Back To School August 31, 2021August 30, 2021 Harvard’s first chaplain, the Reverend Michael Wigglesworth, was gay . . . as recounted in the 1998 Sundance Audience Award-winning documentary Out of the Past by Harvard’s then chaplain, the revered late Peter Gomes. (Also gay. And black. And Republican.) Harvard’s newest chaplain, Greg Epstein, is an atheist: . . . To Mr. Epstein’s fellow campus chaplains, at least, the notion of being led by an atheist is not as counterintuitive as it might sound; his election was unanimous. . . . Meanwhile, until your child gets in to Harvard, should she wear a mask? Two public health experts, writing in the New York Times: . . . Children can get Covid, but their death and hospitalization rates are much lower than for adults. The inflammatory syndrome MIS-C is rare. Long Covid has gained wide attention, but recent studies have shown that rates are low among children and not dissimilar to effects caused by other viral illnesses. We’re not being cavalier by raising these points. Consider that in Britain the government doesn’t require masks for children in schools, and it’s not clear it will advise kids to get vaccinated, either. Britain has experts as we do, and they are looking at the same scientific data we are, they most assuredly care about children’s health the same way we do, and, yet, they have come to a different policy decision. Schools were prioritized over other activities and the risks of transmission without masks were considered acceptable. . . . David Leonhardt examines the same question. . . . [The] evidence suggests that serious versions of Covid will continue to be extremely rare in children. As you can see here, some common activities — and several other diseases — have caused significantly more childhood deaths than Covid has: Death is not the only outcome that parents fear, of course. Yet “long Covid” and hospitalization have also been very rare in children. It’s just that society has been so focused on Covid that we have paid intense attention to the risks associated with it — even when they are smaller than other risks that we unthinkingly accept. To take one example, we don’t use the phrase “long flu,” but it’s a real problem, including for children: One academic study has found that up to 10 percent of people who contract influenza later develop cardiac inflammation. . . . Leonhardt’s final bullet points: Polls suggest that many Democratic voters have an inflated sense of Covid’s risks to children. If you’re liberal, you may want to ask yourself if you fall into this category. (If you’re conservative, you may want to encourage more of your friends to get vaccinated.) The biggest risk to your child’s health today almost certainly is not Covid. It’s more likely to be an activity that you have long decided is acceptable — like swimming, riding a bicycle or traveling in a car. BONUS:
Fingers Tightly Crossed August 29, 2021August 29, 2021 AFGHANISTAN Peter (who voted for Trump twice): “As you well know, Biden is under intense attack for the Afghan withdrawal, with many claiming he is no longer compos mentis. But the colloquy with FOX’s Doocy shows quite the opposite. He gives briefly a quite lucid and informed understanding of Afghan history, the reasons for our involvement and why we are now at last leaving, and the most persuasive and compelling argument for his policy I have yet seen. Dems should show this video widely, because it is Joe Biden at his best, and it should quell his current attackers.” → Nothing will quell most of his current attackers, but given his voting history, it’s awfully good to see Peter sharing this view. Well worth watching that five-minute clip. RFL PUTS We sold half at $13 last week for a quick quadruple. The underlying stock had dropped from $60 to $37. (Suggested in July, these puts allow us to sell RFL at $40 any time until mid-November.) I thought that if RFL bounced back up, I might get a chance to buy the puts back cheaper . . . and sure enough, last week RFL got as high as $52. (Is this a crazy market, or what?) When I went to see how cheaply I could buy some back, I was astonished to see they had become more expensive. So instead of buying any back, I sold all but a few of the rest at $15.37 . . . keeping those last few in case the stock drops to $10 or $20 by the time these puts expire, making them worth $20 or $30. (If the stock drops to $10, the right to sell shares at $40 is worth $30.) That could certainly be leaving a bunch of money on the table. But you know the old line about bulls, bears, and pigs. And what if RFL delays their bad news past the November expiration? Or what if their news somehow isn’t bad? Or is, but the Reddit crowd decides to make it the next GME / AME / SPRT? So I’m largely out at $15.37, and happy. Speaking of SPRT, that we owned for years around $2 and then woke up one morning this March to find at $8 . . . saga recapped here . . . it touched $59.69 Friday, swept up in a Reddit meme-stock short-squeeze whirlwind, before closing the day at $26.33. Insanity. I seem to recall that crazy speculative markets don’t always end well, and so have built up a pretty good cash reserve in case cash is ever once again king, as it occasionally is. Fingers tightly crossed for Louisiana hours before Ida hits . . . and for the last two days of the Kabul evacuation. Have a great week.
