Tariffs, schmariffs, and where's the bloody bromancer when he's badly needed?

 

Another dismal day at the hive mind, the reptile swamp if you will, only relieved by a Luckovich cartoon which the pond took personally:

Much as the pond would like like to take a head in sand approach, it's off to the reptile house to see what misinformation is being peddled this day:

Those who clicked on that cap or can read the small print will note that at the very bottom Ellie and Sarah are suggesting that the feds turn their back on the ICC. 

The pond is now standing by for news from the reptiles that the Geneva Convention can also be disregarded, as well as the UN and its useless attempts to avoid a third world war.

Meanwhile, the pond passed over the blather about lawfare, and gas, gas, gas the country - reptile readers know that climate change is a fraud, whatever comments and suggestions are made in the pond - and the continuing genocide in Gaza, not ameliorated by tall tales of a faux truce. (The pond would rather be reading Aluf Benn's Netanyahu's boycott of Haaretz won't stop us reporting the grim truth about Israel's wars).

Heading past 'go' without collecting any cash, the pond ambled over to the gathering of commentators on the extreme far right, and walked right past Cameron Stewart celebrating a triumph against terror, and never mind the terror of the ongoing genocide:

The pond had to offer the little finger to Dame Slap, cutting her dead because she was in campaign mode before Xmas. 

It was just the usual DS litany, and the irony of her casting herself as a woman of principled convictions, with which to judge others, wasn't sufficient to compensate for the loss of time involved.

As for Stephanie Coombes, it was an opportunity for the reptiles to regurgitate all the graphics already featured on the pond in an earlier parrot story, together with this insight:

If 2GB was a zoo – and it certainly felt that way much of the time – Jones seemed like a particularly rare and endangered exhibit. A lonely relic from another time, stuck on the wrong side of a glass cage, trapped by public scrutiny and unable (or unwilling) to live truthfully.

Which is not to say Jones’s sexuality was a secret. He would have obvious infatuations with the beautiful young men who worked at the station. Jones would take them to dinner, foster their career, speak warmly of their sharp wit and intelligence (even when those merits were lacking).

We – the mostly young producers – thought it was innocent. Funny, even. Here was a powerful man, a titan of the media, clearly beleaguered with schoolboy crushes. It made for good office gossip.

But I was never close to the inner circle or the people he tried to charm. I didn’t know the details. These days I sorely regret being so glib about it.

But for all involved, the best trial is a fair trial and I will say no more on that matter.

The pond will say no more on the matter. To make the parrot's current matter a matter of tedium is a singular achievement.

Following the revival of the Catholic Boys' Daily, matters religious continue to score a mention. 

There was, to stray briefly from the reptile zoo, a cracking Crace, The gospel according to Boris Johnson: it’s the church’s fault our kids are overweight, a fun read if you can bear the thoughts of a fat frump given a Cracing, while the reptile war on the ACU continued apace in Yoni Bashan's Vatican questions ACU faith, It’s not just Sydney’s Archbishop who is doubting the Australian Catholic University of late but it appears the church’s highest earthbound authority, the Vatican no less, has concerns.

That Yoni Bashan continuing of the reptile trolling began with a snap reminding the hive mind punters of the object of the reptile wrath, Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis:

This time the Vatican was dragged into the affair, but anything would have done, because the reptiles are in crusader mode, smearing and stalking in their usual way. You know you're in vindictive idle gossip mode when you get lines like "We're hearing", dressed up with fine distractions like "are cogitating". No cogitation is required when trolling:

It’s not just Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher wondering aloud whether the Australian Catholic University is still, well, Catholic.

We’re hearing senior officials in the Vatican have been apprised of the troubles at ACU and are themselves cogitating over the divergence of the university from the church and its mission.

As revealed on Tuesday, it was this very question that circled almost every paragraph of an extraordinary six-page letter written by Fisher to Pro-chancellor Virginia Bourke on November 13.

Rebuking the university’s leadership, the archbishop spoke of his shame with ACU over the abandonment of union leader Joe de Bruyn last month following his delivery of an honorary doctoral speech which sparked a mass walkout in the audience, saying “our largest educational institution seems to be ambivalent about its Catholic identity”.

