The French socialist Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807-74) is supposed to have seen a protest and said, “I’d better follow them, seeing as I’m their leader.” The story illustrates a truth about democracy that has only become truer with time: Our leaders are creations and creatures of public opinion. They are made and unmade by popular votes—sometimes even polls. They are always chasing the mood, hurrying to the front of the march to claim it as their own.
This Dominic Green fellow just made my list of people to keep an eye on.
Interesting….lefty friends yesterday and today are questioning how Biden’s cancer wasn’t detected sooner. “Darmok, his eyes uncovered.”
Why the bill is a disaster. those holdouts are NOT grandstanding–they are addressing our economic future.
This has been the coldest and rainiest May in upstate NY I can recall in quite some time. I think 1992 was the last time we had a May like this. Evidently there’s a Nor’easter moving through from Wednesday to Friday, which means more rain and more cold over the next few days.
Mike Plaiss, that was a really good essay. I was interested to read how Denmark has solved its immigration problems. Among the remedies was the requirement that immigrants learn Danish to be given welfare benefits. I am amazed at how many Spanish-speaking immigrants here don’t speak English after decades. We shouldn’t allow it. One of my husband’s Croatian grandmothers was still alive when I joined the family. She spoke everyday English, could read newspapers and understand TV news, and could speak to clerks in stores, all this with only a third-grade education. Since English is the consensus language here because people have come from so many different places, we should require legal immigrants to learn the common language.
Terrible spring here in western WA. We’ve creeped up into the low 70s a couple of times but they have been just one offs and the next week to 10 days doesn’t look much better. May and June are the worst months for weather in the NW as we fritter away the long days under cloudy gloom.
@Griffin:Terrible spring here in western WA.
I’ll say this for Western Washington: if you want to know what the weather is, all you need is a calendar. If it’s July, August, or September it’s not raining. Otherwise, it is. And we rarely have storms of any kind, though we do go get frequent earthquakes and the occasional tsunami or volcanic eruption, but every place has something.
And it’s much rainier as you go a short distance west. Olympia has as much annual rainfall as an Atlantic seaboard city. Points farther west get two or three times as much rainfall. In the Olympics it does little but rain, except in the summer.
The cold and rain must be a side effect of global warming somehow …
once upon a time, this was Cuban independence day, but this small isle was cursed by feckless deep staters that handed it over to the
Soviets, rubottom and wieland, as well as the Langley contingent, see Mario Lazo or Earl T Smith, for details,
and no one seems really focused on bringing it back to civilization, unlike Ukrainia Slava, now there is not one single opposition figure even in Exile, there is that difference,
but it occurs to me, there have been demands to send troops all over the world, from bosnia to baghdad, yet there seems to be one glaring exception,
I was interested to read how Denmark has solved its immigration problems. Among the remedies was the requirement that immigrants learn Danish to be given welfare benefits. I am amazed at how many Spanish-speaking immigrants here don’t speak English after decades.
Kate:
That is a clever, out of the box, solution. Almost diabolically Trumpian. 🙂
I too wonder at all the immigrants here who don’t speak English. My father was half-Mexican and he learned English on top of his mother’s Spanish. I’m just sorry he didn’t teach me Spanish when I was young.
My father was part of the melting-pot generation.
Halcyon days.
““Darmok, his eyes uncovered.”
I wonder how many people understand this reference? I, for one, love it.
Learning another language is a big, long project. I certainly underestimated French.
Nonetheless, humans are wired to learn languages. You don’t have to be smart. It just takes thousands of hours.
Children learn languages “easily” because it is Job One and for years they are surrounded by people invested in their learning.
These days when I meet someone who has learned English to live in America, I am impressed. That’s a real accomplishment.
I’m glad I am not learning English!
Star Trek reference? That’s kind of a guess.
from a particularly cryptic episode, about an alien species that spoke in metaphor, which Picard slowly pieces together, using the epic of Gilgamesh of all things,
“Children learn languages “easily” because it is Job One and for years they are surrounded by people invested in their learning.” — Huxley
Also, small children are neurologically primed to learn it in a way that adults are not quite so much.
My father was in the Army in the 1950s and he was stationed in Germany. He never made any specific effort to ‘study German’, but by the time he had spent six years there he had a pretty good comprehension of it by immersion, and he could speak it somewhat, though not so well that he would have fooled a native.
On the other hand, late it life he mentioned that when listening to German being spoken, he could not follow it as well as he once could.
I wonder if a person would begin to lose comprehension of their milk language if they never had occasion to speak it or hear it for decades or centuries? My guess is probably not, I suspect that first childhood language is neurologically different.
Our weather in the Ohio Valley has been kind of weird. April was warm and mild, and sometimes actually hot. May has been alternatively hot and middling, some days are unpleasantly hot and then we’ll get storms and a day or two of weather more typical for April.
“Interesting….lefty friends yesterday and today are questioning how Biden’s cancer wasn’t detected sooner. ” — physicsguy
The Biden coverup has left its mark. A lot of people who just took it for granted that of course the press was honest had their noses rubbed in reality during that debate last year.
“We finally beat Medicare.” — Joe Biden
It just wasn’t possible to hide it any longer, Biden was standing up there and his incapacity was on display to be seen. ‘Women being raped by their sisters’. Confusing abortion and immigration in his answers. Standing there with a blank look on his face, his voice weak and unsteady.
This after months of reporters talking about how ‘sharp’ he was, how forceful he was in meetings, how nobody could keep up with him, how this was ‘the best Biden ever’, etc.
The media/Democratic complex has a real problem.
Star Trek: Next Generation. Good episode with Picard trying to converse with an alien that only speaks in allegory.
On a different subject, the GOP seems determined to hang onto the ‘stupid part’ crown. In Missouri, the GOP controlled legislature just voted to repeal a sick leave provision that the voters passed by 58% in November, on the grounds that it could hurt business interests.
STUPID.
This plays directly into the ‘party of the rich’ stereotype that the GOP has spent years trying to escape. It offers Dems endless opportunities for attack lines that the GOP can’t counter effectively. It has the potential to flip legislative control and lose GOP House seats in Missouri in 2026 and it _might_ be enough to cost the GOP the Missouri electoral votes in 2028.
Even if all that is avoided, it’s a stupid thing to do, it plays to the Dems’ strengths and has a huge blowback potential. That’s true regardless of the merits.
This plays directly into the ‘party of the rich’ stereotype that the GOP has spent years trying to escape.
==
Or they were getting complaints from small business lobbies about legislated increases in employee benefits and the minimum wage.
Based on my experience; if one is reasonably curious and open, after about three months of immersion in a foreign country where the language is similar to one’s native language (not Asia or Africa for me) he or she will be well on her or his way. Should be able to navigate transportation, shopping, dining out… And once one gets over those initial hurdles things just keep coming. One can do a lot of damage with about 50 verbs, 1,000 nouns and some helping words. 20 words a day over 90 days is 1,800 words. How hard is it to learn 20 words in a day if one is living in a foreign country?
Speaking English in America isn’t too rough; no gender, we mainly stick to three verb tenses. Just use “will” for future tense and add an “ed” at the end for past; you’ll be right often enough, and when you’re not people will still understand your intent (“I eated dinner.”) Sentence structure is simple (NV and NVN), tack on a “can,” “may,” “will” at the front or start with “is” to make it a question (“Is cold today?”) And Americans are friendly, patient and relatively used to non-native speakers.
That being said, I know folks who have lived for years in a foreign country and can barely order in a restaurant. Immersion is great, but there is no immersion without participation.
AesopFan,
I know nothing of the Star Trek episode or characters you reference, but do you think the writers of that scene were making an analogy to Saul of Tarsus? That’s where my mind goes when I read, “eyes uncovered” and scales falling from eyes is a common literary device, as is “road to Damascus.” And isn’t Dathon (or is it Dathan) the Old Testament figure who convinces the Israelites to form and worship a golden calf while Moses is away receiving the ten commandments?
Im pretty sure the dathan deference is not biblical*
*played by edward g robinson in the film
@Rufus T. Firefly:do you think the writers of that scene were making an analogy to Saul of Tarsus
I don’t know but Chinese has a huge fund of these allusions (chengyu) that are unintelligible if you don’t know the story behind them. For example “Lord Ye loves dragons” is something like “be careful what you wish for”. “Add feet to the snake” is something like “you ruined it by doing too much”.
But they are more like shibboleths for the educated. You don’t need to know them to communicate.
@ Rufus > ” if one is reasonably curious and open, after about three months of immersion in a foreign country where the language is similar to one’s native language (not Asia or Africa for me) he or she will be well on her or his way.”
In one of the bilingual wards we attended on the Gulf coast, one of our American members had married a lovely woman from a South American country (I don’t remember now which one), who had a very good grasp of English. We also had members who needed translation in every meeting, because they had almost no facility in English at all, even those who had been in the US a number of years.
She sometimes expressed to me her frustration with her compatriots who hadn’t learned the language of their host country, so I asked her one time how long it had taken her. She answered, with some exasperation, “Three months!”
PS She was not the only native Spanish-speaking member who tried to get others to quit relying on their somewhat closed community and get going on their language change-over, although no one ever suggested they stop using Spanish altogether. Most of our church units in areas with large Spanish-speaking demographics sponsor free English classes. The same is true in other areas with different language concentrations.
” ‘This plays directly into the ‘party of the rich’ stereotype that the GOP has spent years trying to escape.’ –HC68
==
Or they were getting complaints from small business lobbies about legislated increases in employee benefits and the minimum wage.” — Art Deco
Still STUPID.
One of the things that has haunted the GOP ever since FDR’s time is the perception by the voters that they are ‘the party of the rich’. Now on one level that never made sense, because both parties, back then and now, are run by wealthy interests.
But what people actually _meant_ when they said it, whether they thought it out clearly or not, was that that GOP was the ‘party of business’, the ‘party of the employers’, while the Dems post-FDR were the party of the employees.
There was, from the 1930s to the 1970s, a great deal of truth in that perception.
Back then, the core of the Democratic Party base was union labor. And back then, union labor meant manufacturing, transportation, construction. The Dems were the nationalist party back then, the GOP the internationalist. It was a different world back then.
In the 1970s, the Dems transformed into the party of the educated elite class, and the working class voters started to migrate to the GOP. The ‘Reagan Democrats’ presaged the TEA party and the MAGA Republicans.
But the process was constantly slowed by the inherent conflict of interest between the business class and the working class that was coming over to the GOP. That’s a lot of why the GOP would win elections on Dem overreach, such as in 1994 and 2000, only to immediately lose support because they would try to _govern_ on business interests (NAFTA, ‘free trade’ in general, unlimited immigration). The interests of the business and corporate world are simply in conflict with those of MAGA and the working class.
At one point, IIRC, the GOP captured the governorship of freaking Maine. The new governor immediately poured precious political capital into an argument over a freaking _mural_ celebrating union labor. Maybe that mural belong on public property, maybe not. Either way, it wasn’t worth the effort he put into it, and it fed straight into the ‘party of the employers’ thing again.
The voters in Missouri vote in sick leave requirements, by a substantial majority, and the GOP legislature immediately reverses it less than a year later, because it costs money to business. No matter what protests they were hearing from the business community, doing that was self-destructively STUPID. I can just hear the Democrats rubbing their hands in glee at the PR opportunities.
Right now, the GOP would be well advised to have a default policy of ‘no’ to requests from the Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association.
”It has the potential to flip legislative control and lose GOP House seats in Missouri in 2026 and it _might_ be enough to cost the GOP the Missouri electoral votes in 2028.”
No, it doesn’t. The GOP has control of the state 58-40, with the only areas the Democrats control being crime-ridden hellholes. The last Democrat to even be competitive in the state was Barack Obama in 2008 (in 2012 he lost to Romney easily), and the last one to actually win was Bill Clinton thanks to Ross Perot siphoning off 1/3 of the conservative vote. You have to go back to before Reagan to see the Democrat win a two-man race.
”Right now, the GOP would be well advised to have a default policy of ‘no’ to requests from the Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association.”
Ahh, yes, they should turn their back on their base because you don’t like them. Who cares about all of the jobs heading out of state? That won’t cost the GOP any votes.
One of the things that has haunted the GOP ever since FDR’s time is the perception by the voters that they are ‘the party of the rich’.
==
A guy who owns a bakery injured by the legislation you favor is not ‘the rich’. You might also take an interest in something other than optics.
Dathan—rhymes with “dot on”—and Abiram (original Aviram, rhymes with ROM) were a pair of malefactors from the tribe of Reuven (IIRC) who were antagonists of Moses.
One sees their names explicitly mentioned in connection with the Korah rebellion but they are also associated, in Rabbinic tradition, with other episodes—e.g., IIRC the Golden Calf (as mentioned) and the two quarreling Israelites that Moses admonishes at the very beginning of Exodus and who respond by mentioning Moses’s killing of the Egyptian taskmaster, which Moses had believed was not witnessed by anyone; however, the word had spread, causing the Pharoah to demand to have Moses killed, prompting Moses to flee to the wilderness east of Egypt (to the region of Midian), where the story continues—the episode at the well, Moses’s meeting his future wife and father-in-law, Moses’s marriage, his job as a shepherd, the burning bush, etc.
as I recall Paul Lepage was strong on cracking down on crime, specially Dominican gangs that were flooding Maine with fentanyl, instead they prefer a prog figurehead like Mills, who serves no good use, you see her defense of discriminatory actions against women athletes and illegal criminals, but Lepage was working class white, we can’t have that, for that matter what good does Susan Collins really do, for the populace,
legislating minimum wages do no good optimum effect, it reduces the labour pool
the Chamber of Commerce, sadly has been at the forefront of the offshoring of critical infrastructure and labour, and against what one would think the native labor pool,, this is not a local phenomenon, it works the same in the UK
on another point, I was fascinating to read the Josephus account of Moses, that DeMille seems to have referred to, it dwells on his campaigns against the Ethiopians when he was in the pharoahs service,
Interesting about Josephus.