FindCenter: The Challenges Of Being Human August 26, 2021August 31, 2021 But first . . . Is rational thinking useful — or allowed — when it comes to the pandemic? Some will say no; some will say yes; some will say it’s already been applied. For your consideration: The Bizarre Refusal to Apply Cost-Benefit Analysis to COVID Debates. And now . . . Lonely? Angry? Grieving? Anxious? On a journey of self-discovery? Neal Goldman: “Today I am turning 51, and humbly announce the birth of FindCenter. Leading up to my 50th birthday I sought to figure out how might I contribute to alleviating some of the profound suffering I see in the world. Not being a doctor, humanitarian or public figure, I focused on harnessing the technology-building skills I acquired over my 25 years as an entrepreneur. In my own life, I had a very hard time trying to figure out how to deal with difficult life events and complicated emotions. FindCenter is meant to streamline that process, and in doing so help make others’ journeys a little easier. It’s a place where anyone can find resources to navigate the challenges of being human.” → Proving yet again that money can’t buy happiness. Though it’s been known to help. Happy Birthday, Neal!
American Guy Fawkeses August 24, 2021 MUST READ Flynn, Stone, Bannon, Prince — and could we throw in Stephen Miller, Giuliani, Josh Hawley, and a few hundred others? How about the Former Guy himself if it turns out he willfully stalled the defense of the Capitol and cheered the attackers on? By Greg Olear. Must read. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry — and if you happen to know Merrick Garland, you’ll forward it for his consideration. WHEELTUG FAA’s New Grants Would Electrify Airports. Not directly tied to WheelTug . . . but sets a nice tone. OATS Back in May, I suggested a flier on oats. It didn’t work out. But compared to most of my losers, this one was terrific: last week, we got all our money back. (Check your credit card statement, and you should see the refund.) To the company’s credit, they decided not to move forward with less capital than would have been needed to give us the best chance of success. They swallowed all their expenses and losses so we’d be made whole. Classy.
A Herring Across The Trail August 22, 2021August 22, 2021 Afghanistan. I blame Raph Nader, as you know. (Gore might have gotten Bin Laden before 9/11* and would surely not have rejected the Taliban’s offer and gone to war with Iraq.) Three perhaps more useful perspectives: First: How presidents lie us into war by Thom Hartmann. You could teach a whole college course around this — or get the gist in 3 minutes: . . . After 9/11 the Taliban offered to arrest Bin Laden, but Bush turned them down because he wanted to be a “wartime president” to have a “successful presidency.” The Washington Post headline weeks after 9/11 put it succinctly: “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer On Bin Laden.” With that decision not to arrest and try Bin Laden for his crime but instead to go to war George W. Bush set the US and Afghanistan on a direct path to today. . . . So worth reading in full! Second: David Petraeus Reflects on the Afghan Debacle. “Unsparing words about Trump and Biden” and a defense of nation-building. Tough stuff, but, again, so worth reading in full. Third: Something you can only read in full here. A note from Basil Comnas to his Hotchkiss ‘65 high school classmates. (If, like me, you have no idea what “a herring across the trail” means, check out logical fallacy #22: “Changing the subject to avoid the point of the argument. A diversionary tactic. From the days of fox hunting, when a saboteur dragged a herring across the trail of a fox in order to throw the dogs off the scent.”) AUGUST 2021 The word Taliban has been a herring across the trail from the beginning of our involvement. Basil Comnas ©2021 / Senior Advisor to UNDP Afghanistan As you may recall, I lived and worked in Afghanistan for all or part of the following years: 1971-78, 1990-91, 1998, 2010-2015. The US has been played for fools by the Government of Afghanistan, two arch crooks, Karzai and Ghani. Biden is getting us out not a moment too soon. After the Soviets invaded Xmas 1979, a first exodus of the intellectual and educated took place, as well as some ordinary country people, who went to Pakistan and Iran. From there, the elite found a way to get to USA and Germany. (An old German law from Hitler’s time allowed Afghans free entry into Germany still in 1979, as honorary Aryans. Before the German authorities changed the law, tens of thousands of Afghans took refuge in Germany when the Soviets entered and carpet bombed the old feudal qalas.) After the departure of the Soviets ( 1989) and the fall of Najibullah (circa 1992) , mujahedeen leaders Massoud (Tajik) and Hekmatyar (Pashtun) fought for control of Kabul. A movement called the Taliban arose and managed to take control of Kabul, most of the South of the country and the West, leaving the North East to Massoud, and