Trump: doing it in the street and frightening the horses

The New Neo Posted on by

Since the firestorm erupted around the release of the audio of Trump’s remarks to Billy Bush in 2005, there have been a number of arguments advanced to counter it. One very popular one involves comparisons to Bill Clinton’s misbehavior and the fact that Democrats circled the wagons to defend it, as well as that of JFK and other presidents alleged to have been philanderers. It’s said we should be more like the Democrats and Stand By Our Man. It’s also said that anyone who wasn’t scandalized by Bill Clinton shouldn’t be scandalized by Trump.

I’m going to point out some differences between the two situations.

The first is that when Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992—which is when news of his philandering first came out on a national level—he had been a multiple-term governor (starting at the age of 32, by the way), a founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, and the head of the National Governors Association. In other words, he had a ton of political executive experience and was widely recognized as a leader in the Democratic Party. He was a very successful politician, a loyal Democrat, and popular as well. Also, when he ran for president in 1992, he successfully squelched what were at the time only rumors of infidelity (for example, Broddrick didn’t make her allegations until a couple of weeks after Clinton’s impeachment, after previously filing a 1997 affadavit saying the rumors were untrue). At no point did we have raunchy audiotapes of Clinton bragging about his sexual exploits and how his power enabled him to get women. If we had had them back then, my guess is that it would have sunk him on the national level, although of course I have no way to know for sure.

So some of the differences are timing, type of allegation vs. actual tape in the person’s own words, and previous political experience/affiliation. Clinton was a Democrat through and through, a successful and popular one who had been a reliable standard-bearer for the Democratic platform and the Democratic agenda. Later on, by the time the Lewinsky affair occurred, Clinton was already well into his second term as a popular Democratic president. The Democrats would have had no reason except morality to have abandoned him at that point, and morality wasn’t going to be enough motivation. They had the numbers, too, to fight conviction in the impeachment trial, and so they knew if they could hang tough, Clinton was never going to be convicted.

In contrast, Donald Trump is none of those things. To tell Republicans to Stand By Their Man would probably cause the majority of Republicans to say “But he’s not my man!” It isn’t really clear that Trump is even a Republican, and he is certainly not a tested Republican leader, or any sort of Republican leader at all except at this point a titular one. He has no history of having held political office. He is the most unpopular presidential nominee in history, and that was true even before these tapes surfaced. He was nominated without getting a majority of Republican primary votes. He has never led Hillary Clinton in the polls except very briefly and by figures well within the margin of error. These are not opinions; these are facts.

And we have actual tapes of his voice, saying some things that indicate he is drunk with power and what it can do for him sexually. It is easy for the listener to extrapolate from the tapes and imagine that Trump’s drunk with power, period. Hey, let’s give him more power!

This isn’t just about sex; not by a long shot. The tapes are about power. And although saying this is just locker-room talk, just machismo bragging, may indeed by true, there is no reason to imagine that these tapes will enhance his already very uncertain electability, and many reasons to imagine it will cause him to drop further in a race that he seems to be losing.

So why should Republicans stand by him? The only reason I’ve ever seen stated (and it’s not a bad one) is that it’s Trump or Hillary, and that Hillary is unconscionable. That may be enough to convince a lot of people on the right who see her as almost a demon. But it’s not going to appeal to the vast middle and/or to moderates that Trump needs in order to win.

What’s more—and quite importantly, I think—those tapes aren’t just a one-off. They are completely congruent with the Trump we already know (if we’ve been paying any attention, that is) from other venues. Such statements weren’t limited to things said supposedly off-the-record, with a hot mic (the Billy Bush remarks, that is). Many were said in public broadcasts with widespread dissemination, as part of Trump’s approximately two dozen appearances over the years on the Howard Stern program.

That’s a lot of appearances, and there are a lot of Trump quotes from the show—none of them in the nature of “locker-room talk,” because the Howard Stern show is a public forum and no locker room. In fact, you could say it takes locker-room talk out of the locker room and into the public airways, and anyone who appears on the show has to know that’s what’s going on. I’ve read that Stern has cleaned up his act somewhat in recent years; I wouldn’t know, since I’m not a listener or a fan. But most of the time when Trump was on, it was the Stern of olden days.

