Why Trump hates Ted Cruz

The New Neo Posted on by

The day after his address at the close of the RNC, Trump decided to tear into Ted Cruz and to repeat some of his most scurrilous and over-the-top accusations (some couched in the form of “questions”) against Cruz and his family. In addition, there’s a report (perhaps true, perhaps not) that Trump has vowed to spend tons of his own money on a super PAC to destroy the careers of both Cruz and Kasich. Even if the latter threat is one he actually made, I would bet he’s not going to actually do it. But it’s the typical Trumpian threat (remember when he said he would go to court to find out if Cruz was a natural-born citizen, for example?).

So, why would Trump be dissing Cruz (and perhaps Kasich) the day after his triumphant acceptance of the GOP nomination? It wouldn’t be because they’re too conservative or too liberal—Kasich was the most liberal of all the people running against Trump, Cruz probably the most conservative. It wouldn’t be because they haven’t endorsed him; several others haven’t endorsed him, either (although they don’t hold office: Fiorina and Jeb Bush come to mind). It wouldn’t be because they did or didn’t come to the convention; Cruz did and Kasich didn’t.

It may be in part because they were both the last men standing towards the primary season’s end. It’s also clear that Cruz is Trump’s main target rather than Kasich, probably because Cruz is the strongest and most potentially powerful of Trump’s primary rivals who wouldn’t kiss his butt in the end (sorry for the crassness of the language, but with Trump it’s apropos).

Trump hates anyone who doesn’t ultimately kiss his butt, and that makes him want to make them kiss his butt or at least to humiliate them greatly. This is not some new behavior of Trump’s since he’s become a candidate; it’s a trait he’s had for decades: he is tremendously vindictive, as you can discover from his Twitter history, his litigation history, and any biography of the man.

Trump tried to humiliate and even destroy every single one of his major opponents in turn during campaign 2016. But not one of them has he tried to slander as much or for as long a time as he’s attacked Cruz (of course, some have now joined his campaign, such as Carson). For the most part, he attacked them until they fell in the polls, and then he moved on to the next contender.

But Cruz’s head is bloody but unbowed. It’s not enough for Trump to have defeated him, he is out to destroy him politically and personally for the future, too, if he can accomplish that. Call Trump an “alpha male” if you wish, but real alpha men don’t need to do this, although narcissistic bullies do (I wrote previously on the subject of whether Trump is an alpha male here). And I don’t care how many times Trump’s kids say what a nice guy he is. He may be nice to them, and he may be nice to those who show him the proper obeisance, but to anyone who crosses him he is not only out to criticize but to humiliate and destroy them, if possible.

Now, many politicians are vindictive or fond of showing subordinates that they’re the boss. LBJ was famously the latter, for example (as well as coarse), sometimes liking to receive people while sitting on the toilet in order to demonstrate his dominance over them. But he did this to aides rather than enemies, it certainly wasn’t done in public, and it didn’t involve vicious slurs on their wives or fathers. Here’s the way it went:

LBJ was well-known (although the stories only came out publicly some time after his presidency was over) for insisting that aides accompany him to the toilet, where he continued to talk to them. It was a sort of test:

Johnson also upset aides with his habit of adjourning a conversation to the bathroom when the need arose. Those who were reluctant to follow him to the toilet were a source of great amusement to him. He frequently recounted a story about “one of the delicate Kennedyites who came into the bathroom with me and then found it utterly impossible to look at me while I sat there on the toilet. You’d think he had never seen those parts of the body before. For there he was, standing as far away from me as he possibly could, keeping his back toward me the whole time, trying to carry on a conversation. I could barely hear a word he said. I kept straining my ears and then finally I asked him to come a little closer to me. Then began the most ludicrous scene I had ever witnessed. Instead of simply turning around and walking over to me, he kept his face away from me and walked backward, one rickety step at a time. For a moment there I thought he was going to run right into me. It certainly made me wonder how that man had made it so far in the world.”

Trump doesn’t invite aides into the toilet, as far as I can see. What he does instead is public and libelous. It seems he cannot resist grinding into the dirt those people he thinks have consistently opposed him, and he doesn’t care how dirty he becomes in the process. Yes, “he fights,” and that’s something the GOP has needed for a long, long time. But there are ways to fight and targets to choose, and this just makes him look bad, petty, and even crazy—solidifying the perception (right or wrong) among many people that he’s a loose cannon with poor impulse control. That’s not what’s wanted in a president.

Cruz is gambling that taking the high road and also keeping away from an endorsement of Trump will hold him in good stead, four years from now.

[NOTE: See also this.]

Munich: terrorists targeting children

The New Neo Posted on by

So, was the Munich gunman an Islamist terrorist, or a crazy guy who wanted to imitate school shootings, or a “German” who hated foreigners (despite his Iranian origins)? It’s pretty clear to me that the German authorities really don’t know yet, if in fact they’ll ever know (the gunman committed suicide). Plus, I wouldn’t necessarily trust them to tell us if they did know.

In fact, right now I’m going to assume that it was some hybrid of at least two of those things, probably Islamic terrorist-inspired crazy person who imitated other shooting sprees. So far they’re saying the shooter, a 18-year old Iranian-German (whatever that means), was named Ali Sonboly, that he had once been treated for depression, that he had read a book about school shootings, that he may have yelled the usual Muslim profession of faith during the shooting spree, and that he may have set up some victims by luring them to MacDonalds with a Facebook post about free food there.

Authorities say they not know his motives, and it also seems very unclear which reports of his behavior are true and which are unsubstantiated rumors. And if Sonboly was a homicidal maniac or psychopathic school shooter a la Adam Lanza at Newtown, for example, why then did he not target a school? Plus, although two of his victims were 13 years old, the rest were older.

German-Iranians can be homicidal maniacs, too, I suppose, without being political. It is also the case that overt ties with Islamist terrorist groups (or other terrorist groups, for that matter) are not necessary for a person to be motivated by admiration for them and unofficial affiliation with them. In the case of Sonboly’s attack, the police are analyzing “a video in which the gunman is seen and heard exchanging racial slurs and profanities with another man. ‘We are trying to determine who said what,’ a police spokesman said.” One thing you can say about the ubiquity of cell phones these days—they certainly offer a lot of forensic evidence to analyze.

In case Sonboly really did purposely target young people, either as an Islamic terrorist or anti-foreign terrorist or as a rampage murderer, or as some combination of several, I’m going to repeat a portion of a post I wrote on the occasion of the Newtown shootings, on the subject of the targeting of children:

As for the question of, “why did the Newtown shooter [Lanza] choose very young children as his targets?”, my answer would be that in many such cases it’s in order to maximize the evil and the resultant horror and revulsion…

As time goes on and more information is revealed, I may change my mind about this, but until then my leading theory is what I’ve come to think of as the Pied Piper Impulse…[I]f a person is filled with inchoate rage at almost everything and everyone in the town around him, what better way to exact revenge then to kill the town’s youngest, sweetest, cutest, most beloved, and most vulnerable residents””its…children? And what better way to impress on the world what a cold-blooded and to-be-feared killer he is/(was)?

Child-killers, even serial child-killers, usually operate from very different motives than a mass killer such as Lanza. They are often pedophilic kidnapper-rapists who then murder their victims. Other single or multiple child-killers are harshly punitive parents and/or parents gone mad. But mass murderers of children often have a political agenda which we define as terrorist (for example, the Beslan horror, in which terrorists caused the death of over 300 people, many of them children of similar age as the victims in Newtown; and the shootings in Norway in which Breivik killed 77 people, most of them teenagers). Terrorists seem to operate under the Pied Piper Impulse of “get them where it hurts” in order to maximize both their leverage and the fear and grief their acts engender.

Between 6 and 15 people reported to have been shot and killed in Munich shopping center

The New Neo Posted on by

[See UPDATES below]

Details still emerging, but here’s what we know so far. The reports seem to indicate there were probably three gunman. Unfortunately (very unfortunately), they are at large:

Tonight, Munich police tweeted: “We currently do not know where to find the perpetrators. Watch yourself and avoid to be the public.”

Obviously a bad translation, but you get the idea.

I haven’t seen a word that reflects on whether this is Islamic terrorism or not, but it’s an excellent excellent bet.

In addition, there’s this:

The shopping centre is next to the Munich Olympic Stadium, where the Palestinian militant group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage and eventually killed them during the 1972 Olympic Games.

They weren’t taken hostage in the stadium, it was in their living quarters, but I’m not even sure that building remains intact; it might have been temporary. Nor do I know whether this proximity is meant to be symbolic, or whether it’s a coincidence.

In a personal note, yesterday I went into a medical office and noticed a sign on the door that said no firearms were allowed. It startled me, as these signs (once so innocuous-seeming) have done now for many years. The sign might just as well read: killers, let it be known that there are a bunch of vulnerable defenseless people in here. Sitting ducks.

UPDATE 5:25 PM

The police are calling it “terrorism,” but it’s unclear what variety of terrorist might be involved. Reports differ widely, some indicating right-wing anti-immigrant terrorism and some indicating Islamic terrorism.

Fog of war quite heavy right now.

UPDATE 5:45 PM

I don’t know whether this is correct or not—so many different stories are coming out—but the latest report indicates Islamic terrorism and the targeting of children:

A gunman shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ opened fire at children in McDonald’s before rampaging through a shopping mall, killing at least eight people.

Munich is in lockdown tonight, as a major police operation is ongoing around the city’s Olympic Park, with the force warning people to stay in their homes and avoid public spaces.

A ninth body has been found tonight and investigators are looking into the possibility of it being the attacker.

Terrified shoppers were seen running for their lives from the Munich Olympia Shopping Centre, in the district of Moosach, after hearing gunshots.

Witnesses said that the gunman screamed ‘I’m German’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’ before shooting at children.

Will Hillary’s Veep be Kaine?

The New Neo Posted on by

Is Kaine, the Democratic senator from Virginia, going to be Hillary’s VP pick? Signs point to it:

After an extensive, months-long process during which the campaign considered a host of different options — even vetting a serious candidate from outside the political arena — the squeaky-clean Virginia senator, whose biggest liability to emerge was that he was boring, is emerging as Clinton’s top choice. Kaine has been urged along by two men familiar with the demands of the job: President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton, those close to the process say.

And after Donald Trump’s somewhat more polished performance Thursday night, even Democrats who had been pushing for a flashier choice like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker were sobered by the challenging four months ahead. “After last night, she needs to make the safest choice possible,” said a former senior White House aide.

“Safe” seems to be Kaine’s middle name.

This does not appear to be a charismatic person. I think Hillary needs a charismatic person, but then again, she may not want the contrast to be too great.

There’s already a Kaine Mutiny brewing, though:

A liberal group is urging Hillary Clinton not to select Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as her running mate because of his positions on trade and banking regulation.

“Making Senator Tim Kaine our vice presidential candidate could be potentially disastrous for our efforts to defeat Donald Trump this fall,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America. The group had endorsed Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary…

Chamberlain criticized Kaine for voting for fast-track authority for the “job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership.” He also argued that Kaine has participated in a “push for bank deregulation.”

I don’t see this choice as mattering either way for Clinton. People have very firmly set ideas about her already.

Snowball Earth

The New Neo Posted on by

I have no idea whether this theory known as “Snowball Earth” has any validity at all, but it’s fascinating to contemplate it:

The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that the Earth’s surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen at least once, sometime earlier than 650 Mya (million years ago). Proponents of the hypothesis argue that it best explains sedimentary deposits generally regarded as of glacial origin at tropical paleolatitudes, and other otherwise enigmatic features in the geological record. Opponents of the hypothesis contest the implications of the geological evidence for global glaciation, the geophysical feasibility of an ice- or slush-covered ocean, and the difficulty of escaping an all-frozen condition. A number of unanswered questions exist…

Oh, I bet they do. I bet they do.

And here’s an entire website devoted to it.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Of course, with Snowball Earth, the completely-frozen state would not be the end of the world, because obviously it was reversible.

Political speeches in general, and Donald Trump’s speech last night in particular

The New Neo Posted on by

There are four main things to say about any political speech.

The first is whether you liked it. The second is whether you agreed with it. The third is whether you thought it was effective in political terms. And the fourth is whether you thought it could hurt the speaker.

For me, these four things are quite separate, in part because (as I’ve probably said too many times already) I really don’t like to listen to speeches at all, and consider political speeches “the worst of the worst.”

So it takes a lot to get me to like a speech, and it’s very rare that I do. Donald Trump’s speech last night didn’t even begin to come close to what I look for in a speech—as Paul Mirengoff writes, it was a “sledgehammer” of a speech, loud and long and pounding away.

So let’s just stipulate that I didn’t like it, and go on to whether I agree with it. I certainly agree with a great deal of it, just as I agree with a great deal of the stated Trump platform, although hardly all. I certainly agree with the need to metaphorically hit Hillary with that sledgehammer, reminding people constantly of her myriad and deep flaws.

Now we get to the heart of the matter—because really, except for the purposes of this blog and you readers, whether I like the speech or not is hardly of importance. But was it effective? The answer is yes.

I have no idea how many people watch these speeches, but it’s a lot, and it matters. Just recall what happened to Obama in 2004, when he gave a speech at the DNC—not as the nominee, but the keynote speaker. He hadn’t even been elected to national office at the time—he’d been an Illinois state senator prior to that, and had just won the Democratic primary for the US Senate for the state of Illinois. But the Democrats knew a rising star when they saw one, and they gave him a platform to rise some more. His speech was apparently electrifying (I didn’t watch it) and brought him national fame. People remembered it a few short years later when he ran for the presidency despite his inexperience, and they liked him in great part because of the message of togetherness expressed in the speech—a message that turned out to be completely bogus.

Now, that’s an effective speech.

But back to Trump. People have called the speech “red meat,” and I think that’s an apt description. My definition of “red meat” is something that satisfies hunger but is a bit raw and bloody, and in speech terms it means it touches most of the bases and rouses whatever emotion needs to be roused. In Trump’s case the emotion is anger and outrage at the mess that has been made of the country and the world during the Obama administration and the resultant pickle we’re in, and anger and outrage at Hillary Clinton’s manifold errors and deceitful (perhaps even criminal) ways. Trump also reached out to the non-conservatives and non-Republicans he thinks can be enticed into his populist camp, and he did it in his own style: no eloquence and no finesse, just give it to ’em straight and hard.

With Trump, the fourth question—did he hurt himself?—is always especially important. Usually it’s difficult to say, because what would be harmful in another candidate seems only to have enhanced his appeal, at least in the primaries. But last night it wasn’t difficult to say that he did not hurt himself. The teleprompter helped in that endeavor (although there were some ad-libs, which is a Trump signature). That’s why some of his opponents on the left say the speech scared them—they are smart enough to see its general appeal, and it made them believe he just might win.

I agree that the speech might help him win, and that it won’t hurt him one iota. Whether speeches should have much influence is another question. But the fact that I think they should be largely irrelevant in assessing what you yourself think about a candidate (unless they’re the only thing you know about that candidate) is in itself somewhat irrelevant, because people are influenced by them, and sometimes a very great deal.

The fact that I tend not to be influenced by any speeches (except Churchill’s and Lincoln’s, but in that case it’s not just their speeches that influence me, and I already know how things turned out with them) isn’t just due to my problem with auditory processing. And it’s not just about Trump, either. Political speeches almost always sound to me like con artists talking, or snake oil salesmen: “This will cure rheumatism, gout, lumbago, indigestion, female troubles, hangnails…all for one low low price…”

Trump may sound more like that than most, but the tendency is nearly universal. There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare and getting rarer.

Which brings us to something that commenter “Beverly” wrote last night:

Well, if Trump says the right things and you still don’t believe him, there’s nothing, literally, he can do to persuade you: that sounds emotional to me.

No; not emotional. Rational. If a person doesn’t believe Trump at this point, it is almost certainly because Trump has lied consistently throughout the campaign and throughout his life—on big things, on small things, on medium-sized things. I’ve written about that so many times in so many ways and with so many examples that it’s tedious to have to mention it again. He has also changed position on big things and small things, both long ago and relatively recently (last few years, anyway). He also says frightening and irresponsible things on a regular basis in the realm of foreign policy. He insults people in the most vicious and personal of ways, and he lies about them in extreme and abusive ways, over and over and over.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

One of the things I’m angry about in this Year of the Trump is that I just might have to vote for someone as despicable as that, and I resent deeply being placed in that position. But that’s the position I’m in. I’ve known for almost a year it might be the position I (and many of you) would be in, and I’ve known since about March or April that it almost certainly would be the position I’d be in. I been wrestling with it all that time, and I think I know what I must do, but don’t ask me to like it, because I hate it with every fiber of my being.

After all, why on earth what anyone trust what a liar promises in a political speech, particularly if the liar is saying the things that he or she thinks that voters wants to hear, and particularly when that person has proven his or her views to be mutable and has no track record of political actions (other than contributing money to both sides, including a lot to the opposition) because he or she has never held public office?

We also get a gut sense of character, but we can be wrong about that. We evaluate all people when we first meet them, and then we continue to evaluate them over time, using a combination of their behavior and their words, with behavior far more important than words if the two conflict. Trump—or any other politician—is no different.

So no, there’s nothing he can say in a speech right now to persuade me to believe him, and that’s because there is so much else he has done and said till now, and I’ve been paying close attention. What would persuade me is if he were to become president and starts following through on what he’s promised, with success and with respect for the Constitution, actually accomplishing much of what he has set out to accomplish. In that event, I will be happy to say I underestimated him on his ability to keep his political promises and to do the right thing for America. But a speech he makes is just as irrelevant in persuading me what kind of president he will be, good or bad, as the speech Obama made in 2004 was—which is to say, not at all.

We may even get to find out what kind of president Trump would be. God bless—and help—America.

[NOTE: I want to add that what sort of children Trump has, good or bad, is almost entirely irrelevant to me, and that’s true of all politicians as far as I’m concerned. But that’s another post for another time.]

Trump’s RNC speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Open thread.

11:35 PM:

I fell asleep for about half of it, but I saw the rest and it was your basic laundry list. The content was a series of promises of what “we” will do. You either trust him to do these things and to know how to do them (and that it’s even possible for anyone to do them), or you don’t. Or (as is the case with me), if you vote for Trump it would be an anti-Hillary vote pure and simple.

I can’t imagine anyone’s mind being changed by this speech. Nor do I have a clue how many people watched it who weren’t already in the bag for Trump.

I will say this: he’s got a very telegenic family.

12:05 AM:

I found this in a comment at Ace of Spades: “I’ve been waiting my entire voting life for a republican to lie to voters like the dems do.”

I had a related thought while I was watching—something to the effect that if you’re willing to say anything, you can promise anything to anybody or everybody. And if you’re not worried about niceties such as the rule of law, or checks and balances—whether your name be Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump—it’s just a question of who makes promises that appeal to the most people, and whether people believe them.

More on the Cruz/Trump clash, plus some reflections on keeping pledges

The New Neo Posted on by

Why are we still talking about Cruz’s speech last night and the reaction to it? It crystallizes some of the themes that have been building and building this entire campaign season, as well as the frustrations.

Trump is a candidate like no other—there is no comparison to previous “hold your nose and vote for them” nominees. And yet because Hillary Clinton is also a candidate like no other (and I don’t mean that phrase in a good way), the dilemma is amplified and intensely emotional on all sides.

The misinformation and spin about what happened around Ted’s speech has reached a crescendo, so much so that we really don’t know what Trump knew in advance or what he didn’t know, what was planned and orchestrated and what was not. But according to Ted Cruz, he had informed Trump three days earlier about what his plans were:

But Mr. Cruz said Thursday that Mr. Trump and his team should have seen it coming. He said he told Mr. Trump by phone three days ago he wasn’t going to endorse him and that the campaign saw his speech a few hours beforehand.

“In that speech last night, I did not say a single negative word about Donald Trump,” Mr. Cruz said. “And I’ll tell you this morning and going forward, I don’t intend to say negative things about Donald Trump.”

I believe him. You know why? Because he’s a man of integrity—which may be why he’s not the greatest politician (and certainly not the most well-loved one) on earth.

In today’s previous thread, in answer to people saying “but Ted took a pledge!” I wrote the following (here and here):

A pledge is not absolute, if later events abrogate it. I missed the part where Cruz took a Loyalty Oath with his hand on a Bible…

A swearing with a hand on the Bible is not absolute, either.

Ask the members of the Wehrmacht who swore loyalty to Hitler before they had a real clue what he would do in terms of the depths of depravity and destruction and murder.

Ask them.

Unless, of course, you think they did the right thing by sticking to their oaths despite the evil of the man.

Perhaps you’re also against divorce under any circumstances? Because most people who get married swear till death, before a clergyman and a host of people.

Cruz got the equivalent of a divorce from Trump.

When I wrote those two comments, I had not yet read this article in the Washington Times quoting Cruz when he spoke to the Texas delegation concerning his speech and the fallout from it. You’ll see how it dovetails with what I wrote (including the use of the word “abrogated” by Cruz):

Mr. Cruz said he had intended to abide by the pledge candidates had made on a debate stage last year, but he said the day the pledge was “abrogated” was the day “this became personal.”

“I’m not going to get into criticizing or attacking Donald Trump, but I’ll just give you this response: I am not in the habit of supporting people that attack my wife and attack my father,” he said, repeating a similar line he had used on the campaign trail.

“And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I’m going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, ”˜Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father,’ ” he said to applause.

Someone in the crowd said it was “politics” and advised Mr. Cruz to “get over it.”

“No, this is not politics,” Mr. Cruz replied. “I will tell the truth. I will not malign, I will not insult, I will not attack ”” I will tell the truth. This is not a game. It is not politics. Right and wrong matters. We have not abandoned who we are in this country.”

“No, sir ”” I do not believe that is correct,” he said.

There’s a person of integrity, in my book. But the exchange underscores a very important question—one that has been implicit during this entire campaign season—do “right and wrong matter” in this country anymore? Or have we “abandoned who we are (who we were) in this country”? Cruz does not think so, but I wonder. I have come to think perhaps he is wrong, because the nominations of both Trump and Hillary (and the re-election of Obama before that) seem to all point in the direction of abandonment.

I hope that Cruz is right and I am wrong on that.

I wrote another comment earlier today that I want to highlight. In it, first I quote a commenter who had written: “And let’s not lie to ourselves- Cruz’s point was that people who believe what he believes should not vote for Trump, but should vote for Republicans down ticket.” My response was the following

I’m not lying to myself, and I disagree with you. You don’t read minds and neither do I, but I most definitely think that Cruz was NOT saying that. I actually think that Cruz is a good wordsmith and he meant exactly what he said, which was vote your conscience, and for the person you believe will defend freedom and the constitution.

Now, of course neither of the candidates will do that, but I don’t think Cruz meant to speak in absolute terms, but rather in relative terms. I actually think he himself might vote for Trump, with great great reluctance, as the person more likely to defend those things. And if you don’t think Trump is more likely to defend those things than Hillary is, there probably isn’t any reason to vote for him.

If I vote for Trump it will be for that exact reason: because as awful, disgusting, reprehensible as he is, he may be the one of the two who is most likely to defend those things.

And Cruz may vote for him too””and he was telling people if they believe that, to vote for Trump. He couldn’t say “vote for him” because Trump is a disgusting POS, not to put too fine a phrase on it. But he said what he said, and I believe he meant what he said and said what he meant.

My contention that Cruz may vote for Trump was borne out by the following, which he is also reported to have said to the Texas delegation:

Mr. Cruz did say he is not voting for likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

He said he would be listening to Mr. Trump’s speech on Thursday and watching how the candidate and his campaign conduct themselves going forward.

“I am watching and listening,” Mr. Cruz said. “When friends of mine, when supporters of mine are asking what to do, the answer I give to everyone is follow your conscience. Do what you believe is right. Do what you believe defends your children and defends this country.”

Mr. Cruz had likewise said in his speech on Wednesday that people should follow their conscience ”” which had been a code word for some at the convention to consider supporting the Texas Republican himself.

“What does it say when you stand up and say ”˜vote your conscience’ and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming ”˜what a horrible thing to say?’ ” Mr. Cruz said Thursday.

As far as I’m concerned, Cruz once again demonstrates his integrity. But integrity may not be what America wants anymore—if it ever did.

It is beyond depressing. Ace wrote quite a post today on the very depressingness of it all, and I have to say that although my style of writing is different (to say the least), I agree with just about every single word he says, especially this: “I cannot tolerate this unending stupidity from maniacs.” Please read the whole thing.

Ace seems to also be saying that he’s about to quit blogging. I hope he doesn’t; his is one of the few blogs I regularly read these days. But when I wrote that I agree with just about every single word he says in that post, I include that at times I feel the impulse to quit. But I very much doubt I’ll quit.

Ah humanity!

[NOTE: Jonah Goldberg’s column is also well worth reading in its entirety.]

[ADDENDUM: Here’s an article describing the various pledges that were made, in case you’ve forgotten.]

The RNC day 3: the consciences of conservatives

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The title of this post is a riff on the title of Barry Goldwater’s book.]

I actually watched two of the speeches last night: that of Ted Cruz and Mike Spence, plus Rubio’s brief cameo video appearance. But of course, today all anyone’s talking about is Ted Cruz’s; see Memeorandum to catch the drift and the scope of the chatter: the Trump forces knew what was coming, the Trump forces had no idea what was coming, Ted Cruz has positioned himself well, Ted Cruz has poisoned his chances forever, the demonstration was spontaneous, the demonstration was staged—and on and on and on the pundits go, and disagree with each other.

First I’ll talk about the other speeches I saw. Rubio’s speech was minimalist and low-key. He looked like he didn’t want to be up there, and in fact he wasn’t up there. But he said just enough to avoid being accused of insufficient Trump support.

Pence was the amiable midwesterner he was expected to be, and he even got in a couple of jokes at the outset. It was the kind of political speech I tend to tune out, since I have trouble listening to speeches in the first place unless they’re very very stirring or very very funny. But I guess he did the job of introducing himself to the American public, and one of those Luntz focus groups of Independents featured a couple of previously “undecided” people who said that they will now vote for Trump because of Pence. So there’s that.

Cruz was the big suspense of the evening: would he or wouldn’t he—endorse Trump, that is. The moment had been hyped to the skies. His speech was emotional, beginning with a focus on a little girl in Texas whose father was one of the police officers murdered in Dallas. He also spoke of general conservative values and freedom, and added:

And to those listening, please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.

That would be a sort of endorsement, if Trump were the kind of person people “trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.” After all, Cruz is encouraging people to vote and not stay home, and to vote for freedom-and-Constitution-defending candidates both up and down the ticket. But of course, a lot of conservative voters don’t think Trump is that sort of person, and so a lot of Trump supporters at the convention appeared furious at Cruz, booing and carrying on in exactly the manner one would expect.

Today, the resultant clamor, criticism, and chatter.

I don’t know what Cruz should have done instead. Stay away from the convention and he’s criticized for not being a team player. Endorse Trump and he’s selling out his principles as well as supporting a man who insulted his family in the vilest of terms. Don’t endorse Trump and Cruz is a traitor to the party and to the pledge he supposedly signed. I think he did exactly the right thing, but I am probably in a rather tiny minority on that. And I think Trump and his people should have done exactly what Newt Gingrich did in his speech, in which Newt was uncharacteristically gracious (although characteristically intelligent):

“Now, I think you misunderstood one paragraph of Ted Cruz ”” who is a superb orator ”” said,” the former House speaker said. “And I just want to point it out to you. Ted Cruz said you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the constitution. In this election, there is only one candidate who will uphold the constitution.”

The crowd let out a raucous cheer.

“So, to paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the constitution of the United States, the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket. That way, we have a Republican ticket to implement Republican principles in Washington.”

In other words, treat it as an endorsement, and move on. But hey, that would run counter to the circular firing squad that is the GOP, counter to the Trump campaign, counter to the way this past year has gone so far.

More on the Turkish coup attempt—“democracy” at any price?

The New Neo Posted on by

In one of my first posts on the coup attempt in Turkey, I mentioned that Daniel Pipes had written a 2015 article asserting that Erdogan’s 2014 electoral victory was bogus. Many people in the west who have championed Erdogan against the coup plotters have cited the fact that Erdogan is the democratically elected leader of the country as the foundation of their defense of him, but even that fact may not be true, according to Pipes.

Now Pipes has written another piece entitled “Why I rooted for the Turkish coup attempt.” Well, I was certainly rooting for it, too (although I saw it as doomed almost from the start). And even though I don’t tweet, I pretty much agree with Pipes in his first paragraphs here:

Every major government condemned the coup attempt in Turkey, as did all four of the parties with representatives in the Turkish parliament. So did even Fethullah Gé¼len, the religious figure accused of being behind the would-be take over.

All of which leaves me feeling a little lonely, having tweeted out on Friday, just after the revolt began, “#ErdoÄŸan stole the most recent election in #Turkey and rules despotically. He deserves to be ousted by a military coup. I hope it succeeds.”

Pipes goes on to explain further:

ErdoÄŸan stole the election. ErdoÄŸan is an Islamist who initially made his mark, both as mayor of Istanbul and as prime minister of Turkey, by playing within the rules. As time wore on, however, he grew disdainful of those rules, specifically the electoral ones. He monopolized state media, tacitly encouraged physical attacks on opposition-party members, and stole votes…

ErdoÄŸan rules despotically. ErdoÄŸan has taken control of one institution after another, even in the two years since he became president, a constitutionally and historically non-political position. The result? An ever-growing portion of Turks are working directly under his control or that of his minions: the prime minister, the cabinet, the judges, the police, the educators, the bankers, the media owners, and other business leaders. The military leadership has acquiesced to ErdoÄŸan but, as the coup attempt confirmed, the officer corps has remained the one institution still outside his direct control.

ErdoÄŸan uses his despotic powers for malign purposes, waging what amounts to a civil war against the Kurds of southeastern Turkey, helping ISIS, aggressing against neighbors, and promoting Sunni Islamism.

Military intervention has previously worked in Turkey. Turkey is the country where military coups d’état have had the most positive effect. In all four of the modern coups (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997), the general staff has shown a disciplined understanding of its role — to right the ship of state and then get out of its way. Their ruling interludes lasted, respectively, five years, two and a half years, three years, and zero years.

Pipes goes on to say that he thinks Erdogan’s days are numbered, and that his downfall will be to overplay his hand in the international arena. I’m not as expert on this as Pipes is (to say the least), but I think he’s being too optimistic. I think that the moves Erdogan is making to solidify his power will indeed solidify his power, much like what happened after the 1979 revolution in Iran. That regime is still in place, although some of the players are gone.

I think it’s also of note that Pipes has long been lumped with the neoconservatives:

Pipes had previously considered himself to be a Democrat, but after anti-war George McGovern gained the 1972 Democratic nomination for President, he switched to the Republican Party. Pipes used to accept being described as a “neoconservative”, once saying that “others see me that way, and, you know, maybe I am one of them.” However, he explicitly rejected the label in April 2009 due to differences with the neoconservative positions on democracy and Iraq, now considering himself a “plain conservative”.

My change experience was complete by around 2003, and thirteen years isn’t so “neo” anymore (although it’s shorter than the amount of time for Pipes, who left the liberal camp in 1972). I also have thought from the beginning that there’s no magic about “democracy” itself without guarantees of liberty and the rule of a law that protects individual liberty. When a dictatorial tyrant is elected, and that person dismantles the structures that protect people’s rights, to defend that person in the name of “democracy” is an absurdity and an outrage.

Articles by Pipes such as this one from 2012 may explain the sort of thinking that led him to differentiate himself from some neocons. I agree with him on the problem with supporting democracy so matter what it looks like; many of my posts about democracy (see this, for example, as well as this) contain such caveats. For example, the following is from that latter post (written nine years ago):

In the many posts I’ve written attempting to explain the basic neocon attitude towards the spread of democracy-(see this and this) I’ve tried to be careful to use the term “liberal democracy” to describe what is advocated. Why? Because democracy alone is not enough.

Democracy can devolve into tyranny almost as easily as a powerful central government can…

History teaches that the Bill of Rights was adopted with an eye to limiting the power of both the executive and the legislative branches, as well as to make clear that all powers not specifically listed in the Constitution as belonging to the federal government were retained by the states and the people. But what would prevent the people from voting away any of those rights? History also teaches us that crowds are strange and fickle things, subject to persuasive demagoguery as well as coercive threats, and that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor wasn’t lying when he said that humankind is often willing to lay down the burden of freedom for easy answers and the promise of protection from its responsibilities…

Without these guarantees, democracy can mean “one person, one vote, one time.” The Ayatollah Khomeini was given dictatorial powers in a process that began, after the fall of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s triumphant return, with a nationwide referendum that was passed with an extraordinary 92.8% percent of the vote. This established the theocratic dictatorship that exists to this day, with the constitution of Iran being totally rewritten shortly afterwards.

Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote for his party, but the German government had another weakness””under its constitution, it was relatively easy to suspend civil liberties and establish a dictatorship. This did not even require the vote of its people, merely a two-thirds majority of its legislature. Therefore it was done by republican means; the Reichstag obligingly voted to abolish itself, although not without the “persuasion” of Hitler’s storm troopers surrounding the building with cries of ““Full powers””or else! We want the bill””or fire and murder!”

And recent less dramatic, but similar and still worrisome, events by which Venezuelan dictator Chavez has seized power with the full cooperation of the Venezuelan legislature””which, as in Germany of old, can amend the constitution by a mere 2/3 vote””demonstrate once again that there are not only “democratic” ways to seize power, but “republican” ones as well (and please note the small “d” and the small “r”)…

How does this apply to the attempts to spread democracy to a country such as Iraq? It makes it clear that democracy itself is a highly flawed “solution” without the guarantees inherent in a liberal democracy, and that none of it is of much use if the constitution of a country is too easily amended or suspended.

It is unsettling to see how many people—on left, right, and in the middle—do not see the truth of this.

Trivial fashion interlude: on the other hand…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the makers of Melania’s dress must be very very happy. It sold out immediately, and at over $2,000 a pop that’s not chump change (although it may be Trump change).

I wish all the Melania-dress-buyers well, though, in wearing it the way she did. I noticed the dress immediately; it’s unusual and to me somewhat reminiscent of perhaps the early-to-mid 60s. But it would be very unflattering for most people. My first thought on seeing it was that I could never pull it off—it would make me (and most women) look like a flour sack tied in the center with a bow (I couldn’t quite tell if it was a bow, but something like that).

No, I don’t really look like a flour sack. But my point is that you have to be tall and very long-waisted (I’m not) to wear that thing, because the high neck (as opposed to the more flattering V) and the belt and the sheath skirt all conspire to make for the lumpy/bumpy divided-in-half look—although not on Melania, who after all was a model:

melaniadress

The puff at the end of the sleeves is also an idiosyncratic touch that’s hard to pull off unless you have marvelous runway panache. Mrs. Trump has it, so it works for her. And white is famously un-slenderizing, so there’s that, too.

There’s also an interesting backstory about the dress:

Melania is originally from Slovenia, which, while she was growing up, was part of Yugoslavia. The dress designer, Roksanda Ilincic, is a Serbian native, which was also part of the former Yugoslavia. In her dress choice, Melania makes a direct nod to her homeland and supports a “local” designer who, like herself, left for her career ”” Ms. Trump’s in modeling, and Ms. Ilinicic’s in fashion.

But, secondly, the choice to not wear an American designer seems to reinforce another message frequently repeated by the Trump campaign: that Melania is the “right” kind of immigrant. In a February interview with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, Melania explained that she “followed the law,” working in the U.S. on a work visa before applying for a green card and then, ultimately, citizenship.

Melania’s story is one being carefully presented as the polar opposite to the kind of immigrants her husband has regularly disparaged on the campaign trail.

Who knew a dress could say so much? So maybe fashion isn’t always trivial, after all.