In Print
Manufacturing Bust
President Barack H. Obama, if current trends continue, will become the first Democrat to preside over a net national loss in domestic manufacturing jobs since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started reporting monthly employment data in 1939. Seven percent of manufacturing jobs nationwide (873,000) have disappeared since Obama took office.
The Panic of 2011
If you’re old or sick and have a lot of money, I suggest taking a trip out of the country, away from your heirs, until January 1, 2011. And don’t tell them where you’re going. On that date, the death tax for rich folks goes from the current 0 percent to 55 percent. So your heirs will get less than half of what they would have if you went to the Great Walmart in the Sky a day earlier.
How Aussies Lost Their Pride of Erin
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”
Some recent Australian cultural trends—massive Islamic immigration, for instance—are so obvious that even an economist can detect them. Others occur so stealthily that they attract no attention, until you suddenly look around and think, Hey, whatever happened to such-and-such?
The Creaturely Myth
James O. Tate reviews Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight • by Karl Rove • New York: Threshold Editions • 608 pp., $30.00
There is—there must be–all the difference in the world between an autobiography and a novel written in the first person. Are we clear? Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History, for example, has much in common with Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield or even Great Expectations, with the obvious exceptions that the “truth” seems to be fiction, and the fiction seems to be true. So then, we are not clear. And possibly an autobiography should be read as though it were fiction—at least, Karl Rove’s narrative should be read as fiction. And I recommend this approach for one particular reason: The book is much more comfortable to consume as a mythic artifact than as a discursive account of life and politics.
An Unfinished Story
A review of The Krajina Chronicle: A History of Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia • by Srdja Trifkovic • Chicago: The Lord Byron Foundation • 250 pp., $20.00
Srdja Trifkovic is no stranger to Chronicles readers, many of whom have found his articles commenting on foreign affairs, with particular attention to the Balkans, to be insightful, penetrating, and written with authority. His latest book, The Krajina Chronicle, provides further confirmation of his extraordinary talent.
Walk Like an Egyptian
About the time that we moved into our current house, my grandmother gave me a pot of Egyptian walking onions. Winter hardy to Zone 3, they are perfect for Rockford, where many plants that are perennial in my native Michigan struggle to make it through our harsher winters.
Bringing Down Brussels
As everyone knows, Greece became a member of the eurozone on the back of a lie. The colonels’ regime had collapsed, Greek politicians were nervous, and that pseudo-French aristocrat Giscard promised entry to a country that is more Middle Eastern than European, but with olive oil. Entry meant no more tanks surrounding Parliament at midnight—rather a pity, actually, because they kept some semblance of law and order. So from 1980 onward, the Greeks began to spend other people’s money, the chief spender being the present premier’s father, known to us Greeks as Ali Babandreou.
Driving Home Their Point
A recent story in the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, California, gives the lie to the notion that illegal aliens are just here “to do the jobs Americans won’t do” and are largely a law-abiding class of the downtrodden, shifting where they can for work.
Where the Demons Dwell: The Antichrist Right
Those blissfully ignorant of right-wing soap opera will have never noticed the Antichrist Right, a loose coalition of writers who regard the Church as the worst thing that ever happened to Western civilization. If I understand correctly, the Antichrist Right would describe Christianity much as Christianity defines evil: a shadowy, parasitic negation that possesses no substance of its own and prevents its mesmerized victims from attaining their true destiny.
Atomic Anniversary
Sixty-five years ago, on August 6, the United States dropped the first offensive nuclear weapon in history. This bomb, code-named “Little Boy,” killed around 140,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan. The U.S. military dropped the second and last nuclear weapon ever used in war, “Fat Man,” three days later on nearby Nagasaki, killing approximately 39,000 people.
