Last call for donations this cycle [scroll down for today’s new posts]

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Once again, I offer a huge “thank you!” to every single person who has contributed so far, and to all those who contribute at other times of year. I am so very grateful to you all, and to all the readers and commenters here.

If anyone wants to contribute to thenewneo, just click on the Paypal button either to the right or at the bottom of the page, depending on what sort of device you use when reading the blog. If the Paypal button isn’t showing, disable your adblocker and that should make it visible.

Mickey Thomas explains how he learned to sing

The New Neo Posted on by

On the song “Fooled Around and Fell In Love,” which I highlighted in this post, I couldn’t help but notice the strong gospel flavor of lead singer Mickey Thomas’ rendition. There’s no question that’s one of the elements that made the song so special. And he does it so effortlessly; never show-offy, unlike so many singers who put a lot of embellishment into their work. It just seems natural when he does it. He’s a white male Aretha Franklin, which may sound like a ridiculous claim, but not when you hear him.

I figured he just always could sing that way. But he swears he couldn’t. He tells the story here, and it’s a great one.

Here’s one of his live performances:

The song lyrics are a great hook, too. The repetition and emphasis on “fooled around and fell in love” highlights the surprise of it. A player, a user, discovers to his shock that there’s this one special woman who calls forth a different response from him: love. Some listeners think it means he gets his comeuppance and gets shafted by this woman, but I don’t see that at all. He looks way too happy. I think it’s the real thing.

Call me romantic.

Trump the dissident; Trump the performer

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting piece by someone who doesn’t appear to be a Trump supporter:

… [W]hile I don’t think Trump is a dissident now, he is once again playing the role. He has millions who see him as unjustly persecuted for his politics, and a movement based on the premise of political persecution is already in gear.

The writer sees the whole thing as performative, just a role Trump is playing, rather than the real thing. It strikes me, and not for the first time, that anti-Trump forces, whether on left or right or in the middle, see him as an actor and ignore the very very real forces arrayed against him that have in fact politically persecuted him and to which he might indeed be sincerely reacting. Russiagate and the Steele dossier are undeniable examples, given the facts.

It also strikes me that, at least for the left, perhaps they think Trump is merely acting because so many of their own positions are performative roles that they play. I also think it’s relevant that one of the big charges from Jack Smith and in the Georgia case is the idea that Trump was merely pretending to think he won the 2020 election when in fact he knew he’d lost it.

Anyone who has studied Trump should be quite aware that it is highly likely he really thinks he won that election. I also wonder, in 2016 when all those Democrats were whining that the real election winner had been Hillary, whether they actually thought that was true or whether they were just saying it for effect. My guess is the latter.

Liars and pretenders often assume that everyone else is doing the same thing and playing the same game.

Another Draconian sentence for J6 participants

The New Neo Posted on by

Two of the Proud Boys are sentenced, one to 17 years and one to 15 years:

Two former leaders of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group were sentenced to more than a decade each in prison Thursday for spearheading an attack on the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 presidential election.

Note the way that’s written – an attack on the Capitol.

Rehl, Biggs, Tarrio and Nordean were convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy, a rarely brought Civil War-era offense…

Federal prosecutors had recommended a 33-year prison sentence for Biggs, who helped lead dozens of Proud Boys members and associates in marching to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Biggs and other Proud Boys joined the mob that broke through police lines and forced lawmakers to flee, disrupting the joint session of Congress for certifying the electoral victory by Biden, a Democrat. …

“That day broke our tradition of peacefully transferring power, which is among the most precious things that we had as Americans,” the judge said, emphasizing that he was using the past tense in light of how Jan. 6 affected the process.

Defense attorneys argued that the Justice Department was unfairly holding their clients responsible for the violent actions of others in the crowd of Trump supporters at the Capitol.

Perhaps the judge slept through the 2016 riots in DC on Inauguration Day, and the constant challenges to Trump’s election, as well as the soft coup to try to remove him from office through lies supported by agencies such as the FBI.

What did Biggs actually do? As far as I can tell from the article, it was this:

Biggs “acted as the tip of the spear” during the attack, prosecutors said in a court filing. He tore down a fence and charged up scaffolding before entering the Capitol. He left the Capitol but reentered the building and went to the Senate chamber.

