You learn something new every day

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes several things, actually.

For instance, I’ve learned quite a bit already today from this article.

Let’s see if I can summarize:

(1) The Hill has taken to calling unaccompanied children who have arrived in this country illegally “unaccompanied immigrant children.”

(2) There are groups who have government contracts to take care of such children.

(3) Quite a few of these children have been raped.

(4) The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of the groups that has such a government contract.

(5) The administration has proposed that such contractors be required by the government “to provide access to contraception and abortion for unaccompanied immigrant children who have been raped.”

(6) The Catholic bishops are objecting to fulfilling the contraception/abortion requirement.

(7) The ACLU is suing, not the bishops, but the Obama administration, in order to gain access to “documents it says will show religious organizations are restricting access to abortions for unaccompanied immigrant children.”

(8) The bishops believe their right to refuse comes under the recently-in-the-limelight federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

There’s something absolutely revolting about every single aspect of this case. It’s horrible that the administration encouraged these kids to come and then refused to deport them. It’s dreadful that taxpayers are being made to pay for their indefinite upkeep, against taxpayer will. It’s horrific that the kids (the article says teenagers in this case) are being raped and might be pregnant. It’s awful that they might have to take abortificants. It’s bad that taxpayers would have to pay for them (I wonder under what law that falls, or is it just something Obama or one of his agencies dreamed up one fine day?). It’s lousy that we are not being told how many children/teenagers are involved. It would be a travesty if the ACLU appears is planning to attempt to force or otherwise coerce an explicitly Catholic group into cooperating with this. On the other hand, these kids having their rapists’ babies (anchor babies, at that) also seems a nightmare. And yet deportation (which I generally advocate, even though the administration has no intention at all of doing it) seems especially inhumane under these circumstances.

Again with the fouettes

The New Neo Posted on by

“Caedmon” asks me to comment on this clip of Natalia Osipova’s fouettes. Let’s take a look and compare them to the ones shown in my previous post about those whiplike turns:

I have to say I lke Osipova’s fouettes the least of all the dancers in the clip I’ve posted. She obviously can do fouettes, of course; that almost goes without saying. Not all of hers are regular fouettes—she tosses off a lot of varations on the theme, but I’ll just talk about the ones that are the classic stuff.

Osipova performs them at a fast tempo. What makes her look somewhat hectic and sloppy at times is that she’s what I call a leg flinger, which is always a temptation with fouettes—just shoot that leg out there in a big hurry to start the turn so you don’t fall behind the music.

In her haste, Osipova doesn’t even usually straighten that leg all the way, nor does she sweep it out completely to the side before beginning her turn. Sometimes she only gets it about halfway there. Compare that to what the others do, and you’ll see that although they sometimes rush, with them there’s still more of a sense of the leg unfolding. With them you can actually see the sweep from front to the side, and you can almost feel in your own body the impetus of the leg’s trajectory beginning to lead the dancer into the turn rather than the dancer flinging the leg out in such a way that its momentum doesn’t seem to naturally start the turn.

It’s as though Osipova wants to get that leg-to-the-side part over and done with, as though it’s just a meaningless prelude to the main attraction—the turn—rather than an integral and necessary part of it. But it should all be one seamless flow.

Let me just add that I know about this problem because I was a habitual leg-flinger myself.

Obama’s negotiating style

The New Neo Posted on by

Is it possible that Obama thinks that agreements have some worth in and of themselves, irrespective of what’s in them? I think so.

Obama has spent nearly his entire life as a Potemkin (cargo cult) achiever and leader. Even when he was a young man, people unaccountably told themselves on meeting him: “This man could be president—and this man should be president.” On first meeting him, many Americans seemed to have felt much the same thing, although he had no record of political achievement except winning elections and making speeches in a sonorous baritone.

Obama is accustomed to casting a spell—a spell to which I’m oblivious, but which I’ve seen demonstrated convincingly. He is used to being lauded for producing absolutely nothing of value.