If you want to see some of the quotes I’m talking about, take a look, and there’s probably plenty more where those came from (some of this was well known even during the primaries, by the way, because it was already in the public domain). Now, I haven’t spent too much time in men’s locker rooms (full disclosure: none). But my guess is that statements like this particular one from Stern about Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and the response from Trump, aren’t what most men would let slide even under those circumstances, and it really is creepy-crawly, even to those accustomed to locker-room talk:

In another interview, from September 2004, Stern asks Trump if he can call Ivanka “a piece of ass,” to which Trump responds in the affirmative.
“My daughter is beautiful, Ivanka,” says Trump.
“By the way, your daughter,” says Stern.
“She’s beautiful,” responds Trump.
“Can I say this? A piece of ass,” Stern responds.
“Yeah,” says Trump.

Bill Clinton, JFK, LBJ, and whatever other philandering president you want to mention maintained at least a facade of decorum. Clinton was caught; the others kept their secrets during the entire time of their presidencies. This was done with the cooperation of the press, to be sure (note that the three I mentioned are Democrats). But Trump flaunts his, at least he did up till now. It indicates a lack of boundaries that is not about sex, not about political correctness, but about dignity and judgment and public behavior, something some voters still care about.

It isn’t even really about whether you care about those things (particularly in comparison to Hillary’s offenses, which are of a very different and non-sexual nature), or whether I care about them, or whether Trump’s sexual behavior in private has been worse than that of other presidents or just as bad or even a little bit better. It’s about the public nature of the evidence. It’s about how no one but the most devoted Trump admirers really wanted him to be president in the first place, and how most people do not seem to trust or like him. In order to win the election, Trump had to earn their trust. He hasn’t done it. He had to earn their respect; instead he has repelled them. He started from a weak and one-down position, and he’s dug himself a deeper hole, and this incident (the Billy Bush tapes) dug it still deeper.

People don’t want to be repelled by their president. And yes, Hillary also repels, but it’s a different sort of repugnance she engenders, and not enough people so far seem to have found her more repugnant than Trump. A lot of people especially don’t want to be repulsed by Trump before electing him, and they don’t want to be repulsed by a political novice whom they already don’t trust anyway. They don’t want a president to do it in the street and frighten the horses.

And let’s say for the sake of argument that Trump’s “doing it” is mere talk—although we don’t know that, either. (By the way, for those who say that Bill Clinton raped someone and that Trump is guilty of “mere words”: Clinton is alleged to have been a rapist, and Trump is alleged to have been a rapist, and both of them have been unfaithful to their wives.) If Trump’s sex talk is “mere talk,” it’s still talk that repels a lot of the people Trump needed to attract in order to win this election.

Hmmm…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I guess I won’t be moving to any of these metropolitan areas any time soon.

Unless my sugar daddy comes along.

We’re just talking about living at the two-bedroom apartment level, and it ain’t cheap:

In San Francisco, America’s most expensive city, workers need a $216,129 salary to not feel burdened by the cost of renting the average two-bedroom apartment at $5,043-a-month.

Households that spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing and utility bills are considered ‘cost-burdened households’, based on a threshold set by The Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In the new report by SmartAsset, a 28 per cent rent-to-income ratio was used to determine how much money households need to afford a two-bed apartment in the largest U.S. cities without feeling ”˜cost-burdened’…

[In San Franciso,] [t]he median household income in the city is still only $78,378.

That’s household income, too, which often includes the income of two people.

More:

New York is the second most expensive place to live – with workers needing to earn a salary of $158,229 to make the cost of renting a two-bed apartment at $3,692-a-month affordable…

In Los Angeles you need a $145,629 salary to not feel burdened by the average cost of renting a two-bed at $3,398…

The fourth most expensive place to live is Boston, Massachusetts.

You’ll need a $120,900-a-year salary to find the average Boston apartment with a couple of bedrooms affordable at $2,821 per month.

Of course, it depends what you mean by “city.” You can live within commuting distance of some of those cities for less, but it also depends on what you consider “commuting distance.” For San Francisco, you have to get many hours away before things get at all reasonable, and they’re still not especially reasonable.

Happy post-modern, Indigenous People’s, Columbus Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

There, did I cover enough bases? Did I get it right (I mean left)?

