September 13, 2026

ROGER KIMBALL: The Madness of the Anti-AI Crowd.

In the course of these hebdomadal bulletins, I have often had occasion to mention Charles Mackay’s 1841 masterpiece Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The title should be inscribed as a talisman somewhere in the homes of the credulous. Mackay’s account of various “moral epidemics”—the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, Witch Hunting, etc.—is amusing until one steps back and realizes that we modern sophisticates are just as susceptible to the sorts of “folly and delusion” Mackay anatomizes as was any seventeenth-century Dutchman who mortgaged his house to purchase a single tulip bulb.

Certain insects undergo periods of dormancy before suddenly erupting in a destructive swarm. So it seems to be with society’s appetite for panic. How long can we go without indulging in the catharsis of a panic? How many society-wide panics have we witnessed in the last few decades? There was the “global cooling” scare when we were warned that a new ice age was upon us. Then there was the “global warming” scare, which is still going strong. “Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice.” Al Gore is going with fire. Chicken Little warned about a “population bomb” in which untold multitudes would precipitate mass starvation and lead governments to force sterilization upon their polyphiloprogenitive charges. Now we are being warned about a terrifying birth dearth. I can imagine that, should a new Charles Mackay arise, such episodes would be included in an updated edition of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.  

Curious how the doomsday messages invariably heat up (pardon the pun) when there’s a Republican in the White House:

 In accordance with the prophecy: Experts Warn We Have Only 12 Years Left Until They Change The Timeline On Global Warming Again.

—The Babylon Bee, August 1st, 2019.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

U.S. LINKS CHINESE SATELLITE IMAGERY TO IRANIAN STRIKE THAT KILLED THREE TROOPS:

US officials have linked satellite imagery supplied to Iran by Chinese entities to an Iranian attack that killed three American troops at a base in Jordan, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

Tehran acquired high-resolution images of the installation both before and after the July attack, according to officials familiar with the incident. They described the findings as the strongest evidence yet that Chinese support for Iran during the war has had deadly consequences for American forces.

The officials declined to identify the suppliers and did not accuse the Chinese government of direct involvement.

The July 17 strike hit sleeping quarters at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in northeastern Jordan, killing three soldiers and wounding four others. It was one of three missile attacks on the installation within 24 hours.

Related?

 

Posted at 12:48 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN NEW YORKERS MEMORY HOLED 9/11:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

JAMES LILEKS: Remember 9/12, Too.

Fury. Not everyone was mad. Right away, the usual scolds flooded message boards — the social media of the day — to caution against overreaction, to remind us that we had sinned against the world, and this was a time for self-reflection. Ever wondered why they hate us? The flame-America-first cohort was already looking at flying flags and getting the cringey ick, as we might say today. That was to be expected. Even to this day, if you tell a leftist to say “9/11 was bad” without adding “but,” it’s like giving somebody shave-and-a-haircut without the “two bits.” They squirm in the discomfort of incompleteness.

On the other side, though, quiet grim resolve. End this. On 9/12, you wondered what was coming, and maybe you thought: all of it. All of it is coming. B-52s over Tehran in 24 hours, surely. Saddam’s house goes up. MOABs generously distributed over Afghanistan. Basically, anyone who cheered on 9/11 gets the business. All scores settled. No more dropping expensive ordnance on tents or sending in a Tomahawk to blow up an aspirin factory. No more sending a message. Oh, sure, maybe Iran wasn’t specifically involved, but if one head of the Hydra bites you, whack ’em all off to make sure it doesn’t happen again. After Pearl Harbor, what did we do? Send in the Doolittle Raid, then call it a day?

Instead, as Lee Smith wrote on Friday, today, it’s as if “9/11 Never Happened.” “[T]he GWOT was a U.S. government initiative deploying enormous human, military, and other material resources to shape current-day reality after a fantasy crafted by progressive Middle East academics, Muslim apologists, and idealistic neoconservatives working inside the administration, along with spokesmen for the states and terror groups aiming their guns at Americans. Agreeing on little else, together these ideological cohorts promoted an ideological fantasy: a culturally rich and politically sophisticated Middle East, like the convivencia of medieval Andalusia, where majority-Muslim polities lived in peaceful and tolerant coexistence with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. America’s post-9/11 mission was the war to restore ‘moderate Islam’—something that had never existed in the first place.”

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll

CANADA ENTERING THE DOOM LOOP?

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll