Predicting the Obama future: Cassandra or Chicken Little?

The New Neo Posted on by

When people worry and speculate about the possible dire consequences of the Obama presidency, one of the most heated disputes is about just how bad will it is likely to get. For example, as of now, this thread on the subject has 136 comments, and it’s not over yet.

Remember Cassandra? I first earned about her in high school, and her plight made a deep impression on me. Cassandra was gifted with the power of prophecy, but cursed with the fate that no one would believe her despite the accuracy of her predictions.

What a dreadful burden! To be right, and to know she was right, and yet to still be powerless when trying to warn people of what was to come, because they would laugh at her or discount what she said.

Then there was the ancient story of Chicken Little, quite a different tale. The opposite happens with Chicken: when an acorn falls on her head (hmmm—interesting that both Cassandra and Chicken are female), she jumps to the hysterical conclusion that the sky is falling. She then races to tell the news to everyone she meets, and finds a lot of takers.

So for those of us who are greatly concerned about Obama’s agenda, which is it? Are we Cassandras or Chicken Littles? And does it even matter—after all, even if we are Cassandra and are accurately foretelling the future in a general sense (if not in all its details), will enough people listen?

And even if they listen, what can be done? As commenter “artfldgr” indicates here, do Obama and his allies on the Left already have us at check, or even at checkmate?

Commenter “Wolla Dalbo” has offered a helpful summary:

Artfldgr””so let me see if I understand your position.

You believe that the Leftists in charge of our educational system for a generation plus now have churned out a citizenry””the younger cohorts”“who many, if not most of them, have been rather thoroughly indoctrinated, and who have been systematically stripped of the history, the values and standards to measure by, and the intellectual tools needed to analyze and understand which is happening now””they have been deliberately, partially blinded, and then turned in a certain direction”“so that they will be of little help in any struggle against Obama & Co.

Second, that the steps””appointments, changes in policy, legislation and regulations”“that Obama & Co. have already put in place and set in motion, have made it unlikely that we can avoid some sort of major struggle/violence if we want to retain our democracy, the Constitution and our freedoms.

Sobering thoughts, indeed. As for me, I can’t yet decide at what point we are on the continuum. But I do know that this sort of argument is impossible to dismiss. I think we are presently balancing on the fulcrum of a tipping point, and that the next few months (certainly the next year) will reveal on which side we have come down.

Acupuncture to the rescue

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall that I hurt my knee about two weeks ago. It was progressing, but in the wrong direction—day by day getting worse instead of better.

Medicine didn’t offer me much (actually, it didn’t offer me anything), and there was a delay in approval for an MRI. So I decided to go to a nearby acupuncturist, and spend eighty-plus out-of-pocket dollars for a treatment.

I have a history with acupuncture. When conventional medicine has failed me in the past, especially with injuries (and unfortunately I’ve had quite a few), I’ve turned reluctantly to the unconventional treatments. I wager that I’ve dumped tens of thousands of dollars into various “alternative” (read: sketchy) approaches over the last two decades, mostly to no avail.

You name it, I tried it; I was that desperate. Despite my basic skepticism, and repeated vows to quit chasing and dumping money after the illusory cure, I kept hearing of something new. A really good chiropractor who fixed my friend’s back, for example. And this one (she claimed) had a whole different approach, so my previous chiropractic horror stories were irrelevant. Or a Reiki practitioner miracle worker. Or expensive magnets that had eliminated the chronic back pain of another friend’s brother—and oh, by the way, he was selling them now and would be happy to have me as a client. Or that woman up in the boonies north of Vermont who charged eight hundred dollars for a several-hour consultation and then sold you expensive nutritional supplements and a filter for your kitchen sink. Or…

Well, you get the picture. I once made a list of every fringey practice I tried, and I think it was close to one hundred. Ninety-eight of them helped not one little bit.

But two were different. The first was massage, which helped somewhat but only temporarily. The second was acupuncture.

Acupuncture was expensive, and (contrary to the hype) it sometimes did hurt when those needles went in. It only helped my back problems and my arm injuries a little bit, although at the time I figured that a little bit was better than nothing.

But I discovered that when acupuncture worked, it really worked. For example, somewhere in the mid-90s I hurt my tailbone, and tried what medical science had to offer for eight long months, to no avail. I decided to give acupuncture a go, and after the first treatment I was astonished to discover the pain reduced by half. And, since this was a pain that hadn’t budged for eight previous months no matter what conventional medicine or physical therapy had thrown at it, that fact certainly got my attention.