Like many things, Columbus Day has evolved. And here’s a discussion of the postmodern Columbus Day (from Dr. Sanity, circa 2009).

As for me, since I live up in New England and the weather has been good, I’ll should just play it safe and call it Leafpeepers Day. They’re out in force now (both the leaves and the human peepers).

I plan to take an official leafpeeping drive some weekday this week in order to try to avoid the worst of the vehicular congestion over the holiday itself.

Here are some photos I’ve taken during previous New England falls. The first isn’t a leaf, it’s a berry in its fall raiment. But let’s not get technical:

100_2449-001

The most spectacular colors are always the reds, which come first:

100_2437-001

In the mist:

100_2442-002

Fini:

100_2483-001

Trump and jailing Clinton: how will it play in Peoria?

The New Neo Posted on by

In case you’re unfamiliar with the somewhat archaic reference in the title of this post, it’s based on an old show biz term, “traditionally used to ask whether a given product, person, promotional theme, or event will appeal to mainstream…America, or across a broad range of demographic and psychographic groups.” In order to win a national election in this country, in what is still essentially a two-party system, a candidate needs a somewhat broad appeal (or, this year, a less broad disgust factor than his/her opponent) in order to win.

Parliamentary systems are different. Parties tend to proliferate, enabling a party to win with pluralities that are often significantly less than 50%, and then coalitions must be formed in order to govern. In our system there has been more of a tendency for the coalition to form within the party itself, and in the past this has been accompanied by a tendency to damp down extremism.

Something about that system has broken down, and it happened not that long ago. I’m not sure when I’d date it from, but certainly within my lifetime.

That’s all background to lead into a discussion of the statement of Trump’s in last night’s debate that if he were president Hillary would be in jail. If you look at the entire transcript, that was the last (and most extreme) statement of a much lengthier exchange that went like this [emphasis mine]:

When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this, where e-mails ”” and you get a subpoena, you get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 e-mails, and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say, very expensive process.

So we’re going to get a special prosecutor, and we’re going to look into it, because you know what? People have been ”” their lives have been destroyed for doing one-fifth of what you’ve done. And it’s a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to follow up on that.

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: I’m going to let you talk about e-mails.

CLINTON: ”¦ because everything he just said is absolutely false, but I’m not surprised.

TRUMP: Oh, really?

CLINTON: In the first debate”¦

(LAUGHTER)

RADDATZ: And really, the audience needs to calm down here.

CLINTON: ”¦ I told people that it would be impossible to be fact-checking Donald all the time. I’d never get to talk about anything I want to do and how we’re going to really make lives better for people.

So, once again, go to HillaryClinton.com. We have literally Trump ”” you can fact check him in real time. Last time at the first debate, we had millions of people fact checking, so I expect we’ll have millions more fact checking, because, you know, it is ”” it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

TRUMP: Because you’d be in jail.

I’m wondering which of Trump’s facts in that exchange Clinton would be able to specifically challenge as lies, because I don’t see any. Nor does she specify any.

If Trump had stopped just short of the “because you’d be in jail” remark, I doubt there would have been much controversy. But it was the “jail” remark that seems to have gotten most of the attention from both sides. On this blog, some commenters were very happy to hear it (and/or to hear he planned to appoint a special prosecutor, the less extreme of his statements), because they’re among those Trump was referring to when he said “the people of this country are furious.” And there’s plenty to be furious about.

I responded this way in the comments section:

I do not trust Trunp, his word, or his promises, and the only way I would ever trust him is if he had been president for several years and had consistently done what he said he would.

The only significance what he says has to me is that it helps me figure out his possible effect on other people, his style””what he projects to people, and whether it will help him win.

That’s where I’m at with Trump, and have been for months. It’s part of my observation that with Trump, everything is mutable. So to me the question of “how did it play in Peoria?” is the most important one (although not literally in Peoria), and I’m not sure of the answer. One small anecdotal bit of evidence came in today’s comment from “OM,” who said:

My 82 yr old father in law Republican from IL reaction to the debate :

“I watched the Creepy Clown Show on television last night. Oh, I was mistaken. It was the presidential election debate.”

By the way, Peoria is in Illinois.

As for what I wrote about the mutability of Trump’s promise, I offer this from Trump’s campaign manager:

Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway dismissed as “a quip” the Republican nominee’s threat at Sunday night’s debate to “jail” Hillary Clinton for her handling of government secrets if he becomes president…

“That was a quip. And I saw in NBC’s own reporting it was referred to as a quip, so I’ll go with NBC on it. He had already finished his statement. She said something like ”˜that’s why you’ll never be president,’ and he said ”˜you’d be in jail.’ And so that was his answer,” Conway said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

But Trump’s own social media director and senior adviser, Dan Scavino Jr., tweeted out the “quip” at about 2 a.m. Monday, complete with a black-and-white photo of a resolute-looking Trump standing at a lectern.

Conway said Trump was not joking about the special prosecutor but was instead “channeling the frustration he hears from thousands of voters out on the stump every day. And they’re very frustrated that she has a different set of rules for her.”

So Conway is saying that the special prosecutor was a real promise, the “jail” remark a joke. Who knows, though, whether Trump would actually appoint one? And could he?:

But former attorneys general under Republican and Democratic administrations said presidents don’t get to decide on the appointment of a special prosecutor.

“I don’t conceive of that as something that’s in the authority of the president,” said Michael Mukasey, who was attorney general under President George W. Bush and has been an outspoken critic of Clinton for her use of the private email server.

Mukasey and other former Justice Department heads said the president can request a special investigator be named, but it’s up to the attorney general whether to actually appoint one.

Federal law states: “The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.”

Mukasey told ABC News, “The president can say what they want to happen, but the attorney general’s proper response would be, ‘That’s interesting, I’ll take a look. But I decide that, you don’t.’

On the other hand—as the Obama DOJ has clear shown—because the president gets to appoint the Attorney General in the first place, he or she can appoint a simpatico political tool to do his/her bidding. That knowledge is one of the clearest legacies of the Obama administration.

Trump’s opponents have been quick to seize on his statement (or quip) as evidence of his banana republic extra-judicial tendencies—for example, here’s Ezra Klein:

…[T]hreatening to jail one’s political opponents ”” is how democratic norms die…

…[W]e believe that political disagreement should be legal.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to care about all that.

In his last line ”” “you’d be in jail” ”” he is outright saying that he would imprison Hillary Clinton in office (if he could). This comes despite the fact that there is no evidence Clinton committed a crime in her handling of the email servers, despite lengthy investigations that found evidence of carelessness and dishonesty. That would be a politically motivated prosecution ”” retribution for daring to run against Trump and attack him during the campaign.

This is everything we feared about Donald Trump.

It’s Klein who should be ashamed of himself, but I won’t sit on a hot stove till that happens. From the context it is crystal clear what Trump was talking about, and of course it wasn’t his opposition to Clinton politically, it was her conduct re not complying with a subpoena and the rest. And obviously he was not speaking of an extra-judicial proceeding, he was saying that under his administration a special prosecutor would have recommended charges, and Trump believes she would have been found guilty.

But he didn’t exactly say it that way, did he? And the way he did say it left him open to sophists like Klein. That’s what Trump often does, and you either like it or you don’t; you either think it’s great or you don’t.

I don’t like Trump; I think I’ve made that pretty clear. But what I’m concerned with here is how the middle of the road undecideds will see it, not how partisans see it. Will they believe someone like Klein? Or will they applaud Trump’s ballsiness?

Or aren’t they paying much attention at all?

[NOTE: By the way, it’s hardly the first time Trump has talked about Hillary and jail.]

Sunday’s ordinarily my day off, but…DEBATE.

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesiree, this evening we have another debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

I may or may not be able to bring myself to watch it. I will decide as the spirit moves me.

Here’s a thread for all of you to discuss whatever you want to say about this travesty of an election season.

I will update as needed as the debate goes on.

UPDATE 9:25 PM

My apologies, but so far I cannot find the stomach to turn it on. Maybe in a little bit.

I thought I’d do something I sometimes do, which is go to the comments of other blogs and read what people are saying, and get an idea of the debate that way. I figured it would be best to go to a blog where the comments are relatively objective and/or evenly balanced, but then I realized there was no such blog.

Except this one, of course.

Seen at another blog: “Trump is trying to appeal to the folks who are already going to vote for him.”

UPDATE 9:40 PM

Okay, I just turned it on, and they’re talking substance rather than sex (perhaps for the first time)—about Obamacare and pre-existing conditions. That’s a topic I know a lot about, it just so happens. It’s a pet peeve of mine that the lie keeps being promulgated that prior to Obamacare, people with pre-existing conditions couldn’t get coverage. In fact, most of them were covered, and I described how in some detail in this post.

Maybe no one cares anymore but me. But it seems emblamatic of what’s wrong with this election that Hillary is pretending that no one with pre-existing conditions could get covered prior to Obamacare and that Obamacare was the only reasonable solution to covering the ones who weren’t covered (there were actually other far better ways to do it). And Trump doesn’t seem to know much about the subject at all.

UPDATE 10:00 PM
Trump: “If you were an effective senator, you would have done it.” Huh? All by herself?

This was preceded by a fairly good attack by Trump on her for a host of things, but this king-senator suggestion of Trump’s is nonsensical, and opens the door for Hillary to describe in glowing terms her work as senator.

I keep wondering whether this debate would change a single mind. I don’t think so. Or, would it help an undecided person to make up his/her mind? That’s an especially important question, because there are enough undecideds that if they all end up swinging in one direction, they could decide the election.

UPDATE 10:14 PM
One of the moderators (Martha Raddatz) is arguing with Trump now in what sounds to me like a contemptuous tone. Then again, now that she’s talking to Hillary, Raddatz sounds petty grumpy as well. Turmp calls her on the fact that she seems to be giving Clinton more time than she gives him. I haven’t timed them both, but it seems as though it could be the case, although his complaint makes him sound whiny.

UPDATE 10:37 PM
Well, it’s over.

Trump may have arrested his slide, merely by seeming relatively sane and relatively composed. Hillary was Hillary.

I can’t stand to watch the wrap-ups and the focus groups, so I won’t.

The origins of Knopfler’s sound

The New Neo Posted on by

Hey, let’s talk about something other than politics. It’s the weekend!

Whether you love Mark Knopfler (as I do), or have never heard of him before even though you may have heard some of his more famous songs like “Sultans of Swing” or “Walk of Life,” you’ll almost certainly notice when you do listen to him that he has a distinctive sound to his guitar playing. In his own words (from “Sultans”) he can make his guitar “cry or sing.” Continue reading →

Would it be possible to replace Trump as GOP nominee?

The New Neo Posted on by

And what would be the result?

Yes, I know (as I wrote in this post) that it’s wishful thinking to even consider it, and highly highly unlikely to ever happen. But is it possible? And if it could be done, would it even be desirable to do it?

The commenter known as “The Other Chuck” writes:

It’s much too late to force Trump out. With the election less than a month away, ballots printed and voting started, nothing can be done even if he withdrew. Face it, even if someone like Pence were put in place the die hard Trump supporters would walk ensuring defeat. Why bother?

I think Other Chuck is correct that it won’t happen.

But I think he is most likely wrong that it absolutely couldn’t happen, and may also be wrong about who would win if it did happen.

Are parties really tied to their nominees with no recourse, whatever the subsequent revelations? Let’s say that a party nominated a person about whom it was revealed, about a month before the election, that he/she was probably an ax murderer. Not a metaphorical one, a literal one. I bet a way would be found to drop that person from the ticket and put in a replacement, whether the person wanted to be dropped or not.

What if a nominee became incapacitated? What if a person is revealed to be of terrible moral character, so much so that party leaders reject him or her as the leader of the party and as their nominee for the highest and most powerful office in the land? Is the party tied firmly to the railroad tracks with no escape as the locomotive of Election Day bears down?

Here is the proper procedure. Read it. It’s far from easy, but it can be done, and it could be done. I’m not sure whether Trump would have to consent in order for this to happen, and I very very much doubt he ever would consent, although I wonder if his arm could be sufficiently twisted.

At any rate, I don’t think the GOP has the cojones for this, so it’s almost certainly moot. But I actually think it could and should be done, because the current situation is a disaster in every way. Not just a disaster for the GOP; a disaster for the country. I see a Hillary Clinton victory as inevitable at this point, but I’ve pretty much seen that right along. And yes, yes; I realize I could be wrong, especially in this very strange election cycle.

As for the Trump voters defecting as a result, so what? I’ve heard that threat over and over for much of the last six months or so—if you don’t nominate Trump, you’ll lose his voters! But at this point, Hillary is so tainted herself that many people (including quite a few Democrats) are hungry for the opportunity to vote for someone sane and decent. Mike Pence could be that person; there are others. And I think whoever it is would attract a lot of Democrats as well as many of the now-disaffected Republicans who don’t want to vote for Trump. That could mean that the Trump diehards wouldn’t be needed for a victory.

There’s no way to know, of course. But that’s my gut feeling, right or wrong. Sure, plenty of people on the right were (and still are) willing to vote for Trump. But how many would refuse, at this point, to vote for another less controversial GOP nominee?

[NOTE: This news, if true, is certainly interesting.]

The joys of aging: eye doctor interlude

The New Neo Posted on by

What have I been doing lately besides contemplating Robert Frost and deploring Donald Trump?

Well, yesterday I had a previously-unscheduled sojourn at the eye doctor’s. First, I’ll tell you the ending: I’m okay. But what preceded it was no small amount of anxiety.

It began Thursday evening when I was at Macy’s trying on some clothes and attempting to unwind from the day. I’d been in the dressing room for about twenty minutes when suddenly, with no warning, I found that when I turned my head to the right something resembling a lightning bolt flashed in the far right side of my vision.

This is the sort of thing that gets a person’s attention, especially when there aren’t any external flashes going off anywhere around. Whenever I tested the phenomenon by turning my head, I’d see that bolt. So it became apparent that this lightning was completely internal—my own private lightning storm.

That’s when the anxiety began (otherwise known as “fear”). Now, I sometimes get the light-show of visual migraine auras, but this seemed very very different. If it was a migraine, it was the strangest one I’d ever had, so that wasn’t my lead theory. Was the problem in my brain or my eye? Because of the consistency of the symptom’s appearance when turning my head, and the fact that it was much diminished with my right eye closed, I became convinced it was in my eye. And I knew that the symptom might be consistent with a detached retina, which sometimes happens rather suddenly (mostly in people over 60) and must be surgically repaired within a timely fashion to avoid dire outcomes.

What did I do? I left the store and went home and Googled it, that’s what I did. I discovered that although my symptoms could be those of a retinal detachment they also fit very well with something else far more innocuous and far more comm,on, a posterior vitreous detachment.

I would much prefer that, of course (not that I get a choice). But there was one little hitch: twenty years ago, I’d been told by a retinal specialist that I had had a PVD in both eyes, and I know that once it’s occurred in an eye it doesn’t happen again. So although I thought PVD fit my current symptoms better than a retinal detachment, and wanted it to be a PVD rather than a retinal detachment, I didn’t see how it could be.

I couldn’t tell if I had an increase in floaters, another symptom of both conditions, because I already have quite a few floaters in each eye—that’s what initially drove me to that retinal specialist twenty years ago, and to that initial diagnosis of bilateral PVD.

On Friday morning I woke up early and called the eye doctor to tell my tale of woe and ask to be seen that day (at least it was Friday and not Saturday). I had read that PVDs can lead to retinal detachments, and although PVDs are far far more common and need no treatment, it’s strongly suggested that a person with such symptoms should go quickly to the eye doctor to make sure. So that’s what I did, and when the doctor looked into my dilated eyes, she said what I had was a right eye PVD but that the left eye was okay.

What a relief.

She was so brusque (although not unkind) and in such a hurry that I forgot to ask what on earth that first doctor had seen, the one who had said it had already happened in both eyes. Not that she could have answered anyway; is she her brother doctor’s keeper, or explainer, or apologist?

As of now, the lighting bolt symptom seems to be happening with less frequency, and it’s not quite as bright. I suppose this means my PVD has progressed. The scoop is that a PVD can take days, weeks, or months to fully detach, and then things should calm down. I feel much calmer already.

[NOTE: I’ve long known the symptoms of a retinal detachment, perhaps because a friend of mine’s husband had one years ago. But I’ve got a bone to pick with the descriptions of symptoms I read at most of the websites. Most of them say you get “flashes of light.” To me that always sounded as though they meant a sort of flashbulb-type illumination, much like when you’re having your picture taken, where things light up in general. Apparently not. Apparently my symptoms were exactly what they mean by “flashes of light”: something in the outer periphery of your vision in the affected eye that looks like a bolt or arc of lightning but is not a general illumination. So, please take note.]

Trump’s bragging locker-room talk: the October surprise?

The New Neo Posted on by

I bet it’s not the only surprise they have up their sleeves.

Nor is it a surprise. Why on earth would it be? We already knew there was plenty of dirt floating around on Trump, and some of it was bound to be sexual. We already knew he was a gross narcissist. So dirt that combines coarse terms (“pussy”) and braggadocio about how his celebrity status entitles him to grab it—why would this be a surprise?

Is it a surprise that he said it? A surprise that it was recorded? A surprise that the recording surfaced? Or just a surprise that it hadn’t surfaced earlier?

To me, it’s a surprise that anyone considers it a surprise.

Trump has already established himself quite fully as the person who could easily say those words. His many appearances on the Howard Stern show solidified (if that’s the right word) his image, and to my way of thinking his comments about avoiding venereal disease being his “own personal Vietnam” are arguably worse, in that they combine the political with the raunchy with the narcissistic, and were said with full knowledge that they’d be broadcast, as opposed to the sort of clandestine machismo-to-machismo type bragging he did with Billy Bush. That “personal Vietnam” statement (which occurred in 1997) came out as a story in February of 2016, so people who voted for Trump in the primaries should have had full knowledge of exactly who and what they were voting for, back when there were still many fine alternatives.

In the more recent hot mic matter, Trump’s comeback about Bill Clinton talking worse to him on the golf course makes a good point, a believable but irrelevant one. Bill isn’t running for president, Hillary is.

Will any of this make a difference? I actually don’t think a whole lot, because Trump had already been sinking for a while anyway. And people are voting or not voting for Trump for other reasons. But I could be wrong there; this one touched a nerve. It certainly cannot possibly help him, and he needs all the help he can get.

Those of us who have been saying from the start that Trump is a uniquely vulnerable candidate because in the fall months just prior to the election a whole bunch of dirt would be flung at him (because there was so very much dirt to be had) can now say a heartfelt “I told you so.” But “I told you so” isn’t at all satisfying when the situation is so dire and the stakes so high.

[NOTE: Senator Mike Lee calls for Trump to step down. Wishful thinking, I’m afraid, although I fervently share the wish.

But let’s indulge in a thought experiment: what would happen if Trump did drop out? Is there any protocol for that sort of event?:

In addition to Lee, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) also called on Trump to step aside, and for the party to institute “emergency rules” to replace him roughly a month before the election.

So, would we end up with one of those smoke-filled rooms after all? At this point it would be just fine with me. Pence would do, for example.]

[NOTE II: Trump’s apology.]

[ADDENDUM: It occurs to me that one way this news could influence the election is to motivate more millennials who don’t like Hillary to come out and vote for her anyway.]

[ADDENDUM II: For those who think this was just the usual locker-room banter on Trump’spart, I beg to differ. Actually, it was a very special type of locker-room talk.

I don’t know whether you read the details at the link, but I’ll provide the meat of it (as it were):

Trump tells Bush about a failed attempt to have sex with a woman, whom he claimed was married at the time. The Post said Trump had been married to Melania for “several months” during the time of the conversation.

In the video, Trump tells Bush the story, saying, “I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”…

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful”¦ I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet,” Trump says while Bush is heard laughing. “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” Bush responds.

“Grab them by the p””y. You can do anything,” Trump said. Bush keeps laughing.

He is saying two main things there that are especially disturbing in a presidential nominee, and are not really comparable to ordinary locker-room banter. One is the bragging about the woman being married. That’s the lesser offense of the two, though. The greater offense is the idea that because he’s rich and famous and powerful he can do anything he wants. Without the person’s consent. And he brags about it.

And he’s asking to be given more power now.]

Reluctant to let go of “Reluctance”

The New Neo Posted on by

I find I have still more to say about Frost’s poem “Reluctance.”

The theme of the poem is the difficulty of letting go, so I guess it’s fitting and proper that I’m loathe to leave it alone after posting the text of it yesterday. Those of you who read this blog regularly already know that I’m a Frost lover. And I don’t even have a lover’s quarrel with him; I just love him.

First, in case your memory needs refreshing, let’s have that poem again:

RELUCTANCE

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ”˜Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Many people who read the poem (and that included me when I first read it) assume, because of the subject matter, that it’s the work of the older Frost—you know, the guy with the craggy lined face and white hair. But if you thought that, you were wrong. The poem was first published in 1913, when Frost was nearly forty, and it had to have been written when he was a much younger man, because it dates from before his marriage in 1895:

This poem also has an additional meaning that stems directly from an autobiographical event in Frost’s life. He wrote this poem while he was living with his mother and sister in Lawrence, Massachusetts, before he had convinced his future wife, Elinor, to marry him. After he was firmly rejected by her during a visit to her school in New York, Frost contemplated committing suicide and becoming a part of the “last lone aster” and “dead leaves.”

The poem is quite conventional in its construction. It rhymes, like many of Frost’s poems, and there is nothing revolutionary about it. Its appeal lies in a number of things that are characteristic of much of Frost, both early and late, including the fact that it appears instantly accessible and understandable to most people. It’s not the least bit obscure, and yet it is fresh, direct, and original in its tone, although not quite as fresh and original as some poems by Frost.

The first stanza is a simple description of the speaker’s wanderings and return. Nature appears only as a place in which the person makes his moves. But that second stanza (one of my favorites) contains Frost’s characteristic close observation of nature, and is minus the human element except for a bit of personification of nature (“sleeping”; “creeping”):

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

Frost makes an observation of something seemingly small—the fact that not every single leaf on an oak falls in the fall, and that some last till winter and appear on the snow. The oak seems to have some sort of agency—it is keeping those last leaves, and then raveling (loosing) them carefully, one by one. Then the released leaves “go scraping and creeping.” But still, we are in the natural world here; there is no human agency. The theme of the oak’s doings with those leaves is also in keeping with the title “Reluctance,” although we probably haven’t put two and two together yet when we read that second stanza. But with the slight personification of the oak, Frost seems to be saying that the oak is reluctant to let go, too.

In the third stanza Frost unites the two worlds more explicitly—the world of nature and the world of man, or more accurately, of the heart of man. Its first four lines are devoted to nature, and then there’s an abrupt turn to human nature and its longings, and we recognize the speaker as the same person from that first stanza:

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ”˜Whither?’

In the very last stanza, the fourth, Frost leaves the natural world almost entirely and talks only about people. By this time it seems quite natural for him to do so, and we don’t notice the change as anything jarring. It seems like the culmination of the thoughts and images of the rest of the poem, uniting the natural world and mankind in their mutual aching reluctance. And yet we also know—even though Frost doesn’t say it explicitly—that we must let go despite that reluctance.

Frost is sometimes thought of as a nature poet. He’s not, although he is an especially keen observer of nature and often uses it in his poetry. But he always (at least, I think it’s always) does so in the service of an observation about human beings.

Here’s a photo I took from the porch of one of Frost’s homes, a small cabin-like place in northern New Hampshire:

135

Nice “hills of view,” eh? This was Frost’s home long, long after the poem was written.

Another plane part has been authenticated as being from Malaysian Airlines Flight 370

The New Neo Posted on by

Another plane part from MH370 has been found:

A piece of an aircraft wing found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius has been identified as belonging to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysian and Australian officials said Friday.

The piece of wing flap was found in May and subsequently analyzed by experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the search for the plane in a remote stretch of ocean off Australia’s west coast. Investigators used a part number found on the debris to link it to the missing Boeing 777, the agency said in a statement. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai also confirmed the identification.

But it has brought us no closer to solving the mystery or to locating the main site of the aircraft and its all-important flight recorders.

It was over two years ago that the flight vanished with 239 souls on board (that’s an aviation term, by the way). At first it dominated the news, and people were aghast that an airplane could disappear in this day and age, and could remain disappeared for that long. Conspiracy theories abounded, often involving an intact plane hijacked somewhere and lying in wait for some future mission. Although there are probably some people who cling to that notion, the finding of several pieces from the plane would probably put it to rest with most. But the mystery remains: was it mechanical failure? Pilot error? Sabotage? If the latter, an inside or outside job?

The plane’s disappearance has now gone off the radar screens (yes, a pun) of most people, and the event has been assimilated into their mental map of possible things that can go wrong in this world. For the families of the victims, the nightmare goes on.