I readily admit this is a blatant attempt to “reproduce” an important (IMO) piece in The Free Press by Niall Ferguson. (For at least the third time, Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The British newspaper The Times has called him “the most brilliant British historian of his generation.”)
The piece, not surprisingly, is called “The Vibe Shift Goes Global.” The sub-head reads, “At home, Yale Law School and DEI committees are out. Abroad, strength and escalation are in.”
The title of Ferguson’s piece comes from something written on Substack by Santiago Pliego in which he “tried to sum up the change that had occurred from the epoch of woke—which began with the cancellation of James Damore by Google in 2017—to the unfiltered era of Elon Musk’s X.”
“Fundamentally,” Pliego wrote, “the Vibe Shift is a return to—a championing of—Reality, a rejection of the bureaucratic, the cowardly, the guilt-driven; a return to greatness, courage, and joyous ambition.”
Ferguson wrote,
“The vibe shift hit American politics on the night of November 5. What no one foresaw was that it would almost immediately go global, too.
The crude way to think about this is just geopolitical physics. The American electorate decisively reelects Donald Trump. Ergo: The German government falls, the French government falls, the South Korean president declares martial law, Bashar al-Assad flees Syria. There’s an economic chain reaction, too. Bitcoin rallies, the dollar rallies, U.S. stocks rally, Tesla rallies. Meanwhile, the Russian currency weakens, China slides deeper into deflation, and Iran’s economy reels.”
He then writes about specific examples of behavior by the heads of state and other high-ranking government officials of various countries/entities that seem to indicate the new reality already exists. Here is one that resonated with me:
“The vibe shift has already had effects in Europe, too. Within days of the U.S. election, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed that Europe should buy more liquefied natural gas from America in order to ward off new tariffs on European exports to the United States. It’s a little embarrassing, to say the least, that Europe continues to buy natural gas from Russia, which it otherwise excoriates for having invaded Ukraine. “Why not replace it [with] American LNG,” asked von der Leyen, “which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices?” That’s a pretty good question. It’s funny she never asked it until after November 5.”
I don’t know what will happen next week, let alone next year or next decade. However, I welcome a move, any move, back towards merit and common sense and away from woke identity politics, away from the unrealistic desired policies of smug, self-righteous, arrogant ideologues.
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Paraskavedekatriaphobia
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On Wednesday, a federal appeals court blocked Nasdaq rules to increase boardroom diversity, saying that the Securities and Exchange Commission did not have the authority to approve them. The rules required thousands of public companies that trade on Nasdaq to have at least one woman, person of color or LGBTQ member on their boards unless they explained why they did not. Companies also must report the diversity of their corporate directors each year.
Nasdaq is meekly “not seeking further review” of the court’s decision. Vibe shift, indeed. Meritum Supra Omnes!
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So, Bill Belichick was not obsessed with breaking Don Shula’s record for career wins by an NFL head coach, after all. He just wanted to coach. Belichick is the new head coach of the football team at the University of North Carolina.
I don’t know Belichick and have never met him. However, I know two people who do know him and say that, away from press conferences, he is a warm, and at times, funny person. This ESPN piece contains the following,
“In April 2006, I [Seth Wickersham] watched him deliver the annual Fusco Distinguished Lecture at Southern Connecticut State University, on a stage that had also featured Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright and Christopher Reeve, among others. Like many, I worried that it would be a two-hour version of his news conferences. But he was in his element, relaxed and energized, speaking to students as they prepared to enter the real world. He told them to chase not money, but a job that was a continuation of a passion. One of the proudest moments of his life was when he passed on a career in finance and moved to Baltimore to do whatever the Colts asked of him.”
I have no idea if a person in his early 70s can relate to 18-22 year old athletes, but this move puts UNC football in the spotlight, at least for awhile. If you are interested in football then I suggest you read the linked ESPN article.
#TheVibeShiftGoesGlobal
#BillBelichick