Copied into the letter was ACU vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis, who was recently in Rome to inspect an ACU campus in the city. While there he was also summoned to appear at a meeting with the Holy See’s Dicastery for Culture and ­Education.

And apparently that meeting didn’t go so swimmingly. Skrbis denied that Vatican officials raised any concerns with him about ACU, and it’s certainly possible that no questions were put to him directly. If they’re not saying it to his face, they’re definitely bringing it up behind his back.

“It was a private and confidential meeting,” an ACU spokeswoman told us. “The vice-chancellor’s meeting with the Dicastery was collegial and mutually beneficial.”

What’s unable to be denied, however, is that high-ranking members of the dicastery are privately raising concerns about ACU’s perceivable deterioration as a Catholic institution. Multiple sources have confirmed it.

The treatment of de Bruyn was one incident that raised pulses, but so did the appointment in January of a pro-abortion academic, Professor Kate Galloway, as the university’s Dean of Law.

And where’s Galloway now? She was paid $1m to give up the position after a conservative backlash; her new role at ACU is Strategic Professor for Law and Social Justice, a pursuit that’s hardly simpatico with Catholic social teachings.

Does Skrbis survive this mess? Chancellor Martin Daubney is mighty keen on renewing Skrbis’ contract in the face of his detractors. And these detractors are many. They’re all watching closely the chapel on the North Sydney campus, waiting for the white smoke to start billowing. YB

Fundamentalism remains at the heart of reptile theology, the search for the pure, and the consignment of the wicked to weeks of reptile coverage purgatory. Skrbis is just the latest in a long line of reptile victims, but as it's the ACU, who cares if it disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow?

As for the rest the reptiles were fixated on the start of the trade wars, and here the pond would like to make a preemptive strike by referring to Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. 

Some of his piece is behind the paywall, but with this available to read:

Here is my concern about Trump’s announcement that he will impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada starting on January 20:

I’m concerned that he won’t actually do it.

Is it possible that Trump will actually slap that 25 percent number on all goods entering the country from Mexico and Canada until they stop all undocumented migrants from crossing the U.S. border and the amount of fentanyl coming into the United States drops to zero?1

Uh, sure. That is one possible outcome.

And if that happens, then prices of consumer goods in the United States will jump and we’ll slingshot into a recession.

Let me tell you a story about a more likely outcome:

On January 20, Trump will issue an EO with his 25 percent tariffs. The trigger date for implementation will be some point in the medium-future. Fox will talk about this great achievement nonstop. The mainstream media will talk about how potentially destabilizing the tariffs are.

And then at some point—maybe before the tariffs kick in, or maybe shortly afterwards—Trump will declare victory. Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

We’ve seen this story before, over and over.

Remember Trump’s “Muslim ban”? He signed a couple of executive orders, the courts halted them. Lawyers did a lot of pro bono work. After a few weeks everything was business as usual.

Remember when Trump tore up NAFTA? Except that he never did. He simply negotiated a “successor” agreement that was little more than new paint on the same vehicle.2

Remember when Trump built the wall that Mexico paid for? Trump replaced about 400 miles of existing barriers and built 52 miles of new fencing—52 miles! The U.S. government paid for all of this.

This is Trump’s modus operandi.

He promises his base crazy shit. He then announces that he’s about to do the crazy shit. The media freaks out at the prospect of said crazy shit. Trump then wriggles out of doing the crazy shit and—this is the key part—his voters give him credit for the crazy shit anyway.

That’s Trump’s secret sauce: The fact that his voters are never let down. No matter how little he actually does for them, no matter how many promises he breaks or fails to deliver, then never feel betrayed by him.

The pond mentioned all that because the pond is in the pits of despair. 

Not because of the threat of tariffs or a trade war. It's because the bromancer has gone MIA and the reptiles have flung two lesser reptiles, minor players, into their coverage of the usual bog standard crazy shit.

Where's the bro when he's badly needed to set the pond straight?

The pond hasn't sighted the bromancer since 9th November, when he promised that Donald Trump's revolution will transform the world, and after that promise, he just disappeared into the ether or up himself. 

