Now home-cooked dinners are a “tyranny”

The New Neo Posted on by

According to this article in Slate, some researchers have found that home-cooked meals aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

They’re not cheap, it’s hard to get the family together, and the wretched louts seem ungrateful for the effort:

Beyond just the time and money constraints, women find that their very own families present a major obstacle to their desire to provide diverse, home-cooked meals. The women interviewed faced not just children but grown adults who are whiny, picky, and ungrateful for their efforts. “We rarely observed a meal in which at least one family member didn’t complain about the food they were served,” the researchers write.

There used to be something called manners, a quaint little custom that forbid that sort of behavior, and was even practiced sometimes by people within the hearts of their own families. Not that complaints didn’t occur, of course; I certainly complained about particular meals served to me as a child, particularly the dread tongue.

I have written about my own experience of family meals in general and of tongue in particular, here:

But sharing that image [of a large cow tongue] can’t begin to convey what it was actually like to confront beef tongue as it was regularly served in my home: attached to part of the jawbone. I was not allowed to leave the table, so I erected a barrier to block the grisly sight. The tall water pitcher was pressed into service, as well as the bowls of mashed potatoes and green beans. According to Wikipedia, beef tongue is””or was””popular in families of German origin, and so it was my mother’s German side of the family that I blame.

Note that “I was not allowed to leave the table” part; you stayed there until you were dismissed, although you could ask for permission. Once a child has had a meal of tongue-attached-to-the-jawbone to complain about, everything else seemed like gravy (which I also didn’t much care for).

Fortunately, for the most part the meals in my family were plain but very tasty. But those were hardly the only benefits:

I’ll go on to say that it’s my impression that the family meal has far greater benefits then mere improved nutrition, tongue or no tongue (and, by the way, tongue probably wouldn’t come under the heading of healthful food nowadays, since according to Wiki it’s about 75% fat). Eating together doesn’t necessarily make a family happy together, but at least it forces them to interact and to know a bit about each other.

I’ve encountered many families who take their meals as separate individuals. Sometimes it’s a scheduling thing, but sometimes it’s just the path of least resistance in a family whose members are already so uncomfortable in each others’ presence that they’d rather avoid close encounters of any kind. But my totally unscientific observation is that the act of eating separately tends to cause even more estrangement.

My family had its share of problems, and our meals sometimes ended in yelling and/or tears. But mealtime was the time when we most felt like a family, and just as often there was a lot of laughter. Come to think of it, sometimes political discussions would happen at the dinner table as well, perhaps fostering the development of the future blogger in me””one had to learn to defend one’s position with a certain amount of logic and grace.

I remember those meals very fondly, and tried my best to recreate them for my own family. And I have to say, although I knew other families where everyone complained to the cook about the meals, my own husband and son were princes in that regard. They loved and appreciated everything that came to the table.

Indeed

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a good question:

Is there anyone or anything in the world that hasn’t taken advantage of Obama’s weakness? Even domestically we’re getting gangs involved in trafficking over the southern border. And around the rest of the world, raw, brute power is deciding the future shape of countries, while Obama muses on the role of social media in informing us of world disasters, or, err, “messiness”, that are in no way his fault.

And here’s an even better reply:

“Is there anyone or anything in the world that hasn’t taken advantage of Obama’s weakness?”

The GOP?

John Quincy Adams: on Islam

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are excerpts from some essays written in 1830 by John Quincy Adams:

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. …He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between [Islam and Christianity]…a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him…(Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.)….

The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force (Blunt, 29:274)…

The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion, is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies. There is no denomination of Christians, which denies or misunderstands this doctrine. All understand it alike””all acknowledge its obligations; and however imperfectly, in the purposes of Divine Providence, its efficacy has been shown in the practice of Christians, it has not been wholly inoperative upon them…The unqualified acknowledgement of a duty does not, indeed, suffice to insure its performance. Hatred is yet a passion, but too powerful upon the hearts of Christians. Yet they cannot indulge it, except by the sacrifice of their principles, and the conscious violation of their duties. No state paper from a Christian hand, could, without trampling the precepts of its Lord and Master, have commenced by an open proclamation of hatred to any portion of the human race. The Ottoman lays it down as the foundation of his discourse…(Blunt, 29:300, emp. added).

Written, as I said, in 1830, and completely un-PC. Unfortunately, events that have transpired between then and now have borne out its truth.

Have you noticed…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the rash of MSM editorials and pundits and even politicians on the liberalish side saying that Obama has no effective foreign policy, and counseling him to man up?

Where were they years ago? Praising him to the skies. And it’s not that he was doing anything different, it’s just that his chickens hadn’t come home to roost.