the North central (Mazar e Sharif ) to an Afghan-Uzbek warlord Dostum. This upheaval precipitated a second wave of emigration, from those who were close to the Soviets, or close to Najibullah, they fled with their families to Pakistan and India where they settled. These were called by many: “the Watan Frush,” meaning betrayers of the motherland. After 9/11, the US and NATO intervened, and set up Karzai as President (he was a restaurateur in Baltimore) and Ghani, who worked for the World Bank. The George W Bush administration wanted to show results before the Nov 2004 US elections, so they pushed all the “western democracy” consultants that they had fielded there to finalize a new Afghan Constitution and hold fresh Afghan elections well before the US Nov 2004 elections. Lots of inky fingers. Understanding the US self-imposed deadline of Nov 2004, the Afghan parties to the drafting of the new Afghan constitution refused to allow any Federalism, i.e. they held firm insisting on an Afghan constitution in which the President (Karzai) appointed ALL the 34 Provincial governors and 10 mayors of the major cities. No federalism, just one political pyramid of patronage with Karzai at the top, distributing all funds, jobs and power. Karzai was placed in power, even though many in the Loya Jirga members that signed off on this travesty asked themselves, “How can we agree to a leader when we know the hat is too big for his head?’” To compound the problem, very few educated Afghans returned from their comfortable lives in Germany and California, to build the new Afghanistan. But the Watan Frush and their children returned, and took many of the reins of government, and took the best jobs at the embassies, ISAF, the UN, NGOs and in the Afghan Government. Traditional leaders from the provinces, who had fought the Soviets and the quislings of the Watan Frush, were marginalized by this new Constitutional structure. Whenever they rebelled, Karzai’s people branded them as Taliban, then the untutored Americans would bomb and otherwise target them. The Russians laughed and laughed. The Governments of Karzai and Ghani used this word Taliban to label any provincial opposition so that the Americans would attack them. While I argued at the embassies in Kabul that the word Taliban was a poor sort of shorthand that no longer had the meaning that it had had before 9/11, everyone insisted (and many still insist) on using this term. The word ‘Taliban’ made a great herring across the trail, for a wild goose chase that I call “the great American Taliban snipe hunt,” that distracted journalists and policy and military decision makers alike. It was simpler, for those that prefer simplicity, to talk in terms of Taliban than to acknowledge the complexities of the political opposition in the provinces, fighting against the Government and its many officials from the Watan Frush (many speaking Russian better than English, not too surprisingly). Now what will happen? I can’t say for sure. My guess would be that there will be a new power struggle in each of the 33 more-rural provinces. Each province will have its own story, while the province of Kabul will become an armed camp, independent and cut off from the rest of the country. This sad outcome is the direct result of callous hubris on the part of the US, thinking that a new rushed and sub-optimal Constitution and elections would produce an instant democracy. The reality is that nearly none of the many US and NATO staff that went to serve in Afghanistan really wanted to be there, or had the necessary skills or training to be there. Add to this the immense financial improprieties that became rife in the GoIRA (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan), plus the mischievousness of neighbours to the south, west and to the north. The chickens of mismanagement and corruption come home to roost, sadly. There will not be a uniform takeover by a monolithic entity, contrary to the popular folklore. Each province will have its own story, and should now have its own outcome depending on the serenity of the local power struggles and focused effectiveness of modest external funds, especially if we (the international community) stop focusing on what happens in Kabul, but focus our attention now on supporting those provincial governors, to see who does a good job of unifying and mobilizing and protecting all their people. We should place our chips on winning provinces from now on. The word Taliban should never be used in an intelligent conversation of what has been happening the past 20 years, or on what is happening now. It has been a herring across the trail from the beginning of our involvement. The traditional and turbaned tribal-rural strongmen in the provinces will now vie for the role of provincial governors (wali), for those rural provinces where they have been living outside the law, up in the hills. When I tracked him down Friday for permission to post his note, Mr. Comnas replied: Sure, but I need to clarify it. I have not