Republican vs. Republican

The New Neo Posted on by

It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to recognize that intra-party politics seems angry these days, particularly on the right (the left is hardly immune, but I’m going to focus on the right for now). One big reason is the threat Obama has posed for the last seven years, and Republicans’ relative impotence at stopping him. Another is that in recent years the Republican nominees for president have come from the more moderate ranks of the Party rather than the more conservative,and the latter group feels thwarted by this. Still another is that Congress seems to have been rolling over without enough of a fight. Another is the influence of talk show hosts who for years have talked a great deal about how rotten the establishment is, and who energize their listeners further in their anger against the perceived wrongdoings and betrayals of that group. And the amnesty issue, on which Congressional Republicans have looked especially weak, has further brought people to the boiling point.

Have big-government Republicans controlled the party for much of its 20th-21st Century existence, as it often claimed? Well, what about Coolidge? He was tapped for the Vice-Presidency by GOP Party bosses, and he was about as small-government conservative as they come. He became president on Harding’s death, finished out Harding’s term, and went on to a term of his own. And the only reason he didn’t go for another term, in 1928 (the Party certainly would have let him) was that he bowed out, saying, “If I take another term, I will be in the White House till 1933 ”¦ Ten years in Washington is longer than any other man has had it””too long!”

Compare and contrast to FDR, who succeeded Coolidge’ successor Hoover, who was more aligned with the “big government” wing. Coolidge’s attitude towards serving another term was in the tradition of George Washington, and FDR’s showed both his ego and his split from that tradition.

And yet, despite FDR and the fact that his big government policies increased the general dependency of Americans on the federal government and got them more used to thinking of that as a good thing, the Republican Party—that “establishment”—still nominated (or allowed to be nominated; it was accomplished against their will) small-government conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964. How is his nomination explained? It wasn’t popular-vote primaries, it was that smoke-filled room, the establishment, nominating him—but as a result of a conservative effort to organize against that establishment, an effort that succeeded that time.

The story is instructive:

[Phyllis Schlafly’s book A Choice, Not an Echo] called for conservatives in the party to organize to counter this wing of the party and their “kingmaker” approach to nominating candidates. The book was a rallying call for conservatives in the party and helped Goldwater win the nomination. Reagan gave a speech as part of a “TV for Goldwater-Miller” television ad campaign which made him an up and coming star among conservatives…The 1964 Goldwater campaign was also followed by the rise of a growing conservative campus movement during the 1960s…the rise of a small libertarian movement which also supported Goldwater but would later split with conservatism over the draft and drug policy…

So the way for conservatives to fight the establishment candidates in those days was felt to be to organize and defeat them according to the rules. Goldwater’s nomination was a bold move, because he was very conservative (although more a libertarian than a social-con). Here’s an excerpt from his acceptance speech at the Convention; you probably recall the famous first paragraph here, which got a lot of negative press at the time. I’d never heard what followed it, which still seems very relevant today:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

I sure can’t argue with that. It seems mighty prescient. Nominating Goldwater was a bold move that backfired, because he got absolutely creamed in the election. Why? Well, he wasn’t an appealing politician; he didn’t have Reagan’s winning personality. But it’s not at all easy to combine conservatism with winning on a national level, unfortunately. And although that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, it may take someone with conservative principles plus a charismatic personality to do it (Trump lacks the former and IMHO also the latter, and Cruz lacks the latter).

The flaw is in people as a whole, not some special flaw of the Republican establishment. People like politicians who offer them pie-in-the-sky, not tough-love. Liberals and big government people sell the idea of helping and caring to the voters. Conservatives sell liberty, yes, but at what cost? Teach people to fish instead of giving them fish, yada yada yada.

So all elected officials—or people who would like to be elected—will naturally tend to drift in the direction of big government even if they didn’t start out that way. It’s not an evil design to thwart the Republican “base.” The base just hasn’t always been big enough and strong enough to counter it.

The Wainwright divorce chronicles

The New Neo Posted on by

It isn’t so often that you get two singer-songwriters who marry and then divorce, and who both write songs about it.

Two offerings in this genre are from Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, who were married for a few years back in the 1970s. This article chronicles some of their turbulent history, as well as that of two of their musically talented children, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, who have taken up not only the family business but the family tendency to write revealing songs about—the family.

