This Week’s Show

Contents

• 01m13s Trump’s personnel picks
• 20m09s Fertility and feminism
• 26m59s Righteous dismissals
• 30m59s RIP Timothy West
• 33m14s Churchill’s return
• 36m17s A very Japanese project
• 38m42s Signoff with Gracie
• 00m00s Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from your precipitously genial host John Derbyshire with some observations on the week’s news.

Today’s podcast will depart somewhat from the usual format. My custom has been to offer five or six longish segments and then a miscellany of shorter items. The way it came out this week was as one lo-o-o-o-ng segment followed by five much shorter ones. Unable to make that fit into the customary format, I shall present each as a segment of its own, with no closing miscellany.

So first, the long one.

02 — Trump’s personnel picks.     Dominating the political news this past week have been President-Elect Trump’s declared personnel picks. I’ve been watching with interest.

By Mid-day Friday I’ve counted twenty-five named nominees, of which twelve are, I am pretty sure, cabinet-level: Vice President of course, White House Chief of Staff, Attorney General, Secretaries of State, Defense, Interior, Health & Human Services, Veterans’ Affairs, and Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence, U.N. Ambassador, and EPA Administrator. Some others — National Security Advisor, CIA Director, … — I’m not sure if they count as cabinet-level, but I’m including them in my twenty-five anyway.

Of the twenty-five I have date of birth for twenty-four: six Boomers, eleven Gen-X-ers, seven Millennials. The median age is 52.

That’s a younger crowd than Joe Biden’s current cabinet. I can only match off twenty titles in Joe Biden’s White House with titles on my Trump list of twenty-five. Biden’s twenty are twelve Boomers, eight Gen-X-ers, and no Millennials at all, median age 61 — nine years older than the median for Trump’s people.

So yes: bye-bye Boomers. We’re trading you in for Gen-X and Millennials. Every generation has its hour in the Sun. We Silents had ours, now the twilight’s coming down on you Boomers. No use complaining; it’s Nature’s way. You Gen-X-ers, Millennials, and Gen-Z-ers: you’ll find out.

Of the forty-four dates of birth I looked up there, the oldest are for RFK, Jr., whom Trump has nominated for Health & Human Services Secretary; he’s seventy. On the other side is Merrick Garland, Biden’s Attorney General, who just turned seventy-two on Wednesday.

The nomination that has generated the most shrieking and wailing so far has been that of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. It’s also the only one I can claim any personal acquaintance with, though at a low level: I was once at an informal small gathering at which Matt Gaetz was also present. I don’t recall him saying much through that evening; but he was perfectly well-mannered, and what he did say was sensible and well-informed.

For all seven years he’s been in Congress, though, I’ve been hearing talk about Gaetz as somewhat of a loose cannon. It was picayune stuff — mis-use of funds, illicit drug use, sexual hanky-panky — and all colored by personal antagonisms. I don’t think the phrase “team player” fits Gaetz very well.

For example, it was Gaetz who last year moved the motion to dump Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker for being too accommodating to House Democrats. There’s been bad blood between Gaetz and McCarthy ever since. They famously jousted on CNN this July, during the Republican convention. Quote from McCarthy on that occasion, quote:

… he’s got an ethics complaint about paying, sleeping with a 17-year-old …

End quote.

So is Matt Gaetz a sleazebag, or what? I have no idea. He didn’t seem like one, that one evening I was in company with him. None of the negative things I’ve heard about him rises above the picayune level. “Sleeping with a 17-year-old”? For goodness’ sake: don’t people listen to the Beatles any more? [Clip:  “She was just seventeen, you know what I mean …”]

Just speculating now: I note that Gaetz’s Congressional seat represents Florida’s 1st District, encompassing much of what I have heard referred to disparagingly as “the Redneck Riviera.” Apparently it’s a favorite vacation and retirement spot for Deplorables from the Old South. It’s also where Gaetz was born and raised.

Born and raised in England myself, I’m hypersensitive to class issues, so I may be overthinking this; but possibly the snobs in Congress, including the GOP snobs, think that Gaetz’s close associations with the Redneck Riviera make him too much of a slob for them to take seriously. I don’t know, I’m just speculating.

There’s talk that Trump might have trouble getting Gaetz’s appointment confirmed by the Senate. In this morning’s news, even Senator Ted Cruz has publicly expressed doubts.

The question is being asked: Why did Trump nominate for Attorney General someone as controversial as Gaetz? The answer is probably that after unhappy experiences with two A-Gs in his first term, Trump wanted someone as far removed as possible from anything like Uniparty consensus politics.

You might argue — I will argue — that those two first-term unhappinesses, with Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, were at least as much Trump’s fault as theirs. Lots of luck getting the Donald to agree with you.

This is all very Trumpian. We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out.

Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Defense Secretary was a close second in the scoffing stakes. He’s best known as a reporter and host on cable TV — on Fox News, woo hoo hoo! A TV host giving orders to our nation’s armed forces? Will they listen?

In fact Hegseth, after graduating from Princeton and Harvard, was a combat infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan and won two Bronze Stars. From those experiences he wrote a book, The War on Warriors, published earlier this year. Here are the opening two paragraphs from the book’s page at Amazon, quote:

Pete Hegseth joined the Army to fight extremists. Then that same Army called him one. The military Pete joined twenty years ago was fiercely focused on lethality, competency, and color blindness. Today our brass are following the rest of our country off the cliff of cultural chaos and weakness.

Americans with common sense are fighting this on many fronts, but if we can’t save the meritocracy of our military, we’re definitely going to lose everywhere else.

End quote.

If you want to hear Hegseth talk about his book, and these issues, I recommend his November 7th appearance on the Shawn Ryan show, which you can find on YouTube. It’s two and a half hours long, which may be too much for you; but for a good sample, just listen to him talking about women in combat roles, starting 53 minutes twenty-six seconds into that interview. Hegseth’s against it, and so am I. You may disagree, but at least hear Pete Hegseth arguing the case. He’s a very smart guy.

Trump’s nomination of Mike Huckabee to be our Ambassador to Israel has ruffled some feathers.

Huckabee is a Christian Zionist, as pro-Israel as it’s possible for a Gentile to be, so his nomination has stirred up anti-Zionists of every variety.

There are of course many such varieties. At one end of the passion spectrum there are rabid old-style Christian Jew-haters. They killed our Lord! At the other end are, ahem, mild-mannered isolationist patriots who, while wishing Israel well, nurse reasonable concerns about what George Washington, in his farewell address, referred to as entanglements and the, quote, “insidious wiles of foreign influence,” end quote.

Presumably the main focus of Trump’s Israel policy will be to revivify the Abraham Accords, in the hopes of building some kind of bulwark of Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, perhaps Egypt, possibly Lebanon — against the lunatics in that region. I don’t see how posting a Zionist Christian as our Ambassador would hinder that. If Lebanon comes into play, it may help it.

And then, Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. I’ve never held Rubio in much regard, having somehow acquired the impression that he’s a bit of a neocon world-saver type.

A person I do hold in very high regard is David Goldman, columnist at Asia Times, writing mostly under the pseudonym “Spengler.” Goldman’s articles on geostrategy, especially where China is concerned, are well-informed and deeply thought out.

Tuesday this week Goldman published an article — this one under his true name — with the title “Rubio brings China Realism to the State Department.” Reading it, I came away with a whole new outlook on Rubio.

I urge you to read Goldman’s article for yourself, but here’s a sample quote. Edited quote:

A bright line divides realists from Utopians among Washington’s China hawks. Neo-conservatives like Dan Blumenthal, popular publicists like Gordon Chang and Peter Zeihan, and true believers like former Secretary of State and CIA director Michael Pompeo believe that China is about to collapse and that the United States should hasten the fall by confronting China militarily and economically …

On the other side are realists who may detest China and accuse it of nefarious behavior but nonetheless recognize that China has made remarkable accomplishments in high-tech industry at home and in global trade. Rubio is the best-informed among the realists and he dismisses the Utopian vision in the conclusion of his report.

End quote.

Again I urge you to read Goldman’s article yourself. It quotes Rubio at length. If you think, as I did until Tuesday, that Rubio is unimpressive, it will change your mind.

Where foreign policy is concerned, the criticisms we’re hearing from the regime media all take as established truth the deceptions and self-deceptions of our post-Cold War foreign-policy establishment.

Tulsi Gabbard’s past comments on Russia cloud her nomination by Trump growls a headline in The Washington Post. What past comments would those be? Reading the story, they turn out to be remarks Tulsi Gabbard made — true and accurate remarks, it seems to me — about the colossal stupidity of our Russia policy across thirty years.

Of all the objections I have so far seen to Trump’s nominations, the silliest one has come from the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, a.k.a. Princess Pocahontas.

To the official announcement that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency, Pocahontas tweeted that, tweet:

The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person.

Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient.

End tweet.

My old friend Andrew Stuttaford returned that right back across the net with, tweet:

How many U.S. Senators does Massachusetts have?

End tweet.

So the objections I’ve seen to Trump’s personnel picks don’t seem to me to carry much weight. Objections aside, though, there are reasonable speculations we can indulge ourselves in.

Will there turn out to be one or two duds among the nominees? Possibly; nobody’s judgment is perfect, certainly not Trump’s.

Will one or two nominees, when appointed, get on Trump’s wrong side and be told “You’re fired!” like Jeff Sessions? I wouldn’t rule it out.