been in Afghanistan since 2015 and I hadn’t appreciated a new development. Yesterday I received new information from a trusted Afghan who just departed Kabul, and while I stand by what I said, it appears that Pakistan has been flooding all of Afghanistan with newly minted “Talibs,” trained in madrasses in Pakistan to be radical jihadists. Our chasing of the red herring, and bombing the armed opposition for twenty years, has allowed the new Talibs to penetrate areas where they previously had no access, like Herat, Kunduz, Badakhshan, even Takhar. Some of these new Talibs speak only Urdu, indicating their origins are the Punjab. Pakistan has played, and continues to play, a treacherous role in undermining stability and social cohesion in Afghanistan. It was no surprise to many that when we finally found Bin Laden, he was living comfortably near in a Pakistan military academy. The million-dollar question: why did the Afghan army not fight these past weeks? The answer that my trusted Afghan source ( known him for 48 years ) is that Pakistan called the shots, with US acquiescence, for the Afghan Army to stand down. Bad days ahead, with the Afghan waters more muddied than ever. Maybe not another US penny of support to Pakistan? (Although Prime Minister Imram Khan is compellingly more attractive than his predecessors, questions remain as to how much real authority he has over the rogue actors in the Pakistani Intelligence Service.) RFL PUTS Suggested at $3.50 six weeks ago, I sold half at $13 Friday. Have a great week! *You can read about it in the first pages of Bob Woodward’s largely pro-Bush Bush at War. “President Clinton had approved five separate intelligence orders authorizing covert action to attempt to destroy bin Laden and his network.” The CIA was urging Bush to continue or step up those efforts; instead, he ignored the “tremendous, immediate” threat and (we know from Bush’s first Treasury Secretary’s book) turned his attention to Iraq.
And Now For Something Completely Silly August 20, 2021August 25, 2021 But first . . . TWO VIEWS ON AFGHANISTAN Tom Friedman: What will matter is the morning after the morning after. Bret Stephens: We should never have left. Trump and Biden both were wrong. BOTH PARTIES ARE DYSFUNCTIONAL One has become a cult, favoring the virus over the vaccine, Putin over the CIA — but let’s not go there. Instead, consider spending 28 minutes with Chuck Todd interviewing Nick Troiano and Lee Drutman about the solution: Ranked-choice voting and open primaries. Imagine if in the primaries candidates had an incentive to appeal to the sensible center. AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY SILLY The quest to get a Paul Giamatti a statue in the wax museum. A pursuit as noteworthy for its uselessness as the world’s largest ball of twine (“There is more to the World’s Largest Ball of Twine than you will expect.”) . . . but for the 21st century. By the daughter of a friend of mine and two of her friends. Film festival material, for sure. (A shout-out, too. to the Cawker City, Kansas, woman who answered when I called to be sure the ball of twine is still on display. “Come on down!” she assured me. “It even tells you the weather.”) Have a great weekend.
A Crash And A Landslide August 19, 2021August 18, 2021 3 LIFE LESSONS FROM A PLANE CRASH This five-minute TED talk is by an important entrepreneur “You’ve Never Heard Of” who was in seat 1D when Captain Sullenberger landed his plane on the Hudson River. WHAT LESSONS FROM A LANDSLIDE? It is a measure of how unhinged things have become that Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency hasn’t made a bigger splash. Much of the country is just numb (he incited a mob to storm the United States Capitol? he sided with the Russians over the CIA?) . . . and the rest believes Hillary ran a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza joint (that has no basement). I like this Amazon review, posted Monday, because it comes from a reader in the U.K., and thus someone not forced to chose sides. 5.0 out of 5 stars Kingsley Flint: How incredible that an autocratic, mentally deranged and very dangerous person could aspire to the title of the most powerful man in the World. In modern times so many have forgotten the Second World War and how it came about. Michael Wolf gives an at once entertaining and alarming intimate picture of the ending of Trump’s presidency and the birth, perhaps largely due to Rudolph Giuliani, of the stolen election myth disaster now threatening the very roots of western democracy. The very fact that the book is so compelling and entertaining illustrates the danger of the Trump phenomenon, and also all the other autocratic governments and tendencies all over the globe. The human race has hypnotised itself through television and democracy has been corrupted by social media and it is this aspect of ‘entertainment’ that has us all transfixed like frightened or unconscious rabbits in the oncoming headlights of global disaster. Have a great day.