No matter, never mind, the pond is left with the dregs, two minute reads from Joe, the lesser member of the Kelly gang, and wee Will of Glasgow fame.

For Joe's wretched piece, Trump’s day one plan both a cause for concern and for hope

Imposing tariffs on America’s three biggest trading partners on day one shows Trump is serious about using tariffs, and any notion he was all talk and empty rhetoric on trade policy must be swiftly put to bed, the reptiles dragged out a tired and ancient snap to match his coverage, Donald Trump arrives three hours late for a campaign rally in Traverse City, Michigan on October 25, 2024. Picture: AFP.

October, and here we are nearing the end of November, and that's the best snap they can muster? And just as bad, mealy-mouthed Joe simply wasn't up to the job:

Donald Trump will be muscular in acting on tariffs, but also flexible.

This is the take-out from his plan to make the imposition of tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China the first item of business on day one of his second presidential term.

Imposing tariffs on America’s three biggest trading partners on day one achieves two things. First, it shows Trump is serious about using tariffs. Any notion that he was all talk and empty rhetoric on trade policy must be swiftly put to bed.

Second, Trump is keeping the rest of the world guessing about how broadly they will eventually be applied.

His day one proposal still falls well short of his radical promise for an across-the-board 10-20 per cent tariff and a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods.

Trump is showing he means business while keeping his ultimate plans hidden – creating space for future flexibility.

Posting on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Canada and Mexico would be hit with a 25 per cent tariff on all goods coming into the US “until such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country.”

Trump also said he would charge Beijing an extra “10 per cent tariff, above any additional tariffs” on all Chinese products coming into America until the flow of illegal drugs into the US was halted.

Economist Steven Hamilton said the Trump tariffs would be “strongly inflationary in the short run and economically damaging in the long run”, given the strong cross-border trade for North American production inputs.

He also said there was good news from Trump’s day one plans, including for Australia.

“This is confirmation of something we have wondered for some time now – the tariffs are not intended to be an across-the-board, unconditional move to raise revenue but rather are a bargaining chip in order to extract concessions from other countries, just as they were last time,” Mr Hamilton said.

“If the countries do as he asks (or at least appear to make a good-faith effort to do so), then perhaps there will be no tariffs.

“This is, in particular, very good news for Australia, as the probability of across-the-board tariffs, which would harm Australia, just went down.”

If Trump does intend to use tariffs as a bargaining chip, this raises further questions.

Would Trump seek to bargain with Canberra and what would he ask in return for Australia being carved-out of any punitive trade measures?

Nobody knows the answers to these questions, reinforcing the unpredictability of the new Trumpian era.

“We are operating under a lot of uncertainty, and have been waiting for Trump to resolve that uncertainty,” Hamilton said.

“We have to take it step by step.

“But there are many things one might have expected him to do on tariffs on day one.

“This is far, far better than what we would have expected had we taken him (Trump) literally.” 

Wee Will's two minute coverage of the bog standard crazy shit, Donald Trump gets personal with Xi Jinping in opening trade war salvo, The second China-America trade war has begun. It is set to get very ugly, very fast, opened with an equally tired and anodyne snap, Donald Trump with Xi Jinping in Beijing during his first term as US President. Picture: AFP

First term as President? Really? That's the best the reptiles can drag out of the archive? And then with wee Will's search engine research to follow:

Beijing’s initial response to Donald Trump’s opening shot in the second round of his trade war with China was to pretend it hadn’t happened.

For almost an hour, there was total silence on the Chinese internet about Trump’s threat to impose 10 per cent tariffs on almost $US400bn worth of products from China unless Beijing addressed his fury about Chinese fentanyl ingredients.

A source in China’s state media told me everyone was waiting for the Chinese government to give its line.

Then, about an hour after the US president-elect’s social media barrage had led news sites around the world, China’s national broadcaster CCTV, announced the news — and set the tone of Beijing’s response.

“Trump arrogantly proposes to impose a 10 per cent tariff on goods imported from China,” CCTV declared.

The story quickly topped China’s search engine Baidu’s search list.

That key word – arrogantly – was everywhere.

At this point the reptiles followed up with a Sky News (Au) cross promotion, featuring the dog botherer and some minor alleged libertarian ratbag contributor:

Sky News contributor Kristin Tate claims the threat of Donald Trump imposing tariffs could “go a long way” to solving the problems facing America today. “I’m not sure that these tariffs will ever be implemented, but the threat of them could go a long way to solving the problems facing this country today,” she told Sky News host Chris Kenny. Ms Tate’s remarks come after Mr Trump claimed he would impose additional tariffs 

Uh huh, go on, a long way to solving the problems? A passing shit show shit storm?

Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

They really do live above the Faraway Tree, while wee Willie did his best to Trump it up:

Eight weeks before Trump has even been inaugurated, the second China-America trade war has begun. It is set to get very ugly, very fast.

Most observers in China think it will continue as long as Trump’s second term and its effects will long outlast him.

And as the Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have made clear, what happens to our biggest trade partner is going to be felt in Australia.

These new tariffs would build on the considerable pile Trump built up in his first term (many already at 25 per cent) and to which Joe Biden has added, rather than dismantled.

Trump campaigned saying he would raise them to 60 per cent on all Chinese imports. That’s the direction of travel. They could even go higher.

A violent trade clash with the world’s biggest economy is the last thing Chinese businesses need right now.

Much of China’s economy is limping towards the country’s 2024 growth target of “about 5 per cent”.

If China's economy is limping, then get ready to do the Oz hobble, but the reptiles settled for another anodyne snap, These new tariffs would build on the considerable pile Trump built up in his first term. (Photo by Nicolas ASFOURI / AFP)

Wee Willie then wrapped things up:

Expert observers of the Chinese economy, such as Dan Rosen at the Rhodium Group, think the actual economic growth rate is closer to 2 per cent.

There is no debate that many in China are doing it tough right now. More than 10 million people are estimated to have lost their jobs from the country’s gravely wounded property sector in the past three years.

Trump and his advisers know all this. And they know that in a trade war with China, America comes with huge leverage because the US continues to buy so much more from China than China does from the US.

That almost $US400bn imbalance is Trump’s core grievance, but it means he has far more Chinese trade to threaten than Beijing does.

Tuesday’s 10 per cent threat was accompanied with a claim, delivered in front of the whole world, that Xi Jinping and his government had lied to the incoming American president.

“I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular fentanyl, being sent into the United States – but to no avail,” Trump declared.

Not only was the Chinese President a liar, according to Trump, he was in cahoots, or at least tolerating, huge criminal drug operations.

It is a shocking change of tone from the red carpet, flag waving reception China’s leader received last week in Peru and Brazil.

Expect Xi to be furious. Trump is not the only leader of a world superpower with a huge ego.

And as Canberra knows well, China’s President is more than willing to take a no holds barred approach in economic tussles.

Still in mourning for the missing bromancer, the pond paused to note the lizard Oz editorialist chiming in with a bland two minute editorial, Donald Trump’s trade war prompts market angst, Donald Trump’s announcement of trade tariffs could have a huge knock-on economic effect.

After moving at breakneck speed to nominate his White House and cabinet teams, Donald Trump, still almost two months from his inauguration, has promised to impose stiff trade restrictions from his first day in the Oval Office. Canada and Mexico, the US’s biggest trading partners, will pay a 25 per cent tariff on all goods coming into the US. China will be “an additional 10 per cent tariff, above any additional tariffs”, he announced.

The president-elect previously has pledged to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China. And with the US buying the lion’s share of Canadian and Mexican exports, US tariffs, which were part of Mr Trump’s campaign platform, have the potential to damage the international economy – including, across time, that of the US itself. Australia, which has huge exposure to the Chinese economy, could suffer collateral damage in any US-China trade war, especially through declining demand for iron ore and other commodities. News of a looming trade war prompted falls in shares and the dollar on Tuesday.

