Yet more Space News! And reasons for us to have some confidence.

There are so many reasons why we ought to refuse and reject the propaganda-against-confidence, out there. A better-than-expected economy?  Dropping crime rates? A working vaccine against malaria and looming extinction for both the Guinea worm and polio? Uneven but steady, incremental steps toward justice... and even progress toward saving the planet!  

Please look at these! https://www.abundance360.com/ and https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2023/

But above all, incredible science!  So today let's deal with the science that's actually above it all. In space!

== Let's live up to Ingenuity ==

The little Mars helicopter that could. It's mission is now officially over, due to damaged blades. This may not be the very last hurrah. But still... hurrah little guy.

Meanwhile Japan's SLIM lunar lander bots - a mostly successful ensemble! Though one little pike on top coulda prevented the showoff headstand.... Some of the design concepts emerged from studies funded by NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).

== Looking out there ==

The Webb Telescope took spectra as a sub-Neptune planet passed in front of its star, letting Webb detect the presence of methane and carbon dioxide in the exoplanet atmosphere, which supported the theory that K2-18 b could indeed be a Hycean (highly oceanic) world… plus evidence of the rare molecule dimethyl sulfide, which might be a strong indicator for the presence of life. On Earth, dimethyl sulfide is created solely as a byproduct of life, most commonly by marine bacteria and phytoplankton.

An infant star! A new image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured what Earth's sun may have looked like when it was only a few tens of thousands of years old. Enhanced images of this newborns are gorgeous!

Also from Webb: carbon, an essential component of life on Earth, is also present within Europa, Jupiter's ice-covered moon that's believed to hold huge oceans of liquid salt water beneath its icy surface.

The riches pouring from the Webb are amazing: a cornucopia!  For example, Tellurium, an element rarer than platinum on Earth, was just found in the aftermath of a violent cosmic kilonova 1 billion light-years away, thanks to Webb.  

See the James Webb Space Telescopes's views of galaxy M51. And again wow. YOU are a member of a civilization that does this sort of thing. Yet you dare to wallow in gloom and killed confidence? Look at this! You helped pay for the wonder, the competence, the wisdom. Do more.

LIGO my ego! Humanity’s new gravity wave detectors, led by LIGO, are so spectacularly precise that they could parse the tiny difference of arrival time between the g-waves emitted by a neutron star collision 130 million light years away and the subsequent (by just a 2.7 second delay!) arrival of gamma rays then visible light from the same event. Truly wonderful stuff. And humbling that I cannot operate at that plane! 

== Space travel & colonization ==

Just getting big rockets to push more stuff out of the Earth’s grip will not be enough for Mars colonization. Other absolutely necessary ingredients will include ISRU facilities robotically utilizing local water to make fuel and air and drinkables, with full tanks before any human departs Earth-Luna space. Also vastly better recycling. And solutions to zero-g and radiation health dangers. And – above all – nuclear interplanetary rockets for shorter transit times.

Speaking of which… this Fission Fragment Rocket Design is one of our projects at NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC).

The one – and only one – verified-likely “lunar resource’ – other than the hot air of Artemis-booster blowhards – is a few somewhat-verified deposits of water-ice in some permanently shaded polar crater areas. Alas, even that attractive bonanza seems to be downgraded. “Deposits of nearly pure ice tens to hundreds of meters thick are no longer expected” according to  new research in Physics World.  “The outlook for would-be lunar water prospectors isn’t entirely negative, though. “We now have more accurate maps for where the largest concentrations of ice can be expected on the Moon.”

There might also (maybe) be debris fields of collectable iron bits from past meteorites. And if someone develops a very efficient solar smelter, maybe a couple other metals. Someday. But if you want water out there in space… and just about anything else… lift your gaze!  

NASA and Japan and the EU should explore the riches of asteroids and leave that  dusty plain of poison lunar dust – to the kiddies, tourists and Apollo-wannabes.

Okay… time to cue the insipid Helium Three cult! Over to you guys.

