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CONDITION: Team Transitory (or, Rather, Team Inflation Not Entrenched) Victory Lap:

Dean Baker: a€~Pretty damn good PCE numbers. Health care services index rose just 0.16 percent. 
With rent coming down sharply (we know this from private indexes of marketed units) sure looks like 
the Fed's job is donea€!

FRED • Personal Consumption Expenditures Excluding Food and Energy (Chain-Type Price Index)

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FRED — 5-Year, 5-Year Forward Inflation Expectation Rate

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2018-01       2018-07       2019-01       2019-07       2020-01       2020-07        2021-01       
2021-07       2022-01        2022-07

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FOCUS: John Holbo on the Horrible Atrocity of Defending Good Causes Badly!

I find my friend John Holbo writing:

John Holbo: Russell Jacoby Against the Buzzwords: a€~Russell Jacobya€! in a€oeTableta€Da€! 
approvingly retweeted by Richard Dawkins, then by Elon Muska€!.

Ia€™ m sympathetic to Jacobya€™ s old lined! a€~theorya€™ sillinessd! in the 80d™ s-90d™ sd! 
perverse incentivesd! for doing d'philosophy d™ badly in various ways. This was not goodd!. Butd! 
as Jacoby himself used to acknowledged! pretend[ing] d'ivory tower-types being eccentricd™ = 
d'barbarians at the gates of western civd™ is one more funny, bug-in-his-ear character in some 
David Lodge novel.
But now Jacobyd™ s updated his scriptd! these leftists dond™t even have power in the Ivory 
Tower!d”they dond™t have jobs! they are bitter baristas! resentful HR drones!a€’’that makes them so 
dangerous!d! Their weakness is their terrible strength !d! The black comedy quality of this 
twistd”surely this is shaping up [as] a sad David Lodge novel...

And this is the illustration Russell Jacoby chooses to illustrate his article:


AMERICA UNDER ACADEMIC LEFTISTS

Oohhha€! kaaaayyyya€!

Who is this guy? I did, long ago, read a very nice, book by Russell Jacoby called Dialectic of 
Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism. It was very worthwhile, even if written in embarrassingly 
crude-and-creaky New Leftese. Jacobya€™ s work did cast a long shadow on some of the other 
contributions than mine to our 2016 conference volume Public Intellectuals in the Global Arena: 
Professors or Pundits? I do remember Dan Drezner citing Jacobya€™ s The
Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe in his 2017 The Ideas Industry. Scanning 
my hard disk, I see his name come up in a few of my notes. So: someone who took the Long March from 
New Left (a€oel was part of a Boston bookstore a€~collectivea€™ that interminably discussed 
everything from the titles the store should stock to the details of our livesa€!a€D) to, today, the 
Paleolithic Right:

Russell Jacoby: The Takeover: Self-righteous professors have spawned self-righteous students and 
unleashed them into the public square: a€~The leftists who would have vanished as assistant 
professors in conferences on narratology and gender fluidity or disappeared as law professors with 
unreadable essays on misogynist hegemony and intersectionality have been pushed out into the larger 
culturea€! staff the ballooning diversity and
inclusion commissariats that assault usa€!. Buzz words of the campusa€’’diversity, inclusion, 
microaggression, power differential, white privilege, group safetya€”have become the buzz words in 
public life. Already confusing on campus, they become noxious off campusa€!

Let me give the mic back to John Holbo:

What indefensible barbarism do these buzz words buzz on behalf of, sez Jacoby? a€oeOrwell targeted 
language that defended a€~the indefensiblea€™ ... the British rule of India, Soviet purges and the 
bombing of Hiroshima.  But today, unlike in 1946, political language of Western progressives does 
not so much as defend the indefensible as defend the defendable.a€D

So they defend thea€! defendable.

That doesna€™t sound SO indefensible...

And I gotta concur with John. Jacoby feels beseiged by noxious buzzwords:

Wonder about the significance of microaggression? You are a microaggressor. Have doubts about an 
eternal, all-inclusive white supremacy? You benefit from white privilege. Skeptical about new 
pronouns? You abet the suicide of fragile adolescentsa€!

