Crossover voting in the primaries

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve always been annoyed that in some states crossover voting is allowed in the state’s primary. That is, voters affiliated with the opposite party can vote in their opponents’ primary, which leaves a great deal of opportunity for mischief.

And yet, I’m not sure how to control for it. Even where crossover voting is not allowed (so-called “closed” primary states), a determined person can ordinarily change party affiliations for the purpose of the primary vote—although usually not on the day of the primary; it requires a bit of advanced planning—and then change back again later. Different states have different rules about it (see this for the state-by-state breakdown).

Democratic and Republican primaries are held on the same day, and a voter can only participate in one or the other. By voting in the opposite party’s primary a voter gives up the chance to vote in his/her own party’s contest. But in years when one party will be nominating an incumbent and there is no contested primary in that party (such as, for example, the Democrats in 2012) and the other party has a hotly-contested primary, the temptation for members of the party with the incumbent to cross over and dirty the waters is increased.

This year, although there’s no incumbent for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is nearly being treated as one. Back when Bernie Sanders seemed more competitive with her, earlier in the season, I was thinking that a competitive Democratic race would have the advantage of discouraging Democratic crossover votes in the Republican primary. As Sanders’ stock has fallen, the possibility of those strategic crossover votes by Democrats increases, and the crossover voters are likely to vote for whoever they think will damage the Republicans most (I leave it to your imagination to decide which person that might be).

This year the Republican contest is such that Republicans are less likely to cross over and use their one and only votes to play games with the Democratic race, simply because the Republican race is so hotly contested and most people feel so strongly about it.

The days of the smoke-filled rooms did away with these problems. But they raised other problems. If the establishment still chose the nominee (with or without the smoke), we’d be seeing candidate Jeb Bush in the ascendance, and we’d have had no say in the matter.

Should we lie to kids about Santa?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s someone who specializes in moral psychology, discussing the pros and cons of telling kids that Santa exists, knowing that some day they’ll find out he doesn’t and realize that you lied to them.

The conclusion? Hard to say what’s best:

…[T]here’s no evidence that children are harmed in either case. What’s clear, though, is that parents shouldn’t be overly worried about the repercussions of believing in Santa ”“ children are not completely credulous.

In fact, children continually take stock of what those around them believe ”“ and actively assess the uniformity of such beliefs to reach conclusions about the plausibility of various claims. As children’s causal reasoning develops (“Santa is too fat to fit down the chimney”), they eventually realise that he is not real, while understanding that other things they can’t actually see, for example germs, are. The key task for parents is managing the likely disappointment that comes when their children eventually grasp the truth.

My own answer is: know your child. Some kids are fine with it. Others of a different bent find it troublesome to learn they’ve been lied to. I was of the latter type, but some of my post-Santa angst had to do with the particular way in which I learned there was no Santa.

It was my older brother who told me, when I was about four and he seven—in fact, we may have even been as young as three and six. At any rate, I was very young, and I was a Santa-believer.

That Christmas eve, my brother went to his bedroom window and looked out, pointing excitedly. “I see it!” he shouted. “I see Santa’s sleigh, and the reindeer! There’s Rudolph!”

I was beside myself with joy. I went to the window and looked and looked and looked where he was pointing, and then at the rest of the sky. All I saw were the usual stars. “I can’t see it!” I whined, frantic. “Where is it?”

He kept pointing and saying “There. Can’t you see it? It’s right there!” I kept straining to see, to no avail.

Suddenly he stopped and became very serious. “The reason you can’t see it is because there is no Santa. He doesn’t exist. It’s just a story.”

This really made me wail. My brother was such a tease—and here he was, teasing me again. So mean! I wasn’t going to be taken in. “Yes, there is a Santa, there is!” I insisted. We went back and forth on that for some time, and finally I ran to my mother.

“He’s saying there’s no Santa,” I told her indignantly, assuming she would tell him to stop. But instead she told me (somewhat sadly) that he was right, there was no Santa.

Now, I’m not sure what my mother should have done. Should she have said my brother was lying, and that there really was a Santa? And then later on I’d find out that it was she who’d lied? I’m not sure what I would have done in her place, but I know that the entire episode was so searing and disillusioning that I decided never to tell my own child there was a Santa, and to avoid the entire deception problem entirely.