== Look up! But with judgement & skepticism? ==

This BigThink photo-essay by Ethan Siegel does a terrific job illustrating the 'distance ladder' method for measuring the 'Hubble Constant' rate of expansion of the universe, now double checked by the Webb Telescope. This method's metric differs from one got from the microwave background, a conundrum! one you'll understand much better from this excellent piece of sci-journalism.

Failure to find a giant ‘planet X' way out there, perturbing into the inner solar system, has led to models suggesting a smaller one, orbiting closer in. This world, frozen and dark, would be no greater than 3 times the mass of Earth, and orbiting at high inclination no farther than 500 astronomical units from the Sun. Which happens also to be the boundary of the Sun’s gravity-lens zone described in Existence. Hence such a world might (maybe) become an incredible base for making a myriad super telescopes.

Speaking of the outer system… the New Horizons Science Team hopes to use the spacecraft to precisely measure the darkness of space itself. Since it's so dark where New Horizons is – billions of miles beyond the sunlit dust of the inner solar system.

A new study reports ‘conclusive evidence’ for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars. If verified, this might – maybe – confirm a conjecture of  the late physicist Jacob Bekenstein.  

A new paper explores a concept closely related to my novel Existence. “Capture of Interstellar Objects in Near Earth Orbit.” Are many near Earth Objects (e.g. close passing asteroids) actually interstellar arrivals (Like ‘Oumuamua) that Jupiter captured into the solar system?  I show such a trajectory-event happening (with a little assist from the object itself!) in that epic tale!

== Black Hole ‘Eaters’ inside the sun? Or the Earth? ==

My friend and colleague John Cramer was working on the latest of his wonderful “Alternate View” columns for ANALOG, this time regarding a new paper out there… “Is there a black hole in the center of the Sun?”  

Here’s an excerpt from that article’s abstract: “There is probably not a black hole in the center of the sun. Despite this detail, our goal in this work to convince the reader that this question is interesting and that work studying stars with central black holes is well motivated. If primordial black holes exist then they may exist in sufficiently large numbers to explain the dark matter in the universe. While primordial black holes may form at almost any mass, the asteroid-mass window between 10−16−10−10 M⊙ remains a viable dark matter candidate and these black holes could be captured by stars upon formation. Such a star, partially powered by accretion luminosity from a microscopic black hole in its core, has been called a `Hawking star.'”

Phew!  John wrote for my opinion, given that my novel Earth is pertinent.  Here’s some of my response:  

John, your Analog columns are a principal reason to stay subscribed! And this is a fascinating topic! And yes, in Earth the very diverse and eclectic plot is centrally propelled by one protagonist having accidentally dropped his lab-made singularity into the planet. Nearly all physicists are sure it will dissipate... he's not so sure and leads a secret effort to build gravity resonators to 'ping' the planetary interior… and he does find it... and realizes it IS dissipating... but there's another one down there. A more deadly variety of singularity that's been growing since 1908. 

Moreover, his ping triggers something unexpected. His surface resonator and the mystery singularity serve as 'mirrors' that excite stimulated, coherent radiation from the energy-rich core and mantle in between. In other words… a gravity laser! Or gazer.  The potential range of beneficial uses - like spaceflight or saving the world from getting eaten from within - fall aside as it is used by various groups as a weapon.  Till someone notices that all these beams are also doing very strange things to the Earth's mantle... So sure, Earth is relevant to the topic. (It also came in 2nd for a Hugo.)

As for one inside the sun - an intriguing idea that demands compatibility with fundamental observations. 

Amid billions of observed stars, we are witnessing no effects of runaway eating of dense stellar interiors, which ought to cause a rather peculiar kind of supernova in its final stages.  (This is also an answer to the question of whether super-high-energy cosmic rays - vastly more powerful than any produced by the LHC - could make dangerous black holes.) Hence, if a solar core primordial BH does not do runaway eating, not even when an elderly star shrinks to a super-dense white dwarf or neutron star, then what prevents that?And if growth doesn't happen, they why won't it shrink?

Of course, using asteroid size BH to explain Dark Matter is a version of the MACHO theory. If there's that many of them, it certainly could help explain the Fermi Paradox!  Making interstellar travel pretty damn hard because of the Minefield Problem.  The problem with this is that they oughta interact with Jupiter pretty often. And wouldn't some get captured into solar orbit?  They'd have to all be below a certain mass not to be noticed.

Okay, you can see why I saved that part of my conversation with John Cramer to share with you last.

Keep looking up... and continue fighting those who would sabotage your can-do spirit and confidence!

Again, my rant demand for wagers over proven facts. Watch as the he-men flee!

I remain awed by some Republicans - those quasi-sapient enough to dislike “all-7-deadly-sins” Trump, while claiming to love science and freedom – and yet who still  clutch mantras of GOP loyalty. Even purported libertarians - who know that Republican policies and narratives are anti-freedom in all ways - recite incantations like ‘liberals are worse!’

(Libertarian hypocrisy is galling, since Dems score better on everything ‘freedom lovers’ should want, from debt and deficits, abortion rights and drug law reform to individual sexual choice, tort and contract law, separation of church/state and anything having to do with personal accountability. Plus this: red-run states (except Utah) average higher rates of every turpitude (e.g. gambling, murder, rape, STDs...) and parasitize budget support from blue America. Alas, none of that matters, apparently - only tax cuts for the nobility. That is the one and only determining issue, ever since the Party of Feudalism took over most libertarian institutions.)

 

We live in a complex era and ‘ostriches’ (those residually smart but in-denial Republicans and Libertarians) use modern complexity to scamper from one head-hole to the next, reciting cancellation incantations. For example, howling about “Hansen’s errors in the 90s!” in order to evade facing the current tsunami of proofs that a looming climate crisis threatens the very lives of our children.

(And yes, that one issue alone should be enough to break the spell! So the distraction incantations become frantic.)

 

== Don't give up on your 'ostrich' neighbors! ==

I found one way past this tactic of frantic birds scurrying from one echo-hole to the next. Confront your semi-sapient ostrich with a list of distilled challenges, and stay focused on a few, tenaciously! Do not allow them to change the subject from that small set of fact-checkable assertions. And yes, here is where Brin repeats his challenge ad nauseam.  It helps to demand wagers! Or else some other form of accountability for what’s factually and provably true.

(Here's a video by a savvy young man using wagers to gradually pry his own mom away from QAnon addiction.) 

 

For example, if any ONE of the following is true, then today’s GOP is an insane criminal enterprise. If ALL are true (and they all are) then abetting that gang of mephistophelians is – in itself – treason to the only civilization that ever offered humanity a sliver of hope and progress. 

 

HERE’S THAT LIST and I will accept wagers - with attorney-escrowed $$$ stakes -over any of them:

 

* Grand juries across the United States (mostly white retirees, mostly in red-run states) have indicted almost a hundred times as many top Repubs as Dems! And I mean that: almost one hundred times as many! With other juries delivering correlated convictions. 

Now, in theory that fact could result from some grand conspiracy involving tens of thousands of Americans - from FBI agents to random citizens - conniving perfectly, without a single actual trace! That is, I suppose it could happen in a Hollywood thriller. Though shouldn't that blithe scenario demand a pretty darn steep burden of proof? Proof that is nonexistent. And I mean 100% nonexistent.

Or else, consider a simpler explanation: that this gusher of indicted/convicted felonies may result from subornation of the once-great party of Lincoln, Teddy R., Ike and Goldwater into a 'swamp' of systematic criminality. (Side bet: which party has >10x the rate of high officials nailed for child predation?)

 

* Pick any random 10 of Trump's 150,000 registered lies for us to wager-over. Or any non-vapor ‘evidence’ of any election 'steal.' Or name ONE fact-centered profession that’s NOT hated-on by Fox? (I can name one, but can you?)

 

* Now those hated fact professions include the FBI! Plus all the intel agencies and the US military officer corps. All of them used to be, not long ago, admired by all US conservatives! Now? Funny how that enemies list just happens to include all the Americans who are most hated by Vlad Putin, blaming them for the fall of his beloved USSR? Shouldn't that perfect overlap cause some concern?