Vivek August 18, 2021August 18, 2021 But first . . . THE TRAGEDY Today’s post is long, so if time is short, just read Fareed Zakaria. We Lost the War In Afghanistan Long Ago. He concludes: The United States had been watching the Taliban gain ground in Afghanistan for years now. It is rich and powerful enough to have been able to mask that reality through a steady stream of counter-attacks and air, missile and drone strikes. But none of that changed the fact that, despite all its efforts, it had not been able to achieve victory — it could not defeat the Taliban. Could it have withdrawn better, more slowly, in a different season, after more negotiations? Certainly. This withdrawal has been poorly planned and executed. But the naked truth is this: There is no elegant way to lose a war. Steve P: “Afghan womanhood is once again threatened by the Taliban beasts. Well, yeah, they are beasts, and, yes Afghan women are again going to get the full Sharia law business. But, hopefully, we will have learned that, however badly Afghan women are treated by the Taliban, Afghan men and officials don’t give a fig and, may in fact, approve of traditional patriarchal handling of women as chattel. Afghan men are not rallying to protect their women-folk since we left and are not even standing to defend what civic infrastructure and institutions we set up for them over 20 years and more than a trillion US dollars. Biden is 110% right. The Afghans have to either fight for country or be once again ruled by a pack of primitive Islamic psychopaths. Some folks simply cannot be saved from themselves. Republicans will try to make this a ‘who lost Afghanistan’ moment. Don’t let them get away with it. Ask them what strategies we did not try over the 20 years that they think we should try now instead. We tried them all, short of carpet bombing that place. So did the British over a century ago. So did the Russians almost 50 years ago. And now us. The words of Kipling to British soldiers of his day ring in my head: ‘When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.’“ And now . . . That unread book by Vivek Ramaswamy I plugged Monday — Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam — moved several of you to write. The brilliant billionaire who urged me to read it . . . and who presumably read it in manuscript, as I am now reading Andrew Yang’s forthcoming book (he and I travel in different circles) . . . responded to yesterday’s criticism: “Chris B, could not have read the book, as it just dropped today. I always thought you couldn’t judge a book by its cover? But, for haters, no facts matter.” Chris B. is more of a gentle libertarian than a hater and based his harsh assessment of Ramaswamy not on the book, which he did not purport to have read, but on Ramaswamy’s writings and tweets. Meanwhile . . . Joel N.: “I’ve not read the book. I have no desire to read it. I personally interacted with the gentleman in question a couple of times for an hour or two each, related to one of his ventures which he was trying to push on us (he picked a very good target) during my stint in Cambridge. He is obviously highly intelligent (orders of magnitude more than me, and forgive me, I am not at the bottom of the heap), highly motivated (same), and highly successful (same). But in my own personal one-on-one interactions with him, the red alarm immediately came on. He came across as someone that wasn’t doing anything without an angle or for personal gain, and it’s clear from his track record he has an impeccable sense of timing. I’m not perfect at anything but I am rarely wrong as a judge of character. It would be exceptionally hard for me to believe that there has been a change in his character of the magnitude required for him to write the book, as your friend describes it, in good and sincere conscience.” David G: “Since leaving Wall Street a decade ago, I went into academia and am now dean of a religiously based business school in Los Angeles — the first business school in the nation to be grounded in stakeholder capitalism/social impact/ethical values in every programmatic offering. “Although Ramaswamy and I may hail from the same general hometown (Cincinnati), I had a very different upbringing. My parents weren’t in higher-powered jobs like his, and so I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the very best private school (or any private school, for that matter) in that city. This meant I lacked the tailwinds for easier access to some Ivy League institutions (such as the two from which Ramaswamy graduated) and the accompanying privileged networking opportunities with powerful people. I’m not complaining, solely contextualizing. “Perhaps consistently being out-of-touch with “regular people” is why some of these questionable ideas would be raised by Ramaswamy’s book (obviously I haven’t read the book yet, either, as it comes out today, but I look forward to doing so). “If you believe shareholder value maximization should be the sole or even primary analytic for corporate managers, rather than delivering value to a variety of stakeholders –including equity investors – then let me pose the following questions. “Let’s say our business is considering a project that’s objectively harmful to the environment. “For decades, business students have been taught that if the Net Present Value of that project’s expected future cash inflows and outflows is positive, then management ought to proceed with that project. Why? Because management’s primary goal is always shareholder wealth maximization, and this project does just