At this early stage, though, with the Biden people — who are really the Obama people — still in power, all we can do is line them up against Trump’s picks and do broad comparisons: Merrick Garland against Matt Gaetz, Lloyd Austin against Pete Hegseth, Alejandro Mayorkas against Kristi Noem, Pete Buttigieg against anyone at all — I haven’t heard a Trump nominee for Transportation yet, but Pee Wee Herman, if he were still with us, would be an improvement on Buttigieg — and so on.

When I line up the two cabinets like that, Biden’s against Trump’s, the conclusion seems plain: We shall soon have a way better federal government than we’ve had this past four years.

03 — Fertility and feminism.     Apparently I owe an apology to the Amish people. In last week’s podcast I complimented the Amish on having voted solidly for Trump, and also for their admirably high fertility.

Nothing wrong with any of that; but several listeners have emailed in to tell me that I pronounced the word “Amish” wrong. I was saying “Ay-mish” instead of “Ah-mish.”

Checking with my Webster’s Dictionary, 1961 edition, I see that they do indeed give “Ah-mish” as their first choice for pronunciation, with “A-mish” as their second — I’ve never heard that — and my “Ay-mish” as their third.

With the traditional immigrant’s desire to be just as American as the Americans, I shall in future try to say “Ah-mish.” There’s a teeny little anomaly here, though.

Webster’s also favors “ah-men” as the conclusion to a prayer, and that is the pronunciation I learned in my Anglican childhood. The Pastor at my local Baptist church here on Long Island, though, along with all his congregation, prefer “ay-men.”

What’s up with that? Shall I ever get fully, properly acquainted with American English? Or “Ah-merican” English, or “Ay-merican” English? …

And having mentioned Amish fertility back there, in among all the demographic analyses of this months’ election there have been two interesting scatter plots posted by someone at X tweeting under the name Charlie Smirkley.

The first scatter plot has, along the horizontal axis, the average age of white mothers at their first birth, with a range from 25 to 35. The vertical axis shows Trump’s percentage share of the vote, range from five percent to 75. There is one teeny “x” marked for each state.

The scatter plot of those x-es is plainly from top left to bottom right, correlation coefficient −0.91. So states where white mothers are younger at their first birth vote more for Trump.

The second scatter plot has Trump’s share of the vote, five percent to 75, along its horizontal axis, while the vertical axis shows Total Fertility Rate, range 1.1 to 2.1. That’s the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime. Again, one teeny “x” marked to represent each state.

The trend line here goes upwards from bottom left to top right. The higher a state’s fertility level, the bigger a share of the vote went to Trump, correlation coefficient positive 0.78.

I haven’t checked Charlie Smirkley’s source for those plots, but they agree with my intuition that Trump-voting slobs are more fertile than Trump-hating snobs, starting at younger ages.

It also keys in neatly to the feminist 4B Movement we’ve been hearing about.

This movement started in South Korea a decade ago. The four Bs are: no dating men, no sex with men, no marriage with men, no childbirth. Why are they called Bs? Because the Korean word for “no” begins with “b.” Don’t blame me; I just report this stuff.

Quote from the London Guardian newspaper, yesterday, quote:

As Donald Trump secured victory in the US presidential election, an unexpected phenomenon began trending on social media: young American women declaring their commitment to “4B,” a fringe South Korean feminist movement advocating the rejection of marriage, childbirth, dating and sex.

End quote.

Yes: women afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome and so furious at the election result are going to take their anger out on the world by shunning men. Charlie Smirkley’s scatter plots tell us they were already doing so; but presumably if this 4B Movement takes off here, the trend will intensify.

I don’t see any downside to this. Behavioral genetics tells us that most aspects of the human personality are to some degree heritable. If these cranky TDS-afflicted feminists stop reproducing, there’ll be fewer like them each generation. I’m fine with that.

04 — Righteous dismissals.     I can personally testify that unemployment is no fun. Sometimes, though, reading about a person being fired, or resigning in the sure knowledge that he or she was about to be fired, brings a happy smile to my face.

Two of those this week. Number One: Mam’i Washington, the supervisor at FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who told her staff, cleaning up after those terrible storms last month, not to give any federal disaster relief to houses displaying Trump campaign signs.

Ms Washington was fired last week, quite rightly of course. In an interview with a podcaster, though, she’s been claiming that she was just following official FEMA policy.

A FEMA official, on condition of anonymity, has supported her claim. He or she told the New York Post that, quote:

I have heard from other entities who are serving in North Carolina that there was clear guidance saying to be “mindful” of the types of people who are in Western North Carolina — they’re largely Republican, very conservative — very derogatory sorts of references in their culture.

End quote.

This informant said, however, that FEMA employees are trained to deal with unruly deplorables after a disaster and that FEMA’s real motive in avoiding certain areas in need is “equity.”