Haven’t had much luck with him, myself. (Every time I start trying to read him, I—regretfully—end up putting him back on the shelf for another day.)
Of course, Moses was Pharaoh’s “grandson” by adoption…according to the story…
@mkent:“Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association…” their base..
Those special interest groups are not the base of Republican voters.
The individual humans who actually run small businesses might be part of that base, but the lobbying groups are not.
Who cares about all of the jobs heading out of state? That won’t cost the GOP any votes.
Blue cities stay blue despite their blue government policies that hemorrhage jobs. Check your premises. Voters vote on what matters to them, which may not be what you think is in their best interest, economically or any other way.
” ‘Right now, the GOP would be well advised to have a default policy of ‘no’ to requests from the Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association.’ — HC68
Ahh, yes, they should turn their back on their base because you don’t like them. .” — mkent
No, because the _electorate_ doesn’t like them.
Business interests historically have been the dominant force in the GOP, but not the base. Since the 1980s and esp. the 1990s, the base has increasingly been social conservatives and American nationalists and increasingly working class voters. Those three groups more-or-less get along with each other, but there are deep conflicts of economic interest with business groups for each of them. To make it worse, business groups lean socially left for the most part.
It was business interests that pushed NAFTA, mass outsourcing, and open borders immigration. It was business interests who tried to ram Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney down the base voters’ throats in 2008 and 2012, and made an attempt at forcing Jeb Bush on them in 2016. ‘Any willing worker’ was business interests. Business interests backed Obamacare. In the first Trump Administration, they constantly struggled to undercut everything he tried to do except for tax cuts.
The price of making the GOP the true majority party is necessarily going to include a sharp reduction in the influence of business interests, because their agenda is fundamentally _unpopular_ .
Which is why reversing a popular electoral action less than a year later, on this subject of all things, is such utter and complete lunacy. I can already hear the attack ads now. Maybe later events will make this all a moot point, but it’s exactly the sort of wedge issue that can split the GOP coalition along its fracture lines.
MAGA, as a group, are _not_ libertarians.
” ‘One of the things that has haunted the GOP ever since FDR’s time is the perception by the voters that they are ‘the party of the rich’. — HC68
==
A guy who owns a bakery injured by the legislation you favor is not ‘the rich’. You might also take an interest in something other than optics.” — Art Deco
It doesn’t matter whether the baker is rich in fact, it matters that the public will perceive the GOP Legislature’s actions as favoring _employers over employees_ . Fair or not, justified or not, that’s how it’ll be perceived.
It’s a bit like the minimum wage. The political debate about minimum wages in principle, whether we like it or not, ended in the late 1930s. Since then, it’s been possible for the GOP to oppose a _particular_ increase or a particular aspect of it, but every time they’ve tried to oppose it in principle they’ve gotten burned, because the electorate isn’t open to that argument.
As for optics, there’s word for political movements that ignore them: defeated.
_Optics decide electorate outcomes_, more or less. Four years of rational arguments and evidence didn’t break Democratic voters’ trust in Biden. The first fifteen minutes or so of that debate last year did it.
Glenn Younkin became Governor of Virginia because Terry McAuliffe said one sentence about parents that implied they shouldn’t control their children’s education. One sentence.
Mitch Daniels’ political career ended in 2010. He was considered a promising Presidential possibility up until that point. Then, in a 2010 interview with the then-widely-read-by-conservatives _Weekly Standard_ , Daniels made a reference to calling a ‘truce’ on social issues to focus on the deficit and economics.
That was it. He was toast. Within 24 hours he was scrambling to explain that it didn’t mean what people thought, but in politics, ‘if you’re explaining you’re losing’. His Presidential aspirations collapsed. A year or two ago he floated what looked like a trial balloon for a run of some sort, and immediately he was peppered with questions from conservatives about that ‘truce’. It was still a millstone around his neck over a decade later.
Optics matter. And the GOP electorate is hypersensitive about the dominance of the Chamber of Commerce and business interests.
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Sometimes I want to link to an essay just because it’s so well written.
Why Keir Starmer Became an Immigration Hawk
https://archive.md/4bjek
This Dominic Green fellow just made my list of people to keep an eye on.
Interesting….lefty friends yesterday and today are questioning how Biden’s cancer wasn’t detected sooner. “Darmok, his eyes uncovered.”
Why the bill is a disaster. those holdouts are NOT grandstanding–they are addressing our economic future.
https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/how-republicans-got-roped-into-a
This has been the coldest and rainiest May in upstate NY I can recall in quite some time. I think 1992 was the last time we had a May like this. Evidently there’s a Nor’easter moving through from Wednesday to Friday, which means more rain and more cold over the next few days.
Mike Plaiss, that was a really good essay. I was interested to read how Denmark has solved its immigration problems. Among the remedies was the requirement that immigrants learn Danish to be given welfare benefits. I am amazed at how many Spanish-speaking immigrants here don’t speak English after decades. We shouldn’t allow it. One of my husband’s Croatian grandmothers was still alive when I joined the family. She spoke everyday English, could read newspapers and understand TV news, and could speak to clerks in stores, all this with only a third-grade education. Since English is the consensus language here because people have come from so many different places, we should require legal immigrants to learn the common language.
Terrible spring here in western WA. We’ve creeped up into the low 70s a couple of times but they have been just one offs and the next week to 10 days doesn’t look much better. May and June are the worst months for weather in the NW as we fritter away the long days under cloudy gloom.
@Griffin:Terrible spring here in western WA.
I’ll say this for Western Washington: if you want to know what the weather is, all you need is a calendar. If it’s July, August, or September it’s not raining. Otherwise, it is. And we rarely have storms of any kind, though we do go get frequent earthquakes and the occasional tsunami or volcanic eruption, but every place has something.
That said our “rain” is more of a drizzle. Seattle gets just about the same annual rainfall as Pittsburgh, and just about the same number of rainy days. Every major city on the Atlantic seaboard gets more rain than Seattle, though they have about 25% fewer rainy days. About 60% of Washingtonians live within 30 miles of Seattle and get roughly the same weather, though we have a lot of microclimates because of all the mountains and inlets.
And it’s much rainier as you go a short distance west. Olympia has as much annual rainfall as an Atlantic seaboard city. Points farther west get two or three times as much rainfall. In the Olympics it does little but rain, except in the summer.
The cold and rain must be a side effect of global warming somehow …
across the pond
https://substack.com/@mattgoodwin/note/c-118679405
once upon a time, this was Cuban independence day, but this small isle was cursed by feckless deep staters that handed it over to the
Soviets, rubottom and wieland, as well as the Langley contingent, see Mario Lazo or Earl T Smith, for details,
and no one seems really focused on bringing it back to civilization, unlike Ukrainia Slava, now there is not one single opposition figure even in Exile, there is that difference,
but it occurs to me, there have been demands to send troops all over the world, from bosnia to baghdad, yet there seems to be one glaring exception,
I was interested to read how Denmark has solved its immigration problems. Among the remedies was the requirement that immigrants learn Danish to be given welfare benefits. I am amazed at how many Spanish-speaking immigrants here don’t speak English after decades.
Kate:
That is a clever, out of the box, solution. Almost diabolically Trumpian. 🙂
I too wonder at all the immigrants here who don’t speak English. My father was half-Mexican and he learned English on top of his mother’s Spanish. I’m just sorry he didn’t teach me Spanish when I was young.
My father was part of the melting-pot generation.
Halcyon days.
““Darmok, his eyes uncovered.”
I wonder how many people understand this reference? I, for one, love it.
Learning another language is a big, long project. I certainly underestimated French.
Nonetheless, humans are wired to learn languages. You don’t have to be smart. It just takes thousands of hours.
Children learn languages “easily” because it is Job One and for years they are surrounded by people invested in their learning.
These days when I meet someone who has learned English to live in America, I am impressed. That’s a real accomplishment.
I’m glad I am not learning English!
Star Trek reference? That’s kind of a guess.
from a particularly cryptic episode, about an alien species that spoke in metaphor, which Picard slowly pieces together, using the epic of Gilgamesh of all things,
“Children learn languages “easily” because it is Job One and for years they are surrounded by people invested in their learning.” — Huxley
Also, small children are neurologically primed to learn it in a way that adults are not quite so much.
My father was in the Army in the 1950s and he was stationed in Germany. He never made any specific effort to ‘study German’, but by the time he had spent six years there he had a pretty good comprehension of it by immersion, and he could speak it somewhat, though not so well that he would have fooled a native.
On the other hand, late it life he mentioned that when listening to German being spoken, he could not follow it as well as he once could.
I wonder if a person would begin to lose comprehension of their milk language if they never had occasion to speak it or hear it for decades or centuries? My guess is probably not, I suspect that first childhood language is neurologically different.
Our weather in the Ohio Valley has been kind of weird. April was warm and mild, and sometimes actually hot. May has been alternatively hot and middling, some days are unpleasantly hot and then we’ll get storms and a day or two of weather more typical for April.
“Interesting….lefty friends yesterday and today are questioning how Biden’s cancer wasn’t detected sooner. ” — physicsguy
The Biden coverup has left its mark. A lot of people who just took it for granted that of course the press was honest had their noses rubbed in reality during that debate last year.