So why should he not think he can get away with presenting America and the world with some sort of non-binding, not-yet-agreed-on “deal” with Iran as a great accomplishment and have people believe him? It may even be that by June nothing more definite will have been decided but that he’ll declare an even more wonderful interim agreement and then kick the can further down the road.

What’s more, by the time Iran actually gets a nuclear weapon and demonstrates that this is the case, a Republican administration could be in power and can be blamed for it. Obama has never had to face any consequences from his lies and missteps and outright betrayals so far, except for the loss of Congress in 2014, a setback he seems to have weathered quite creatively by going around them.

So what’s the downside for him in the Iran deal? I really don’t see one. The only downside would be if Congress decided to impeach and convict him as a result, and let’s have a show of hands on how many people believe that will happen.

[ADDENDUM: Richard Fernandez has some thoughts which are somewhat related:

While the president may vaunt America’s strength it is equally apparent that by almost any measure, that strength has been declining ever since he set foot in office.

He is like an aristocrat who inherited a great fortune and done nothing but lose money at cards since he assumed the title, spending his hours presenting the high presence when not busy at golf. Now, even as he boasts of his still considerable wealth, Obama appears to remain carelessly indifferent to the foes who have driven him out of Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He is going to play against the same people who beat him in the past, yet without taking any special precautions, is confident of victory this time.

Why? Perhaps Friedman should have asked the president, “besides America strength, which you did not create, from where else do you derive your confidence? Is there some success you’re not telling us about?” We will be assured that these successes exist in abundance in some secret archive, though under seal together with his school records. We’ll have to take it on faith, What Jaffe called “the limits of the administration’s approach” are after all the limits of Obama’s mind. And the limits of that mind are a closely guarded secret…

If Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria are any guide, Obama’s “model” nuclear agreement may be a similar bust. Even the fact that he never ceases to talk about the glittering possibilities of that “once in a lifetime deal” with Iran is vaguely disturbing, reminiscent of those people who are almost stock characters who prattle on about some “sure thing” ”” a gold mine, undervalued stock, perpetual motion machine or some Nigerian bank transfer ”” they learned about down at the corner, eagerly pawning their property and borrowing all the money they can to make the Big Bet. These are people who in reality about to be taken to the cleaners, cheated, or rolled in the ditch when they leave the building. It is, as I have written elsewhere, almost too painful to watch.

At the moment, Fernandez seems to be leaning heavily on the “fool” argument.]

About those fouettes

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written about the ballet step known as the fouette before, and so I’ll quote myself:

The turn…is known as the fouette—a word that means “whip.”…The trajectory of the leg as it quickly unfolds leads the body into the turn with a whipping force that isn’t easy to control, to say the least.

But you know what? I don’t care much for any of it. And this isn’t only because I was never all that good at fouettes, especially when on pointe.

Like most steps in ballet, the technique required of dancers performing the fouette has become more extreme. It used to be enough just to do them; the step itself elicited oohs and ahs. Now, multiple turns embedded within the fouettes (as you see in this video at the beginning and end) have become required in order to satisfy the jaded palates of the dance consumers, used to gymnastics rather than finesse, athleticism rather than art, tricks rather than sublimity.

I have searched You Tube for an example of fouettes that would partake of artistry. I couldn’t find any, even in older clips featuring dancers I admire greatly. It seems it doesn’t matter who does them, or how well or how poorly; they’re a trick that doesn’t interest me at all, although I admire the strength and balance required because I know how exceptionally difficult it is.

Here is an illustration of the genre, by a German dancer named Adeline Pastor. A phenomenal turner, she begins the sequence with something I guess would be called an octuple turn (as opposed to a double or triple or quadruple). It’s something I’ve never seen before from a woman en pointe, although occasionally it’s done by a man in soft ballet slippers, which although not easy is certainly a lot easier (fouettes are never done by men). Pastor then proceeds to do something else that’s exceptionally difficult; she changes her focus with succeeding fouettes, eventually coming back to face the audience:

It’s an astounding trick. But again, it’s in the nature of a circus or gymnast’s feat. Interesting and extraordinarily difficult, but not what I think is unique to ballet.

Here’s a set of fouettes I found that’s also good, but quite different. What’s so hard about this one is that the dancer manages a double revolution every third fouette, even as the series goes on and as one would expect she begins to tire. She doesn’t falter, though. What’s more, she adds something subtle that the casual watcher wouldn’t know is fiendishly difficult: she puts her arms up as she does the doubles.

Why is that so difficult? A dancer usually pulls his/her arms closer to the body order to reduce what I think would be called air resistance while turning, as well as to make the turner smaller and more compact and more like a ball and less likely to be thrown off-center. Our teachers used to sometimes make us turn with arms up, and believe me it doesn’t take but one experience to illustrate the principle:

The dancer in the following clip throws in doubles every other fouette, but notice two things that make her achievement, impressive thought it is, less impressive than the one above it: her arms are on her hips rather than in the air, and as she tires she eliminates the doubles and the fancy arms:

Hey, I couldn’t do anything of the sort even when I was in my prime. And my prime (at least where fouettes are concerned), unlike that of Miss Jean Brodie, seems to have passed.

Obama and disarmament: one of his longest-held dreams

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember this? It’s one of the few papers that Obama wrote while in college or law school that is available; the rest seem to have disappeared. It is a 1983 article in the Columbia campus paper, and it constitutes pretty much Obama’s only paper trail—except for some poetry he wrote while at Occidental—until Dreams From My Father.

The article is mostly straight reportage and quotes about the Nuclear Freeze Movement and organizations called “Arms Race Alternatives” (ARA) and “Students Against Militarism (SAM). But sometimes Obama reveals his own attitude in a few comments such as, “Generally, the narrow focus of the Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion-dollar erector sets.” Note the superior tone, the boilerplate Sixties leftist-activist lingo, and the contempt for the military, already present in Obama at a relatively young age. To him, the military are boys playing with expensive toys.

He quotes one activist as saying “everyone’s asking for peace, but no one’s asking for justice,” which (in Obama’s words), causes “one…to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem rather than the disease itself.” To Obama, the real problems appear to be economic and political issues involving a lack of justice, and the arms race is a mere symptom of that deeper concern (shades of this far more recent policy statement).

Later in the article, Obama writes in his own voice again:

Perhaps the essential goodness of humanity is an arguable proposition, but by observing the SAM meeting last Thursday night, with its solid turnout and enthusiasm, one might be persuaded that the manifestations of our better instincts can at least match the bad ones…

The most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American system generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What [the students in these groups] try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, manes like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part.

This is a young man who certainly doesn’t seem to like America. He also doesn’t appear able to express himself all that well, but there is no question he thinks he knows better, and has purer and more noble instincts, than those stupidheads in charge. That’s not an unusual point of view for a young man, I suppose. But Obama seems to have managed to carry that sort of attitude right up to the present (excepting the non-stupidhead-in-chief, of course).

Even the NY Times wrote of Obama’s article:

What clearly excited him was the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would end the testing and development of new weapons, and thus, in the minds of arms controllers, end the nuclear arms race. The Reagan administration vehemently opposed the treaty. Paraphrasing Mr. Bigelow’s views, Mr. Obama said the United States should initiate the ban “as a powerful first step towards a nuclear free world.” That phrase would reemerge decades later…

Barack Obama’s journalistic voice was edgy with disdain for what he called ‘the relentless, often silent spread of militarism in the country’ amid ‘the growing threat of war.’ The two groups, he wrote, “visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.”

And Obama biographer David Remnick called Obama’s article “muddled.”