I believe he’s managed to forgive me.

Hansel and Gretel: losing their religion

The New Neo Posted on by

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

I love the opera “Hansel and Gretel,” by Engelbert Humperdinck (no, not that Humperdinck or this one; this one). His name may be a yuk, but the music he composed is among the masterpieces of opera, soaring and sonorous, tuneful and moving, and altogether delightful.

“Hansel and Gretel” is often performed at Christmastime, being suitable for children. The original German is rarely used in this country, and there are various well-known and well-loved English translations. A few years ago, when I read that the Metropolitan Opera of NY was doing the work, I thought of going down to see it, because it’s such a favorite of mine.

And then I checked out the Met’s website, and watched a video there of the production. My ears were not offended; the voices, as expected, were great. But I could hardly believe my eyes.

First, in order for you to understand why, let me set the scene, directly following the famous Prayer Song which occurs after the children have discovered themselves lost in the dark and dangerous forest and the Sandman has come to help them sleep by sprinkling sand in their eyes. The German libretto then has Gretel singing that it’s time to say their evening prayers, and the words of the prayer song that follows are very specific in describing a religious image of comfort and protection: fourteen angels will surround the children to guard them from harm while they sleep.

Most stagings—in fact, all stagings I had ever seen—follow what are really clear instructions in the libretto when they set up the scene that directly follows, in which the music of the Prayer Song is expanded, rising and swelling as the children fall asleep with visions of these angels (or perhaps actual angels) guarding them. It’s an exceptionally beautiful and inspirational image.

Well, here we have the Met’s newer, improved version (for those unfamiliar with the opera, don’t be surprised at the fact that Hansel is always played by a woman dressed as a boy in what’s known as a “breeches” role):

The original setting has turned into a Sendak-esque, vaguely threatening scene in which the fourteen angels have become chefs In the Night Kitchen. I believe it’s no accident that the unabashedly religious aspect of the opera has been turned into secular emptiness (although perhaps “emptiness” is not the best word, since this is about food). And this staging is not just wrong because it represents a change from the traditional, or because it’s not religious; it’s wrong because it goes against the fact that the music itself expresses holiness and serenity. One might even say that the music is celestial. So the concept behind the staging goes against the music as well.

In case you want an antidote, here’s the old Met production, before angels feared to tread there. I have kept the Prayer Song because it’s so beautiful, too; it constitutes the first two minutes, and is sung here in an English translation that is inferior to the one I know best, which explicitly describes the fourteen angels and their relative positioning in the tableau, and is also a better rendition of the original German (for greater enjoyment, go to the full screen version to watch):

Merry Christmas!

[ADDENDUM: For those of you who didn’t follow the link above to “the one I know best,” here it is:

When at night I go to sleep,
Fourteen angels watch do keep.
Two my head are guarding:
Two my feet are guiding:
Two are on my right hand;
Two are on my left hand;
Two who warmly cover;
Two who o’er me hover;
Two to whom ’tis given
To guide my steps to Heaven. ]

Those evil GOP elite puppet masters

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter Geoffrey Britain wrote this in the thread about recent political polls:

The polls are meaningless because if either Trump or Cruz gains the nomination, the GOP leadership will torpedo their election. Why”¦ because both threaten to turn over the proverbial ”˜apple cart’.

I agree that the establishment is very upset indeed at the prospect of either Trump OR Cruz—and although I originally thought a Trump presidency would upset them more, on reflection I’m not so sure it’s not Cruz who causes the greater fear.

However, I’ve become really tired of people giving so very much power to the evil puppetmasters of the GOP establishment, as though they control everything. For example, if I had a dollar for every person who used to say authoritatively and repetitively that the establishment would engineer Jeb Bush’s nomination, I’d have quite a bit of money (and some of you will probably point out that it’s not over yet and Jeb could somehow still pull it out). I always said that, although Jeb was their favored candidate and they would certainly give him money and support, they would not be successful because Bush has no constituency. He was going to be that bad a candidate.

