Candidates for Best Dozen Articles I've Read in 2021

Introduction

Best articles of 2021 page.

The Best

1. EPSTEIN Epstein on Henry James, New Criterion (2021).

2. "Federal Protection of “Oath Keepers” Kingpin Stewart Rhodes Breaks the Entire Capitol “Insurrection” Lie Wide Open," Revolver.news (2021).

3. "AMERICA'S NEW CLASS SYSTEM," Time, NICHOLAS LEMANN, June 24, 2001):

Practically speaking, what the Mandarins have done is take over a chunk of territory that was previously controlled by an inbred group of self-styled gentlemen called the Episcopacy. Their domains: Ivy League universities, the big foundations, Wall Street, major research hospitals and corporate law firms. Mandarins therefore congregate in big metropolises and on the two coasts. Although successful Mandarins have plenty of money and don't suffer from cripplingly low self-esteem, life has been mildly unfair to them. Often they find themselves serving merely as high-level advisers to Talents and Lifers--the Mandarin is usually the management consultant, not the chief executive--and they're the most disliked of the three groups. They tend to think they've earned their place in open competition ("meritocracy" is the Mandarins' name for their path), but outsiders think of them as privileged, conceited teacher's pets who are prone to concocting corrupt arrangements behind closed doors.

4. Codevilla on America's Ruling Class

5. "Counting on Counties: How the Creation of Three Thousand Counties Shaped Local Government Across America," William A. Fischel, Dartmouth College (April 2021).

6. "We Should Ask the Modellers to Prove Their Models Can Accurately Predict the Future Before Following Their Advice Again," 24 October 2021, Dr. David Livermore:

As to why these trajectories differ so much, I really cannot say, except for proposing that gonococci biologically ‘like’ being ciprofloxacin resistant whereas cefixime resistance stresses them.
Sometimes, for amusement, I’d ask the modellers why it was possible to write a program to outwit a chess grandmaster but not to reliably predict winners at a race meeting, even a tin-pot one with six nags per race, half of them no hopers. It ought to be easy for modellers to bankrupt bookies, I’d opine. Why don’t they? The answer was that horses were complex and unpredictable. Too many variables again, whereas the moves of chessmen are finite and follow pre-defined patterns. Our modellers lacked the temperament of betting men too, I felt, leastways with their own money. ... Medics, nurses, physios, medical lab scientists, and clinical scientists all must demonstrate competency to be licensed. There is no such regulation for modellers. Yet their advice, adopted by the Government, affects millions whereas a bad doctor can only harm one patient at a time. ... Examine the graph. Then, USING ONLY DATA AVAILABLE UP TO JULY 1891 (i.e., as far into the 1889-94 pandemic as we presently are with COVID) devise a mathematical model (not a qualitative speculation) to account for the peaks up to that date and to predict the size, timing and duration of the two subsequent peaks. Explain why there were no further peaks after 1894. ... In the meantime, let us have no more talk of lockdowns until modellers can prove their skills and competency by showing how the death waves of a previous pandemic could have been predicted accurately. They will find numerous relevant pre-July 1891 articles in the BMJ and the Lancet among other sources.

7. Thapar abortion dissent (2021).

8. "Estate Planning: To My Vampire, If Any," by Steven M. Silva (May 25, 2011).

9. Charles Haywood review of Frieden's The Feminine Mystique. "It’s not just women, though—only a tiny segment of men have a job that offers real accomplishment, “the life of mind and spirit,” either. The job does not give them fulfillment; it is a means to their real method of fulfillment, providing for and protecting their family."