I went for about six treatments after that. Each time the pain was reduced by about half, until I was pain free. This has remained by far my most successful acupuncture story—till now, that is. It’s the reason I thought of acupuncture at all for my sudden knee malady.

I can’t say I had any expectations, however. When I lay down on that table to let that woman stick a bunch of needles in each leg it was because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been hobbling around in great pain for many days, and I was starting to wonder how long I’d be able to walk at all.

When I got up about forty minutes later I was stunned. The pain wasn’t gone, but it was about 85% reduced. This was pretty much in miracle territory as far as I was concerned. I didn’t limp, although I certainly walked slowly and tentatively, waiting for the sharp ache to return full force.

The acupuncturist gave me some weird-smelling liniment patches to put on my knee, from a box that had pictures of dragons on it. At this point if she’d told me to swallow the patches I might have done so. During the next couple of days the pain pretty much disappeared—and (knock wood, knock wood!) it’s remained disappeared.

I have no scientific explanation, but I guess I don’t need one. My qi seems to be happy and my meridians merry, so I’m happy and merry.

Why Honduras matters more and more

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama cuts aid to Honduras in an attempt to blackmail the country into accepting Zelaya. Isn’t it interesting that our President comes down so hard on a country for merely attempting to assert its own constitution against a power grab by a would-be Leftist tyrant? And Hillary Clinton is his willing handmaiden in the process.

Disgusting. Shameful.

And very Orwellian, as the State Department cites Honduras’s supposed “continuing failure to restore democratic, constitutional rule to Honduras.”

[NOTE: Dr. Sanity has more, as does Latin American expert Fausta.]

[ADDENDUM: In addition to the cut in aid, Obama and Hillary are also saying that we will not recognize the next election in Honduras. The announcement was made after a cozy little chat Ms. Clinton had with Zelaya:

Honduras’s ejected president Mel Zelaya saw the Secretary and apparently persuaded [Clinton] that the outcome of Honduras’s next elections must be rejected. On what basis? None was stated, and no logical basis exists. The next elections will be entirely constitutional and held on time; and the term of office of the ousted Zelaya would end naturally and constitutionally when a new president is sworn in, in January. The candidates were selected before the current crisis began, and all the parties–including Zelaya’s Liberal Party, one half of Honduras’s essentially two party system–are participating. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt that the election can be monitored by international observers (and we could have demanded more of them than usual) and fairly conducted. Honduras’s vote for a new president on November 29 was the obvious way for everyone to dig out of the current mess without hurting the Honduran people and without damaging Honduras’s democratic institutions.

But it was rejected yesterday by Clinton and the Obama administration. The State Department’s spokesman said that “Based on conditions as they currently exist, we cannot recognize the results of this election.” The irrationality of the words is striking: based on conditions today, we can’t recognize the results of a free election more than two months from now on November 29, even if everyone thinks it’s free and even if Zelaya’s party participates, and even if his term would constitutionally be over anyway.]

Obama Arrangement Syndrome

The New Neo Posted on by

I propose the use of the following term for the tendency to make excuses for our new President: Obama Arrangement Syndrome, or OAS.

I picked up this felicitous phrase here, from commenter “Terry Gain,” who writes:

…at least six months ago I coined the term…OBAMA ARRANGEMENT SYNDROME . The syndrome requires that people interpret or ignore events in a manner that reinforces their preconceived, and rigid, notions about Obama.

Gain’s comment was offered in reference to this excellent article at PJ by David Solway, who was discussing a recent piece by Camille Paglia, one I also wrote about here. Solway notes that in Paglia’s article she:

…slaps Obama across the cheek with one hand and lovingly caresses him with the other. The article is a tissue of contradictions in which she seems to be writing against her proper grain, tramming her tapestry with ill-concealed unease.

I wrote the following about that very same Paglia article:

…[Y]ou’ll witness a person struggling with the clash of prior beliefs vs. present observations. If Obama is so smart, and good, and well-meaning, then why is he doing all these bad (or stupid, or destructive) things?…Paglia is like a wife who’s found the lipstick on the collar and all the little love notes to another woman, and is still so in love with her husband and so desirous of saving her marriage that she’s struggling against accepting the truth that she’s been betrayed by a stinker.

The phenomenon is extremely widespread among pundits who supported Obama. One can only imagine that it’s very widespread among non-pundits who supported him, as well. Why is Obama Arrangement Syndrome so prevalent, and why are people so inclined to make excuses for him?

