November 2010 prognostications

The New Neo Posted on by

All signs are that the majority in the House will change hands in November, although it’s best to advise against premature chicken-counting; Republicans are known for their ability to disappoint. And then, of course, there’s always the question of what they’ll be able and willing to do even if they win, and whether the Senate will come along for the ride.

But articles such as this one from Reid Wilson, who tries to reassure the Democratic troops that the Republicans haven’t really got much of a chance of victory in November of 2010, are the equivalent of whistling past the graveyard. He quotes unnamed “senior Democratic strategists” as saying they’re “not only likely to keep the House, but they believe the GOP won’t come close to gaining the 39 seats they need to take over.”

Hmmm, I wonder what Wilson and those strategists are smoking (as someone writes in the comments there, it must be hopium).

Wilson’s article, and others like it, may be an attempt at keeping Democratic voters motivated. After all, if they are so disheartened they don’t even go to the polls, then there’s no chance of stopping the Republicans. In private, it’s more likely that those Democratic strategists are whistling a different tune, however:

Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.

In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.

They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover ”” or that anything resembling the White House’s promise of a “recovery summer” is under way…

I wonder why they ever believed the markets would recover in time. It’s been rather clear for quite a while that they were unlikely to. After all, it’s not as though this administration or this Congress has been doing anything different that would be expected to change things.

For members of Congress,it’s the old “fool vs. knave” question: are they really that economically ignorant, or are they out to sabotage the economy in a Cloward-Piven-like maneuver? And if the latter, why would they think re-election would be their reward? Come to think of it, though, the true believers such as Nancy Pelosi are probably safe in their ultra-blue districts, even if the country goes down the tubes.

Parents and college freshmen: the long goodbye

The New Neo Posted on by

Colleges are increasingly feeling the need to gently nudge parents of incoming freshman to take their leave of the campus, lest the older generation take up residence more permanently there, the better to breathe down the necks of their offspring.

Freshman orientations at many colleges now often include a schedule that specifically mentions that the rest of the activities are for students only. Some have even instituted staged and formalized ceremonial leave-takings.

It seems that the current crop of parents are so heavily involved with their children that it’s hard to say goodbye. Years of arranging playdates and chauffeuring and tutoring for college boards create a situation in which going away to college looms almost as large an empty nest watershed in parents’ lives as the subsequent marriage of their offspring eventually does.

Of course, if the economy continues on its current course, they may see their grown-up children again in four years, up close and personal, as they move back home with mom and dad (or mom or dad, or mom and mom, or dad and dad, or mom and stepdad, or dad and stepmom, or…you get the idea) in order to save money.

But for the parents of college freshman, that prospect seems far away. What’s real right now is the wrenching goodbye that looms large and closer. Family therapists refer to it as “launching,” and know that it can be a huge turning point for parents who find it hard to let go.

And, lest you think I’m insufficiently sympathetic, let me just say that I found it a hard rite of passage, too—both as a seventeen-year-old college freshman, and as an (age-undisclosed) parent of an eighteen-year-old college freshman. The first occasion left me standing in a virtually empty dorm room, facing a roommate who was a total stranger, and with a sinking, empty feeling, knowing almost no one at the college I had chosen seemingly at random, in a far-off town in a far-off state. I made friends soon enough, but the memory of that day has never left me.

Nor have I forgotten saying goodbye to my own wonderful son (and only child) on a beautiful sunny afternoon, standing on the campus of another university, in another time and place. That leave-taking also coincided with the end of my long marriage—and both my husband and I knew it, adding to the poignancy.

There were no ceremonies except hugs, and then the turning and walking away, knowing that now we needed to trust that all the love and care we’d placed in our son would bear fruit once he was on his own.

And you know what? So far, it has. But the tears we shed that day (and tried to hide) were not for him; they were for us.

The Alaska Republican Senate primary results

The New Neo Posted on by

Uncertain.

But it is clear that Miller might just be the winner, although the final results won’t be known for about a week..

And another thing that’s clear is that Sarah Palin can really pick em. At least so far.

Miller has already done better than polls suggested he would, and certainly better than the left predicted. Was this also one of those anti-incumbent votes? After all, Murkowski is the current senator from the state. My guess is that the incumbency factor was part of it, but hardly the whole part.

Tiger Woods’s ex-wife Elin Nordegren speaks…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and she divulges that:

…[She] was as surprised as most of the rest of the world that the persona Woods put forth ”“ dedicated competitor, family man ”“ was a carefully constructed sham. “I’m so embarassed that I never suspected [his affairs] ”“ not a one,” she said.

My guess is that a lot of people might read that and say, “What a dummy. Of course she should have known! There are always clues!”

And to them I respond, “No. She. Shouldn’t. No. There. Aren’t.”