that. “But what we seem to gloss over is that some of the expected cash outflows in these projects *of course* include expected regulatory fines for environmental harm, legitimate lawsuits for wrongful death caused to folks in the community or actions for meaningful bodily harm to exposed employees, and more. “So why is it wrong to actually consider the environment itself or the local community or employees as stakeholders of that business, since they’re all impacted by a business’s / manager’s strategic decisions that historically placed shareholder wealth maximization first and foremost in the decision analytic? “And just who *are* these shareholders, whose financial interests must be placed ahead of all other stakeholders’ interests? According to recent publications, the top 1% of families based on net worth control 51% of the value of directly owned stocks, while the bottom 50% own approximately 0% of directly owned stocks and 1% of indirectly owned stocks. To contextualize further, Black families represent only 2% of Wall Street holdings and 1% of directly held stocks.+ I could go on…. “So when people challenge the idea that a manager’s primary job (and a corporation’s primary role) is to maximize shareholder value — but not the value of a broader group of stakeholders (that still includes its equity holders) — just what are we saying? “After considering the foregoing and re-reading the snippet you quoted (Ramaswamy’s a ‘traitor to his class’? Really? ‘America’s elites may want to sort us into demographic boxes, but we don’t have to stay there,’ as if he’s not among the most elite of the elite given background and accomplishment? The mere existence of a counter-narrative to longstanding corporate governance structures and shareholder primary law is somehow considered a frightening ‘invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives’?), I’d hope reasonable people would find those claims highly questionable.” → Ramaswamy will, at the very least, start a lot of arguments. RECAF My guy: “The stock is being driven into the ground by short sellers. They are working overtime to spread FUD and appear to be succeeding. Here are the lies they are spreading. And here is the company’s response. I just bought more.” → I have no idea how this will turn out, but got some shares at $4.43 yesterday.
Reader Feedback August 17, 2021August 16, 2021 THE WITHDRAWAL John M.: “As a father of two wonderful intelligent self sufficient daughters, my heart bleeds for the millions of young women who will now face a life of brutal subjugation. For all of our failures we can say, to paraphrase Walter Cronkite once again: ‘We were a good and decent people who tried to confront tyranny and in the end we came up short.’” → It is to cry. RANKED CHOICE VOTING Mike H: “I hope your conclusion is valid, but it is not apparent to me how ranked-choice voting disincentivizes negative campaigning.” → Think of it this way. Say you were running for office in a ranked-choice election. Knowing that each of your rivals has some strong fans, and hoping to be those fans’ second choice, would you be more or less likely to smear them? THE PANDEMIC Jim Burt: “Not only is every ICU bed between Memphis and Biloxi – all of Mississippi – filled, but the University of Mississippi medical school parking garage has been taken over by a tent containing an emergency field hospital. Yet the entire population of the state could be vaccinated in one day, with a follow-up in 2-3 weeks. In other words, the pandemic in Mississippi could be over in a month. Other states could be dealt with similarly, leaving only Florida and Texas — each led by a governor who, to please the MAGA base, has aligned himself with the coronavirus against the people. It’s that simple. Why the hell not?” → Next you’ll be requiring children to be vaccinated before they can attend school! Measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chickenpox . . . are you crazy? Oh, wait. We already do that. RECAF Jim S.: “Back down to half its recent high, does your source have any thoughts?” → Yes: “Long stretches between news always seems to be filled with FUD. There was an expectation among many that the last news release would be more significant. I think there were a lot of shareholders who expected a quick fortune and are taking their chips off the table. What still matters, the only thing, is the oil in the ground. I’m still bullish.” → I had to look up FUD (“fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) but that sounds about right. My hope — especially now that we’ve taken our initial investment off the table and are playing with house money — is that the global shift to clean energy will advance so rapidly that RECAF finds no demand for its oil and the shares go to zero. Failing that, my hope is to make a bundle to give to progressive pro-climate causes and candidates. UNWOKE Chris B.: “In my opinion, Ramaswamy is just another obnoxious pseudopopulist Republican who had every advantage growing up, works the system incredibly well, and knows nothing about or ignores the history of American racism and the very deliberate assault on Black public education.” → Chris here is commenting on yesterday’s post plugging the Vivek Ramaswamy book I had not read. I have rarely found Chris to be wrong about anything — and frequently found the billionaire who recommended the book to be wrong (though brilliant) — so . . . hmmm. It still sounds like an interesting read, if only to see what we’re up against. Either way, I’m with Bill Maher. Did you watch that clip?
