Biden Goes Down, Flags Go Up and France Goes Right
All the news that's fit to know from Grimoire Manor
Greetings from Paris, the land of baguettes, crispy cathedrals, and maybe Europe’s newest far-right government. A few things interesting loom on our horizons, so here is a quick rundown.
What’s The Old Joke About Grampa Dying Peacefully in His Sleep, Not Screaming Like the Passengers in His Car?
First, if you were somehow in a catatonic stupor the last few days (but not participating in a presidential debate while in said stupor) and awoke only to read Grimoire Manor, well first of all, good for you. But more importantly, President Biden had what appeared to be a pretty significant cognitive meltdown during his first debate with former President Trump. As I’ve written before, the odds of Biden (and Trump for that matter) having some degree of clinically significant cognitive impairment, possibly early dementia, are non-trivial. Can I definitively say Biden is in the early stages of dementia? Without publicly released neuropsychological testing results, no (and that’s not going to happen). But come on, we’re certainly at the point where, at very least, we’d be talking about taking the car keys away, maybe putting some alerts on the credit cards if he was a relative. Instead, this guy has nuclear launch codes.
I’m not saying I want Trump to have those nuclear launch codes either. But I think about this from what I like to refer to as the 100-year-history view. What would middle school kids be learning about in their history class 100 years from now. In that sense, if we ignore the whole “this is very terrible for the US today” angle…and hey why should Grimoire Manor burden itself with this since nobody with actual power and control has…then the 2024 election is actually a pretty amazing history lesson. “You see kids, in 2016 in the US, the two main political parties decided to run two of the worst candidates ever. Both candidates were amazingly unpopular, it was close, and in the end this dude who was kind of nuts won against the Lady Nobody Liked. Then, 4 years later basically Grampa Moses came along and voters kicked Crazy Dude out of office in favor of Grampa Moses. Soon it turned out, maybe hiring a guy older than the Eiffel Tower (France theme today) to run the country was a bad idea, so they voted the Crazy Dude back into office! Nobody thought to, you know, run more popular or competent candidates. 4 years later the US got invaded by Nazi France, which put it out of its misery.”
Governments and K12 Schools Should Adopt Institutional Neutrality
Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the state government decided that the Ten Commandments would be displayed in every schoolroom. Capitalizing on Louisiana’s remarkable rise from 41st best school system to 40th, this should definitely be the thing that fixes American schools. Aside from the whole separation of church and state/unconstitutional thing. So, I doubt this will last long in the courts, but it does raise a question…should schools or, for that matter municipal or state governments, take political positions on controversial issues1?
Recently, many universities have started adopting institutional neutrality. Briefly, this means that universities should stop releasing public statements on controversial issues whether Israel/Palestine2, abortion, Black Lives Matter, Ukraine, etc. This is a good idea as universities should be teaching students how to think (which is hard to go given how bad at this so many university professors are), not what to think. But maybe governments and K12 schools should get out of this political flag/statement business too?
This has come up in recent years as K12 schools in particular have put up banners and flags supporting BLM or LGBT Pride or various other issues. I think the days of BLM support are largely done and probably evoke more eyerolling than anything, but Pride is a live issue (fortunately I’m posting this one day after Pride month!) To be clear, I take the groundbreaking position that not discriminating against people based on their sexual orientation is good. But I also kind of think giving identity groups an entire month where we’re all supposed to have very special episode conversations is kinda counterproductive. When we think of a single issue such as Pride flags, the issue seems complex…some students and families may take comfort in the flags which is great, although the flags may also stoke controversy given both the religious concerns of some families (and not just Christian but often Muslim, adding some wrinkle too criticism taboo on the left), but also ongoing debates about youth transgender medicine. Conservative religious views of homosexuality don’t interest me much, but neither do I begrudge people for having them. My notorious inability to get all that upset about most issues raises its head again.
I think focusing on a single issue such as Pride actually confuses the real concerns, however. Rather, should schools and governments take positions that don’t necessarily represent all their constituents and are standards applied evenly? For instance, would it be equally ok for a school in a conservative district to fly banners opposing youth gender medicine? Or for a school to fly a Thin Blue Line flag? Or a MAGA flag, etc.? I think there’s a legitimate issue that, in flying political flags3, however well-intentioned, public entities such as schools and municipalities could cross accusations of hypocrisy and potential free-speech issues if they apply double standards to different political issues. Or put simply, although the issue of Pride flags don’t really animate me much one way or the other (sorry, like with abortion, I don’t really have a strong opinion on this), I’m mulling the idea that municipalities and K12 public school should, like universities, embrace institutional neutrality.
The First Step Towards France’s Revenge on Germany4?
Lastly, as I write this France is voting in national elections which look likely to return a far-right government5. I’ll be interested to see how this turns out, but it looks like France is likely to join much of the rest of Europe in shifting toward the political right. In Europe, the UK is one of few exceptions. Interestingly, for all the “The Fascists are coming! The Fascists are coming!” hysteria in the US, US politics has mainly stayed straight down the middle, chaotic and bombastic as it may otherwise be.
My best guess is that massive immigration and the sense of social dissolution that comes with it is driving much of this. I think one of the reasons the UK is shifting left is mainly because the conservative Tories proved to be incompetent in addressing immigration6. I think the issue of immigration is, well, complex. There are obvious upsides and, when well-regulated can be a net plus. But I think there are legitimate concerns, not over the racial purity stuff which doesn’t interest me at all, but over social cohesion, illegal immigration, the issue of refugees, etc. Or, put a different way, poorly regulated immigration can potentially cause some real problems. But perhaps I’ll return to that in a future post.
In the meantime, Vive La France!
Or even, for that matter, noncontroversial ones? After all, I have had a lot of people assure me that many very controversial issues are, in fact, noncontroversial.
That this suddenly appeared to be a good idea only after a bunch of Jews died is, maybe, not the best look. But it’s still a good thing, so not going to look this gift horse too closely in the mouth.
And, yes, I’d include Pride flags as political.
After all, when was the last time France won a war outright on their own? The Frankish invasion of Gaul? I kid…
Ok, this is a bit of a simplification but that’s the news media narrative. It’s actually the first round of a two-round voting system, because why make things simple? It appears from polls that the far-right Le Pen faction is likely to be a big winner, but less clear that they’ll have the supermajority needed to control France’s parliament.
Ed West has covered this admirably but I’m too lazy to look up which of his Substack articles covered this.