Mr Trump linked his announcement to action on border security, immigration and drugs by Mexico and Canada, which suggests the tariffs could be tempered depending on action on those issues. But it creates a challenge for Anthony Albanese and his ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, to argue Australia’s case for exemptions as effectively as possible between now and the third week of January. In hindsight, a detour by the Prime Minister to Mar-a-Lago after the G20 summit might have been worthwhile. In 2018, when Mr Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium imports in his first term, he agreed to an exemption for Australia after lobbying by Malcolm Turnbull and discussions on regional security and trade.

For Australia, a trading nation with a budget driven heavily by export earnings, free trade and rules-based trading practices need to be at the forefront of our bilateral and multilateral relationships. The nation has a strong case to argue about the risk of China using any trade war to strengthen its economic relationships across the world, including in the Indo-Pacific, which could increase its strategic influence against the interests of the US and Australia.

China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, lost no time pressing the point from Beijing’s perspective at his press conference on Tuesday. “There is no reason for us to compromise our respective national interests for the sake of a third party,” he said. “I look forward to a constructive, productive relationship between China and Australia, irrespective of what has happened in other parts of the world.” After China’s punitive sanctions against Australian wine, seafood, cotton, barley, meat, coal, wood and other commodities that cost the national economy $20bn a year, it would be difficult to take seriously support for free trade by the regime of Xi Jinping. Mr Xiao’s claim the dispute was “not something the Chinese imposed”, pointing to Australia’s ban on Chinese telco Huawei (essential for security reasons), was self-serving nonsense. While continuing China’s charm offensive towards Mr Albanese, Mr Xiao could not resist baring the communist regime’s ugly teeth, urging Australia to back the “peaceful reunification” of China with Taiwan.

That's it, that's the best the reptiles could do?

Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

Deeply dissatisfied, the pond had to turn back to yesterday's lizard Oz, regurgitating the WSJ, so that the pond could end on a comedic note.

That's more like it, that talk of wokeness, and that graphic, echoing down the corridor in Surry Hills:

The copy was pretty good too, with Mike Gonzalez and Armen Tooloee combining to produce a three minute read, How Trump can rid Washington of wokeness, Celebrating the end of peak woke and burying it completely are two different things. What will it take to kill wokeness once and for all? Here’s what Trump can do.

That level of stupidity meant the pond had to invoke its standard rider, which it runs any time 'woke' and 'wokeness' are mentioned:

The reptiles recycled the captivating illustration at the start of the piece, with this tag, This elite has spent years infusing every institution with policies, procedures and mandates aimed at transforming society. To put a spike through the heart of woke, Mr. Trump and the new Congress must reverse these policies:

The pond was tempted to match it with another piece of artwork:

Then, to put it in the politest Godwin's Law way possible, the fuckheads - don't blame the pond, the term is pure science - began their rant:

That the electorate has rejected wokeness should be obvious by now. Donald Trump’s most effective campaign ad featured the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Even liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote after the election that “woke is broke.”

But celebrating the end of peak woke and burying it completely are two different things. What will it take to kill wokeness once and for all?

We first have to define it. Woke means believing America is riddled with inequities, where not only its people but the system itself is racist and in need of systemic overhaul; where society is divided between the “oppressors” and the “oppressed”; where history must be expunged and rewritten. This is a world of make-believe. But for the woke elite, it colours everything from climate policy to the Israel-Hamas war.

This elite has spent years infusing every institution with policies, procedures and mandates aimed at transforming society. Diversity, equity and inclusion measures, particularly in government and academia, have created an identity-based system in which people’s immutable characteristics, not their choices, determine whether they are worthy of awards or punishment.

To put a spike through the heart of woke, Mr. Trump and the new Congress must reverse these policies. Some of the following proposals will be easy to implement, others harder. But all will help restore sanity.

• Rescind and reverse all of Mr. Biden’s executive orders implementing DEI and gender theory, including Executive Order 13985, which advanced a “whole-of-government equity agenda.”

Mr Biden also signed executive orders supporting “gender-affirming” medical interventions on minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries. These too must go.

Mr Trump should then sign two executive orders. The first should reinstitute his 2020 ban on DEI training for federal workers and contractors. The second should define “male” and “female” in precise biological terms, which would clarify what the Biden Title IX rule has destructively muddled, and preserve the intent of Title IX.