Woke Is Broke August 16, 2021August 16, 2021 Bill Maher on Matt Damon and wokeness. Must watch. Bring back common sense! And once you’ve watched, consider this book — which I have not read: Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, by Vivek Ramaswamy. Out tomorrow. I don’t often recommend books I haven’t read — I’ve pre-ordered it — but this one was strongly urged on me by a brilliant billionaire friend, and written by a brilliant budding billionaire, so if you’re a brilliant billionaire, you may well like it. Even if you’re not, it may be of interest: A young entrepreneur makes the case that politics has no place in business and sets out a new vision for the future of American capitalism. There’s a new invisible force at work in our economic and cultural lives. It affects every advertisement we see and every product we buy, from our morning coffee to a new pair of shoes. “Stakeholder capitalism” makes rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally friendly world, but in reality, this ideology, championed by America’s business and political leaders, robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity. Vivek Ramaswamy is a traitor to his class. He’s founded multibillion-dollar enterprises, led a biotech company as CEO; he became a hedge fund partner in his 20s, trained as a scientist at Harvard and a lawyer at Yale, and grew up the child of immigrants in a small town in Ohio. Now he takes us behind the scenes into corporate boardrooms and five-star conferences, into Ivy League classrooms and secretive nonprofits, to reveal the defining scam of our century. The modern woke-industrial complex divides us as a people. By mixing morality with consumerism, America’s elites prey on our innermost insecurities about who we really are. They sell us cheap social causes and skin-deep identities to satisfy our hunger for a cause and our search for meaning, at a moment when we as Americans lack both. This book not only rips back the curtain on the new corporatist agenda, it offers a better way forward. America’s elites may want to sort us into demographic boxes, but we don’t have to stay there. Woke, Inc. begins as a critique of stakeholder capitalism and ends with an exploration of what it means to be an American in 2021 – a journey that begins with cynicism and ends with hope. But to be anti-woke is not to discount the terrible injustices that existed when our nation was founded, on most of which we’ve made dramatic progress (slaves are free! women can vote! gays can marry!) yet have a lot further to go — and a moral imperative to go there. Canceling Matt Damon doesn’t help. If anything, it gives the forces that resist progress something legitimately to oppose (excessive wokeness) while side-stepping the real issues. On the real issues, progressives are right and those who justified slavery (just read the Bible!) or fought women’s suffrage (just read the Bible!) or fight LGBTQ equality (just read the Bible!) or try to whitewash January 6 (just watch FOX News!) or discredit Black Lives Matter (just watch Fox News!) were and are wrong. So I leave you with . . . CASTE IN THE CLASSROOM By the daughter of my 8th grade algebra teacher, Bob Moses, whom I told you about a while ago. Watch the trailer? Watch the 40-minute film for $10? Two teens in Massachusetts wonder why they’re the only Black or Brown students in their calculus class. As they talk to “The Professor,” a friend’s uncle, he walks them through the development of this country’s racialized caste system and how it has become manifested in our school systems. The Professor enlightens them about some of the knowledge Africans brought to this continent and imparted to the wider population, only to have credit for these accomplishments ripped away. He describes the building of the US economy on the backs and wombs of enslaved Africans, white fear of rebellion, and white suppression of Black literacy. The teens learn how these systems of oppression continued post-slavery through sharecropping, peonage, imprisonment, convict leasing, and the ever-present threat of white violence. From the Jim Crow South to the de facto Jim Crow North, the Professor introduces a framework from civil rights and education activist Bob Moses called “sharecropper education”— a system in which the quality of children’s education is proportional to the roles they are assigned at birth by caste. As they examine statistics from their own school district, the teens wonder how their community compares. Lastly, the boys and the Professor imagine some solutions to redesigning their district and the US education system writ large. Finally, the two immediate tragedies . . . Haiti, which we could have done nothing to prevent, and Afghanistan, which is much more complicated — but excruciating. It is ironic that this was the one place the former president actually expressed support for the current president (except to say he would have left faster). One’s heart aches for the people of Haiti and Afghanistan.