 

Wager!  Let's ask those heroes (the FBI/intel/military officers who won the Cold War & War on Terror, but who are now hated nightly on Fox) to weigh in on fact-related matters! Like the climate crisis, or January 6, or Russian influence in the GOP… or whether Vlad's “ex” commissar cronies in Moscow - and a slightly relabeled KGB - ever actually changed their stripes? 

No, I mean it. Let’s ask them! Afraid that experiment might contradict what you suckle, nightly, from the Fox teat?

 

* Let's go together and ask a panel of those fact folks to compare Hunter Biden's whole life – assuming the worst! -  vs. any random week of the Trump boys. Let's tally NDAs & hush payments! How about we join forces to demand all records from both families! 

Can we agree - across party lines - to a national campaign to cancel all the NDAs, publish all the business records and let the chips fall where they may? No? Then how about at least solid metrics of who 'drained the swamp?' When do K Street lobbying firms to best? During Dem or GOP administrations?

 

* Come to sea with me and a pH meter! Personally and together and in person. Then let’s take our readings to a randomly chosen community college chemistry instructor for clear interpretation. Let’s bet right now whether acidification is killing the oceans that our children will need! And it can ONLY be caused by human CO2 pollution.

 Are you man enough to put up wager stakes?  Or even more manly… to start caring?

 

* Let’s check Fox 'campus indoctrination' rants. Come with me in person to the nearest research university and knock on 20 RANDOM doors! 

Let’s BET NOW whether 18 or 19 of those 20 doors lead to smart & savvy grownups, doing brilliant work, who shrug off the noisy, noisome ‘woke-ist’ campus bullies, as gnat-like, abrasive, silly nuisances? 

No other factor did more to 'make America great' than vibrant U.S. leadership in science. So why does MAGA screech hate at universities, and scientists especially? (I can tell you why.)

* Compare DEATH rates of those who took - or refused - vaccines! Side question: Were ANY Americans as beloved by the nation, ever, as FDR was and later Jonas Salk?

 

* Can we bet which party is ALWAYS more fiscally responsible regarding debt and deficits? And yes, I mean always! (In fact, national Republican administrations are always spendthrift wastrels, sending deficits skyrocketing, while Democratic ones are always fiscally responsible. Please rush to escrow those wager stakes. Big ones.

"Are you squirming now?" (Ask your MAGA.) "How about, as a grownup, you live with the death of a favorite meme cliché!"

 

* I mentioned this before, but it really hits home! Let's put up real stakes whether Red-run States (except Utah) average higher in every class of turpitude! From gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence and murder to teen sex, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation. 

 

* Throw in the failure of a single Rightist “supply side economics” prediction ever, ever to come true. Did I say ever? The sole tangible outcome of that cult has been rocketing wealth disparities favoring inheritance brats – now passing French Revolution levels - along with the deliberate war on science and the planet. 

 

== Am I beating a dead horse? ==

Of course, it’s futile to demand wagers from blowhard cowards, desperately repeating reassuring mantras and masturbatory incantations. No MAGA/Putinist ever shows manly guts to back up their blab, the way that our WWII grampas would've, with cash stakes slapped on the bar and an honest “let’s find out!”

Instead, alas, the blowhards always flee, amid the ruins of their macho.

So why do I recommend the tactic? 

Because it is this very assertiveness of confident men and women that will cause the New Confederates to back down... especially those unhappy, uncomfortable ones with actual minds, who know that something has gone terribly wrong with their 'movement.' Those who cover their ears and eyes, or suckle from the glass bosom of Fox etc., murmuring "I know my party's gone insane, but... but... but DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE!  Yeah, that's the ticket..."

It's these borderline cases who are worth the effort. And I can prove that.

Way back during Watergate, I saw the shift happen, when a critical mass of such folks - ostrich Republicans in refusal to recognize criminality - finally lifted their heads out of holes of denial, shook off the cobwebs and admitted: 

"I care more about my children, the future, science, truth, America and the world than about an undead were-elephant that badly needs a stake through its heart...

".... so that a decent, loyal, factual and American conservatism* can be reborn from the ashes of this monster." 

When that happens (and I have faith in my neighbors!) I will be among those who step up, congratulate them, welcome that phoenix back home... and then get back to negotiating with actual adults about our richly varied course into the future.