Congress should then pass and Mr. Trump sign the Dismantle DEI Act, currently working its way through the House, which would eliminate DEI practices throughout the federal bureaucracy.

Here the pond would like to interrupt with an interesting observation raised by Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark, Americans Have One Very Strange Cognitive Bias Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love The People.

Last revived a 2022 poll written up by Taylor Orth as ​​From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans.

When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right. In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups, including racial and religious groups, as well as other less frequently studied groups, such as pet owners and those who are left-handed.

When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).

It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%).

Last made a meal of the findings:

Yesterday Jemele Hill recirculated a study YouGov did in 2022 about the gaps between people’s perceptions and reality.

YouGov asked a series of questions on “What percentage of Americans do you think are [fill in the blank]?” with the [blank] being all sorts of qualities: black, gay, Christian, left-handed, own a passport, etc.

The results were hilarious. Here are some of the percentages that Americans (on average) think their fellow citizens are:

Transgender: 21 percent, Muslim: 27 percent, Jewish: 30 percent, Black: 41 percent, Live in New York City: 30 percent, Gay or lesbian: 30 percent

We’ll get to the actual, in vivo percentages in a moment. First I want to point out the absurdity: 1-in-3 are gay/lesbian? Muslims and Jews make up 57 percent of the country? Blacks are 40 percent of the population?

Not to be crass, but if a third of the population is gay/lesbian then where are all the kids coming from?

If a quarter of the country is Muslim and a third is Jewish, then mosques plus synagogues would outnumber churches. Does anyone see more mosques and synagogues than churches as they drive around?

If 40 percent of the country is black then wouldn’t there be a lot more black people in Congress? I mean, there have only been 12 African-American senators ever.

You see what I mean: These perceptions do not square with any version of observable reality. Here the numbers as they actually exist in the real world:

Transgender: 1 percent, Muslim: 1 percent, Jewish: 2 percent, Black: 12 percent, Live in New York City: 2 percent, Gay or lesbian: 3 percent

We are talking about errors of perception measured by orders of magnitude. On the trans population, the average American’s estimation is off by 2,000 percent.

Yep, Mike Gonzalez and Armen Tooloee are scribbling furiously about the need for a gigantic hammer to crack very small trans and similar walnuts.

Anyone who has seen a painful Kimmel 'spot poll in the street' segment will be aware of the painful stupidity and ignorance of many Americans, easily set up for FUD, and that allows prize maroons of the Gonzalez and Tooloee kind to focus on the woke leaves while ignoring the tariff trees.

Some might expect better from the lizard Oz and the WSJ, but the art of distraction is essential to the game of trolling.

On and on they rambled, pandering to the gap between reality and perceptions. You know, 'woke' universities, dangerous museums, radical census activities, the alarming CPB, yadda yadda:

• End woke university practices. Mr Trump’s plan, which he announced last summer, would change the accreditation system, protect free speech, eliminate wasteful administrative positions, and use the Justice Department to file lawsuits against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination.

• Retake control of museums, starting with the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian museums have forsaken their mission of spreading knowledge and instead are trying to “decolonise” society. The National Museum of African-American History and Culture, for instance, has an entire web page deriding “white fragility” and a “white dominant culture.”

Mr Trump should ask Congress to restore ideological balance by appointing real conservatives willing to stand up to progressive views to the Board of Regents, which governs the Smithsonian. This board is responsible for appointing the Smithsonian’s secretary, or chief executive officer. The current secretary, Lonnie Bunch, says DEI “is integral to excellence in museum practice.”

• Eliminate the Census’s racial and ethnic categories. These categories form the lifeblood of identity politics and are often synthetic — some were added to the Census only recently. The ethnoracial pentagon — American Indians or Alaska natives, Asian or Pacific Islanders, blacks, Hispanics and whites — emerged in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 in 1977 and was first used in the decennial Census in 1980.

