More on “uncouthness” and class conflict

The New Neo Posted on by

After I wrote yesterday’s post criticizing the idea that it is Trump’s “uncouthness” that constitutes the major objection of Trump opponents to electing Trump as president, I got to thinking about why this “they hate him because he’s uncouth” type of meme might be so pervasive. I believe that one reason some Trump supporters keep claiming it is that it serves to reflect and further stir up feelings of sensitivity and resentment about class that have long existed on the right as well as the left.

That’s part of what all this “GOPe” “establishment” “elite” talk has been about, too. The populist flames have been fanned for years against the Republicans, some of it deserved but some of it just demagoguery for ratings—from talk shows, bloggers, and pundits. Some of them absolutely believe what they are saying, and some probably don’t.

I wrote this about the phenomenon back in April:

The attack on the GOP from within (that is, the civil war as opposed to the separate attack from the left) relies on words such as “elites” and “establishment.” But those are classic leftist words””as pejoratives anyway, with “establishment” being a leftist word that I recall being popular in the 60s, along with “the system” (which I don’t hear that much about nowadays, along with “the man”).

It’s all another example of how leftist activist techniques are used by the alt-right (some of whom are actual leftists), as well as by talk show hosts and by other pundits, to stir up the “masses” (another leftist word) against the GOP. Now the GOP has its deep flaws, but it’s been nowhere near as bad as people say, and not even remotely as bad as the Democrats have been.

Even Newt Gingrich, who has been an “elite” for many decades, has gotten into the “elites” act…

For some people, it resonates quite strongly with other parts of their life experience. For some, it’s just an act of cynical manipulation. But in any event, many of these people have chosen Trump as the perfect vehicle for the sentiment. But it wouldn’t have worked if the ground hadn’t been prepared for years. “Country club Republicans” and “Rockefeller Republicans” were earlier manifestations of this class consciousness and class conflict on the right.

Trump himself is, of course, a rich man. A very rich man. What’s more, he’s been rich and powerful all his life. He likes to act like he was a self-made man, but he’s not—although he seems to be an industrious man and a very hard worker. He’s also, however, a rich man who came from a rich family and who got even richer, and he is also good at self-promotion.

Trump was not born a blue-collar, working class guy. However, his family—he grew up in Queens rather than Manhattan, for example, although it was an expensive part of Queens—had a slight “wrong side of the tracks” vibe. Although Donald was born into wealth and always had every privilege, his father was the self-made man. And it was his father who made sure his son Donald knew about the working man’s side of things, by making him learn about many aspects of the building trades by working them for a while in connection with his buildings (I can’t find the source for that at the moment, but I’m pretty sure I read it in a Trump biography).

I don’t hold Trump’s being born into wealth against him. He has worked hard at real estate development and at self-promotion, and now he’s bearing the fruit. But why was Romney excoriated as a patrician and Trump not? The difference was actually more about style and perception than reality, about appealing to a different base in the GOP and elsewhere. Trump is a populist—an unlikely populist, but a populist nevertheless. Romney was many things, but populist he was not.

And to circle back to the beginning, I believe that populism is the source of these simplifications of the objections of Trump’s opponents, the desire to brand them as elitist snobs who look down their noses and sneer at the base.

Rolling Stone found guilty of defamation…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in the matter of the Sabrina Erdely story about bogus gang rape at UVA, the one that portrayed “Jackie” as victim extraordinaire. The verdict involved a finding of actual malice on the part of the periodical and Erdely:

In a lawsuit filed last year, then-UVA associate dean of students Nicole Eramo alleged that the article and interviews Ms. Erdely gave about her reporting cast the administrator as the callous villain of its tale and falsely asserted that she discouraged a student identified only as “Jackie” from taking her rape allegations to the police.

Key to the verdict against Rolling Stone itself was its delayed decision to retract the story, according to the jury’s verdict form.

This is the tale of a periodical and a reporter who loved their story so much they couldn’t let go of it when they should have, and who had no interest in using due diligence in researching it.

Here’s a statement from Rolling Stone after the verdict:

We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo. It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.

Well, Rolling Stone, I have a suggestion to make. If you would like your reporting to result in campus policies that better protect students, it would help to report the facts rather than lies.

Erdely herself has made a sort of cottage industry from writing sensational articles about rape, and several of her previous pieces have been subsequently looked at with a more skeptical eye than before, in light of the UVA brouhaha. But these articles of Erdely’s were not merely about rape; her recurrent leitmotif was that the victims’ reports of rape were ignored or minimized by the relevant institutions in attempts at coverup. Erdely’s “Jackie” story fit the pattern, with its allegations against UVA administrator Eramo:

Sabrina Rubin Erdely is trying to build a narrative. The narrative, really, is not as much about rape qua rape. The narrative is that rape is widely ignored and/or condoned by people in authority within institutions that she dislikes (frats, the military, churches). Reporting that a rape has occurred is upsetting but not surprising to people ”“ so what makes these stories actual news stories is that they in each instance make the sensational claim that the rape was reported to people in positions of authority who either ignored the accusation or who actually punished the victim for reporting it.

Here’s an article about one of Erdely’s previous stories for Rolling Stone, one that involved sexual abuse by priests in Philadelphia. The following excerpt was written five years ago, long before Erdely’s UVA story came out:

The author of “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely, is not a religion reporter; she writes mostly about health issues. But she knows how to smear, and knows how to exploit stereotypes. As we will see, she is also dishonest…

I suggest you read the whole thing, but even more important to read would be this article about what happened later in the case (written in the fall of 2015). If you are familiar with the UVA/Jackie story, it should come as no surprise:

Daniel Gallagher is a slender 27-year-old with a wispy beard who is better known as “Billy Doe.” Under that pseudonym, he made national headlines in 2011 when he claimed to have been serially raped as a fifth- and sixth-grader at St. Jerome’s parish by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher.

Gallagher subsequently became the Philadelphia district attorney’s star witness at two historic criminal trials. His graphic testimony helped convict three alleged assailants, as well as Monsignor William Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s former secretary for clergy, who was found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child. The monsignor became the first Catholic administrator in the country to go to jail for failing to adequately supervise a sexually abusive priest…

The Billy Doe rape story was so sensational it attracted the attention of crusading Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She described Billy Doe in a 2011 story, “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files,” as a “sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks” who had been callously “passed around” from predator to predator..

Judging from [court-appointed forensic psychiatrist] Mechanick’s report, Billy Doe has as much credibility as Jackie.

There’s much more that’s occurred subsequently on some of those Philadelphia cases, and the legal machinations are ongoing. Some of the more recent developments can be found here.

I can’t believe…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s now so close to Election Day. The nation is tied to the tracks and we can hear the train whistle getting louder and louder.

It’s terrifying, even though I really want this to be over.

Michelle Obama takes my advice, sort of

The New Neo Posted on by

And gets into trouble for it.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I gave some fashion advice to the new First Lady, Michelle Obama. I thought she’d look good in a dress on the order of a particular garment of Jackie Kennedy’s:

Not to belabor the point (oh, maybe just a little), but this is what Michelle Obama should have worn to the Inaugural Ball. Although a different color might have been in order, the cut and drape would have been just perfect.

The dress has the added attraction of being historical: designed by Oleg Cassini, it was worn by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962 at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize Laureates of the Western Hemisphere.

Which did not yet include Bob Dylan, although he was already starting his literary career.

Here’s Jackie’s elegant and classically-inspired dress:

jackiedress

Well, I’ve waited and I’ve waited, through thick and thin and the entire stressful Obama administration, as well as the frustrating and depressing 2016 campaign season. And now, finally, we have this:

michelledress2

It’s in the ballpark, anyway. And it is in a different color (and material). Although I don’t think I’d have chosen gold, I rather like it. It’s never too late to take neo-neocon’s advice.

And yes, I know this is maximally trivial and you don’t want to hear about it. But I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between the two dresses. If you think that Michelle’s isn’t quite as nice as Jackie’s, I’d agree with you. But I think that in general, clothing is nowhere near as well-made as it used to be, and this probably goes for designer clothing as well (Michelle’s dress was by Versace).

Victor Davis Hanson and the non-Trumpers

The New Neo Posted on by

Like many Trump-boosters, Victor Davis Hanson misses the point in this description of the motivations of people on the right who won’t vote for Trump. It’s an error I’ve seen over and over again from Trump supporters, including even relatively reluctant Trump supporters such as Hanson, who is ordinarily an intelligent and perceptive writer [emphasis mine]:

…Trump’s uncouthness has turned off his rivals and their supporters, who still in large part insist that they will not support him despite the transparency of the primaries and the long-ago oath of fealty of the Republican candidates to the eventual nominee.

Hanson commits many errors there, all in that single sentence. One is that Trump’s “rivals and their supporters still in large part insist they will not support him.” That is, quite simply, factually untrue. Carson and Christie and Perry boarded the Trump train in an early and vocal manner, and Huckabee wasn’t far behind. Kasich and Jeb Bush never did, but Cruz and Rubio both did, although reluctantly and to great criticism. Jindal did as well, as did Scott Walker. So did (to my surprise, because I had missed it when it happened in September) Carly Fiorina.

You can find out all of this quite easily by Googling it. As for “their supporters,” there is no question that although Trump won the primaries with less than half of the GOP vote, the vast majority of GOP voters are planning to vote for him. So in fact Trump’s “rivals and their supporters” in very large part are supporting Trump, despite his manifold flaws (and “flaws” is a kind word compared to some I could use).

So, why does Hanson—a man whose writing I have respected and praised for a long, long time—write what he wrote there? My theory is that anger and/or frustration is getting in the way of facts this year more than ever, even in people who ordinarily would be more careful. Trump versus Hillary is an enormously emotional experience, among other things, and emotion can cloud reason even in the best of us.

But that’s not all Hanson gets wrong. He also commits the very common error of Trump supporters by mischaracterizing the motives of the Trump non-supporters as their perception that Trump is “uncouth.” I’ve written about the problems with this approach many times before, which is that it trivializes and minimizes the objections of most non-Trumpers, objections which are ordinarily far more profound than that, and which have been fully aired many many times.

So there’s no excuse for this sort of error. Why does Hanson make it, and why do some many other Trump-supporting pundits make it, as well? With some it’s not an error, of course; it’s a purposeful distortion, although I do not think that’s true of Hanson at all. My best guess with someone like Hanson, an honorable person, is that the compromises one must make in order to support Trump mean that the supporter needs to quiet those voices of more profound objection in him/herself, to damp down his/her own awareness of the more seriously troubling aspects not just of Trump’s personality, but—much more importantly—of his character, his understanding of the issues (particularly international ones), his questionable alt-right allies, his lies, and even some of his policy statements (not to mention their shifting nature). It’s easier to tell oneself that those who object to Trump are merely snobs who can’t take a little populist mouthing-off. But although I suppose there are a few people who fit that description and whose main objection to Trump is his rough style, it very obviously isn’t what’s operating with the vast majority of thoughtful people who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump even though they detest and fear Hillary.

But that’s not all I have to say about that sentence of Hanson’s that I quoted. The “transparency of the primaries and the long-ago oath of fealty of the Republican candidates to the eventual nominee” have little relevance under the circumstances People like Jeb Bush didn’t sign a pact in blood, and conscience might actually cause a person to change his or her mind, particularly with a candidate (Trump, in this case) who has done reprehensible things that were unknown to the person at the time he/she made that promise. And furthermore, what possible difference would these promises of Trump’s rivals make to their previous supporters, the ordinary voters? Why would those voters care about these broken promises of the other candidates at this point, when they themselves never took the pledge and are free to make their own voting decisions? They are not vassals, bound by the oaths of their lords.