I am at U.C. Berkeley.

If the Woke Beast has a belly, the place where I am must be its Ground Zero.

Yet in my personal experience:

1. Microaggressions: I have come home to my house to find my house-sitter and two of her friends 
sitting on the floor drinking wine, unburdening themselves on the microaggressions of being a 
female economics graduate student here at Berkeley. These are powerful, brilliant, capable, 
accomplished women alla€”and it grinds them down. It is one of the reasons why Economics does so 
badly and our pipeline of women (and underrepresented
minorities!) leaks so much. Economicsa€™ s Talmud-like culture of challenge and debate has many 
advantages, but it does make microaggression (and macroaggression) a lifestyle.

So my reaction is: Time spent reflecting upon how to make the social world less of a zero-sum 
dominance and more of a positive-sum cooperation game is rarely wasted.

2. Pronouns: I had thought that the first principle of being a gentlemen is to treat people as they 
want to be treated, and, in polite society, at least, take their presentation-of-self at surface 
value: if a man is introducted to you as Monsieur le Comte de St.-Germain, you refer to him as 
Monsieur le Comte. If Jacoby wants to write a brief for how impolite society is superior, I might 
read it. But he has not done so.

So my reaction is: Adolescence is a time in which everyone is fragile, and needs sympathy and 
compassion. Civilization is empathy and consideration. Barbarism is the reverse.

3. White Privilege: If you are an elderly or middle-aged straight white male in America who does 
not know that you have been playing the videogame of life on the a€ceeasya€D setting, I judge you 
to be a pathetic loser. And I cannot interpret Jacobya€™ s a€oehave doubts about an eternal, 
all-inclusive white supremacy? You benefit from white privilegea€D as anything other than a denial 
that he has been playing on the a€ceeasya€D setting.


So my reaction is: Knowing how much you are, as Milton and Rose Director Friedman liked to say, 
d€oesupremely lucky peopled€U is a very important part of self-knowledge.

Am I deluded? Should I join those like Russell Jacoby who complain about snowflakesa€”women are 
snowflakes who are annoyed when told in class that a€oesolving this will put hair on their 
chesta€Da€”about those who want a different pronouna€”they should just suck it up and recognize 
that they are a€rehea€D or a€reshea€Da€”and about those who tell them that something called 
a€oewhite privilegea€D played a substantial part in what success they
have had?

Leta€™ s think about: White privilege makes you a lucky person who has been, undeservedly, 
successfula€!

I head over to the internet to look at Jacobya€™ s curriculum vitae. I cannot find it anywhere. The 
closest I can find is not a .pdf but, instead, an email link to request it.
Odd.

Googling around, I find he became professor emeritus at UCLA in 2020. The UCLA website says 
a€reeducation: Universities of Chicago, Wisconsin and Rochester. Ph.D. Rochester, 1974a€D. I find 
little else until I follow a Google link over to a a€oeWorld Biographical Encyclopediaa€U, of which 
I have never heard. Is it reliable? In any event, Prabook says:
Bachelor, University Wisconsin, 1967. Master of Arts, University Rochester, 1968. Student, Ecole 
Pratique Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1970. Doctor of Philosophy in History, University Rochester, 1974.

Lecturer, Boston University, Boston, 1974-1975. Scholar in residence, Brandeis U., 1975-1976. 
Lecturer department History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976-1979. Visiting assistant 
professor History, University of California, Irvine, 1979-1980. Visiting associate professor 
Humanities, Simon Fraser U., Vancouver, B.C., Canada, 1983-1984. Visiting scholar, associate 
professor, Lonergan U. College/Liberal Arts College
Concordia U., Montreal, Canada, 1985-1986. Visiting senior lecturer, University of California, San 
Diego, 1986-1987. Visiting associate professor of history, University of California, Riverside, 
1988-1991. Visiting associate professor of history, University of California at Los Angeles, 
1992-1994. Adjunct professor of history, University of California at Los Angeles, 1995-

I think: Here is someone who bounced around for twenty years with no academic stability: from 
short-term non-renewable three-year-or-less position to positiona€”UCLA, UCI, SFU, Concordia, UCSD, 
UCR, UCLAa€”before finally landing a semi-permanent (but potentially insecure the next time a 
budget crunch comes around, or someone in the senior tenured faculty wants a teaching-heavy job 
slot for a protA©gA©) adjunct position likely to carry a high
teaching-load at UCLA.