Activists were banking on what sociologist Cristina Mora called “collective amnesia,” expecting Americans to believe these identity groups had been defined forever. The idea was to Balkanize the nation, foster resentment among groups and allow the left to gain power. But many members of these groups have voted for Mr. Trump in large numbers, particularly this year. They’re assimilated. It’s time to stop dividing Americans into ethnic and racial groups.

Mr Trump should issue an executive order directing OMB to rescind the 1977 directive (and subsequent revisions) and ordering the Census Bureau to abandon these faux categories. If the government is truly interested in disparities, it should ask questions that have real bearing on people’s backgrounds and perspectives, such as, “Is there a father in the house?”

• Dissolve the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, which funds public media organisations that are responsible for spreading the woke mind virus. Mr Trump can’t control private companies, but NPR, PBS and other public broadcasters collectively receive millions in taxpayer dollars. The CPB distributes more than 70% of its annual $500 million congressional appropriation to public media. This must stop. Broadcasters will do fine relying on paying members.

Congress must then pass legislation undoing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which established the CPB. It’s time to shut it down.

This isn’t an exhaustive list — much else could be on it — but everything here is vital to pull America out of the swamp of wokeness.

Mr Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of “NextGen Marxism.” Mr Tooloee is chief of staff to conservative activist and author Christopher Rufo.

The Wall St Journal

Stupid people proposing stupid solutions, and for some reason the pond was reminded of a Parker Molloy piece that dropped into the pond's email tray, Without 'Libs' to Dunk On Reactionaries on X Face a Crisis of Relevance, As liberals exit X, reactionaries find themselves without the opposition that fuels their influence.

You see Gonzalez and cooee Tooloee need the likes of the pond to bite on the trolling, or the entire purpose gets lost in the wilderness:

Ever since Elon Musk took over the platform formerly known as Twitter—now rebranded as X—the social media landscape has been anything but stable. The site’s atmosphere has drifted dramatically, becoming increasingly hostile and unwelcoming to many of its original users. Hate speech has found a louder voice, right-wing propaganda is more prominent, and the general user experience has deteriorated. As a result, an increasing number of people are deciding they’ve had enough. They’re leaving X and migrating to alternatives like Bluesky and Threads in search of healthier online communities.

This exodus presents a conundrum for the reactionaries who remain on X. Their online existence is heavily dependent on the very people they’re pushing away. Without “libs” to dunk on, troll, or “trigger,” all they have are themselves.

Right-wing influencers and politicians have long used platforms like X to spread their messages far and wide. The appeal isn’t just in preaching to the choir; it’s about reaching a broader audience that includes their ideological enemies. The confrontations that arise from this dynamic generate engagement—likes, retweets, comments—that amplify their reach and influence.

As more liberals and moderates leave X, the platform risks becoming a monoculture similar to fringe sites like Gab or Truth Social. While these platforms offer a haven for conservative voices, they lack the diversity necessary to influence mainstream discourse. The content becomes repetitive, the engagement dwindles, and the ability to sway public opinion diminishes.

And so on, with  Molloy quoting a piece by Ali Breland in The Atlantic, worth noting at length:

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and subsequently turned it into X, disaffected users have talked about leaving once and for all. Maybe they’d post some about how X has gotten worse to use, how it harbors white supremacists, how it pushes right-wing posts into their feed, or how distasteful they find the fact that Musk has cozied up to Donald Trump. Then they’d leave. Or at least some of them did. For the most part, X has held up as the closest thing to a central platform for political and cultural discourse.

But that may have changed. After Trump’s election victory, more people appear to have gotten serious about leaving. According to Similarweb, a social-media analytics company, the week after the election corresponded with the biggest spike in account deactivations on X since Musk’s takeover of the site. Many of these users have fled to Bluesky: The Twitter-like microblogging platform has added about 10 million new accounts since October.

X has millions of users and can afford to shed some here and there. Many liberal celebrities, journalists, writers, athletes, and artists still use it—but that they’ll continue to do so is not guaranteed. In a sense, this is a victory for conservatives: As the left flees and X loses broader relevance, it becomes a more overtly right-wing site. But the right needs liberals on X. If the platform becomes akin to “alt-tech platforms” such as Gab or Truth Social, this shift would be good for people on the right who want their politics to be affirmed. It may not be as good for persuading people to join their political movement.