======

* Do you know the State of Arizona now draws 7.3% of its electricity from the spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave?

Well, then, maybe if I hum a few bars....

News from SPAAAAACE! Oh, and Fermi Paradox & Comets & Uplift!

Some of you are crazy about space colonization now! I can dig it; it’s always been a dream for me, as well. Still, elsewhere I talk about the harm this mindset may be wreaking, upon the chances that our grandchildren may actually do it well! 

For example the “Artemis Program” aims to repeat a lunar footprint stunt that NASA accomplished 50+ years ago, on a useless sandbox of poison dust. Sure it was a proud feat, especially with 1960s tech and it set a new symbolic benchmark for what humans are capable-of!  But we should suck space budgets dry to check a few symbolic milestones, when the same funding could get us started with asteroid mining, where the actual riches are?

I say leave the 'bar-moonzvah' - ('today I am a man!!') - symbolism stuff to the Apoll-wannabe kiddies, while we raise our gaze much higher.

Now comes a book by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, creators of one of the best online series of one page, science friendly comix – SMBC - Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Their earlier book - Soonish: The Emerging Technologies that'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything - was very incisive! Now they have “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”  

Hey!  I am not pissing on dreams here. I craft and peddle dreams for a living... and some come true! But this is gonna take some time. And lots and lots of homework, first.

== Wonderful 'casts online about this wonderful cosmos ==

As a former solar astronomer… (well, I worked for them 3 summers, at Caltech)… and as author of Sundiver, I highly recommend this gorgeous episode of Astrum, giving breathtaking views of our star across the spectrum.  By all means, be inspired thereupon to get the new, upgraded and re-covered edition of Sundiver!  And yes, it’s marvelous to be a member of such a civilization! 

I often recommend the series of very tight and scientifically grounded speculation podcasts by Isaac Arthur. And I’ll tout especially his latest episode about Comet Mining. After much important background about comets as a rich source of vast amounts of ice for fuel, water and air (far more than the pittance at the lunar poles), he gets into the good stuff. At 9:30 into this episode Isaac describes the dust-crust model of comets, the current, well-accepted model that I originated in my 1981 doctoral dissertation... and portrayed -with Gregory Benford- in Heart of the Comet. 

Later, Isaac discusses how comets may also be key to leapfrogging interstellar colonization via the Oort Cloud – another concept Greg and I introduced in that novel. And his tribute to my friend John Lewis’s Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from Asteroids was moving.

Oh, while we're at it, Isaac just posted a couple of even more lucid and comprehensive fact+speculation 'casts. One does a grand tour of concepts regarding the ill-named Fermi Paradox. (In my 1983 formal paper on the topic - in many ways the first one ever - I coined the much better term 'The Great Silence.')

Even more pertinent... at least to those inhabiting or visiting this space... is the recent extensive riff that Isaac Arthur did on 'The Ethics of Uplift.' He is very thorough... and yet I wrote to him with nine more aspects he might want to look at, should he ever revisit the topic!  Indeed, I will post some of these in comments, below.

More Space News!! ==

NASA spacecraft has high-speed asteroid encounter and finds a surprise. The LUCY probe, on its way to the Trojan asteroids at  a Jupiter Lagrange point, snapped this fascinating picture of another rubble asteroid that’s in fact  pair, barely kissing. Voyeurs!

The wonderful,11 year old Curiosity rover has just climbed past a region of small meteoroid craters to resume its arduous climb up the slopes of Mount Sharp.

A terrific interview with my friend, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. Excellent perspectives on Space, AI, and intelligence in the Universe.

== And finally…where are they? ==

Sixty years I’ve seen these UFO manias come and go, about twice per decade, with absolutely nothing ever to show for them, other than hearsay and fuzz and eagerness overwhelming almost nonexistent 'evidence.'

Please, will you pause and ponder the plausible. If we did have ‘crashed ships’ what would happen? We’d urgently ask tens of thousands of our very best people to study em, right? 