I wrote that last sentence before I decided to look up the word “fealty,” which Hanson had used and which struck me as archaic. When I looked it up just now, I found this definition:

1.History/Historical.

(a) fidelity to a lord.
(b) the obligation or the engagement to be faithful to a lord, usually sworn to by a vassal.

2. fidelity; faithfulness.

Bingo! The word “vassal” turns out to have been remarkably faithful to what Hanson is saying, but completely inappropriate to the situation. Hanson is a classics professor and military historian, who also specializes in ancient agrarian history. As such, he knows what a word such as “fealty” means, and he knows that neither the other GOP candidates nor their supporters owe the nominee any sort of “fealty” whatsoever. Perhaps he wishes they did; then neither he nor Trump would have to try to convince them of anything.

In sum, why does it seem to be so difficult for so many Trump supporters to acknowledge the actual arguments and reasoning behind the decisions of non-Trump supporters, and try to counter those arguments instead of creating a much more simplistic strawman? Is it really necessary to insult them by trivializing what they think?

Neo speaks

The New Neo Posted on by

Many years ago I used to do weekly podcasts for PJ Media with three other bloggers (“The Sanity Squad”), and most of my readers were familiar with the sound of my voice. Although at first doing the podcasts made me very nervous, I soon became accustomed to that sort of format and to trying to sound coherent while speaking extemporaneously and without preparation. But it’s been so long since then that probably most people here have never heard my speaking voice.

I was reminded of this by a discussion here yesterday about, of all people, Michael Savage, which caused me to point out to “The Other Chuck” that about three and a half years ago I was a guest on the Savage show, and that you can still listen to the audio here.

Chuck” responded by pointing out that he was surprised at my lack of a New York accent. Which in turn reminded me that most of you probably have never read this old essay of mine on how it is that I don’t tawk like a New Yawkah.

Which in turn reminds me of one of the many oddities of this 2016 election, which is that this is the all-NY election—which would be strange in and of itself, even without all this election’s many other, far more important, strangenesses.

As if things weren’t bad enough—I’m asking you for money again

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP—scroll down for new posts.]

passhat.jpg

I figured, why not do this before the election instead of after? My assumption is that people might be feeling even grumpier and more depressed after.

But perhaps not. All presumptions and assumptions seem to be off this year.

Anyway, this seemed as good a time as any to pass the hat, because it’s that time again.

Please click on that Paypal “donate” button (hint hint: it’s on the right sidebar, above the Amazon widget, which is also a handy and helpful gadget to use, and the holidays are coming). I will be deeply grateful to every single one of you who does decide to contribute. Every bit— large or small, lump sum or monthly increments—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog.

I give profound thanks to all of you in advance. I will probably repeat this notice by bumping it to the top of the blog for the next week, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat. And it’s a lot better than those fund-raising drives they have on NPR, isn’t it? No interruption of the scheduled programming.

Hillary: it’s the chaos, stupid

The New Neo Posted on by

James Comey’s letter informing Congress of new and possibly relevant emails in the Hillary Clinton investigation was most likely at least one of the reasons the polls have tightened during the last few days.

Polls usually tighten anyway close to Election Day, but it’s hard to escape the idea that the Comey announcement has at least something to do with the development this year. There is absolutely no way to tell who will win this election, but my sense is still that—in part due to the Electoral College breakdown—Clinton remains on track to become the next president, although it is indisputable that Trump’s chances have improved significantly.

If that sounds hedge-y, so be it. I don’t know what will happen, you don’t know what will happen, even Nate Silver doesn’t know what will happen.

For a very long time, Trump supporters have been trying to convince people in the middle and on the right who are very hesitant to vote for him—or are even against voting for him—that there’s a very good reason to vote for Trump despite their huge reservations, and that reason is named “Hillary Clinton.” Their argument usually goes like this: we know what Hillary will do, and it’s bad; we may not know what Trump will do, but there’s at least some chance that it will be better. That’s one of the more convincing arguments to vote for Trump, but for many listeners it has had a fatal flaw, which is that it doesn’t take into account what I would call the chaos factor.