“We finally beat Medicare.” — Joe Biden
It just wasn’t possible to hide it any longer, Biden was standing up there and his incapacity was on display to be seen. ‘Women being raped by their sisters’. Confusing abortion and immigration in his answers. Standing there with a blank look on his face, his voice weak and unsteady.
This after months of reporters talking about how ‘sharp’ he was, how forceful he was in meetings, how nobody could keep up with him, how this was ‘the best Biden ever’, etc.
The media/Democratic complex has a real problem.
Star Trek: Next Generation. Good episode with Picard trying to converse with an alien that only speaks in allegory.
On a different subject, the GOP seems determined to hang onto the ‘stupid part’ crown. In Missouri, the GOP controlled legislature just voted to repeal a sick leave provision that the voters passed by 58% in November, on the grounds that it could hurt business interests.
STUPID.
This plays directly into the ‘party of the rich’ stereotype that the GOP has spent years trying to escape. It offers Dems endless opportunities for attack lines that the GOP can’t counter effectively. It has the potential to flip legislative control and lose GOP House seats in Missouri in 2026 and it _might_ be enough to cost the GOP the Missouri electoral votes in 2028.
Even if all that is avoided, it’s a stupid thing to do, it plays to the Dems’ strengths and has a huge blowback potential. That’s true regardless of the merits.
This plays directly into the ‘party of the rich’ stereotype that the GOP has spent years trying to escape.
==
Or they were getting complaints from small business lobbies about legislated increases in employee benefits and the minimum wage.
Sound familiar?
“Hurricane Ventura Shatters Portuguese Politics”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/analysis/hurricane-ventura-shatters-portuguese-politics/
To be compared with:
“Manufacturing Misinformation: How the EU Spends Millions To Smother Free Speech”—
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/mcc-brussels-report-manufacturing-misinformation-eu-millions-to-squash-free-speech/
(The “European Conservative” site has some very pertinent and fascinating stuff…)
Acksually, the Star Trek NG episode is named “Darmok”, and the quote referenced is “Sokath, his eyes uncovered.”
I had to look it up.
But, the point is well taken.
https://quotesanity.com/darmok-and-jalad-at-tanagra-quotes/#the-most-iconic-quotes-from-darmok-and-jalad-at-tanagra
“3. “Sokath, his eyes uncovered” – Another metaphorical phrase used by Dathon, this quote represents the moment of understanding and revelation. It symbolizes the joy and enlightenment that can come from overcoming barriers and truly connecting with someone.”
huxley,
Based on my experience; if one is reasonably curious and open, after about three months of immersion in a foreign country where the language is similar to one’s native language (not Asia or Africa for me) he or she will be well on her or his way. Should be able to navigate transportation, shopping, dining out… And once one gets over those initial hurdles things just keep coming. One can do a lot of damage with about 50 verbs, 1,000 nouns and some helping words. 20 words a day over 90 days is 1,800 words. How hard is it to learn 20 words in a day if one is living in a foreign country?
Speaking English in America isn’t too rough; no gender, we mainly stick to three verb tenses. Just use “will” for future tense and add an “ed” at the end for past; you’ll be right often enough, and when you’re not people will still understand your intent (“I eated dinner.”) Sentence structure is simple (NV and NVN), tack on a “can,” “may,” “will” at the front or start with “is” to make it a question (“Is cold today?”) And Americans are friendly, patient and relatively used to non-native speakers.
That being said, I know folks who have lived for years in a foreign country and can barely order in a restaurant. Immersion is great, but there is no immersion without participation.
AesopFan,
I know nothing of the Star Trek episode or characters you reference, but do you think the writers of that scene were making an analogy to Saul of Tarsus? That’s where my mind goes when I read, “eyes uncovered” and scales falling from eyes is a common literary device, as is “road to Damascus.” And isn’t Dathon (or is it Dathan) the Old Testament figure who convinces the Israelites to form and worship a golden calf while Moses is away receiving the ten commandments?
HC68,
I think you’re right about “milk languages.”
Speaking of language
https://t.co/kS0cXLk2ie
Im pretty sure the dathan deference is not biblical*
*played by edward g robinson in the film
@Rufus T. Firefly:do you think the writers of that scene were making an analogy to Saul of Tarsus
I don’t know but Chinese has a huge fund of these allusions (chengyu) that are unintelligible if you don’t know the story behind them. For example “Lord Ye loves dragons” is something like “be careful what you wish for”. “Add feet to the snake” is something like “you ruined it by doing too much”.
But they are more like shibboleths for the educated. You don’t need to know them to communicate.
@ Rufus > ” if one is reasonably curious and open, after about three months of immersion in a foreign country where the language is similar to one’s native language (not Asia or Africa for me) he or she will be well on her or his way.”