Ah yes, “equity.” It’s all too believable. As happy as I am that Ms Washington got canned, I’m sure there are officials in the higher ranks of FEMA equally at fault. Perhaps the Department of Government Efficiency will take the matter in hand once Elon and Vivek have it up and running.

Number Two well-deserved pink slip: Laura Helmuth, the editor of Scientific American magazine. I told you last week about Ms Helmuth’s appalling, foul-mouthed reactions to the election result.

Here she was yesterday, Thursday, posting on BlueSky, a social media platform for lefty progressives. Quote:

I’ve decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief. I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching) …

End quote.

Take all the time you need, Laura. You won’t be missed — nor, I’m guessing, re-hired. Nor will you ever be forgiven by lovers of scientific truth for contributing to the destruction of a fine old magazine — America’s oldest magazine, I believe.

05 — RIP Timothy West.     Four years ago, in my Diary for November 2020, I had a segment about British columnist Ed West, who used to write for UnHerd.com but who nowadays I think posts mainly to his own Substack account.

I had things to say about Ed’s very talented family, with whom I’ve been acquainted in a literary way — as a consumer, I mean — for more than forty years.

Among those things was the following, quote from me:

Ed is also a first cousin once removed of actor Timothy West, who lingers in my mind as the definitive stage portrayal of Stalin. That was in David Pownall’s play Masterclass around 1984, when the U.S.S.R. had loosened up some and there were a lot of Russians in London. It seemed like every one of them was in the theater that evening. Each time Timothy West’s Stalin hoicked up his withered arm they all sighed Aaaah! in unison.

End quote.

Timothy West died on Tuesday at the age of 90. The London Times ran a full obituary. He’s survived by his wife Prunella Scales — Sybil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers — although unfortunately she’s disabled by dementia. The two were married for 61 years.

Rest in peace, Sir. Meaning no offense at all, to me you will always be Stalin.

06 — Churchill’s return.     Two weeks from now, at the end of this month, you’ll be hearing about Sir Winston Churchill. November 30th will be Sir Winston’s 150th birthday.

I never met Churchill, though I followed his funeral procession through the streets of London in 1965 when I was a student there. Nowadays there’s a lot of negativity about him. He was an alcoholic and a spendthrift, you’ll read, who sold his soul to Jewish financiers and got unnecessarily large numbers of his countrymen killed.

That is nothing new to me. My father was a Churchill hater. Dad — who, as it happens, died forty years ago yesterday — served in World War One. He blamed Churchill for the Gallipoli fiasco in that war — unfairly, I do believe.

My own view of Churchill is more conventional and respectful. He was a great man. For an excellent essay taking that point of view I refer you to the current issue — that is, the November issue — of The New Criterion. The last article in the magazine is by Larry Arrn, the President of Hillsdale College. Title: “One hundred fifty years of Churchill.” I recommend it to your attention.

In other Churchill news, we have been told that Donald Trump, on re-entering the White House, will restore the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office.

The bust was a gift to Lyndon Johnson, then President, following Churchill’s death in 1965. It sat happily in the Oval Office for 44 years until Barack Obama replaced it with one of Martin Luther King.

Trump, who is a major Churchill fan, restored it in 2017 but then Joe Biden removed it again in 2021, replacing it this time with one of immigration restrictionist Cesar Chavez. No, that doesn’t make sense to me, either; but that’s Joe Biden for you.

Come January the old bulldog will be back in the Oval Office. Long may he remain there!

07 — A very Japanese project.     November 5th, while we were lining up at our polling stations, Japan launched into space the first ever wooden satellite, named LignoSat.

Quote from the Reuters report, quote:

Once deployed, LignoSat will stay in the orbit for six months, with the electronic components onboard measuring how wood endures the extreme environment of space, where temperatures fluctuate from −100 to 100 degrees Celsius every 45 minutes as it orbits from darkness to sunlight.

End quote.

The Japanese scientists running this project are full of optimism about the potential for wood in space exploration. As one of them pointed out to reporters, quote: “Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” end quote. Yes, they were. He went on to predict that metal satellites may be banned in future.

I can’t explain why, but there is something very Japanese about the idea of wooden satellites. If you had asked me, at any time prior to this news story, which nation would be the first to launch a wooden satellite, I’m sure I would have replied — I mean, once I’d stopped laughing — “Japan.”

It’s something to do with the generalized image we carry around in our heads of foreign nations we know only from reading about them.

Let me give it a try. Which nation do you think will be the first to launch into orbit a satellite made of leather?

08 — Signoff.     That’s all I have, ladies and gents. Thank you for your time and attention — especially through that long opening segment — and thanks as always for your encouragement and support.

Concerning which, forgive me for reminding you that the home page at my personal website johnderbyshire.com has full instructions on how to support my work using snail mail, PayPal, or crypto, or via Zelle direct to my bank. To make a tax-deductible donation, earmark a check with my name and mail it to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you!

There will be more from Radio Derb next week