In general, different people have very different tolerances for unpredictability and possible chaos. Some thrive on it and others would choose predictability and stability, even of a negative sort, over what they see as the possibility of a chaotic and perhaps even worse result. During the past year I’ve talked to and/or read the opinions of a great many people who are politically in the middle or on the right who would ordinarily have voted for the Republican candidate this year (or perhaps any other year), but who’ve been having extreme difficulty wrapping their minds around voting for Trump, because they don’t accept the premises of that pro-Trump argument I just described. They are put off and even frightened by the possibility of greater chaos around the world if Trump is elected president.

You don’t have to agree with them to understand the idea. For these people, “burn it down” is not a reassuring slogan. Nor do arguments such as “well, if Trump is elected and he does something really awful, he can always be impeached and convicted” help a bit. That sounds to them like a recipe for chaos and upheaval and uncertainty, as well.

And of course, such reasoning is even greater among liberals, who very often see Trump as equivalent to a madman or a Hitler, and as a potential agent of enormous chaos and change. They were unlikely to vote for any Republican in the first place, but they might have accepted the victory of any of them with relative equanimity. But the prospect of Trump terrifies them, and this terror is very real, whether you think it justified or not.

How does this relate to the polls, and to the tightening of the race lately? One of Hillary’s major selling points in the past has been stability versus what are perceived as Trump’s erratic qualities, and she tailors many of her political ads around this idea. But the Comey announcement introduces a significant element of instability and possible chaos into the notions people have about what a possible Clinton presidency would look like, even for some people who might have otherwise turned to her as an alternative to the possible chaos they envision with Trump. The vagueness of Comey’s letter in terms of what the new information might be is not reassuring; it may even increase this feeling of uncertainty about Hillary rather than decrease it.

Now the very real possibility of a post-election indictment cannot be dismissed, and it puts us in uncharted waters. How would this work for a president, before or after inauguration? Would it involve the necessity of impeachment as well? What other revelations might be forthcoming, and how serious would they be? What do we really know about the workings of a woman many people already didn’t like, but at least thought they knew? How does all of this stack up with what we know or don’t know about Donald Trump, and what many people fear from him?

Do you watch TV news anymore?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t.

Ann Althouse succinctly states my take on this election:

To me, the election is a horror show, and it doesn’t matter whether I go down into the cellar or jump out the window. A monster will grab me. I can’t have the fun of enjoying Trump crushing it on Fox or Clinton basking in presumed victory on CNN.

Some time last winter, without planning it or thinking much about it, I suddenly stopped watching all news shows. That includes all networks and cable networks, all talk shows, all radio talk shows—the entire kit and kaboodle. This happened spontaneously and came from the gut mostly; I found I simply could not bear to watch anyone. The election year that had begun with such high promise had already turned into a horror show for me, and I couldn’t stand the smug gloating or the doom and gloomers or the distortions and lies and spin or really much of anything about it.

Of course, I’ve always much preferred to get my news in print, so I hadn’t been a heavy TV news consumer anyway, and stopping wasn’t a hardship at all.

My question is: what about you? Do you watch a lot of TV news or listen to radio talk shows? Did you used to watch more? Or are you just drinking it up?

I’ve seen a lot of commentary on blogs this year from people who’re saying “Pass the popcorn, I’m enjoying this so much!” Hey, party pooper me isn’t having fun at all. I consider this election tragic for the country, and although I suppose it has its ironic and schadenfreude-ish and even comic aspects, I ain’t laughing and I’m not even smiling.

It’s the Clinton Foundation, stupid

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a lot of news coming out, and much of it concerns the fact that the Comey announcement was really about the FBI’s renewed focus on the Clinton Foundation as a pay-for-play scheme.

Here’s an article by Andrew C. McCarthy. It’s a bit complex, but please read the whole thing.

Also please see this at the WSJ. Here’s an excerpt:

Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said.

Agents, using informants and recordings from unrelated corruption investigations, thought they had found enough material to merit aggressively pursuing the investigation into the foundation that started in summer 2015 based on claims made in a book by a conservative author called “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” these people said…

The roots of the dispute lie in a disagreement over the strength of the case, these people said, which broadly centered on whether Clinton Foundation contributors received favorable treatment from the State Department under Hillary Clinton.

Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI didn’t think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had promising leads their bosses wouldn’t let them pursue, they said…

Amid the internal finger-pointing on the Clinton Foundation matter, some have blamed the FBI’s No. 2 official, deputy director Andrew McCabe, claiming he sought to stop agents from pursuing the case this summer. His defenders deny that, and say it was the Justice Department that kept pushing back on the investigation.

The author of that first article, Andrew C. McCarthy, has been my go-to guy for this kind of legal issue for a long, long time, and is one of the clearest and most reliable writers in the field. He’s been pretty much writing an article a day since the Comey announcement broke nearly a week ago (one of the longest weeks of Hillary Clinton’s life, most likely). Today McCarthy speculates on why the FBI never discovered the existence of the Weiner/Abedin computer before. It is also worth reading, and McCarthy concludes with this:

The reports of the FBI’s investigation that have been made public indicate that there could be dozens of computers and other communications devices which may be storing classified information, but which the FBI has neither seized nor made plans to try to obtain. If that is true, it is inexplicable..

…Is the Abedin/Weiner laptop the last one? Or will late discoveries continue to rock Camp Clinton and roil our politics?

McCarthy is basing his speculation about the thoroughness of the FBI’s questioning on this report:

The FBI requested all the computers that were used in conjunction with Hillary Clinton’s private server, but a new report states the former secretary of state’s top aides were never asked to turn over their computers or smartphones.

“No one was asked for devices by the FBI,” an anonymous source familiar with the investigation told Politico late Tuesday.

Since aides did not turn over their devices, their attorneys were instead the ones guiding investigators in their search despite their looking out for their clients’ best interests.

However, I had read earlier that Huma Abedin was asked (under oath, but apparently not by the FBI) if there was any other computer she had used that might have had the Hillary emails on it, and she denied that she had any:

On June 28, 2016, Abedin said under oath in a sworn deposition that she looked for all devices that she thought contained government work on them so the records could be given to the State Department. (These records were subsequently reviewed by the FBI.)

Also, even now Abedin says that she has no idea how the emails got on her husband’s laptop and that she had never used it:

Huma Abedin’s lawyer has thrown new confusion into the Clinton email probe – saying she never used the laptop seized by the FBI where the messages were found.

In a dramatic development, Abedin’s newly-hired attorney claimed that the laptop was solely in the possession of the Hillary Clinton aide’s ex-husband, pervert Anthony Weiner.

The claim on Abedin’s behalf deepens the mystery of how emails relevant to the Clinton server investigation could be found on his laptop.

Initial reports had suggested the device was shared by Abedin and Weiner before their estrangement.

But Karen Dunn told Politico the computer belonged to Weiner alone.

We’re dealing in a fog of war (metaphorically speaking) situation here, apparently. However, it seems to me that if this is true, the FBI would not have had the authority to seize Weiner’s computer, even if they had asked Abedin all the relevant questions. My question is: when a person is being investigated, how do the authorities determine which are the computers used by that person’s aides, and which computers to ask for legal access to?

World Series thread

The New Neo Posted on by

Oh boy.

All tied up, seventh game, ninth inning.

It looked like the Cubs had it, but then the Indians came back. The fat lady has not yet sung.

Is this a metaphor for something or other?

11:55 PM: Yikes! Beginning the 10th, now there’s a rain delay.

This is almost like an old-fashioned Red Sox type of World Series.

12:21 PM: Cubs take a one-run lead in the tenth.

12:39 PM: Cubs one out away. It can be a looong out.

12:44 PM: One-run game now. Change of pitchers.

12:48 PM CUBS WIN!

And Theo Epstein is a friggin genius. He did it for the Red Sox, and then he did it for the Cubs. With some help, of course.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: Theo Epstein for president!