In one of the bilingual wards we attended on the Gulf coast, one of our American members had married a lovely woman from a South American country (I don’t remember now which one), who had a very good grasp of English. We also had members who needed translation in every meeting, because they had almost no facility in English at all, even those who had been in the US a number of years.
She sometimes expressed to me her frustration with her compatriots who hadn’t learned the language of their host country, so I asked her one time how long it had taken her. She answered, with some exasperation, “Three months!”
PS She was not the only native Spanish-speaking member who tried to get others to quit relying on their somewhat closed community and get going on their language change-over, although no one ever suggested they stop using Spanish altogether. Most of our church units in areas with large Spanish-speaking demographics sponsor free English classes. The same is true in other areas with different language concentrations.
” ‘This plays directly into the ‘party of the rich’ stereotype that the GOP has spent years trying to escape.’ –HC68
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Or they were getting complaints from small business lobbies about legislated increases in employee benefits and the minimum wage.” — Art Deco
Still STUPID.
One of the things that has haunted the GOP ever since FDR’s time is the perception by the voters that they are ‘the party of the rich’. Now on one level that never made sense, because both parties, back then and now, are run by wealthy interests.
But what people actually _meant_ when they said it, whether they thought it out clearly or not, was that that GOP was the ‘party of business’, the ‘party of the employers’, while the Dems post-FDR were the party of the employees.
There was, from the 1930s to the 1970s, a great deal of truth in that perception.
Back then, the core of the Democratic Party base was union labor. And back then, union labor meant manufacturing, transportation, construction. The Dems were the nationalist party back then, the GOP the internationalist. It was a different world back then.
In the 1970s, the Dems transformed into the party of the educated elite class, and the working class voters started to migrate to the GOP. The ‘Reagan Democrats’ presaged the TEA party and the MAGA Republicans.
But the process was constantly slowed by the inherent conflict of interest between the business class and the working class that was coming over to the GOP. That’s a lot of why the GOP would win elections on Dem overreach, such as in 1994 and 2000, only to immediately lose support because they would try to _govern_ on business interests (NAFTA, ‘free trade’ in general, unlimited immigration). The interests of the business and corporate world are simply in conflict with those of MAGA and the working class.
At one point, IIRC, the GOP captured the governorship of freaking Maine. The new governor immediately poured precious political capital into an argument over a freaking _mural_ celebrating union labor. Maybe that mural belong on public property, maybe not. Either way, it wasn’t worth the effort he put into it, and it fed straight into the ‘party of the employers’ thing again.
The voters in Missouri vote in sick leave requirements, by a substantial majority, and the GOP legislature immediately reverses it less than a year later, because it costs money to business. No matter what protests they were hearing from the business community, doing that was self-destructively STUPID. I can just hear the Democrats rubbing their hands in glee at the PR opportunities.
Right now, the GOP would be well advised to have a default policy of ‘no’ to requests from the Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association.
”It has the potential to flip legislative control and lose GOP House seats in Missouri in 2026 and it _might_ be enough to cost the GOP the Missouri electoral votes in 2028.”
No, it doesn’t. The GOP has control of the state 58-40, with the only areas the Democrats control being crime-ridden hellholes. The last Democrat to even be competitive in the state was Barack Obama in 2008 (in 2012 he lost to Romney easily), and the last one to actually win was Bill Clinton thanks to Ross Perot siphoning off 1/3 of the conservative vote. You have to go back to before Reagan to see the Democrat win a two-man race.
”Right now, the GOP would be well advised to have a default policy of ‘no’ to requests from the Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association.”
Ahh, yes, they should turn their back on their base because you don’t like them. Who cares about all of the jobs heading out of state? That won’t cost the GOP any votes.
One of the things that has haunted the GOP ever since FDR’s time is the perception by the voters that they are ‘the party of the rich’.
==
A guy who owns a bakery injured by the legislation you favor is not ‘the rich’. You might also take an interest in something other than optics.
Dathan—rhymes with “dot on”—and Abiram (original Aviram, rhymes with ROM) were a pair of malefactors from the tribe of Reuven (IIRC) who were antagonists of Moses.
One sees their names explicitly mentioned in connection with the Korah rebellion but they are also associated, in Rabbinic tradition, with other episodes—e.g., IIRC the Golden Calf (as mentioned) and the two quarreling Israelites that Moses admonishes at the very beginning of Exodus and who respond by mentioning Moses’s killing of the Egyptian taskmaster, which Moses had believed was not witnessed by anyone; however, the word had spread, causing the Pharoah to demand to have Moses killed, prompting Moses to flee to the wilderness east of Egypt (to the region of Midian), where the story continues—the episode at the well, Moses’s meeting his future wife and father-in-law, Moses’s marriage, his job as a shepherd, the burning bush, etc.
as I recall Paul Lepage was strong on cracking down on crime, specially Dominican gangs that were flooding Maine with fentanyl, instead they prefer a prog figurehead like Mills, who serves no good use, you see her defense of discriminatory actions against women athletes and illegal criminals, but Lepage was working class white, we can’t have that, for that matter what good does Susan Collins really do, for the populace,
legislating minimum wages do no good optimum effect, it reduces the labour pool
the Chamber of Commerce, sadly has been at the forefront of the offshoring of critical infrastructure and labour, and against what one would think the native labor pool,, this is not a local phenomenon, it works the same in the UK
on another point, I was fascinating to read the Josephus account of Moses, that DeMille seems to have referred to, it dwells on his campaigns against the Ethiopians when he was in the pharoahs service,
Interesting about Josephus.