As for Rehl:

For Rehl, who also helped lead Proud Boys, prosecutors asked for a 30-year prison sentence. He was seen on video spraying a chemical irritant at law enforcement officers outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, but he repeatedly lied about that assault while he testified at his trial, said prosecutor Erik Kenerson. “He tried to craft a narrative to fit the evidence and he was caught,” Kenerson said.

Rehl also led at least three other men into the Capitol and into a senator’s office, where he smoked and posed for pictures while flashing the Proud Boys’ hand gesture, prosecutors said in court documents.

“Rehl led an army to attempt to stop the certification proceeding, was proud that they got as close as they did, and his only regret in the immediate aftermath was that they did not go further,” they wrote in a court filing.

Kelly read from some of the “chilling” messages Rehl sent after Jan. 6, including one, the judge said, that read, “Everyone should have showed up armed and taken the country back the right way.” The judge shook his head and said, “I mean, my God.”

I mean, thoughtcrime – what he wished he’d done but didn’t do. And, smoking and posing for pictures while flashing the Proud Boys’ hand gesture? Throw the book at him!

And both defendants have been incarcerated already for two and a half years.

The long pre-trial incarcerations, and the length of these sentences, are obviously and egregiously unfair. But that’s the point: to send a message so that no one on the right dare ever do something similar again.

These are the last few days of my donations drive [BUMPED UP: Please scroll down for today’s new posts]

The New Neo Posted on by

I offer a big “thank you!” to every single person who has contributed so far, and to all those who contribute at other times of year. I am so very grateful to you all, and to all the readers and commenters here. I’ll keep this up for a couple more days, and then it will go into hiding for a while.

If anyone wants to contribute to thenewneo, just click on the Paypal button either to the right or at the bottom of the page, depending on what sort of device you use when reading the blog. If the Paypal button is not showing, disable your adblocker and that should make it visible.

On the King James Version of the Bible

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[NOTE: Today I was going to write about the usual political brouhaha, depressing though it is. But I found myself dragging my heels – not only because the news isn’t pleasant, but also because I had to deal with some other stuff. For example, my ex has been engaged in clearing out a storage unit he’s had since our divorce close to twenty years ago, and we have a few pieces of antique furniture there that we’re trying to unload. I already knew that antique furniture is now quite unpopular, natch. But I figure it’s worth at least something to someone. So I was getting some expert advice on what to do about that.

Then a friend called, and I was happy to talk to her for far longer than I’d planned. And when I returned to my trusty computer and put up my previous post – about poetry, sparked by something commenters said in today’s open thread – I found that I still didn’t want to write about politics today.

Then I noticed a discussion in that same open thread about the King James version of the Bible, and I remembered I’d dealt with that in an older post. So here it is again, very slightly edited. It first appeared here back in 2008.]

As a child who loved poetry, I memorized it almost without intending to. Just a few readings of a poem I liked and its cadences seemed to stick in my brain. Lines and phrases came to me at odd times and repeated themselves, the way song lyrics often do.

The best of them had a strange and hypnotic power. As I got older they took on meanings and subtleties I hadn’t understood as a child. But I had always understood the beauty of the words and the way they fit together, sound complementing sense.

The same was true of certain prayers and Bible passages—the Psalms, for instance, which I knew were also poems, although they didn’t rhyme.

Their language was archaic. I learned the King James Version, even though I didn’t know at the time that it was called that. But it was easy to understand, not hard at all. And to me, all those “thys” and “thous” and “eths” and “ests” made it seem as though the psalms came not from the olden days, but from a place beyond and outside of time.

Then I went to a service that used a revised and modernized version of the Bible. I could still recognize the prayers and psalms, but now they had a jarring pedestrian quality, almost like a Dick and Jane reader. I was still relatively young, but even then I felt the tug of nostalgia for the beautiful language of the past, despite the fact that I couldn’t articulate what was missing or why I minded so much.

Well, maybe now I can articulate it. Here’s the 23rd Psalm in the King James Version:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

And here’s the same 23rd Psalm in the New American Standard version, written in 1971 with the twin goals of translational accuracy and modernization of the language.

It’s not necessarily identical with the first new version I encountered. But it’s typical of versions that make changes that are relatively minimal and yet still seem to me to represent a loss, however slight, of something very beautiful that was part of what made the earlier version so compelling. Is that loss compensated for by any gain in accessibility or authenticity? You be the judge:

The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness
For His name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

It doesn’t take too many liberties with the older version, not really. Mostly it clears out the “thous,” and substitutes the modern “you,” in addition to removing the archaic endings from the verbs. So it oughtn’t to be so bad, right? And yet, and yet … it feels so much flatter, although you may disagree.