Well, I know many of the planet’s ‘best people’ - when it comes to qualifications to study such an important and fascinating thing as alien technology. And none of them were ever asked to ‘study an alien ship!’  They never moved with their families to a Manhattan Project urgency colony like 1943 Los Alamos. A very few flew in and out of Area 51 for a few years on secret stuff... but always 9-to-5 weekdays. 

Above all, this cult insults the best minds on the planet, dismissing them as gutless lemming drones - clichés from a zillion dumb Hollywood flicks - instead of the free and rambunctiously individualist scientists and techies etc. that we taught them to be. 

Even worse, this cult never explains how – with 10 million times as many active cameras on Earth now, than in the 1950s (and I do NOT exaggerate!) the ‘images’ keep getting ever fuzzier. 

Look, I have studied the ‘alien’ all my life, not just in many sci fi thought experiments but in SETI and astrophysics. I would do a 180, if I ever saw anything but frantic/romantic jibber-jabber that detracts from our ability to seriously ponder our destiny in this vast universe.

If you have any actual, actual curiosity instead of cult fetishism, you might look at this:  What's really up with UAPs?  Re-linking my recent essay dissecting the “UFO Mania” from a dozen different angles that you’ve likely not seen elsewhere. 

Oh, side-note: while it is not my method to create glowing balls to flit around the atmosphere like a Cat Laser (and I could make every ‘tictac’ ever described), this patent by the US Air Force is also pretty cool, and likely could be more practical than my method.

This is not harmless! Amid the stoopid but harmless UFO mania, a worse cult - METI - aims to beam "Yoohoo to aliens!" from taxpayer-funded facilities, breaking laws, moral codes & basic standards of decency.  See my discussion.

Here’s one of my entertaining (I hope!) rants about why it is immoral, illegal and just plain dumb to shout “Yoohoo!” into the cosmos. 

And if you’d rather read a more cogently expressed argument, try this.

“Shouting At the Cosmos” – about METI “messaging” to aliens.

Did that bring you down?  Hey, we are in 2024, fated to be at-minimum 'interesting times.' More likely a wild ride.  We need adults right now, more than ever!  Do NOT 'curb your enthusiasm!'  But try also not to be a sucker.

Are right and left in agreement to demoralize us?

First a note for book lovers: Across all of January, the Uplift Storm Trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore & Heaven's Reach) will be on e-book sale for $3.99. Alas apparently not on Kobo or Barnes & Noble. But a crazy good deal on Amazon. Do you want adventure? With some science and great alien races? I got em here for you! And... oh... what savings!

Now...

== A fanatical cult keeps growing ==

Christopher F. Rufo recently published "America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything," arguing that America has been quietly taken over by the ideological heirs of the 1960s radicals, "disguised in benign-sounding language like diversity, equity and inclusion"

There are so many refutations to this bald-faced blather, but the simplest start with:

Who has benefited? Until the first “Supply Side” bills under Reagan, the U.S. middle and working classes shared in every advance in the American economy. Ever since those successive Supply Side ‘reforms’ - first Reagan's and those of Bush and then Trump - working Americans have fallen ever-further behind the top 1%, but especially the aristocrats and inheritance brats of the top 0.01%.  Wealth disparities skyrocketed to French Revolution levels. That is, until 2021 – when the Biden+Pelosi bills reversed those trends ... a little.

So who ‘took over’ America, judging by those who benefited? Casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon princes, murder sheiks, “ex” commissars in the Kremlin and members of an incestuously parasitical CEO caste. 

The 'left’? Puh-lease. Oh, sure, there does exist a far-left wing of ditzy, sanctimony-junky yammerers, bent on trashing their own side's credibility, delighting Foxites who nightly point and cry: "See? ALL liberals are like THAT!!"  A lie, but effective...

...at distracting from the disproportionate outcomes of each side. Like the nearly universal rule that the US economy does better during Democratic administrations.

So let me reiterate that not one positive outcome prediction ever made by Supply Side promoters - re deficits or industrial investment or economic growth - ever came true. Not… one… ever. And I have had standing wager offers on the table for a decade.

If any of the followers of Milton Friedman and that ilk had a sliver of dignity (or manhood) or fealty to scientific method, they would eagerly accept my offer of wagers over that devastating assertion.  They would try to prove me wrong.