Nor will you read any mea culpas on their part. And they will not be supporting Republicans any time soon, either. No, their criticism is rooted in anger at what they see as Obama’s incompetence, and the fact that they were duped on that score. In the great “knave or fool” debate, they are now edging towards “fool.” They will never see the answer as “knave.”

That’s because they are either fools or knaves. Perhaps an equal sprinkling of each among the lackeys of the MSM? Among the politicians, knaves strongly predominate.

Andrew Madoff, RIP

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of you who follow this blog know that I’ve said from the start that I don’t think Bernie Madoff’s sons were guilty, and that they were among Madoff’s biggest victims because he stole their good name from them as he duped them. They endured the horror of suddenly realizing the magnitude of what he had done, and of having to turn their own father in to the authorities, only to have the world believe them guilty of complicity in his crimes.

Many readers considered me a naive dupe myself for saying I believed them not guilty (my posts and comments on the subject are here, here, and here). Of course they were guilty; why couldn’t I see that? But since the scandal first came out, not a scintilla of credible evidence of their guilt has emerged, despite lawsuits and an intense search to find it. Everything I have read—and I’ve read plenty—has only solidified my opinion that they were innocent victims of their sociopathic father.

One of the worst developments in the family saga was the 2010 suicide of Madoff’s son Mark, which I wrote about here. It was ironic that, of Madoff’s two sons, it was Mark who was physically healthy and his brother Andrew who had suffered from cancer in 2003 and achieved a remission. Now comes the news that Andrew has died of that cancer at the age of 48:

In 2013, a judge in England dismissed a case against Mark and Andrew Madoff, ruling that they neither “knew of, or suspected, the fraud” and that “their honesty and integrity has been vindicated.”

Diana B. Henriques, a reporter who covered the Madoff case for the New York Times, noted in her 2011 book about the story, “The Wizard of Lies,” that if the sons were guilty, they might have fled – and that they had not.

“From the very beginning of this whole episode,” Andrew Madoff told Safer, “˜I’ve been eager, I would say almost desperate, to speak out publicly and tell people that I’m absolutely not involved.”

So now both Madoff offspring are dead. Andrew was the one who had stopped talking with his mother because she had initially supported the father, although Andrew finally began talking to her again after his brother committed suicide and she repudiated her husband.

Andrew also referred to what happened as a “father-son betrayal of biblical proportions.” I agree wholeheartedly. I would add that there are some Greek tragedies with happier endings than this.

“Honey, I love you so much…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that I’m going to get another wife.”

The kid in this video is one smart cookie. He’s making logical sense, and advancing the argument that so many little children secretly (and not so secretly, although most are not so startlingly articulate about it) think when told they’re going to get a new baby sibling: Why do you want another? Aren’t I good enough for you?

[Hat tip: Ace.]

The theater of evil: masks and guilt

The New Neo Posted on by

I notice that Dexter Filkins at the New Yorker agrees with me on the first motive I listed for the perpetrators of the Foley and Sotloff beheadings in my PJ piece, which is that the murderers enjoy these killings.

Filkins stops there, though, in his analysis. He remarks that the executioner in the James Foley video is wearing a mask, and adds:

Is it the mark of a warrior? Or is it the mark of a murderer who knows, deep in his soul, that he should be ashamed?

Filkins misses the fact that the answer for these perpetrators is probably “neither.” The key to a better answer is in Filkins’ employment of the word “executioner” to describe Foley’s murderer, a term that Filkins uses minus the scare quotes. The word actually appears twice in his article, once at the beginning and once at the end.

But these killings are actually more akin to an act of theater in which the murderer is dressed as though he were an executioner, an agent of the state who is merely carrying out the lawful decree of the courts against a person who has been judged guilty of a crime. A real executioner (not this pretend one) does not murder, although he kills.

This role-play enacted by the murderer of Foley and Sotloff is a mockery of a true execution. ISIS has not subjected their captives to the rule of law in a state, and it is these fake “executioners” who are the murderers. They are play-acting in an attempt to reverse that reality for the viewers, aping actual executioners by wearing their traditional costume—and, in the process, enhancing the theater by hiding (or at least attempting to hide) their identities and making themselves into the faceless bogymen of a child’s nightmare.

Filkins is thrusting his own morality on them, but they do not share his idea of who is guilty and who innocent. “Deep in their souls” they are unashamed. People with psychopathic tendencies do not share the common definition of shame, and these people are both psychopathic and religious fanatics who believe their cause is sacred.

Civilization and its enemies

The New Neo Posted on by

I remember reading some of Lee Harris’s essays post-9/11 and being impressed, but after that I lost track of him. So I missed his book Civilization and its Enemies: The Next Stage of History when it first came out in 2004.