The revisers have made a few other changes that seem to me to be gratuitous, although I imagine they have something to do with translating more literally and correctly from the original Hebrew (of which I understand only a few words, although I’ve heard it’s the very best way of all to appreciate the splendor and poetry of the work, as well as its meaning).

There are a couple of changes that jump out at me in jarring fashion. I feel something akin to a pang at the missing words and phrases, and come close to wincing at the additions.

Why oh why, in line 4 (corresponding to line 2 in the older version), are the waters described as “quiet” instead of “still?” Surely the phrases indicate close to the same thing in English, but “still” has the added virtue of conjuring up other references such as “still waters run deep,” as well as the repetitive “s” sound that harmonically resonates with the “s” at the end of the word “waters” and the one in the middle of “beside.” That’s poetry.

Then there’s the worst offense of all, at least to my ears: the omission of the word “Yea” in line 4 of the old version (it would be line 8 in the new). “Yea” was a great change of pace, a dramatic stopping point where the rhythmic variation of the unstressed and stressed syllables stood still for a moment, like a rest in music, before charging forward again. It worked as wonderful emphasis: yes, indeed; hear hear!

The substitution of “Even though” for “Yea, though” not only fails to serve this rhythmic function, it doesn’t even have the same meaning. “Yea” is an affirmation and an emphasis, underlining the thought to follow. The “even” is weak, tentative: “despite the fact that I walk through the valley … ”

I can’t imagine anyone caring quite the same way about the newer version as the older one. It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to memorize it for the sheer beauty of it, although some of the poetry still comes through. Perhaps there’s even someone who prefers it, just as there are people who prefer frozen french fries to the real thing. But that someone isn’t me.

The changes for the sake of accuracy seem so minimal that I can’t believe they make much of a difference, although in some other parts of the Bible that may be more important. I say keep the important ones and ditch the rest.

I challenge anyone to prefer an even newer version, though, one that departs far more from King James. It’s called the Contemporary English Version, written in 1995 with the purpose of simplicity and ease of reading:

You, LORD, are my shepherd.
I will never be in need.
You let me rest in fields
of green grass.
You lead me to streams
of peaceful water,
and you refresh my life.
You are true to your name,
and you lead me
along the right paths.
I may walk through valleys
as dark as death,
but I won’t be afraid.
You are with me,
and your shepherd’s rod makes me feel safe.
You treat me to a feast,
while my enemies watch.
You honor me as your guest,
and you fill my cup
until it overflows.
Your kindness and love
will always be with me
each day of my life,
and I will live forever
in your house, LORD.

One might just as well call it the Hallmark greeting card version and be done with it. Or maybe it’s the “You Light Up My Life” version.

This version simplifies to the point of boredom. Nearly all the things that make the first (and even the second, to a certain extent) version uniquely vivid are blanded out. I have no idea why the water is now “peaceful,” for example, but it’s certainly the most dull choice of the three.

But perhaps the worst offense in the passage is totally eliminating the specificity of the image of anointing the speaker’s head with oil, substituting instead the generic and soporific (big yawn) “You honor me as your guest.” Yes, I get the reason: the meaning of the ritual, along with all its rich associations, has been lost. But I don’t think it’s that difficult to guess at in context or to teach, even for a child. For what shall it profit a religious text, if it shall gain a small modicum of enhanced comprehensibility, and lose its own power?

The King James Bible was once new and modern, I suppose, back in the early 1600s when it was first written. But there’s a reason why it’s so popular and has stood the test of time: it’s a masterpiece (and wonder of wonders, it’s a masterpiece produced by a committee).

And yet the urge to improve on the King James Version is nearly irresistible, it seems. There are no fewer than twenty other English-language versions listed at the BibleGateway site, and no doubt there are more on the way. That’s progress for you.

September 1, 1939

The New Neo Posted on by

In an earlier post today, commenter “PA Cat” writes this:

Today marks the 84th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland that is usually considered the beginning of WWII. I went back to look at a poem by W.H. Auden associated with that date, namely “September 1, 1939.” The first stanza reads as follows:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

The poem is interesting for several reasons, one being its revival following 9/11. As Ian Sansom notes, ” . . . in the aftermath of 9/11, many American newspapers reprinted Auden’s poem in its entirety: it was widely circulated and discussed online and in print. It seemed prophetic, wise and relevant, almost too good to be true. This is partly because it mentions September and New York, circulating fears, and the unmentionable odour of death, all in its first stanza. It was the right poem, in the right place, for a wrong time.”