Sometimes there are clues, and spouses close their eyes to the evidence before them because they don’t want to face it. But sometimes cheaters are con-artist masters at the game. Sometimes they cover their tracks in such a way that, even if their spouse were Sherlock Holmes, suspicion would not be raised (okay; maybe Sherlock would figure it out, but nobody else).

Tiger may have been just this variety of cheat.

That sleepy “sl”

The New Neo Posted on by

I was talking to a friend the other day and the word “scurry” came up, as in “we’ve got to scurry out of here.” I joked that a better word would be “skedaddle,” and maybe even “scoot” or “scram.”

And then I realized that all these words start with the same phoneme, the “sk”sound. That led to thinking of others in the same category: scat, scramble, scamper, skitter, scutter.

It’s probably no coincidence; the “sk” sound has a quick and percussive quality. Sometimes the sound of a word fits its meaning and sometimes it doesn’t, but these certainly seem to.

And then there’s “sl,” very different from “sk.” Its sound is lazy, loose, slow, and it engenders sleepy, slurred, sluggish, slothful, sleepy, and slumber.

And now I must skedaddle, or be accused of slacking off!

Maine and New Hampshire diverge

The New Neo Posted on by

Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man—a book about the Great Depression—applies herself to the economic differences between Maine and New Hampshire today.

As a New Englander, I know these two states (and Vermont and Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island) fairly well. Outsiders may consider all these states somewhat similar (they’ve got lakes! they’ve got pretty autumn leaves! they’ve got village greens!), but they are not. New Hampshire has the distinction of being less liberal than the others; it’s more or less purple right now, with the others being blue (or perhaps even indigo).

But right after WWII, Maine and New Hampshire were very similar to each other in demographics and fiscal policies, with Maine slightly ahead in some respects. Then they diverged, as Shlaes points out (based on a study by J. Scott Moody of Public Choice Analytics):

At the end of World War II, Maine boasted a bigger economy and a bigger population than New Hampshire. In some other respects the two states were similar. They were both in New England, and both were struggling with the death of old industries such as textiles. In 1946, per capita income was $9,610 and $9,768 for Maine and New Hampshire, respectively…

Back in 1946, only 16.6 percent of what Maine residents earned or collected came from a government, federal, state or local. For New Hampshire, that rate was 18.4 percent. Neither state had an income tax or a sales tax. Then the divergence started.

Then Maine began to tax its citizens much more heavily than New Hampshire did, so much so that now Maine residents’ tax burden ranks 6th nationally to New Hampshire’s 49th, and more residents rely on public sector income. It shows in the results: New Hampshire is doing significantly better than Maine economically, as just about every sentient being in New England is aware.

[NOTE: No doubt someone, somewhere, will try to say these differences are due to factors other than economic policies such as taxation. And it may even be true for all I know; life does not lend itself to absolute certainty in such matters, because the variables are numerous and cannot be controlled. But the argument that Moody and Shlaes advance that fiscal policies made a big difference seems fairly compelling to me.]

Richard Fernandez on the professional left

The New Neo Posted on by

Brilliant, as usual:

The professional structure of the Left eventually creates a common organizational culture. One of the reasons that the Left does so well working with foreign intelligence agencies, Islamic extremists and even criminal syndicates and crooked unions is that they architectured like them. The Left has a version of every process a conspiratorial organization possesses. From rites of initiation ”” which may consist in the case of menial, repetitive tasks like selling the Daily Worker at a streetcorner to ”˜making their bones’ the Left has a conveyor belt geared towards controlling admission into a cherished inner sanctum. It is a process that appeals naturally to snobs…

Because the Left partakes in the internal structures of power they are not going away soon; certainly not in 2010 or 2012. The Left is baked into the system…The disquiet created by the information revolution stems from the fact that it has allowed the “amateurs” to briefly glimpse the professionals at work, perhaps for the first time in their lives…

America was conceived as an experiment in creating a land run for amateurs. The Founding Fathers appear to have taken the view that the Towers of Power would always be with us, but attempted to keep them low. They tried craft a society in which the power of elites would limited, with no established religions; no runaway central authority; hedged with prohibitions on government. It was an attempt to enshrine amateurism as a means of pre-empting the establishment of Byzantine structures that would eventually encrust the majority will with their own agendas. One of the reasons for the reaction against President Obama’s agenda is the perception that the elites are about to succeed, perhaps forever; that the experiment of July 4, 1776 is at an end…

…[A]ll true revolutions are attempts to assert the primacy of the ordinary and of the individual over the powers and principalities of the world. In practice most revolution is not about the wretched of the earth overthrowing their masters. It is about the ordinary man trying to keep from being told what to do by self-appointed and highly paid busybodies. It is a struggle that will probably continue to the end of the human race between those with the will to rule; and on the other hand those who simply wish to to be left alone. The most revolutionary thing in the world is to try to live your life as you want to.

How low can Obama go?

The New Neo Posted on by

Pretty darn low.

But not low enough, IMHO. Not near low enough.