And although I agree that powerful GOP “elites” don’t like either Trump or Cruz, those elites are not all-powerful. I predict that the GOP “establishment” (I don’t like any of these terms it; maybe I should just say “old guard”) will not be able to torpedo either Trump or Cruz in the general if in fact either manages to win the Republican nomination. Both Trump and Cruz have to be able to appeal to people more than Hillary in order to win, and the elites can hamper them somewhat by giving them less than full support and cooperation. But, as with Jeb, the elites do not control the electorate. Nor do I think those elites would prefer Hillary’s election—if only for selfish reasons; it would diminish their own power for her to win.

I make another prediction, and you can bank on this one: if either Trump or Cruz does turn out to be the Republican nominee, and if that person loses in the general election for president, the angry conservative base will say that the loss is all the fault of the GOP elites who stabbed the GOP nominee in the back.

Another prediction: if the convention ends up being brokered because there’s no clear front-runner according to the primary rules, then that same angry conservative base won’t blame it all on the fact that the voters simply were split. To them, it will always be a conspiracy of the elites, who engineered this in order to take charge of the process and take it out of the hands of the people.

Personally, I’d rather not see a brokered convention, because that will split the party even further (if such a thing be possible), and I believe that would favor the election of Hillary Clinton and quite possibly the permanent victory of the left in this country.

What with this “schlonged” business?

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump has now scandalized people by using a Yiddish expression to describe what happened to Hillary Clinton at the hands of the Obama forces back in 2008:

She was favored to win and she got schlonged, she lost.

Now, for those of you who aren’t especially up on Yiddish, “schlong” is one of the many Yiddish words to describe the male member, as in genitalia. I won’t bother to list the others; you probably can yourself. But, even as a New Yorker, although I’m familiar with the word, I can’t ever recall it being used as a verb before—which is the way Trump is using it here, as an equivalent of “screwed.”

Not only that, but it’s not the first time Trump has turned the noun into a verb:

The business mogul and Republican front-runner has also used the term “schlonged” before, saying in a 2011 interview with the Washington Post, “I watched a popular Republican woman [Jane Corwin] not only lose but get schlonged by a Democrat [Kathy Hochul] nobody ever heard of for the congressional seat and that was because, simply, because of the Paul Ryan plan.”

I’m not the only one curious about this usage; here’s a WaPo article that looks at “schlonged” from the linguistic point of view:

Trump’s problem? He’s a gentile who, linguistically, may have wandered too far from home.

“Many goyim are confused by the large number of Yiddish terms beginning with ”˜schl’ or ”˜schm’ (schlemiel, schlemazzle, schmeggegge, schlub, schlock, schlep, schmutz, schnook), and use them incorrectly or interchangeably,” [Steven Pinker] wrote. “And headline writers often ransack the language for onomatopoeic synonyms for ”˜defeat’ such as drub, whomp, thump, wallop, whack, trounce, clobber, smash, trample, and Obama’s own favorite, shellac (which in fact sounds a bit like schlong). So an alternative explanation is that Trump reached for what he thought was a Yinglish word for ”˜beat’ and inadvertently coined an obscene one.”

That was actually the first possibility that occurred to me. It made me think of the time when, as an 8-year-old, I called my 11-year-old brother a “slut.” I thought it sounded really nasty—slippery and slimy, like a sort of slug—and was surprised that he burst out laughing and then explained to me what the word actually meant (which I didn’t quite understand even after the explanation).

But that’s probably not it for Trump. Trump moves in New York circles where he’s probably been schooled in some of the finer points of Yiddish, if not the language itself, then its more colorful expressions.

However, the verb form of schlong—“schlonged”—is a rare construction, almost a Trumpism:

Nexis notes just seven uses of “schlonged.” Two were Trump’s recent jab at Clinton; one referenced a “long-schlonged” reality TV star; one appeared in an obituary for Philip Seymour Hoffman, noting the actor’s role as a “gauche gay boom operator with a crush on [a] long-schlonged superstar” in the film “Boogie Nights”; another appeared in an article about the HBO show “Hung”; and another in the transcript of an episode of Comedy Central’s long-canceled “The Man Show.”

Only one use of “schlonged” as a verb came from a respected political source. In 2011, NPR’s Neal Conan made this observation (to The Post’s Chris Cillizza) on the 1984 Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro campaign: “That ticket went on to get schlonged at the polls.”

NPR, wow.

On the other hand, it’s quite common to turn a noun into a verb, such as “Google” to “Googled.”

Trump’s use of the word “schlonged” has been widely condemned, of course. It’s supposedly sexist, it’s vulgar, it’s a colorful and idiosyncratic use of language, it’s New Yorkese, it’s all the things that Trump’s detractors hate about him and his supporters know and love.

Oh, and I note that it has us talking about him again. In this case, talking about his talk.

Everything she says is a lie, including “and” and “the”

The New Neo Posted on by

That Hillary Clinton might lie is no surprise at all, even to her supporters, who shrug it off or rationalize it. And on the topic of lies and the lying liars who tell them, there was mention in the comments section recently of the famous quip by Mary McCarthy about Lillian Hellman during a 1979 appearance by the former on the Dick Cavett Show: “every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

It was pretty funny at the time, but it engendered a lawsuit by Hellman, a lawsuit designed to bankrupt McCarthy. It might have even succeeded in doing so had Hellman not died before its completion, and had not Hellman’s executors dropped the suit.

The story of the remark, the lawsuit, and the two women lingers on, which may at this point be what they’re both most famous for—although I’m pretty sure that, of the two, Hellman remains the more well-known. She was indeed a liar, who herself said, ” [or wrote; not sure which]: “Everyone’s memory is tricky and mine’s a little trickier than most.”

The McCarthy-Hellman feud was about a lot of things. To Hellman, it was about her literary reputation as well as her construction of a life, since a lot of that reputation rested on her memoirs and the stories she told there. For McCarthy, it seems to have been about her devotion to truth, and the truth of—among other things—Hellman’s self-serving whitewashing of Hellman’s Stalinist politics. There was also the possibility of a stolen lover, back in the days. If you read this essay about the episode, you’ll see that Hellman does not come across very well, to say the least:

Others saw it as a continuation of the feud of the anti-Stalinists of which McCarthy was an early member vs. the Stalinists which included Hellman, Hammett, and other left-wing liberals who continued to defend Stalin long after his crimes had been made public. Hellman once chastized Kruschev for turning against Stalin, she felt he was disloyal. Although she claimed not to know anything about the Moscow purge trials, Hellman had signed petitions applauding the guilty verdicts and encouraged others not to cooperate with a committee that sought to establish the truth behind the trials. McCarthy, herself, said that the enmity was personal. She hated what she saw as Hellman’s attempts to make herself look more like a heroine at the expense of others.

Both women had been pro-Soviet way back when, but McCarthy had renounced that position and Hellman never seems to have done so. There was another, earlier altercation they had, about the writer John Dos Passos and his political change:

Hellman and McCarthy had only met a few times in their lives, the most notable being at Sarah Lawrence College in 1947, at a dinner party thrown by the college president, Harold Taylor, to discuss a writer’s conference. McCarthy attended as did Stephen Spender who was also teaching at the college. Hellman was an invited guest. Just before dinner, McCarthy overheard Hellman flippantly telling a group of students that the writer and painter John Dos Passos had sold out the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War because “he didn’t like the food in Madrid.” Incensed, McCarthy stormed in and proceeded to tell the students that if they wanted to know the truth about Dos Passos’ change of heart, they should read his book, Adventures of a Young Man. Hellman, in turn, was not pleased at being dressed down in front of a group of students.

I wrote a lengthy piece about that change of heart, here. It certainly wasn’t about the food:

Dos Passos’s main contact in Spain was to have been a good friend of his named Robles, a left-wing intellectual who seems to have angered Moscow at some point and who was “disappeared,” apparently shot by the Communists after being accused of being a Fascist spy.

Dos Passos tried to discover what had actually happened to his pal Robles…

That was the disillusionment that led Dos Passos from Spain, which Hellman flippantly dismissed. Lovely.

What was Clinton actually implying when she said that Trump is the best ISIS recruiter?

The New Neo Posted on by

No doubt you’ve heard that Hillary Clinton’s claim that ISIS uses Trump in its recruiting videos is a lie.

Well, one can hardly regard it as news that Hillary Clinton might be lying.

“He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter,” she said. “They are going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”

Even Vox says such videos probably don’t exist. But no biggee—they could exist, or something like that.

Actually, one thing ISIS apparently does point out in its videos is that Bill Clinton is a fornicator, as well as calling George W. Bush a liar (see also this).

The point is that ISIS uses just about everything about us to recruit, as well as a ton of other stuff, such as its own vicious violence, although it’s gone for the softer sell recently. ISIS propaganda is rather sophisticated; see this for a fuller explanation and some examples.

So, Hillary’s lies are hardly a surprise; most people already know she lies, and cynicism can allow them to shrug it off as something all politicians do. More important, to my way of thinking, is what her statement showed about her lack of understanding of ISIS—the sophistication of their methods, and especially the breadth of their objections to our way of life.

But there’s something else, too: in Hillary’s “ISIS uses Trump to recruit” claim, isn’t Clinton really saying that all it takes to turn a significant number of Muslims into murderous barbaric ISIS recruits is the idea that a US presidential candidate might want to bar them from visiting or immigrating to this country? Isn’t that a powerful condemnation of the religion and its adherents—by Hillary? Are they so ready to kill that just a few words indicating they’re not allowed to come here would be enough to ignite them and inspire a lot of people to join the ranks of the murderous terrorists of ISIS?

Seems awfully Islamophobic to me, not to mention bigoted. And furthermore, does that mean she’s saying that we have to make nice to them and welcome them into this country, or more of them will want to kill us?

How about some lebkuchen?

The New Neo Posted on by

Enough of this “news” business—now for something completely different, something for the holidays. It’ll help you gain your requisite .81 pounds and then some.

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a long time are probably familiar with the following family recipe, which I’ve posted here many times before. But here it is again for anyone who may have missed it. The recipe was brought over from Germany by my ancestors sometime in the mid-1800s, and when I was growing up it was my favorite of all the wonderful treats cooked by my great-aunt Flora, a baker of rare gifts. She and my great-uncle were not only exceptionally wonderful people, but to my childish and wondering eyes they looked very much like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.

The name of the treat is lebkuchen. But it’s quite a different one from the traditional recipe, which I don’t much care for. This is sweet and dense, can be made ahead, and keeps very well when stored in tins. That is, if you can resist the urge to devour it immediately, and good luck with that.

Flora’s Lebkuchen:

(preheat the oven to 375 degrees)

1 pound dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 oz. chopped dates
1 cup raisins
1 tsp. orange juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. lemon juice

Sift the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon).

Beat the eggs and brown sugar together with a rotary beater till the mixture forms the ribbon. Add the orange juice, lemon juice, and extracts to it.

Add the dry mixture to it, a little at a time, stirring.

Add the raisins, dates, and walnuts.

Grease and flour two 9X9 cake pans. Put batter in pans and bake for about 25 minutes (or a little less; test the cake with a cake tester to see if it’s done). You don’t want it to get too dark and dry on the edges, but the middle can’t still be wet when tested.

Meanwhile, make the frosting.

Melt about 6 Tbs. of unsalted butter and add 2 Tbs. hot milk, and 1 Tbs. almond extract. Add enough confectioner’s sugar to make a frosting of spreading consistency (the recipe says “2 cups,” but I’ve always noticed that’s not usually correct). You can make even more frosting if you like a lot of frosting.

Let cake cool to at least lukewarm, and spread generously with the frosting. Then cut into small pieces and store (or eat!).

I have absolutely no powers of resistance for this particular treat.

Let’s try to deal with some facts for a change—at least, as facts are reported in polls

The New Neo Posted on by

With polls, especially polls this far ahead of any voting, there’s always the caveat of possible inaccuracy, plus possible future change. But polls are the best evidence we have, and they can certainly show trends.

One of the most recent and most complete (although certainly far from comprehensive) polls is this one taken on December 10-13, with a national sample of 1002 registered voters contacted by cell phone and landline. It shows that in a Trump vs. Clinton matchup, Trump is 44 to Clinton’s 50 among registered voters (p. 6) (why was the poll not of likely voters, I wonder?). Trump is supported by 11% of Democrats, Clinton is supported by 14% of Republicans (who on earth are those 14%?). Trump gets 22% of blacks against Clinton, 51% of men to Clinton’s 44%, and 38% of women to Clinton’s 54%.

Unfortunately, there is no way to compare those Trump figures to those of the other candidates against Clinton, because the poll only matches Trump against Clinton, and the rest of the Republican field against each other and Trump but not against Hillary. Interestingly enough, against Trump Hillary gets 70% of all voters between 18 and 29, and Trump gets 47% of all voters over 65 to Hillary’s 44%, so Trump has a large weakness with the young. Trump trails Hillary 13 points when all adults and not just registered adults are polled.

When measured against the other Republican candidates, Trump is at 38% of Republicans and Independents who lean GOP and are registered to vote. But are those poll respondents likely voters in the Republican primaries? The survey reports on page 8 that 24% of those answering gave the probability of their voting in a primary as 50% or less (11% said 50/50). Trump’s support is highest among the least educated and lowest income Republicans and Republican-leaners, who traditionally have a lower turnout (although I would imagine Trump might motivate them to turn out in higher numbers this time).

On page 4, which compares the Republican candidates to each other but not to Clinton, you get some interesting breakdowns (and one counterintuitive one). Quite a few people on this blog have been asserting that women don’t like Cruz: wrong, at least among Republican women and Republican-leaning women. Cruz does quite well with them, and better than Rubio, which is somewhat surprising to me. Trump is Men=47/Women=28, while Cruz is Men=10/Women=22, and Rubio is Men=14/Women=11.

But, as I already stated, the poll does not compare the other Republican candidates against Clinton, or with Democrats. Also, there’s the sample (p. 7), which is fairly typical for polls at this point: 23% were Republicans and 34% Independents. That means that there were only about 230 Republicans in the poll, and perhaps another 150-170 or so Republican-leaners. So that means, as the pollsters admit, that the margin of error for leaned Republicans is a whopping 6 plus or minus (that’s 12% all together), and for registered Republicans 4% plus or minus (8% total).

And a huge percentage of Republicans in this other poll from Dec. 4-8 say it’s too early to say who they will vote for: 64%. That indicates a lot of fluidity in the race.

This Dec. 6-9 WSJ poll doesn’t answer the question about Democratic support for the various Republican candidates, but it’s got some interesting results in general. Once again, it finds (as nearly all the other polls have for many months now) that Rubio is Clinton’s strongest opponent; he beats her 48/45. Only the top 4 Republicans are evaluated in head-to-head contests against her, but of those four Rubio is the clearest winner. Carson does well, 47/46, Cruz is close at 45/48, and Trump does very poorly at 40/50. As I’ve pointed out before, Trump has done the most poorly against Clinton of all the major Republican candidates, and he does worse than some of the minor ones as well.

That may not matter to you, or you might think it will change. But it’s the way the trends have been going so far.

Christmas shopping: there is still time for Amazon—and for lefties

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s still plenty of time to order from Amazon through the neo-neocon portal. Give your loved ones a present—or even yourself—and help me out as well. It’s a win-win-win situation.

Oh, and those lefties I’m talking about? Not the political kind; the left-handed kind. I’m left-handed, and I have struggled for years to get pens that don’t smear. The best I’ve ever found are by Pentel and can be ordered from Amazon right here. The lefties on your list will love you for it.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance, and I thank all of you who’ve already done your shopping through my blog.

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]

Using “Kapo” as a word of insult

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve noticed the word “kapo” cropping up now and then in the comments section of this blog, to refer to someone Jewish who is seen as an underhanded betrayer of the Jewish people or Israel. Here’s a typical example, which was posted around the time of the Iran deal and referred to the vote for it:

Kapo:
Did Jerry Nadler Betray America, Israel and His Community?
Yes.

Kapos were an essential component in the running of the German National Socialist concentration camps.

But Jerry Nadler (and all the others I’ve ever seen described by the word, except of course for the actual, real-life historical kapos) had no gun pointed at his head when he decided about the Iran deal. Nor was he facing a death camp or concentration camp. And therein lies a tale—about the actual kapos, who they were and what they faced.

Let’s first establish that, although the word is often used to refer to Jews, and although some were certainly Jewish, most kapos were not [emphasis mine]:

A kapo or prisoner functionary was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks in the camp…The system was designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. If they were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious and racial prisoners; those were known for their brutality toward other prisoners.

The kapos were involuntary prisoners in a system that was known for its overwhelming brutality. By becoming kapos, they qualified for some moderate privileges that meant they might actually be able to survive their horrific captivity. Some kapos actually were relatively decent (mostly in secrecy) to the fellow-prisoners under their supervision. The camp administrators preferred kapos from the criminal population, because they were less hampered by conventional morality:

At Buchenwald, these tasks were originally assigned to criminal prisoners, but after 1939, political prisoners began to displace the criminal prisoners, though criminals were preferred by the SS. At Mauthausen, on the other hand, functionary positions remained dominated by criminal prisoners until just before liberation…

Identified by green triangles, the befristeten Vorbeugungshé¤ftling or “BV” [criminal] kapos, were called “professional criminals” by other prisoners and were known for their brutality and lack of scruples. Indeed, they were selected by the SS because of those qualities. According to former prisoners, the criminal functionaries were more apt to be helpful to the SS than political functionaries, who were more apt to be helpful to other prisoners.

More evidence that Jews were not preferred by the SS to be chosen as kapos:

The SS sometimes had racial criteria for the prisoner functionaries, sometimes one had to be racially “superior” to be a functionary.

And once a person was fingered to be a kapo, there was no turning back. Here’s Himmler on the subject:

The moment we become dissatisfied with him, he is no longer Kapo, he’s back to sleeping with his men. And he knows that he will be beaten to death by them the first night.

After the war, some particularly brutal kapos were tried and sentenced—German ones in Germany, Polish ones in Poland, and some Jewish ones in Israel. I have tried to get a good estimate of what percentage of kapos were Jews, since the word is usually used today in the context of accusing Jews of various offenses, and although I haven’t found an official estimate it’s clear that the Nazi preference was for them not to be Jews. This book of interviews with Jewish Sonderkommandos from Aushwitz contains one survivor’s estimate that 80% of the kapos were not Jewish, for example. Another memoir indicates that 10% of kapos were Jews. A historical novel QB VII by Leon Uris, presumably based on research, states that only a few out of every hundred were Jewish.

So it appears that the idea that kapos were predominantly Jewish is almost certainly false, and in fact Jews seem to have been significantly underrepresented among kapos in comparison to their numbers among regular camp prisoners. However, some kapos were indeed Jewish.

In addition, camp survivors usually say that the Jewish kapos tended to be better (see this) and German kapos were often (although not always) considered the worst (see this).

But the situation of the kapos in general, particularly those who had no previous criminal history, was so substantially different from that of virtually anyone in the US today, that I would say it is actually an abomination to compare the two, for the simple reason that kapos were concentration camp inmates under threat of torture and death. As kapos they received special privileges, and the most special one was life itself. In other words, their first motivation was to save their lives in a situation of evil so total and so horrific that in a very real way they were victims who were coerced into colluding with their oppressors.

Consider the case of Jacob Tannenbaum, a Jew and a former kapo who was alleged to have been violent and who was tried many years later in the US. This was his pre-kapo history:

…Tannenbaum [was] an observant Polish Jew who, before the war, had been active in Zionist activities. His wife, six-month-old daughter, parents and five siblings perished during the Holocaust.

Perhaps that would be enough to make a person go mad, even without more. But there was considerably more that Tannenbaum experienced before becoming a kapo:

After some time in a Polish camp in 1942, he was sent with other relatively healthy prisoners to the forced-labor camp in Galicia, where his Nazi captors blinded him in one eye and severely injured his back in a beating.

Finally, for eight months in 1944 and 1945, he served as a kapo in Gorlitz, supervising 1,000 prisoners who worked there in an armaments factory.

Tannenbaum was in camps for a total of three years. After the war he came to the US and became a citizen in 1955, a practicing Orthodox Jew who donated money to causes such as that of Weisenthal, the Nazi-tracker. Years later he was recognized and arrested, and the camp survivors testified that he had been especially brutal, beating them sometimes without even Germans being present, and in six cases causing the death of inmates (for example, by informing on them for infractions). But Tannenbaum said there had always been Germans present during the beatings and that he did what he did under threat of death. In the end there was a settlement, with Tannenbaum stripped of his citizenship but not deported for health reasons. He was 77 (or 79; I’ve read conflicting reports) at the time of the proceedings, suffered a stroke while testifying, and died a year later.

Some called Tannenbaum a tragic figure. In my opinion, he is surely that, but is he guilty? I would have to know more to make a decision, but I know that I have my doubts about his guilt in the moral sense. His case was exceptionally controversial, with many people thinking he should not have been charged, but I’m not bringing it up to decide his guilt or innocence. I’m bringing it up to point out the intensity of the pressures kapos were under, and the profundity of the moral decisions and dilemmas they faced.

I have already said that they did not volunteer for the camps, which is self-evident. What is less evident is that they did not volunteer for the job of kapo, either. They were selected [emphasis mine]:

…[T]he Tannenbaum case already has resurrected the history of the several hundred Jewish kapos, all selected by the Nazis to oversee and punish their own people, often with the hope of sparing themselves. Theirs was the conundrum within the catastrophe.

“I know that when the Tannenbaum case is heard, many of the allegations will be horrifying,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which studies the Holocaust and human rights issues. “What needs to be said generally is that one must make a distinction between those who volunteered for the SS or the Gestapo and those who thought they would save their lives by cooperating. You can’t say Patty Hearst played the same role as her kidnappers. The same is true of any kapo.”

“It is important to retain a perspective,” said Henry Siegman, the executive director of the American Jewish Congress. “There is a critical difference between the Barbies of the world – the victimizers – and the Tannenbaums, as sad and tragic and despicable as they were. They were victims. They were people who succumbed to unbelievable stress.”

Tannenbaum alleged, among other things, that the beatings he administered were designed to save accused prisoners of worse at the hands of the Nazis themselves, who would just as soon have killed them instead. Who knows? Tannenbaum himself had been subject to psychological torment as well:

“He told us once that in one of the camps the Nazis played this ‘joke’ on him – a kind of psychological torture,” said Sonny Tannenbaum, a peace officer in the New York City court system. “They had him dig a grave and made him believe they were going to bury him alive in it. Then they all laughed and had him come out, and threw a dead German shepherd in the grave.”

Here’s the moral distinction the legal system was trying to make:

“Any inquiry like this, Jewish or German, comes down to whether someone took part in the persecution of innocent people willingly and voluntarily,” said Mr. Ryan, a former director of the Office of Special Investigations and now a lawyer for Harvard University. “It’s just that with the kapos you have to add the additional layer of what the SS was doing over their shoulders. Were the kapos beating the inmates only enough to keep the SS from beating them even more brutally? Or were they persecuting them as badly or even worse than the SS?”

How could one ever judge such a thing about a person who had been tortured as Tannenbaum had? There is little question in my mind that under anything remotely resembling ordinary circumstances he would not have done anything of the sort. Yes, he had choices, and he probably made some bad ones, but is he required to have been a hero and/or a saint, exhibiting a bravery and goodness that—to be honest—very few among us would be capable of under similar circumstances?

Someone using the word “kapo” to refer to anything less than that sort of pressure and that sort of horrific choice seems wrong to me, a trivialization of a profound human tragedy and a deep outrage.

My takeaway…

The New Neo Posted on by

…from the new Fox poll, for what it’s worth:

(1) Trump continues to be the front runner, which is no surprise at all.
(2) Voters seem to think he has the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton, but the polls also indicate he does the worst of all the major Republican candidates against her. This has been consistently the case. Rubio has the best chance, according to the same polls (including this one).
(3) People’s favorite second choice is Cruz. That means it is likely that, as other candidates drop out (will they ever do so?), Cruz will rise.