Patriarch Loudon’s (although he doesn’t exactly live up to the “patriarch” role in the traditional sense) father was a well-known writer from a patrician family, who divorced the singer’s mother fairly early on. Wainwright III is a very odd commodity, and something of an acquired taste that not everyone acquires. But I liked him from the moment I first heard him, and find him an intriguing combination of biting humor, biting sarcasm, and biting sorrow. Here you see him mostly in the latter (sorrow) mode, and note that he doesn’t spare himself or evade blame:

Here is his ex-wife some years earlier, singing on roughly the same subject—their divorce. Poignant:

And here’s much more about the relationship and the divorce of these two complex, gifted people. This quote is from their daughter:

Sometimes, the Loudon records would emerge from the vinyl stacks. “Kate would pull them out very late at night,” Martha says, “and she’d listen to two or three of the songs and cry.” Did it seem, to young Martha, that her mother was still in love with him? “Yes,” Martha says. “Very much. Not in love with him. In anger with him. In a good way. In something with him. In wanting to have had more with him, with the father of her children.”

There are many YouTube videos of the children singing with their father, and although they seem to have reconciled there’s an edge. But with Loudon Wainwright III, there’s always an edge. Here’s son Rufus—whose fame has eclipsed his father’s, but whose style I’m not really into—taking on the subject of his father and leave-taking. I don’t doubt for a moment that it was an intense experience to have been the child (or spouse) of the old man:

Sadly, McGarrigle died in 2010.

Old Testament and New: Trump and “an eye for an eye”

The New Neo Posted on by

Get ready for something unusual: I’m going to defend Donald Trump. At least, a little bit.

Yesterday Trump said something that was immediately pounced on by many listeners as being un-Christian:

WHAM 1180 AM radio host Bob Lonsberry asked the Republican front-runner if he had a favorite verse or story from the Bible that’s impacted his thinking or character.

“Well, I think many. I mean, you know, when we get into the Bible, I think many. So many,” he responded. “And some people””look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us.”

“And they laugh at our face, and they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our money, they’re taking the health of our country,” he continued. “And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”

Trump appears to be referring to a passage from Exodus 21-24, which lays out the Old Testament rules governing personal behavior.

“If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows,” the passage reads, in the King James translation. “But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” [other quotes of a similar nature follow]…

But in Matthew (5:38-42) in the New Testament, Jesus repudiates even that notion. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also…

But I think Trump’s reply was one of the most honest things Trump has ever said. He has always been clear about the idea that a perceived insult or attack should be met with an attack in response.

In addition, like many other people who discuss the “eye for eye” Old Testament principle, he has sometimes showed a lack of understanding of what it’s actually about, which is that “Biblical scholars generally interpret ‘eye for eye,’ which was derived from the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, as a restriction on retaliation for personal injuries ”” in other words, only an eye for an eye.”

Trump’s form of it has actually tended to be even more extreme than the most extreme interpretations of the Old Testament prescription, because in the past Trump has indicated he thinks a person should sometimes strike back even harder. He has written this (and it’s not out of either Testament, Old or New):

For many years I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back. When somebody hurts you, just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can.

That’s from a 2004 book of Trump’s called How To Get Rich, so it’s not something he said a long long time ago. It seems to completely lack that restrictive function of the Old Testament “only an eye for an eye” statement, except in the practical sense of a restriction caused by your own physical limitations, or what you are able to get away with.

The Biblical Old Testament quote appears to be describing a rule of official justice, not personal retribution. Therefore it may also represent the substitution of an official response for an earlier private (retaliatory feuding) sort of extra-judicial response, and therefore the triumph of the courts over the private methods of retribution, a triumph that represented the march of what we call civilization.

[NOTE: I’ve noticed that Ben Howe at RedState gets it right.]

The lack of endorsements from Republican senators and governors

The New Neo Posted on by

Leon H. Wolf points out that there have been relatively few endorsements of either Trump or Cruz from elected GOP officials:

Surprising as it is, there are still a lot of people who are on the sidelines as the party decides between Trump and Cruz. Almost the entire United States Senate, many sitting governors, and a large number of ostensibly conservative pundits have said that they are not going to endorse either Cruz or Trump. This is the coward’s way of tacitly endorsing Trump without risking any fallout for doing so, or taking any responsibility for the crazy things that Trump says and does…

Many people have fallen into the trap of believing that Trump’s chances of reaching 50% have already gone down the tubes, but it just isn’t so…

…[I]f the GOP does nothing to unite to stop Trump, he will win, either before the convention or at the convention. And the pundits and elected officials who are sitting on the sidelines now know this ”“ or at least they should. The only reason anyone would refuse to take a stand against Trump at this point ”“ even for Kasich ”“ is because they secretly want Trump to win. If that’s what they want, they should have the courage of their convictions and come out and openly declare it.

Quite apart from the political considerations, there is no substantive reason for anyone to be neutral about Trump at this point.

I agree with a couple of things that Wolf says. I agree that Trump still has a very good chance of winning the nomination on the first ballot. I agree that there is no substantive reason to be neutral about Trump at this point. And I agree that a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines.

Where I disagree is that refusal to take a stand at this point means they secretly want Trump to win. What I actually think it means is this, depending on the person:

(1) Some don’t want either person to win—Trump or Cruz. They can’t figure out who is the worst candidate (there’s no question for them of who is the “best”—the answer is “neither”).

(2) Some are hedging their bets. The election is so close that they cannot predict the winner, so the bandwagon effect isn’t operating. Also, if they think neither candidate is likely to win the general election, they don’t stand to gain anything much from an endorsement (such as an appointment or a favor) and they also would lose the support of people who liked the other candidate. So they may see any endorsement as a lose-lose proposition.

(3) Some are afraid of retaliation if they back the wrong person and the other person is the nominee and perhaps even the eventual winner. In particular, Trump is known for taking revenge on anyone who has thwarted him.

Those are the big three reasons, in my opinion. I also have a question—in close races, are there usually a great many senators or governors who endorse? I really have little idea whether the premise of the whole thing is correct—that is, whether there are a lot fewer endorsements this year than usual at a similar point in the campaign (i.e. when there are still two leading candidates who are very competitive with each other).

Clearing the underbrush on the blog

The New Neo Posted on by

I just got a huge political post off my chest, and that means I’m tired of writing about politics today. So if you want to read about why Lewandowski won’t be prosecuted (in my opinion, because the battery was a relatively minor thing—an apology would always have sufficed—and because the politics involved are just too volatile, so the prosecutor exercised its discretion, probably wisely), or about how Trump didn’t know that Joe Paterno is deceased (not one of my big beefs with Trump, I must say, but your mileage may differ), or about Cruz’s 100 cans of soup (I’m not going to even dignify that one with a link), go right ahead.

Meanwhile, I’m going to talk about my blog. It turns out that I’m a hoarder of post drafts. I didn’t see this coming—it developed slowly, over many years. Although blogging is not up there with digging ditches in terms of labor, churning out several blog posts a day is nevertheless work. It can be a challenge, but for most bloggers—who usually suffer from or are blessed with a hefty dose of ideophoria—getting ideas for enough posts is not a problem. More often, the problem is getting too many ideas and becoming scattered, or in my case researching posts and writing half of them but then putting them on hold because they become too unwieldy. I assume I’ll go back and finish them later on, but then new events happen, new thoughts come, new articles beckon, and the old ones pile up in a drafts folder that grows and grows and grows.

The upshot is that my old blog has about 150 old drafts still on it, some long and almost finished, and some short and mere sketches of an idea. The other day I noticed that the number of drafts on this blog (which I still think of as my “new blog,” although I’ve been here since 2007) was approaching 600.

That’s ridiculous.

When I set about weeding them out, I found that they fell into categories. Many were outdated, but they tracked issues that had obsessed me at the time. A lot of them, for example, were about Obamacare and health insurance as a whole. A surprising number were about defending Thomas Duncan, the ebola patient who was (unjustly, I strongly believe) accused of knowing he had ebola and hiding that fact in order to come to this country. I did so much research on that, and on ebola in general, that I could write a book, but ultimately I had to abandon the issue and move on.

Posts on the Iran deal, Romney’s candidacy, Iraq, Obama this and that, scattered like so many bread crumbs telling me where my trail had led me, and representing untold hours of work, so much that I can’t even begin to estimate how much. Most of these old drafts I deleted, leaving me with slightly under 300 at present that I think still have some meaning and promise. Many of them are about history or other non-topical subjects, and therefore are what in the trade is known as “evergreens.”

Yesterday’s post on Hoover and FDR was one of these, by the way. I spruced it up a bit, but most of what was in there was research I had done about three years ago. As sometimes happens, a couple of links I had used back then were now dead, but so be it—that’s what I get for procrastination. And this particular post I’m composing at the moment—the one whose finished version you are now reading—was a draft from many years ago entitled “Blog hoarding” and consisting solely of the words “new vice.”

I also found another category of long-held drafts that are more mysterious to me in terms of what’s going on here. They are mostly non-political posts—some personal essays, some about the arts—that seem to mean something more to me than the usual blah-blah-blah. I once thought I’d work some of them up and try to sell them, but I don’t think that’s what’s operating anymore. What’s operating now is a combination of my own sense of privacy—these posts seem somehow too revealing of my heart, even though many aren’t obviously personal in the least—and a strange notion that by publishing them I lose them.

This is absurd, but that’s the best explanation I can come up with. I’ll try to “let go” of some of them (i.e. publish them) over time, but I probably won’t tell you which ones they are. Best to keep you guessing.

Who are the “alt-right” and what do they want?

The New Neo Posted on by

You’ve probably heard of the “alt-right” in connection with this campaign season, and you probably don’t really know exactly who these people are and what they ultimately want.

Welcome to the club, which is a very large one (including me).