And I guess: He doesna€™ t see himself as lucky. He didna€™ t go from Ph.D. to tenure in seven 
years. He always saw himself as failing to run the course in the expected time, as hanging onto his 
academic post by his fingernails.
I                                                                                                   
   drop over to Amazona€™ s a€«Look Inside the Booka€D feature. I am struck by the beginning of the 
acknowledgements to his 2020 On Diversity:

In my previous books I have been chagrined by the brevity of my acknowledgments; no lengthy roster 
of esteemed colleagues and devoted friends or rollcall of foundations, institutiosn, and 
conferences that fAated the author. Alas, my short list has barely changed over the decadesa€!

And I again guess: He sees himself not as lucky but as unluckya€”as lacking the devoted friends, 
esteemed colleagues, and, perhaps most important, the hard-working and tireless but interested 
adversaries to read his stuff and point him in a better direction.
Plus: I am struck by the beginning of Jacobya€™ s introduction to the 1996 reissue of his 1975 
Social Amnesia:

Social Amnesiaa€! written amid the dying embers of the new lefta€!. I was part of a Boston 
bookstore "collective" that interminably discussed everything from the titles the store should 
stock to the details of our lives. Anti-psychoanalytic sentimenta€!. Kate Millet's Sexual 
Politics^}. The bookstore carried Pavlova€! billed as a materialist and revolutionary, not Freud 
who was attacked as an idealist and reactionarya€!. What bothered
me was not a sheer ignorance of psychoanalytic thinking, but the cheap criticism that Freud was 
nineteenth centurya€!. The criticism implied that those who come later are smarter: the critics and 
their friends. This outlook had a great futurea€!

And I again guess: He sees himself not as lucky but as vastly unlucky: Even his friends were not 
his constructive adversaries but, rather, his enemiesa€”in the sense that they made deliberate 
decisions to remain ignorant of what he saw as crucial.
So I think: Maybe what Jacoby is doing is crying out that he was not, personally, privileged?

Maybe what Jacoby really wants to say, but cannot quite bring himself to, is that his ancestorsa€™ 
American white-ethnic experience was not all that easy, and he does not see his experience as all 
that easy? That others had it easier? Thata€”let me list the surnames of my 
great-great-grandparentsa€”the Wymans, Richardsons, Paysons, Ushers, Wards, Carters, Andersons, 
Lords, Slocums, Creases, Parkinsons, Bradfords, Siglins, Whipples, Gallaghers, and
DeLongs had it easy, but the Jacobys did not? The Jacobys should be numbered not among the goats 
but among the sheep, on the side of the strivers who deserve good things, on the side of those who 
never yachted off of Marblehead or Newport, as opposed to the entitled parasites who did?

But if that is what he really means to say, then he should say that!

So by now I have constructed an image of Russell Jacoby in my minda€™ s eye. In this image, he 
REALLY does not like being called THE MANa€”someone who has an unearned position, who benefits from 
white privilege, who needs to recognize that he is one of the, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Tom 
and Daisy Buchanan, a€recareless peoplea€D who can and does unthinkingly break things with their 
actions, and even their words, and so must be careful.

In the image in my minda€™ s eye HE REALLY REALLY RESENTS being told that there was anything 
a€reeasya€D about his life and career: About being born in New York in 1945. About leaving New York 
for Chicago as a teenager and then dropping out of the University of Chicago (for academic? 
financial?) reasons. About finishing his B.A. at lower-status (and cheaper!) Wisconsin-Madison in 
1967. About using graduate-school to avoid being drafted
and sent to Vietnam. About finding his New-Left commitments blocking him from getting the 
tenure-track job he deserved while the universities were still fat and growing through the 
mid-1970s, even as he recognized that they were idiots. About having three years to prove that he 
deserved a tenure-track slot, and it not appearing, and getting bounced. About trying to do it 
again. And again. And so on.