The number of people departing X indicates that something is shifting, but raw user numbers have never fully captured the point of what the site was. Twitter’s value proposition was that relatively influential people talked to each other on it. In theory, you could log on to Twitter and see a country singer rib a cable-news anchor, billionaires bloviate, artists talk about media theory, historians get into vicious arguments, and celebrities share vaguely interesting minutiae about their lives. More so than anywhere else, you could see the unvarnished thoughts of the relatively powerful and influential. And anyone, even you, could maybe strike up a conversation with such people. As each wave departs X, the site gradually becomes less valuable to those who stay, prompting a cycle that slowly but surely diminishes X’s relevance.

This is how you get something approaching Gab or Truth Social. They are both platforms with modest but persistent usership that can be useful for conservatives to send messages to their base: Trump owns Truth Social, and has announced many of his Cabinet picks on the site. (As Doug Burgum, his nominee for interior secretary, said earlier this month: “Nothing’s true until you read it on Truth Social.”) But the platforms have little utility to the general public. Gab and Truth Social are rare examples of actual echo chambers, where conservatives can congregate to energize themselves and reinforce their ideology. These are not spaces that mean much to anyone who is not just conservative, but extremely conservative. Normal people do not log on to Gab and Truth Social. These places are for political obsessives whose appetites are not satiated by talk radio and Fox News. They are for open anti-Semites, unabashed swastika-posting neo-Nazis, transphobes, and people who say they want to kill Democrats.

Of course, if X becomes more explicitly right wing, it will be a far bigger conservative echo chamber than either Gab or Truth Social. Truth Social reportedly had just 70,000 users as of May, and a 2022 study found just 1 percent of American adults get their news from Gab. Still, the right successfully completing a Gab-ification of X doesn’t mean that moderates and everyone to the left of them would have to live on a platform dominated by the right and mainline conservative perspectives. It would just mean that even more people with moderate and liberal sympathies will get disgusted and leave the platform, and that the right will lose the ability to shape wider discourse.

The conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who has successfully seeded moral panics around critical race theory and DEI hiring practices, has directly pointed to X as a tool that has let him reach a general audience. The reason right-wing politicians and influencers such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens keep posting on it instead of on conservative platforms is because they want what Rufo wants: a chance to push their perspectives into the mainstream. This utility becomes diminished when most of the people looking at X are just other right-wingers who already agree with them. The fringier, vanguard segments of the online right seem to understand this and are trying to follow the libs to Bluesky.

Liberals and the left do not need the right to be online in the way that the right needs liberals and the left. The nature of reactionary politics demands constant confrontations—literal reactions—to the left. People like Rufo would have a substantially harder time trying to influence opinions on a platform without liberals. “Triggering the libs” sounds like a joke, but it is often essential for segments of the right. This explains the popularity of some X accounts with millions of followers, such as Libs of TikTok, whose purpose is to troll liberals.

The more liberals leave X, the less value it offers to the right, both in terms of cultural relevance and in opportunities for trolling. The X exodus won’t happen overnight. Some users might be reluctant to leave because it’s hard to reestablish an audience built up over the years, and network effects will keep X relevant. But it’s not a given that a platform has to last. Old habits die hard, but they can die.

Cackling geese like Mike Gonzalez and Armen Tooloee, tiresomely trolling away, should watch out, as should the reptiles at the lizard Oz. 

Is anyone listening to them outside their assorted hive mind publications? 

The trolling had nil impact on the pond and it's likely that a substantial proportion of Americans just walked on by, if only because you simply can't eradicate the inclination of some people to be kind, generous, empathetic, caring and concerned. They'll cop way more 'harden the fuck up' shit storm activity in the next four years than what is going down in a museum or on NPR.

You can keep on trolling as best you can, but to what avail, unless you happen to want to live in Russia, China or Iran, or turn the USA into same.

As for the pond, it's water off a duck's back, because if the pond gave a flying fig to this day's feeble trolling, the pond wouldn't have been able to close with the immortal Rowe and the infallible Pope: