communications metadata from members of Congress — a nearly unheard-of move outside of corruption investigations. While Justice Department leak investigations are routine, current and former congressional officials familiar with the inquiry said they could not recall an instance in which the records of lawmakers had been seized as part of one.

Moreover, just as it did in investigating news organizations, the Justice Department secured a gag order on Apple that expired this year, according to a person familiar with the inquiry, so lawmakers did not know they were being investigated until Apple informed them last month.

Prosecutors also eventually secured subpoenas for reporters’ records to try to identify their confidential sources, a move that department policy allows only after all other avenues of inquiry are exhausted.

[LF6] America’s Biggest Rental Car Company Is Lobbying to Drive Away Competitors by Eric Boehm

Enterprise is the dominant player in the rental car market, and it has every incentive to restrict the operations of upstart competitors.

The first time New Hampshire State Rep. Sherman Packard (R–Rockingham) heard of the car-sharing startup Turo, it was from a lobbyist.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Packard says, has a “huge footprint in my community. So they called me up and said, ‘Hey, let’s be fair about this.'”

To the Enterprise lobbyists, being fair meant forcing Turo—which is basically Airbnb, but for your car—to pay a 9 percent tax, the same one the state charges on hotel rooms, meals, and other tourist expenses, including rental cars. (New Hampshire has no general sales tax.)

The appeal to fairness worked. In January, Packard introduced a bill in the state legislature that would tax and regulate businesses like Turo as if they were rental car companies. Enterprise and its lobbyists had won.

That may seem like a routine dispute between a state government and a disruptive new technology that doesn’t easily fit in existing boxes for tax and regulatory purposes. But Packard’s bill is just one small part of a national effort by traditional rental car companies to use their political clout against a newcomer that threatens the old business model.

It’s a fight that’s still happening mostly behind the scenes—at statehouses, in courthouses, and within airport authorities. But it could explode into the mainstream as the peer-to-peer rental model expands beyond Turo and its immediate competitors (see: Maven, Getaround). And at the center of the effort to stunt the competition is the same company that first reached out to Packard: Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Emails obtained by Reason via open records requests show how lobbyists for Enterprise helped shape public policy at a major airport near Washington, D.C., by calling upon existing relationships with airport officials, state lawmakers, and even Maryland’s Secretary of Transportation. The emails reveal both how thoroughly Enterprise and its lobbyists are connected in local politics and how aggressively the rental giant has sought to use its accumulated political muscle to crush an upstart.

Turo’s fight with Enterprise has been most visible in San Francisco, where the company has battled the city—and, by proxy, traditional rental car companies—over airport fees.

Those fees constitute 11.5 percent of the annual operating budget at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), according to a lawsuit filed against Turo last year by the city. For several years, Turo held a permit to operate as an “off-airport” rental car company, which required the payment of an $18 fee for every rental contract executed and a 10 percent tax on all rentals. A Turo user who shared her car for $500 and exchanged the keys at SFO would have to pay the airport $68. By comparison, Uber and Lyft pay a mere $3.80 fee for every drop-off or pick-up.

The permit also mandated that Turo users, like all on- and off-airport rental car services, only do business at the airport’s rental car center, which requires travelers to leave the main terminal and take a free light rail train. The cost of the train is covered by the rental car fees.

[LF7] Kamala Harris is in a really tough spot by Raul Reyes at CNN

It is a shame that Harris’ comments overshadowed the point of her trip, which was to examine the root causes of unauthorized Central American migration to the US.

She needs to be better prepared to discuss migration, and to sell President Joe Biden’s policies to the American public. And this will be no easy task, given that the GOP — and by extension, conservative media outlets — often rely on simplistic views of a complex situation.

There’s no denying that Harris was wrong to tell Central Americans not to come here. By law, asylum-seekers are required to be present in the US when they make their case. This is as true now as it was when Donald Trump was president. So advising people simply to stay home is brushing aside what could be legitimate fears of persecution in their own countries.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Harris’ remarks, saying “This is disappointing to see… the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing.”

Similarly, when Harris warned about how perilous the trip north is, she was stating the obvious — at least for people in Central America.

They do not need to be told of the dangers involved in trekking to the border; the risks are well-known throughout the region. People undertake the trip out of fear and desperation.

In the future, instead of falling back on the message of “don’t come,” Harris would be well advised to remind her global audience that asylum is a legal right. It is a right subject to final adjudication by US immigration authorities, and it is complicated. But Americans are capable of understanding nuanced issues, and grasping that we have legal and humanitarian obligations to our neighbors.

In reality, Harris’ words were likely not intended for Central Americans. They were probably meant to preclude any Republican charges that the Biden administration is for “open borders.”

Yet, when it comes to immigration, it is a waste of time for the Biden administration to try to blunt partisan attacks. Consider that Republicans have seized on Harris’ trip as a failure, emphasizing that she has not visited the border. “Vice President Harris is in Mexico today,” Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted Tuesday. “Probably the closest she’s ever been to the southern border. But she still won’t visit it.”

Such a visit to the border probably would have been meaningless. These trips, often taken by Republican lawmakers, amount to little more than a silly photo op. For conservative lawmakers, they are a popular way to remind their base of the “border crisis” and to signal that migration is a threat to the country.

Given that the purpose of Harris’ trip was to address the root causes of migration, the notion of a trip to the border this week made no sense.

That didn’t stop NBC News’ Lester Holt from pressing Harris on why she hadn’t been to the border. “I– and I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris replied. “And I mean, I don’t–I don’t understand the point that you’re making.”

On one hand, her answer swatted away Holt’s query. On the other, to some observers she came across as flippant and ill-prepared for what should have been an easily foreseeable question.

Retroactive: The week that was at Ordinary Times

Alzheimer’s Disease, Aduhelm, and The Fear of False Hope by Ryan Townley
I will be clear that Aduhelm is not a cure, and there is no evidence that it halts the march of Alzheimer’s disease.

Thursday Throughput: The Boys Are All Right Fertility Edition by Michael Siegel
Activists will continue to milk the issue, but this new paper suggests we should hold off flogging this fertility panic for the time being.

OT Contributor Network: Heard Tell Podcast w/Jennifer Greenberg
With yet another abuse scandal in the news, this time in the SBC, we turn to our friend Jennifer Greenberg to talk about how abusers operate.

Morning Ed: China
I’m concerned about what the future holds for Big Tech and China.

OT Contributors Network: Spheres of Influence Podcast with Napp Nazworth
OT Contributor Dennis Sanders talks to Napp Nazworth, who made headlines for leaving the Christian Post over its support of Trump.

Andrew Yang and the Benefits of Running for President by Eric Medlin
In the digital age, it is easier than ever for a candidate like Andrew Yang to take the attention of a presidential race to further their own ends

Introducing The New Morning Ed
The Ordinary Times multimedia empire expands!

Wednesday Writs: Lawfully Admitted, TPS, and Sanchez v Mayorkas
A 9-0 opinion penned by Justice Kagan earlier this week held that TPS does not cure an unlawful entry for purposes of LPR status

The Final Stages of the Con: Donald Trump, Stolen Elections, and Delusion by Michael Siegel
And so, we find ourselves in the final stage of the con. Trump’s glorious promises have been revealed for the empty promises they always were.

The Persistent Problems of Personality Tests by Andrew Donaldson
Steve Zhou takes up the warning signs that using personality tests to “placing people in specific boxes” is problematic, at best.

OT Contributor Network: Heard Tell w/John McCumber on Cybersecurity
The latest episode of Heard Tell features OT contributor John McCumber explaining what we are hearing about cybersecurity in the news cycle.

Unanimous SCOTUS Immigration Ruling on TPS: Read It For Yourself
A Unanimous SCOTUS immigration ruling finds those that came illegally to America but were granted TPS status cannot apply for permanent residency.

The Hallmark of Dreams by Johanna Rowland
My story would crest home, floating through uncertain spaces, until you would see that I am okay now. I did not accomplish everything I dreamed.

Sunday Morning! Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash by Rufus
Julie Dash’s luminous Daughters of the Dust plays like a series of rituals guiding its Gullah characters from the old life to the new.

A Reverie On Failure Part 5: The Dawn of Disappointment by John David Duke, Jr.
I hereby confess to you, dear reader, that when I consider you, I am pitiless. In what manner do you deal out in judgment to me?