This image I have constructed does explain to me how ex-New Leftist Jacoby can write:

The New York Times published an opinion piece by Sen. Tom Cotton that called for the national guard 
to stem looting in the wake of the George Floyd riots. Employees of the Times protested and charged 
that the piece put Black staffers a€rein danger.a€D Again, this was an article in the editorial 
section of the paper, page 14. In the American adaption of Stalinist show trials, the editor of the 
opinion section [James Bennet] confessed. He
regretted a€oethe paina€D he caused. He resigneda€!

For, as John Holbo points out, that is not at all an adequate description of what went down:

Jacoby has his parade.... But in each case (and others) isna€™ t it more complicated?... Ia€™ 11 
only offer one example.... Tom Cotton.... A bunch of NYTimes staffers say CottonaC™ s op-ed made 
them feel a€~unsafea€™ , which does sound snowflake-y. But... Cotton explicitly calleda€! for the 
extrajudicial execution of American citizens, en masse, by the US military....

Tom Cotton @TomCottonAR

And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantrya€”whatever it takes to 
restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.

Jamie Dupree @jamiedupree

Sen. Tom Cotton R-AR suggests using the 101st Airborne to restore order, https://t.co/FBibQDX8sk
2:14 PM r™ Jun 1,2020

17,290Likes5,097Retweets

Indeed. Would anyone sane and balanced not think that massively boosting Tom Cottona€™ s violent 
fantasies beyond their normal spread has the potential to make us all unsafe?

And James Bennet? The victim of the a€reAmerican adaption of Stalinist show trialsa€D? James Bennet 
is, right now, a senior editor at the Economist. He writes the Lexington column. He did not suffer 
the fate of a defendant at a Stalinist show trial: He was not shot dead with a bullet in the back 
of his skull in the basement of Lubyanka Prison on Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow.
Do I have the gist of Russell Jacoby right? Or am I completely off base here?

Share Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality

MUST-READ: Once Again, I Do Not Envy the FOMC Todaya€!:

EDER        Federal Funds Effective Rate


5

Remember: NONE of the interest-rate increases the Fed has undertaken since its lift-off from zero 
have yet had time to affect the real economy of demand, production, and employment. And NONE of the 
interest-rate increases the Fed has undertaken since its lift-off from zero will begin to have 
effects on inflation for at least another six months. The inflation trajectory is, so far, what it 
would have been had the Fed stayed at zero up to this moment. That means
that there is, now, an awful lot of monetary contraction in the pipeline:

Paul Krugman: Is the Inflation Storm Letting Up?: a€~After the nasty shocks of the past two years, 
nobody wants to get too excited by positive news. Having greatly underestimated past inflation 
risks myself, Ia€™ m working hard on curbing my enthusiasm, and the Fed, which is worried about its 
credibility, is even more inclined to look for clouds in the silver lininga€!. Buta€! Whata€™ s 
really striking about the improvement in
inflation numbers is that so far, at least, it hasna€™t followed the pessimistsa€™ script. 
Disinflation, many commentators insisted, would require a sustained period of high 
unemploymenta€”say, at least a 5 percent unemployment rate for five years. And to be fair, this 
prediction could still be vindicated if recent progress against inflation turns out to be a false 
dawn. However, inflation has declined rapidly, even with unemployment still
near record lowsa€!

FRED - • Personal Consumption Expenditures Excluding Food and Energy (Chain-Type Price Index)

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Jan 2018       Jul 2018       Jan 2019       Jul 2019       Jan 2020       Jul 2020       Jan 2021  
     Jul 2021       Jan 2022       Jul 2022

But we have had two episodes of fake a€oegreen shoot sa€D on inflation in the past two yearsa€!
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