The USSR fell not that many years after Obama wrote that 1983 piece, and many people believe this happened in part because of the arms race. See this on Reagan and Star Wars:

In the arms control negotiations with the Soviets, SDI proved to be a very powerful bargaining chip, primarily because the President did not believe it was up for discussion. Secondly, as many of us who met with USSR officials came to realize, the Soviets were the most fervent believers that the U.S. could actually develop and field the complex systems needed for SDI to work! Moscow had apparently concluded that this system would tip the strategic balance toward the United States.

This came at a time that the USSR itself was falling further behind economically””much more so than many in the U.S. Intelligence Community believed.

We did not fully appreciate then that Gorbachev, unlike his predecessors, was aware of the depths that the Soviet economy had fallen. It also appears that Gorbachev was deeply concerned about the President’s SDI program, feeling that what was at stake was more than just a space defense program. He believed that if the United States combined its technological superiority with its economic potential, America would make an enormous “skachok” (leap) ahead. In doing so, we would, to use the Marxian phrase, “consign the Soviet Union to the ash- heap of history”!

I am virtually certain that Obama hated Star Wars. Almost every liberal did at the time (although I remember thinking it didn’t sound so stupid for us to start working on something like that; this probably was an early sign of what was later to become my political conversion). Star Wars didn’t single-handedly cause the USSR to topple, of course, but it seems to have helped.

You might also remember this:

…President Obama erred in 2013 with his decision to scrap — in response to Russian objections — a planned system in Europe to defend against missile threats from the Middle East. Obama won no good will from the Russians, even as he forfeited an important opportunity to strengthen U.S. allies against future threats. Missile defense allows strong nations to defend themselves against weaker enemies without resorting to terrorist tactics or fighting bloody wars. This is a win-win, except for terrorists like Hamas and national rulers bent on aggression against neighbors.

But the dream dies hard, doesn’t it?

[NOTE: Let me add a personal note about the nuclear disarmament movement of yesteryear. Some of its activists were idealists. But a certain percentage (I don’t know how large) were pro-Soviet Communists. I say that from personal experience; I’m talking about a relative of mine who combined his pro-Soviet, pro-Communist proclivities with prominence in the nuclear disarmament cause.]

Waging the PsyWar

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting call to PsyWar arms:

The Islamists have enjoyed a long run in which they have directed the most hateful imaginable propaganda and violence against Jews, Christians, Hindus, and the wrong kinds of Muslims…It is this article’s purpose to unleash a whirlwind that will make Islamists the world’s pariahs, and probably to the extent that the world’s civilized nations will deport their adherents and fellow travelers as undesirables.

To author William A. Levinson I say “good luck with that deportation stuff.” Right after 9/11 I had thought the West would go that route, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Levinson advocates less propaganda defense and more propaganda offense, but although it’s a necessary part of activism to become more effective in the counter-propaganda game, I’m not at all sure that PC thought hasn’t largely eliminated our ability to do so. If it isn’t already obvious that the Islamist terrorists, and particularly ISIS, are savage barbarians (to use some very un-PC words), I don’t know what more could be done to make it clear.

But we do need to become more able to tell the truth about the enemy—with, for example, words like “enemy”—and not to shy away from it because of some mistaken and slavish devotion to an ideal of tolerance. There is evil, and they are on its side.

[Hat tip: commenter “g6loq.”]

Happy Easter!

The New Neo Posted on by

Enjoy:

Have a wonderful Easter!

This Easter, please remember and pray for the courageous and beleaguered Christians all over the world who are under attack.