2004 seems like a long time ago. And in a sense it is: ten years. But his book has only grown more topical every day.

I’m sorry to say that, because it’s not a book that offers a lot of comfort. But his writing is brilliant, so thoughtful and yet compressed that it’s one of those books where the reader would do well to pause every paragraph or so in order to contemplate and digest what has just been said.

Here’s an excerpt. In the passage that follows, Harris has previously defined his use of the word “ruthlessness” as meaning “dreadfulness, frightfulness, horror, horribleness, terror, terribleness, atrociousness, atrocity”:

…[T]he more the spirit of commerce triumphs, the closer mankind comes to dispensing with war, the nearer we approach the end of history, the greater are the rewards to those who decide to return to the path of war, and the easier it will be for them to conquer. There is nothing that can be done to change this fact; it is built into the structure of the world…

People who have been trained in the practice of civility, and who find it second nature, will be reluctant to challenge the conduct of another on the ground that he is lacking civility The ruthless party therefore knows that he will be able to push very far before a break point is openly acknowledged Because once the break point is acknowledged, all bets are off and you no longer can be sure of the next step.

Before the break point, the civil party thinks that the ruthless party can be accommodated to civilized standards by means of patience and forbearance, much in the same way that we might try to domesticate a feral animal. We are convinced we will bring him around. We attribute his ruthlessness to some defect in is psychology. Perhaps he has an inferiority complex and is acting out with us. (Who knows, he may have had a wicked stepfather somewhere in his childhood.) We may blame ruthlessness on someone’s religion or culture or economic status. We never dream of identifying it for what it is—a strategy that works.

Every society, every culture, every civilization has produced exponents of ruthlessness; none has a monopoly on it. None will ever find a way of eliminating those who are prepared to resort to ruthlessness, as long as it continues to work, and it will continue to work so long as men civilize themselves, and to work all the more effectively whenever a civilization has succeeded so well in its civilizing task that it believes itself within sight of the end of history, because at no time is ruthlessness more effective. It works in some cases because its victims are easy to cow, in some cases because they genuinely can’t fathom ruthlessness, and in some cases because their idealism refuses to countenance such an illiberal truth.

Harris’ point is not just about Islamic terrorism, although that was the impetus for his book and it fits it quite well. He is saying that in a world of civilized, peace-loving, westernized nations who have put aside their own ruthlessness or at least come to disapprove of it and be reluctant to use it, the ruthless group which is willing to stop at nothing will wield an inordinate amount of power, and that the rest of the world will be very slow to meet it with enough ruthlessness to stop it. The paradox is that, if we want to preserve a so-called civilized world, we must be prepared to be bloody-minded at times, and to remember the laws of the copybook headings:

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

I originally thought 9/11 was such a breaking point. Sometimes I think the rise of ISIS is another. But there is an excellent possibility that the western world has now become so “civilized,” and so resistant to thinking ill of others, that even ISIS is not enough to get us to defend ourselves and the civilization and civility we profess to prize.

Obama knew all about ISIS

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama not only knew about the rise of ISIS for a year, but he knew in detail:

President Obama was given detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of the Islamic State as part of his daily briefing for at least a year before the group seized large swaths of territory over the summer, a former Pentagon official told Fox News.

The official — who asked not to be identified because the President’s Daily Brief is considered the most authoritative, classified intelligence community product analyzing sensitive international events for the president — said the data was strong and “granular” in detail.

The source said a policymaker “could not come away with any other impression: This is getting bad.”

Perhaps he confused the briefings with social media, and therefore ignored them. Or maybe he just doesn’t follow the jayvee.

Either one could explain his lack of curiosity:

Incidentally, read further in the article and you’ll see that the President never asked for additional information about IS. He read the daily briefings, but apparently had no further questions he wanted to ask anyone about.

You know, the way curious, intellectually-lively people never ask questions about important and interesting things

Steven Sotloff beheaded by ISIS?

The New Neo Posted on by

A new video has been released purporting to show the beheading of journalist Steven Sotloff. In the James Foley video ISIS had claimed he would be next.

Although its authenticity has yet to be established, I would guess that it is exactly as stated, and that there will be more of a similar type to follow. As with Foley, Sotloff was forced to recite some claptrap for propaganda purposes, probably as a result of some extra threat or ruse by his captors. These verbal humiliations are part of the point for ISIS, in addition to the barbaric and evil method of death. The psychological and propaganda goals includes motivating anguished families to plead fruitlessly for mercy from the merciless ISIS prior to the murders of their loved ones.

May Steve Sotloff’s soul rest in peace, and may his family find some comfort for their wrenching and hideous pain. And may ISIS get what they deserve.