Then again, there’s this report from The Anchoress:

One of my husband’s friends–”“hated Bush, loved Obama and defended him vociferously for the first year, less passionately the second”“–told him over lunch this week that he’s done with Obama and “I never thought I’d say this but I miss Bush. We knew that he said what he meant, even if we didn’t want to hear it. We knew who he was, even if we didn’t like him. And we never had to wonder whether he liked us. He always did.”

Encouraging.

The real “metastasized anti-Semitism”

The New Neo Posted on by

Daisy Kahn, one of the developers of the 9/11 mosque, had this to say in an interview yesterday:

Khan said she believed the project would be built.

“Of course, it has to go ahead,” she said. “There’s so much at stake.”

Asked if America was “Islamophobic,” Khan responded that it’s like “metastasized anti-Semitism.”

“It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia ”” it’s hate of Muslims,” she said. “And we are deeply concerned.”

That’s an interesting phrase I’ve never heard before—“metastasized anti-Semitism.” A metastasis is, of course, the spread of a cancer from one part of the body (the primary cancer site) to another (secondary) site. The hallmark of a metastasis is that, in the new site, the cancer cells histologically resemble those at the old site and are identifiable as such.

Arabic and Hebrew are both part of the linguistic group known as Semitic, so if the term “Semite” is used in the linguistic sense, it refers to both groups. But the word “anti-Semitism” refers solely to anti-Jewish beliefs and actions, and always has:

It was coined in 1879 by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in a pamphlet called, “The Victory of Germandom over Jewry”. Using ideas of race and nationalism, Marr argued that Jews had become the first major power in the West. He accused them of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879 Marr founded the “League for Anti-Semitism”.

This has not usually stopped Muslim Arabs and their liberal/left defenders in recent years from playing a form of anti-Semitic victimhood as their trump card, as Kahn has done. In fact, even on this blog, when the term “anti-Semitism” is mentioned I often draw visitors who comment that, since Arabs are Semites themselves, they therefore cannot be called anti-Semitic.

But of course they can, when they exhibit vicious hatred of Jews as a group, rather than mere disapproval of Israel’s policies. And, curiously enough, if you’re looking for a good fit, the term “metastasized anti-Semitism” can best be applied to anti-Jewish hatred in the Muslim Arab world.

In fact, there’s an entire scholarly book about it, written by Bernard Lewis and entitled Semites and Anti-Semites. If anti-Semitism is a German phrase coined by a German spreading anti-Jewish sentiment, and anti-Semitism reached its zenith (so far, anyway) as practiced by the Nazis before and during World War II, then its true metastasis, its direct spread from the original site to a more distant one, occurred between Nazi Germany and Arab Muslim nations during that time:

[Lewis] argues that the role of Jews in the classical Islamic world was noteworthy mainly for its unimportance.

Anti-Semitism entered Moslem culture only with the growth of European influence in the Middle East, a process that began 150 years ago. Along with guns, medicine-and the opera, the Moslems imported anti-Semitism, and it flourished. Perhaps the most startling part of Semites and Anti-Semites (Norton, 283 pages, $18.95) is the chapter that demonstrates the widespread admiration in the Middle East for Hitler and the Nazis. The Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, met Hitler in Berlin in 1941 and later joined the Nazi effort; Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nasser turned into a major haven for Nazis; and Anwar Sadat worked closely with German agents during World War II. This admiration remains alive: As recently as 1982, the newspaper of Egypt’s Liberal Party referred to Hitler as “that great man.”

But it was the Arab armies’ frequent military defeats at the hands of Israel that created the real need for anti-Semitism. Seeking a way to explain the Jews’ unexpected success, many Arabs turned to the great body of anti-Semitic literature developed in Europe for just such purposes. The results have been spectacular: Israelis and Jews everywhere have become satanic figures in the Arabic media. These are not fringe writings, either; as Mr. Lewis observes, “Classical anti-Semitism is an essential part of Arab intellectual life at the present time-almost as much as happened in Nazi Germany.” In 1970, emotions reached such a pitch that one of the world’s most outstandingly anti-Semitic tracts, a document forged by the czars’ secret police in the 1890s and titled the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, turned up on the best-seller list in Lebanon.

The standard themes of European anti-Semitism first appeared in Iraq and Egypt, then became prominent in Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iran. As a group, these countries “have become the main center of international anti-Semitism, from which anti-Semitic literature and other propaganda is distributed all over the world.” Just as the scourge of anti-Semitism died out in its European homeland, ironically, it was reborn in the Middle East.

The book review I just quoted was written in 1986. Since then, unfortunately, we’ve learned that reports of the death of anti-Semitism in Europe have been greatly exaggerated; although, fortunately, Nazism as a mass movement seems to be no more. And it is ironic indeed that the torch of anti-Semitism has been successfully passed from the dying Nazi movement to Arab and Muslim lands, where it has flourished—and, yes, metastasized.