Going out in style (literary)

The New Neo Posted on by

Emily Phillips had a way with words, and she used it to write her own obituary, which has gone viral [hat tip: Althouse]. I bet we can get a good idea of Phillips’ personality by reading it:

It pains me to admit it, but apparently, I have passed away. Everyone told me it would happen one day but that’s simply not something I wanted to hear, much less experience. Once again I didn’t get things my way! That’s been the story of my life all my life…

So many things in my life seemed of little significance at the time they happened but then took on a greater importance as I got older. The memories I’m taking with me now are so precious and have more value than all the gold and silver in my jewelry box.
Memories”¦where do I begin? Well, I remember Mother wearing an apron; I remember Daddy calling Square Dances; I remember my older sister pushing me off my tricycle (on the cinder driveway); I remember my younger sister sleep walking out of the house; I remember grandmother Nonnie who sewed exquisite dresses for me when I was little; I remember grandmother Mamateate wringing a chicken’s neck so we could have Sunday dinner. I remember being the bride in our Tom Thumb Wedding in first grade and performing skits for the 4-H Club later in grade five. I remember cutting small rosebuds still wet with dew to wear to school on spring mornings, and I remember the smell of newly mowed grass. I remember the thrill of leading our high school band down King Street in New Orleans for Mardi Gras (I was head majorette). I remember representing Waynesville in the Miss North Carolina Pageant, and yes, I twirled my baton to the tune of “”Dixie””. It could have been no other way.

I married the man of my dreams (tall, dark, and handsome) on December 16, 1967 and from that day on I was proud to be Mrs. Charlie Phillips, Grand Diva Of All Things Domestic. Our plan was to have two children…

So”¦I was born; I blinked; and it was over. No buildings named after me; no monuments erected in my honor.
But I DID have the chance to know and love each and every friend as well as all my family members. How much more blessed can a person be?…

If you want to, you can look for me in the evening sunset or with the earliest spring daffodils or amongst the flitting and fluttering butterflies. You know I’ll be there in one form or another…

RIP, Emily Phillips. Sounds as though you had a very very good life.

When I read Phillips’ obituary, it immediately conjured up three widely-disparate literary precedents. I’m not saying she was thinking of these when she wrote her piece (in fact, I very much doubt it). But here they are, proving something-or-other about the universality of these feelings.

The first is Thornton Wilder’s beloved play “Our Town”. For those unfamiliar with the play, this passage occurs towards the end, when Emily (the central character in the play, who happens to have the same first name as Phillips)—who lived in a small town, married her high school sweetheart, and died young—comes back to observe an ordinary day in her life from that perspective:

Mr. Webb [Emily’s father] (off-stage): Where’s my girl? Where’s my birthday girl?

Emily: I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.
Emily breaks down sobbing.

Mrs. Webb exits.

I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back…up the hill…to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.

Looks left and then out past audience and then to the right.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners…Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

To the Stage Manager
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?

Stage Manager
No.

Pause
The saints and poets, maybe””they do some.

The second is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince. The quote can be found here:

All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems… But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them… In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me… You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure… It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh.

In closing, I offer a passage from Leo Tolstoi’s The Death of Ivan Illych. I first read the story in college and it had immediately made a deep and lasting impression on me. I wrote about it previously here. Emily Phillips doesn’t seem to have the same sense of “terribleness” as Ivan does, but other aspects of Ivan’s thoughts remind me of what she wrote:

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius ”” man in the abstract ”” was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Katenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius preside at a session as he did? “Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.”

The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses

The New Neo Posted on by

Most people know about concentration camps and the Holocaust; the words have come to be nearly synonymous, although they’re not. But most people are far less aware of how the whole thing began: that it didn’t start with mass murder and that it was a long time coming. In fact, organized actions against Jews and Jewish-owned businesses predated the Nazi takeover of Germany, and the movement began in the universities.

You may have guessed where I’m going with this.

Some background:

Antisemitism in Germany grew increasingly respectable after the First World War and was most prevalent in the universities. By 1921, the German student union, the Deutscher Hochschulring, barred Jews from membership. Since the bar was racial, it included Jews who had converted to Christianity. The bar was challenged by the government leading to a referendum in which 76% of students voted for the exclusion.

At the same time, Nazi newspapers began agitating for a boycott of Jewish businesses and anti-Jewish boycotts became a regular feature of 1920s’ regional German politics with right-wing German parties becoming closed to Jews.

From 1931-2 SA “brownshirt” thugs physically prevented customers from entering Jewish shops, windows were systematically smashed and Jewish shop owners threatened. At Christmas 1932, the central office of the Nazi party organized a nation-wide boycott. In addition, German businesses, particularly large organizations like banks, insurance companies, and industrial firms such as Siemens, increasingly refused to employ Jews. Many hotels, restaurants and cafes barred Jews from entering…

On 1 April 1933, the Nazis carried out their first nationwide, planned action against Jews: a boycott targeting Jewish businesses and professionals, in response to the Jewish boycott of German goods.

On the day of the boycott, the SA stood menacingly in front of Jewish-owned department stores and retail establishments, and the offices of professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The Star of David was painted in yellow and black across thousands of doors and windows, with accompanying antisemitic slogans. Signs were posted saying “Don’t Buy from Jews!” (Kauf nicht bei Juden!), “The Jews Are Our Misfortune!” (Die Juden sind unser Unglé¼ck!) and “Go to Palestine!” (Geh nach Palé¤stina!). Throughout Germany acts of violence against individual Jews and Jewish property occurred…

Economic boycotts are a valid, lawful tool. They are useful in putting pressure on businesses, but should be considered a potentially dangerous method. Any liberty-loving person planning this approach should consider it very very cautiously. Threatening to boycott a company merely because of the political views of someone who works for it, even a CEO, is starting down a very slippery slope. It’s not that it’s never a good idea, it’s just that it’s a dangerous tool that needs to be handled with care.

The trouble with so many of these campaigns (such as the one against Memories Pizza) is that they represent the imposition of a newly-required brand of thinking and the stamping out of opinions opposed to it, to serve warning that any public display or support of the opposite point of view is going to have severe consequences for those who might espouse it. This, I think you’ll agree, is not good.

A liberal’s take on the Iran “deal”

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[NOTE: The word “deal” is in scare quotes because it’s not actually a deal, it’s an announcement of a tentative deal to make a deal. But for the rest of this post I’ll leave out the quote marks for the sake of convenience.]

If you want to know what a well-meaning, relatively well-informed liberal’s take on the Iran deal is, I’m about to describe it.

You say there are no well-meaning relatively well-informed liberals? Of course there are; this is an argument we’ve had many times on this blog before, and you know my position.

After a discussion yesterday with a person I think merits the above description (your take may differ), here’s my summary: The goal of the Iran talks is not to stop Iran from getting a bomb; that horse was already out of the barn. The goal—and the person freely admitted this was a gamble—is to open Iran to more Western influence and over time to soften the theocratic regime there, much as happened in the Communist world years ago. The current government of Iran (not the mullahs, though) campaigned on a platform of doing just that, and if they fail to deliver the people will revolt. The deal is a risky move, but one well worth it, because the government isn’t crazy and won’t nuke Israel or the West. And it’s the best alternative compared to the others.

Our actual discussion was more detailed, but that was the gist of it. This particular person also knows quite a few US citizens who are of Iranian background and have relatives there, so that’s part of what he is relying on when coming to these conclusions. He said that all that jubilation in the Iranian street wasn’t just people happy that Iran has stuck it to the Big Satan (although a lot of people like that absolutely were indeed celebrating there), it was also a large subset of Iranians who are happy because they think this will lead to more human rights and less power for the mullahs.

My part in the discussion was to say things like this: how do you know the Iranian government isn’t just a front for the mullahs? What about all the recent “Death to America” chants? Why is Iran insisting on keeping ICBM’s, if not to deliver weapons long-range? Why the underground facility? Why do you think helping the current regime economically (and allowing it free rein in other countries militarily) will weaken it and make it more vulnerable to the reformers’ wishes rather than strengthening it? Don’t you think Iran would need to show some good will and good intent first by softening its rhetoric and in particular scaling back its operations to take over other countries in the Middle East?

The argument that ensued made it clear to me that, at least in this instance, our main disagreements were over the mindset of the Iranian government (as opposed to the mullahs; we agreed on their motivations), who’s actually in charge there, and where the forces of history and human nature will blow that country, as well as what the risks of this deal will be to Israel and the US. In other words: is the threatening rhetoric mostly for show, or does it represent an intent to act? And in what internal political direction is Iran likely to move if this deal comes to pass?

That’s where the “human nature” part comes on. So much of differing opinion is a different take on people themselves. Conservatives (and I include myself here) tend to take the view that threats signify intent and must always be taken seriously, and that in order to give concessions to a side that has previously been your enemy, the enemy needs to have altered something that indicates a very real change of behavior, and that if you don’t have a very reliable way to check on their compliance with an agreement, the agreement isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s printed on. I think history bears this out.

This agreement, of course, doesn’t even feature a piece of paper, or really any agreement at all. If you want a very penetrating analysis of how that fact serves Obama’s purposes in the political sense, see this. And this describes the deeper roots of the Iran-as-nuclear-power problem:

If a nuclear deal is imminent, that is largely because over the past 13 years of on-and-off negotiations, the great powers of the world have slowly but surely given in to Iran’s demands. As Iran has flouted United Nations resolutions demanding a halt to its program, those nations have steadily softened their terms. Instead of ending the threat of Iranian nuclearization, negotiators have apparently limited their ambitions to an attempt to regulate it””an idea that, given the record of Iran’s lack of even rudimentary compliance with international law, is wishful thinking.

How did we get here? In speaking with nearly 30 experts and veterans of both the Bush and Obama administrations, I’ve found one core factor at the heart of this outcome: the desire to avoid military engagement with Iran at all costs””and, particularly during the Obama administration, the fear of even threatening it. Without a credible threat to use force, the United States has relied on tools that alone could never have compelled the Islamic Republic of Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

Read the whole thing. It’s extremely interesting, and goes into the history of negotiations with Iran during the Bush years. I have long thought that the war in Iraq was deeply connected to what’s going on in Iran right now, in no small part because the Iraq War showed (temporarily) that we meant business about nuclear non-proliferation in the area, and the abandonment of the Iraq War meant that we no longer meant business. The article seems to substantiate that:

While America never seemed capable of aiming a direct threat at Iran when the nuclear program grew more substantial in the latter Bush years, the fact remains that the Iraq war itself initially aided Western efforts to halt Iran’s progress. According to several sources, U.S. intelligence indicated that in the months following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran was riven with anxiety that it might come next. That fear probably drove the Iranians into negotiations with Europe in 2003. In those so-called E3 talks, the Iranians agreed to suspend enrichment””the only time they have done so in more than a decade of negotiations.

Michael Singh, a senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2005 to 2008, claims that the E3 negotiations “were about ensuring that Iran escape the peril of an invasion unscathed.” This suggests that when the United States had a high degree of credibility as a forceful actor, Iran made some of its greatest concessions to date.

In summary, the rationale given by my liberal friend for the current approach to Iran is that, if it has become impossible to halt Iran’s nuclear program without war or a credible threat of war, then the next best thing is to make the regime into a more cooperative and tractable entity. I think that’s a highly unlikely and dangerous pipe dream. Nor do I think that war is the only alternative, but a credible threat of war seems necessary—although I understand that a threat of war could propel a country like Iran to become even more determined to get nuclear weapons.

At any rate, the current administration cannot possibly mount a credible threat of war at this point even if it wanted to (which it does not). After the loss of will in Iraq, I’m not sure any future administration can do so.

[NOTE: More about the Iraq War, WMDs, and the rewriting of history here.]

The band that just walked away, Renee (Part II: the lyrics)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I here.]

Whatever was I talking about when I said that the lyrics of “Walk Away, Renee” were poetry? You might think the lyrics aren’t so special; just the usual rock pap. But bear with me and see whether you end up changing your mind.