The other reason why the poem is interesting is that Auden later disowned it, stating that “The whole poem, I realized, was infected with an incurable dishonesty – and must be scrapped.” He refused to have it included in anthologies of his poetry, but readers have persisted in reviving the poem again and again. Sansom goes on to describe “September 1, 1939” as “the world’s greatest zombie poem. It won’t die – and never will – because people want it to be true. . . .

Later in the thread, commenter “IrishOtter49” asks a good question: “Why did Auden dislike his own poem?”

I recall reading about that once, and although I can’t find the essay where I found it, I located this, which is in agreement with what I recall:

… [P]erhaps Auden wouldn’t be surprised that “September 1, 1939,” a poem he essentially disowned, is one of his best remembered. Penned to mark the outbreak of World War II, the poem had a renewed profile after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Auden came to dislike “September 1, 1939,” especially its much-quoted assertion, “We must love one another or die.” The line later seemed nonsensical to him, since people must ultimately die regardless of their actions.

The line that is probably best remembered is the one Auden disliked the most, perhaps for reasons having to do with logic – we all die anyway – but I believe he also may have found it somewhat trite and pat. I’m guessing at that part. I think he was too hard on himself about this, because if the line is interpreted as referring to humanity as a whole rather than the individual, it’s dealing with something different: can humans survive without love, or will hatred take over and destroy us?

In this, the line is a bit like the famous – and often-reviled or mocked – state motto of New Hampshire, “Live Free or Die.” Yes, we die either way, free or in slavery. But the motto is saying that the speaker chooses freedom over fear of death, and is willing to die for freedom. That’s a different message than in Auden’s poem, which I’m pretty sure is not saying that we should be willing to die for love. But “or die” is a way of saying something else, even though “or” is not really a choice for humans about dying; it’s always “and.” Part of the question is also, “how we will live and how will we die, and when?” as well as “how many of us will die for lack of this precious thing?”

Auden may have had a more personal reason to dislike his poem as well, although this is just another guess on my part. Note that the poem’s narrator is placed in New York. Auden was British, but he had moved to America in 1939. From the link:

Others couldn’t help noticing that his departure coincided with the start of Britain’s ordeal in World War II. Novelist Evelyn Waugh would later claim that Auden had left “at the first squeak of an air-raid warning.”

His absence from England even came up in the British Parliament, although the government took no action against him. “In Britain,” says Carpenter, “some of those left-wing intellectuals who had supported and admired Auden during the 1930s were beginning to be shocked by his decision to remain in America.”

Auden, Carpenter concludes, “does not seem to have faced the question whether he had a moral duty to help, however trivially, in the fight against Hitler.”

“In Auden’s case,” Smith writes of Auden’s move to America, “it was probably not cowardice: Those who knew him are firm in their rejection of that charge.”

That entire era, and the controversy of his move, might not have created the most pleasant memories in Auden. At any rate, the poet doesn’t own his own poem. The world is free to make what it will of it, and the world’s verdict is that it is good.

My favorite part has never been that line. It’s the last stanza:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

And in the non-poetry realm, on Hitler’s invasion of Poland:

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. To justify the action, Nazi propagandists accused Poland of persecuting ethnic Germans living in Poland. They also falsely claimed that Poland was planning, with its allies Great Britain and France, to encircle and dismember Germany. The SS, in collusion with the German military, staged a phony attack on a German radio station. The Germans falsely accused the Poles of this attack. Hitler then used the action to launch a “retaliatory” campaign against Poland.

And a couple of weeks later, the Soviets came in from the east in accord with Hitler and Stalin’s pact.

Switching back to poetry and the subject of love, Edna St. Vincent Millay has something to say on a personal level. I’ll let her have the last word:

I noticed today, as is so often the case, …

The New Neo Posted on by

… that my posts are all about the law as a tool of politics. So much of what goes on between left and right in this country today occurs through that mechanism. That’s why the leftist slant of law schools that really picked up steam in the 1980s and 1990s has been such an important part of the Gramscian march, really its cornerstone (yes; I know that’s a mixed metaphor).