Haven’t had much luck with him, myself. (Every time I start trying to read him, I—regretfully—end up putting him back on the shelf for another day.)
Of course, Moses was Pharaoh’s “grandson” by adoption…according to the story…
@mkent:“Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association…” their base..
Those special interest groups are not the base of Republican voters.
The individual humans who actually run small businesses might be part of that base, but the lobbying groups are not.
Who cares about all of the jobs heading out of state? That won’t cost the GOP any votes.
Blue cities stay blue despite their blue government policies that hemorrhage jobs. Check your premises. Voters vote on what matters to them, which may not be what you think is in their best interest, economically or any other way.
” ‘Right now, the GOP would be well advised to have a default policy of ‘no’ to requests from the Chamber of Commerce, the ‘Job Creators’ Network’, FWD.us,
or the Hotel and Restaurant Association.’ — HC68
Ahh, yes, they should turn their back on their base because you don’t like them. .” — mkent
No, because the _electorate_ doesn’t like them.
Business interests historically have been the dominant force in the GOP, but not the base. Since the 1980s and esp. the 1990s, the base has increasingly been social conservatives and American nationalists and increasingly working class voters. Those three groups more-or-less get along with each other, but there are deep conflicts of economic interest with business groups for each of them. To make it worse, business groups lean socially left for the most part.
It was business interests that pushed NAFTA, mass outsourcing, and open borders immigration. It was business interests who tried to ram Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney down the base voters’ throats in 2008 and 2012, and made an attempt at forcing Jeb Bush on them in 2016. ‘Any willing worker’ was business interests. Business interests backed Obamacare. In the first Trump Administration, they constantly struggled to undercut everything he tried to do except for tax cuts.
The price of making the GOP the true majority party is necessarily going to include a sharp reduction in the influence of business interests, because their agenda is fundamentally _unpopular_ .
Which is why reversing a popular electoral action less than a year later, on this subject of all things, is such utter and complete lunacy. I can already hear the attack ads now. Maybe later events will make this all a moot point, but it’s exactly the sort of wedge issue that can split the GOP coalition along its fracture lines.
MAGA, as a group, are _not_ libertarians.
” ‘One of the things that has haunted the GOP ever since FDR’s time is the perception by the voters that they are ‘the party of the rich’. — HC68
==
A guy who owns a bakery injured by the legislation you favor is not ‘the rich’. You might also take an interest in something other than optics.” — Art Deco
It doesn’t matter whether the baker is rich in fact, it matters that the public will perceive the GOP Legislature’s actions as favoring _employers over employees_ . Fair or not, justified or not, that’s how it’ll be perceived.
It’s a bit like the minimum wage. The political debate about minimum wages in principle, whether we like it or not, ended in the late 1930s. Since then, it’s been possible for the GOP to oppose a _particular_ increase or a particular aspect of it, but every time they’ve tried to oppose it in principle they’ve gotten burned, because the electorate isn’t open to that argument.
As for optics, there’s word for political movements that ignore them: defeated.
_Optics decide electorate outcomes_, more or less. Four years of rational arguments and evidence didn’t break Democratic voters’ trust in Biden. The first fifteen minutes or so of that debate last year did it.
Glenn Younkin became Governor of Virginia because Terry McAuliffe said one sentence about parents that implied they shouldn’t control their children’s education. One sentence.
Mitch Daniels’ political career ended in 2010. He was considered a promising Presidential possibility up until that point. Then, in a 2010 interview with the then-widely-read-by-conservatives _Weekly Standard_ , Daniels made a reference to calling a ‘truce’ on social issues to focus on the deficit and economics.
That was it. He was toast. Within 24 hours he was scrambling to explain that it didn’t mean what people thought, but in politics, ‘if you’re explaining you’re losing’. His Presidential aspirations collapsed. A year or two ago he floated what looked like a trial balloon for a run of some sort, and immediately he was peppered with questions from conservatives about that ‘truce’. It was still a millstone around his neck over a decade later.
Optics matter. And the GOP electorate is hypersensitive about the dominance of the Chamber of Commerce and business interests.