First, let’s take a look:

And when I see the sign that points one way
The lot we used to pass by every day

CHORUS 1:
Just walk away, Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You’re not to blame

From deep inside the tears that I’m forced to cry
From deep inside the pain that I chose to hide

CHORUS 2:
Just walk away, Renee
You won’t see me follow you back home
Now as the rain beats down upon my weary eyes,
For me it cries

CHORUS 2 repeat

Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall
Still find a way to haunt me though they’re so small

CHORUS 1 repeat

The situation could hardly be more commonplace for a song—the pain of a breakup—and this helps us empathize with the singer. But it’s the specifics here (the girl’s name, the urban setting and images, and the singer’s complicated emotional response—the tension between his feelings of self-pity and his resigned and stoic detachment from it) that are unique and arresting.

From the very first word the lyrics are unusual; is there another song that begins in the middle of a sentence with the word “and?” If so, I can’t think of it. And yet it’s a remarkably effective device, making it seem as though the listener is almost eavesdropping, breaking into the young man’s fragmented private thoughts.

The image in that very first line—a one-way street sign—reminds us that, no matter what we might wish after a love is lost, time’s arrow only goes in one direction: forward. It also plunges us into the song’s setting—an urban street—all in just a few parsimonious words.

Then there’s the second line of the song: “the lot we used to pass by every day.” In a way it’s a ho-hum thought: the jilted lover remembers the places the couple used to go. But why in this song does he mention a lot, and not something more attractive and conventionally sentimental? In a city the word usually refers to a vacant lot, and this image conjures up the idea of the emptiness associated with the loss of Renee, to be echoed later in the chorus with its “empty sidewalks.”

It’s also in that chorus where we learn that, despite the singer’s longing, he’s much stronger than we might expect: “you won’t see me follow you back home.” No stalker, he! And then we’re informed that, not only is this singer stronger than in the ordinary breakup song, he’s devoid of the usual anger or self-pity, and more mature in his acceptance and even forgiveness: “you’re not to blame.”

Next the chorus grabs us with the hook: the “away/Renee” rhyme, which combined with the melancholy melody has made for so many irresistible earworms over the years.

The second verse, like the first, begins in the middle of a phrase (“From deep inside”), and then offers some truncated images and fragments again, this time involving another cliche: tears and pain. Could anything be more ordinary in a song about a breakup? But once again, this singer has something unexpected up his sleeve. He’s not just crying, he’s fighting it: he’s forced to cry these tears against his will.

In the second chorus he adds another seeming cliche: the rain falls on his weary (rhymes with the unvoiced but implied word “teary”) eyes. Next, in a fine and compact example of the pathetic fallacy, the weather expresses his sorrow, described in the succinct phrase “for me it cries.”

We think we hear another cliched image in the last verse: the singer sees the former lovers’ names inscribed within a heart. But, contrary to our expectations, they’re not carved into a tree, they’re graffiti drawn on a wall. There’s that urban setting again. The drawing of the heart with the names is active and almost sentient (it “finds” a way to haunt him), while the singer remains passive and acted upon. And in that verse’s final line, he tries bravely but unsuccessfully to minimize the entire episode and keep the pain under control again and save himself from maudlin excess: “though they’re so small.”

Brown, Martin, Sansone, and all the rest (including Renee herself) seem to have walked away from their brief bolt of fame and fortune. Or perhaps fame and fortune walked away from them. But “Walk Away Renee” lives on, an unexpected masterpiece that seemed to have come out of nowhere to visit its youthful creators. A mysterious miracle.

[NOTE: There are a great many cover versions of Renee on YouTube; most of them seem quite inferior to me. The Four Tops had a popular one, but I don’t much care for it, although it’s better than most. But it’s not quite plaintive enough.

Here’s a strange and surprisingly affecting version with Cyndi Lauper; it’s plenty plaintive, all right. The guy with her gets that first line wrong in a way that’s rather common; he says “light” instead of “lot.” But I really like her voice on the chorus:

And here’s more of the real on-again off-again history of Brown and the band.]