That doesn’t stop a lot of people from writing about it (including me). Witness two recent offerings: this one from Trump-friendly Breitbart (“friendly” isn’t quite a strong enough word, but it’ll do for now) and this rebuttal at the Federalist. They’re both well worth reading, although long.

The Breitbart piece treats the alt-right as predominantly a bunch of young, often bright and/or irreverent people most of whom are not racist but are merely defending whites and Western culture (which the alt-right equates as inextricably linked) against threats, and are not really bigots. The Federalist says no, a great many of them really are motivated by bigotry:

[The alt-right] is a movement that counters the toxic culture of the left with a toxic brew of its own: a mix of old bigotries and new identity and victimhood politics adapted for the straight white male. Bokhari and Yiannopoulos [authors of the Breitbart piece] try to connect it to “cultural libertarianism,” a concept coined by Bokhari last year and championed by both authors; but other than opposition to restrictions on “hate speech,” it’s hard to see what an ideology that explicitly subordinates the individual to the tribe could have in common with libertarianism of any kind.

Today, the excesses of the “social justice” movement have brought us to a point where reasonable conservatives, libertarians, and liberals are ready to join forces against quasi-totalitarian identity politics. We need to start reclaiming the principles of common humanity, freedom, and universal values, not put a positive spin on a different brand of divisive identitarianism.

Both articles are so long that to respond to them in any comprehensive and detailed way would take a great deal more time than I have now. So I’ll just say that I agree far more with the conclusions of Federalist author Cathy Young than with the Breitbart piece, but I reiterate that I don’t think anyone actually knows who the alt-right really is, because what we see is the tip of the iceberg. And I say that despite the fact that I generally don’t tend to go for conspiracy theories. But what I’ve seen of this phenomenon (and I’ve seen a lot of it) tells me—or tells my gut—that this is a large and dangerous movement with roots that may be well-hidden but are also international (foreign IP numbers, for example) and are the very opposite of classical liberalism and/or what is usually thought of as conservatism.

As a blogger for this last decade-plus, I’ve had to react to things in real time, often with very incomplete information. The alt-right is one of those things. I’ve found that I’ve had to go with my gut time and again, and that my gut has demonstrated a rather good track record. It’s not a compelling argument to say “my gut tells me something very bad about a lot of these people.” But my gut has become a far more perceptive instrument than it used to be, and I’ve come to really trust it, particularly in sensing something I’ll call “tone” and in understanding what it represents.

For example, I have seen nothing from the alt-right that makes me think they care in the least about individual liberty, truth, or what Young calls “universal values.” What I have seen is vicious ad hominem attacks, lies, propaganda, and yes, bigotry (including anti-Semitism, of course). And just to clarify—the “alt-right” I’m talking about are the activists; their much-more-numerous followers are a more varied bunch with varied motivations and methods, who may or may not even understand who or what the alt-right is, and may or may not sympathize with it.

The strongest force behind the Trump phenomenon appears to be populism mixed with anger at the GOP for its failure to fight successfully (or in some cases even to fight at all) against illegal immigration and other aspects of the Obama administration and the general drift of events in America lately. But as with most political movements there’s also a smaller, activist part working behind the scenes to provide the memes and tactics that help drive the larger movement. In the case of Trump the activists are also somewhat varied, but the portion that has come to be known as the alt right seems to me to be a well-motivated and organized group of people who have studied the methods of the left and adopted those methods to their own purposes—purposes that often do not come under the heading “conservative” at all:

…[T]he true conflict facing Republicans is…within the soul of American conservatives. Namely, a new, highly heterogeneous force in right-wing politics is taking hold, and they have their sights set firmly on the Republican “establishment.” Known collectively as the “alternative right,” this amalgam includes neo-reactionaries, monarchists, nativists, populists, and even a few self-declared fascists. They mostly congregate online, with a large swath of blogs and websites dedicated to their concerns. As an example of how truly diverse the alt right is, major and proverbial watering holes for them include everything from Breitbart and the libertarian-leaning Taki Mag to Alternative Right””a blog that openly supports white nationalism.

…The alt right taken the fight to the left in the best way possible””they’ve co-opted its tactics and deployed them against their bully makers.

Even though the alt right loves to mix it up with Gawker and Salon types, it (like Trump) may enjoy picking on other conservatives even more. Republican hesitancy to accept the alt right into the fold therefore makes sense for several reasons, especially since it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the alt right couldn’t care less about the Republican party. In fact, many on the alt right believe that the Republican party is in dire need of a purge.

Anyone who’s been around the right side of the blogosphere since last summer should instantly recognize what is being described here; you’ve seen them. Several blogs have been taken over by this group, notably Breitbart. Many alt-righters have come to this blog, too, but I’m relatively small potatoes and in addition I’ve always had an aggressive banning policy, so only the most polite ones tend to stay.

The alt-right is recognizable almost immediately by style and tone, which very much resembles the left. At first I thought it was the actual left, riding the coattails of the Trump phenomenon in order to hurt the conservative movement. And in fact a certain percentage probably does fall under that description, but I doubt it’s the majority. The majority of alt-right activists mimic the left’s methods, but this is not in the service of conservatism of the Buckley variety, this is bare-knuckles war that is in part a war against what for want of a better term I’ll call classical liberalism.

The alt-right’s main weapons of smears, lies, attacks, sabotage, and mockery are wielded by a relentless corps of people willing to hammer them home at every possible opportunity in every possible venue. The regular right didn’t and still doesn’t know what hit it, but it had better smarten up, although it may already be too late.

Is Trump aware of all of this? Or is he just the alt-right’s unwitting and perfect instrument, the “tool” that fits their needs exactly (the alt-right often refers to Trump as just a “tool” or a “weapon” to them). I don’t know; my guess is that he’s slightly aware of it, but not really in on its inner workings, and that he thinks they are the tools that he is using.

If Trump were to be nominated, I believe he would lose in the general, unless Hillary (or Sanders) weakens so much that literally anyone could beat them. Not only is a Trump loss indicated by nearly all the polls, but it appears to me that any gain Trump might get from some crossover votes would be more than offset by the number of Republican voters he’d lose. But the alt-right doesn’t much care if Trump gets elected or not, although of course they would like him to be elected and they will work for his election quite assiduously. But since their goal is to displace and take over and thus destroy the fragile coalition that has long been the Republican Party, I believe they have already come close to their aim, and that aim will have been accomplished whether Trump wins or not or even whether he is nominated or not.

No one will get the alt-right activists back into the fold—if they were even in the fold in the first place (I don’t think most of them were). They are gone for good. They’re not interested in joining, anyway; they’re interested in taking over and then imposing their will on the others. That’s a huge part of what this election has become. A vote for Trump is a vote for the alt-right, whether Trump knows it or not.

Gaming the Hoover-Roosevelt transition

The New Neo Posted on by

I was raised by parents who were Democrats who venerated FDR, but the more I learn about FDR the more I don’t like many things he did. For years I’ve been reading the conservative point of view on the Great Depression and the New Deal, for example, which has been a mind-changing experience. But right now I’d like to talk about something related but with a different emphasis: FDR’s pre-inauguration strategy.

Years ago I came across an article (here’s the link I had for it, but the link now leads nowhere) about how FDR sabotaged any attempts by Hoover to help the situation prior to FDR’s coming to power:

Hoover, according to [Jonathan Alter, who is not a conservative], tried to involve Roosevelt in end-of-term actions, suggesting to the then-President-elect that they jointly appoint delegates to a World Economic Conference to be held in June 1933 (three months after FDR’s inauguration), a highly touted meeting which was arranged to tackle the global Depression. Roosevelt rejected the overture, fearing that his New Deal would be seen as just a continuation of the Hoover Administration if he worked with the departing President.

Alter wrote that on February 18, just two weeks before inauguration day, Hoover tried again to enlist Roosevelt into a joint effort — including a bank holiday — to stabilize markets, but again Roosevelt rebuffed the President.

In his book, Alter quotes James Warburg, a member of Roosevelt’s inner circle. The Roosevelt brain trust “wanted it to get as bad as it was going to get before he took office, so that he could come in on the turn rather than in the continuing downward spiral.”

For his part, years later, Hoover wrote the bank crisis that ensued “was the most political and unnecessary bank panic in all our history” and “it could have been cured by simple cooperation.”

That’s stunning, but in a way it’s not surprising. Politics.

Here’s more:

[Hoover and FDR] met at the White House in late November and found little agreement. Later meetings produced little. At one point, Roosevelt declared, “It’s not my baby.” By Alter’s account, Roosevelt’s standoffish posture was calculated. “His political instincts told him that if he were enlisted by Hoover in November, he would not be able to break sharply from the past the following March,” Alter writes.

Also see this (from another dead link; that’ll teach me to delay so much in writing a post I’ve already researched):

One of the few anti-Depression steps that Hoover had taken, with Congressional approval, was the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation making the government the lender of last resort. Speaker of the House John Nance Garner, soon to be Vice President, pushed through a legislative requirement for the RFC to make public the names of banks that borrowed. Fearing that depositors would swiftly withdraw funds from institutions that identified themselves as in need of loans, banks simply stopped borrowing.

At the same time, Henry A. Wallace, newly designated as Secretary of Agriculture, suggested that going off the gold standard might be the best solution to the crisis. A run on the banks followed, with several states closing all their banks for periods up to twelve days. Unemployment continued to rise. Hoover was convinced, as he said in his memoirs, that Roosevelt wanted to let conditions worsen and then close the banks himself as a sign of taking charge.

Seems plausible.

[NOTE: For what it’s worth, John Nance Garner was the guy who is famously supposed to have said that “The vice-presidency isn’t worth a bucketful of warm spit.”

Or was it “warm piss“? Easier to obtain a bucketful of that.]

Exercises: can anyone explain this phenomenon?

The New Neo Posted on by

For many years—decades, actually, ever since I hurt my back and arms about 25 years ago—I’ve done a series of exercises before I go to sleep.

Perhaps “exercises” is too strong a word, because they’re not strenuous. They’re more like yoga—mild stretches of various kinds, plus some crunches. Some of them involve a series of head positions I perform lying down, designed to stretch the neck but also to just relax the head and neck.

I’ve noticed two things I find odd about this practice of mine. On the occasions when I skip the exercises, I’m more inclined to wake up in the morning with—of all things—a slightly upset GI system (you can fill in the details yourself). One might think this has something to do with the absence of the crunches, since those involve that area of the body. But that brings us to the second thing I’ve noticed, which is that invariably when I come to the head/neck position part of the exercises, I feel my entire GI tract relaxing, and any discomfort I might have felt (from eating too much at dinner, for example, or eating foods that ordinarily cause me problems in that arena) is almost immediately relieved or eased.

It’s not my imagination, either. Nor is it some sort of expectation, because it’s counter-intuitive, and I was very surprised when I first noticed it happening. But it’s been very consistent. The phenomenon has led me to some new-agey conclusions about holistic approaches to health. And it makes a certain amount of sense, because nothing in the body exists in isolation.

When I hurt my back and my arms (see this), I was a relatively young woman and had been used to being very active. Not only was I in wretched pain for many many years, but the pain naturally changed the way I walked, sat, and stood, and even the way I slept (maybe especially the way I slept; some day I’ll write about that). For at least a decade I spent an enormous amount of money, time, and effort chasing around the country after either a cure or at least an improvement, and 95% of what I did was futile or even made things worse. I used to joke that I was single-handedly (although both arms were affected) supporting both medicine and alternative medicine—to the tune of many many thousands of dollars, because I’d tried so many things; well over a hundred.

One of those things was the Feldenkrais approach. I went to some practitioner for about eight or so sessions, and it didn’t really seem to do anything for me except that I liked the head/neck exercises, which I incorporated into my routine. Those are the ones I do to this day.

It occurred to me just now that there must be some demonstrations of these exercises on YouTube, but I couldn’t find them, even though there are a lot of Feldenkrais videos there. The exercises I do are so simple—just a way to turn the head slowly from side to side—that I suppose perhaps the people who make the videos don’t even feel the need to show them. But for me, they’ve been great.

One unique part of the exercises I do is that you are supposed to use your eyes in a certain way when you perform them. That was novel when I first heard it, and I thought it might be sort of stupid and worthless, but I’ve come to think that’s one of the most important aspects of these movements. In the first set of exercises, your eyes work against the head motion: that is, you look in the opposite direction of the way your head is turning. In the second set, you look in the direction your head is moving—in fact, the eye movement leads the head movement rather than following it. It sounds both simple and meaningless, but I’ve become convinced that it enables you to have more freedom in your eyes and head and neck rather than to use your eyes and head and neck in a more rigid way, everything marching in lockstep together.

What this has to do with digestion I can’t quite imagine. But it really seems to affect it and improve it.

[NOTE: Here’s an article about Feldenkrais’ use of eye movements in his exercises:

As [Feldenkrais] explained it, “The head habitually moves with the eyes”¦because the eyes and the ears necessitate the movement of the head in order to direct themselves to the source of information… The movement of the head will come by itself if you stop holding the breath”“”“that means if you do nothing, just let yourself be as you are. And with the movement of the eyes, the neck muscles will change, involving the rest of yourself.” When Feldenkrais had us move our eyes in different configurations in relation to the head, we became better able to move everything else.

What is so powerful about the Awareness Through Movement lessons he developed around eye movements is that we are led to consciously connect them with movements in all other parts of ourselves. This makes possible much greater improvement in our difficulties”“”“improvement that lasts and lasts.

Here is a way we might understand how the Feldenkrais® work with the eyes can be so powerfully helpful throughout our whole self. Think of it as learning a conscious, intentional shift in how we focus our attention. Ordinarily, in connection with our eyes, our attention is focused on what we are seeing”“”“ on something external to ourselves. In Awareness Through Movement lessons we may be asked to look at a point on the ceiling, or look slowly around in a circle, all the time noticing what we have to do with our neck or legs in order to do that smoothly. This is a focus of attention that none of us would normally ever think of doing spontaneously. Our human nature is such that we need someone to guide and lead us into such awareness. With this kind of instruction we have great potential to change and integrate how we organize ourselves for whatever we choose to do.

This may sound like gobbledygook to you. It sort of sounds like gobbledygook to me, too. But experience has told me there is definitely something to it.

Hey, shouldn’t I plug something on Amazon now, so I at least get something out of this deal? I’ve not read any of these books on Feldenkrais method, and maybe I should. Take a look; this one seems to be most popular; it’s by Feldenkrais himself.]

Cruz vs. Donald

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting interview with Ted Cruz, worth listening to. But right now I’m particularly interested in the part between minutes 11:17-12:00, when Cruz talks about calling Trump “Donald.”

I have a very good friend who pointed out this phenomenon to me many months ago, around the time of the first and second debates—that Cruz never refers to Trump as Trump (much less “Mr. Trump”) but always by his first name “Donald.”

The technique does two things, although it does them fairly subtly. The first is that, superficially at least, it sounds casual and friendly. The second is that it makes Trump seem slightly lacking in dignity (although in this day and age it’s not all that unusual to use first names, and is not considered such an affront) and sounds a little silly. I don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear “Donald,” but what comes to mine is “Duck.”

I don’t know whether Trump ever uses “Cruz” or even “Mr. Cruz” to refer to Ted Cruz, but I doubt it happens often if it happens at all. In print, when he refers to “Ted,” it’s almost always “Lyin’ Ted.” But then, that’s Trump, right? Always making with the schoolyard stuff, insulting and accusative, and often accusing others of what he is guilty of himself. He wants his followers and even the undecideds to associate the two words: lying and Ted.

In the clip, note also what Cruz does at 11:17 to Chris Christie:

Paul Ryan says he isn’t running

The New Neo Posted on by

Paul Ryan just made an announcement:

“I do not want, nor will I accept the nomination for our party,” Ryan said in an announcement at the Republican National Committee. “Count me out.”

…”So let me speak directly to the delegates on this,” Ryan said. “If no candidate has a majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only choose a person who has actually taken part in the primary.”

The Trump people have been putting out the idea that Cruz is a mere stalking horse for the GOP, which will double-cross him and put in someone like Ryan or Romney instead. This is supposed to make you vote for Trump because he’s the only real anti-establishment guy, and think that Cruz hasn’t got a chance despite the fact that he’s been piling up votes (and delegates) lately at a fast clip. Are Cruz’s delegates going to defect that easily and bow to the will of the establishment? It doesn’t seem likely, although Trump and his supporters would like you to think it is.

Ace has this to say on that:

I have to say that the “Vote for Trump or else the Establishment wins” scare tactic cuts less ice with me than it used to. That’s because, as bad as the Dreaded Establishment is, I have to compare them to the other threats to democracy and American conservatism that are also on the horizon, and a larger threat is a man I call Donald F. Trump.

Burning it all down looked better to me when I imagined the arsonist in question would be smart, well-put-together, and likely to have success in an election and in governance.

Now that I see Trump’s pathetically disorganized and inept campaign — and his utter inability to make any headway with people who aren’t already in his coalition — I see him as a sure disaster in an election, and an even surer disaster as a president, if by some dark miracle he should win. Somehow.

So the “boo-scare vote for Trump or the Establishment monster’s gonna gitcha” thing doesn’t really scare me.

It’s interesting that Ace has come to this outlook on things. Ace is one of my favorite bloggers, because he’s smart and funny in equal measure (not a common balance), as well as usually doing his homework. A while back he got on the “burn it down” wagon with a vengeance, and initially was a mild Trump-supporter (or, as he said, he was “Trump curious”). But over time Trump’s words and deeds seem to have alienated Ace to the point where—well, that quote said quite clearly what point he’s reached.

Are polls purposely skewed or not?

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday we had a discussion on this thread about whether polls are gamed in order to help a certain candidate or party. It’s a question that’s interesting enough to devote a whole other post to it.

Then answer is: it depends on the poll and the circumstances, but for the most part, most mainstream, recognized pollsters have an investment in getting things right. If a pollster fails to predict an election, and is off (or way off) too often, that pollster’s reputation suffers. Reputation for accuracy is important to a pollster, and argues for trying to be as correct as possible in predicting outcomes.

However, some pollsters are known to be more propaganda-driven than others. That is based on their track records, and who hires them and for what. But a great many of the more well-known pollsters’ fame and reputation rests on their predictive ability, and to be accurate you cannot also be repeatedly and consistently skewing the data.

Poll companies are money-making entities, for the most part. It costs money to run polls, and the more respondents included on a poll, the more expensive the poll is. Therefore, although sampling techniques are very important and can make up for other deficiencies, in general the higher the “n” the smaller the margin of error. These days, the response rate is so low (which is a built-in problem in many respects) that for every respondent a poll reaches, the pollster has to have contacted nine more. This takes time, and time is money. In New York state (the subject of yesterday’s post), delegate are determined on a district-by-district basis, and to do an accurate poll would require matching the number of respondents to the GOP registration for each district. Getting it right—and getting enough GOP subjects to be accurate in each district in a state where GOP membership is very spotty—would probably cost a lot more than pollsters are willing to spend for a state poll in a primary.

Trump the fabulous wheeler-dealer, hirer of the best and smartest people who know how to work the system, whines “It’s unfair!” when he fails to successfully wheel and deal and work the system

The New Neo Posted on by

Ace points out the contradiction of it all. Read the whole thing, plus the links to pieces such as this one:

If anything, in fact, the delegate-wrangling process should be a godsend for Trump. It moves the race out of the ballot box, where he’s vulnerable to a surge of #NeverTrump votes as the primaries near their conclusion, to the backroom, where he can work his fatcat dealmaking magic. In practice, Cruz is beating the pants off of him, something that should never happen per the mystique that surrounds Trump of being a master negotiator. Noah Rothman claimed this morning that the fact that two of Trump’s kids failed to register in New York as Republicans in time to vote in this year’s primary is a microcosm of Trump’s disorganization generally, which is fair enough. But I’d add to that that him getting consistently beaten by Cruz at the delegate level is a microcosm of how Trump’s image as wheeler-dealer extraordinaire is oversold. An ingenious salesman should not be at this sort of chronic disadvantage against a guy who’s not very personally likable, whose methods are loathed by the establishmentarians who “rigged” the system, and who’s operating at a financial handicap compared to Trump. But he is. How come?

The question is rhetorical, and the answer is obvious: Trump is not the ingenious guy he presents himself as being, nor does he hire the best people. Or maybe he is all that in the field of real estate development, but that’s because he actually has skills there that don’t transfer easily to a lot of other processes, although they transfer to some. And he’s an infantile entitled complainer, too, which I’ve noticed a lot of his fans seem to have no problem justifying and excusing.

By the way, I would think this whether I liked Trump or not. How do I know? Simple. It has to do with my reaction to Bush/Gore 2000. At that time I was, of course, a Democrat, and I voted for Gore. During the long and nerve-wracking legal process of watching the courts decide who had won the photo finish election, I very much wanted to it be Gore, naturally. But when Bush won in the courts, unlike a lot of Democrats I never cried “Foul!” or thought he had stolen the election. I remember being very very disappointed in Gore and his advisors and aides, and thinking that if they couldn’t mount that fight and win—if Gore had been outfoxed and outmaneuvered by the Bush team—then he probably didn’t have the requisite toughness and knowledge of the system to have deserved the presidency and made an effective president.

President Obama started a new presidential tradition of whining and complaining, blaming and accusing. Prior to Obama, such behavior in a president was considered both unmanly and unpresidential. But at least Obama didn’t run on touting his macho alpha male characteristics, except for the occasional remark. Trump does.

[NOTE: See also this, as well as this:

Trump is not being cheated. Everyone is playing by the same rules, which were available to every campaign well in advance. Trump simply is not as good at converting knowledge into success ”“ notwithstanding the centrality of this talent to his candidacy. Perhaps this is because he is singularly good at generating free publicity (and consequently minimizing the publicity available to his rivals). Maybe he underestimated the importance of building a competent, experienced campaign organization. But he can hardly acknowledge this because it is a colossal error of judgment ”“ and his purportedly peerless judgment is the selling point of his campaign…

Trump is constitutionally incapable of admitting errors ”“ a flaw exacerbated by a campaign premised on a personality rather than a program. So his now familiar, repulsive reaction is to smear his opposition as cheaters, liars and even law-breakers ”¦ while Roger Stone, one of Trump’s brass-knuckles specialists, threatens to extort delegates. The stubborn fact, however, is that Trump has a management problem ”“ namely ”¦ Trump. He grossly miscalculated the task at hand, he is scrambling to find suitable staff way too late in the game, and in a vain effort to divert attention from his own failings he is slandering others. This is the kind of candidate he has been, and the damage someone of his judgment and temperament could do if he were president is blatant.

Please read the whole thing.]

[ADDENDUM: Please see also this and this.]

[ADDENDUM II: Rather than turn this blog into an all-Trump all-the-time festival, I’m going to just post another link to an article on a topic that truly does deserve a post of its own, the fact that the hundred million dollars of Trump’s supposed charitable donations mostly amount to free golf rounds and hotel rooms at his resorts.]