But a cult is a cult! “Trump advisers plot aggressive new tax cuts for second White House term.” 

Six thousand years of rule by inheritance brats and high level cheaters never accomplished (combined!) 1% as much as the FDR generation did, by raising up the working class into a prosperous middle class... plus using anti-trust etc to spur fair competition. Adam Smith - who denounced aristocratic cheaters as the main enemies of fair competition - would today be a flaming Democrat.  

Mr. Rufo’s entire movement has been taken over and suborned by those casino mafiosi, hedge lords, carbon princes, murder sheiks and “ex” commissars who own the GOP. And who subsidize his yammers.

== How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement ==

A somewhat less-wrong rightist screed is Fredrik deBoer’s book, “How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement.” The assertion - in this case somewhat defensible - is that liberal movements seem to be driven nowadays more by sanctimony than by achieving actual, pragmatic outcomes for the poor, or oppressed, or for the Earth. Or for posterity.

“Today,” deBoer writes, “left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.... For that reason, these spaces prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete.” 

Above all: sanctimony-driven activism extolls purity of dogma and proper incantations over incremental progress. (Hence ignoring the incredible accomplishments of the Pelosi 2021-2 Congress.) It encourages disdain for the legitimacy of allies who might not adopt – or agree with – every polemical litmus test. And the electoral results are devastating, as attacks on allies weaken the very coalitions that must be broad enough to achieve working power.

Dig it folks. As much as it hurts - the guy is generally correct. Liberalism is bleeding away Hispanics and Blacks and many others who are sick of being told what to believe, by smug patrons who should instead be listening.  

Indeed, you start to see why the Mad/Treasonous right has survived and even flourished, despite their utterly disproved policies and long-expected demographic collapse. 

It also fits and explains the most bizarre-ingrate rightwing trend I have ever seen, a full-court press campaign to discredit the universities that were the topmost investment of the GI Bill generation. The very institutions that actually Made America Great.

Oh, the Confederate madness WILL pass away into discredited insipidity, the way it did in most earlier phases of America’s 250 year ongoing Civil War. 

But it would have happened long ago, except for the sanctimony fetishism of our own mad wing.

== Will this too pass? ==

Some things just explain themselves.

Much has been said about the role of fear in propelling our social and political problems. It was much discussed in The Postman, where I projected fear as the last straw that triggered violence and the Great Collapse. Still, hardly anyone – even anthropologists – offer deep perspective on the big tradeoff underlying it all. Closest was Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which I cite here, in Altruistic Horizons: Our tribal natures, the ‘fear effect’ vs. inclusion… and the end of ideologies.”

“Private jets cause 14 times more pollution than commercial flights. But now momentum is building around the world to rein in billionaires and make them pay for the destruction they're causing. Add your name to demand taxing private jets, and share this widely!”  

I would in fact go much farther! There should be a target date for a worldwide convergence to demonstrate at every private jet terminal, with placards shouting Get Back Into First Class! Let’s see them denounce that as ‘commie!’

Of course this is also a result of the apparent determination, by a microencephalic, flattery-lobotomized aristocratic caste, to revive the concept of Class War, that had been thrown in the dustbin by the New Deal reforms. (Engendering a calm and spectacularly productive middle.)   

In their drive (though they seem too dumb to realize it) to resurrect Karl Marx, today’s moronic oligarchs actually seem to believe their best path to restoring feudalism will be to wage all-out war against … nerds! Yes, those geeks who know stuff. Those who daily craft miracles and advances that stand a real chance of saving the world.

Alas, the spoiled, prepper-lord oligarchs have an unexpected ally -- Hollywood -  whose relentless series of downer stories do not have the salutary effects that I described in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood - warnings that can be acted upon and save us all, as 'self-preventing prophecies.  

No, So many of today's movies are despair cult stuff. Take so many recent flicks, like Leave the World Behind, which is all about demolishing all hope or confidence. Attacking even any remaining scintilla of a notion that millions of skilled people might cooperate to save something worth preserving...

...like a civilization that - for all of its flaws - has been very good to us.