I think it boils down to the following:

(1) Cognitive dissonance is extraordinarily uncomfortable. When any of us has a certain belief, and then more information comes in that contradicts it, the resultant anxiety and distress can be powerful. We tend to rearrange our perceptions and make excuses to minimize the conflict. The revision of an opinion or belief system in response to new facts tends to be slow to come, and to require unequivocal evidence of a dramatic sort. After all, it’s awful to have been wrong; “The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support one’s choices.”

(2) Then there’s the phenomenon of what many see as Obama’s likability and attractiveness. Although I seem to be immune to these charms (I see him as a manipulative and calculating sort, a humorless and power-hungry narcissist), there is no question that a great many people like him on a very personal level. This makes them even more predisposed to make excuses for him and give him the benefit of the doubt.

(3) Ditto for Obama’s youth and race. The former makes people regard him as vulnerable and simply in need of seasoning, and is one of the reasons we see so many articles giving Obama advice. The latter makes most people want him to succeed, since most of us are eager to overcome the legacy of racism in this country. So many people will bend over backwards to put his actions in a good light.

A recent Peggy Noonan article offers another example of a writer in the throes of Obama Arrangement Syndrome, although there are indications of the beginning of an emergence for Noonan. She starts the piece by talking, as do so many people with OAS, about the flaws of Obama’s advisers. The idea is that it’s not Obama who’s at fault; he’s just running with a bad crowd, a group Noonan calls young, untried, triumphant, and overpraised (Noonan somehow manages to ignore the fact that Obama chose these people of his own free will). She further adds that these youthful aides:

…[have] never been beaten up by life, never been defeated. They haven’t learned from failure because they haven’t experienced it. They don’t know what the warning signs of trouble are. They haven’t spent time on the losing side.

It is odd that Noonan exempts the President himself from this criticism, because her words could certainly apply to him. But she does go on to call Obama Faux Eloquent Boring, as as well lacking in humor and humility. In fact, she goes on to add, towards the end of her piece, that she has come to believe that he is cold.

Noonan specifically states that she’s arrived at that conclusion only within the last week. Till then, something appears to have blinded her to the very obvious fact of Obama’s coldness (and by the way, for those who wonder why I’m focusing so much on the opinions of Paglia and Noonan, I think they may be quite representative of a good part of the public who supported Obama, especially the women who turned out in droves for him). It was at Ted Kennedy’s funeral that Noonan saw this:

The president walked into the funeral and moved toward the front pews nodding, shaking hands. He hugged Mrs. Kennedy, nodded some more, shook more hands. He was dignified and contained, he was utterly appropriate, and he was cold.

He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he’s disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there’s not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool. One wonders if this will play well with the American people. Long-term it is hard to get people to trust your policies if they think you’re coolly operating on some intellectual or ideological abstractions.

Something has changed in Noonan, because nothing has changed in Obama. Why could she suddenly see what had been apparent before but unnoticed by her? Why is she starting to reject reason #2 above, the perception of Obama’s personal likability?

My guess is that Noonan would never have seen this coldness if the way had not been paved by so many of Obama’s actions since his inauguration. His demonizing of the opposition. His pallid and almost meaningless statements about the Iranian protesters. His lies about the economy. These and so many more must have chipped away at her perception of him as a charming young man.

It takes quite a while to reach a tipping point, but then other perceptions, previously blocked, can be allowed to enter consciousness. After all, a mind is a difficult thing to change. But a mind is not an impossible thing to change.

Snowe job: health care reform compromise?

The New Neo Posted on by

Olympia Snowe, RINO of Maine, is engaged in brokering a compromise deal with Obama on health care. The idea is that if she comes on board, other balking moderates will join and the bill will be passed.

This is exactly what happened with the stimulus legislation, and Snowe is detested by most other Republicans for her role in the betrayal.

Snowe’s position is that a public option won’t be in the bill except as a trigger, a threat that if private insurers don’t do what the government requires, a public option will kick in at some future date (see also this). However, there’s some evidence that the public option could kick in sooner, even immediately, since Snowe wrote in July that “This [public] option would be available from day one in any state where ”“ after market and insurance reforms are implemented ”“ affordable, competitive plans still do not exist.”

So it’s clear as mud, as usual. One thing that is clear is that many of the most liberal Democrats won’t like Snowe’s compromise, and the majority of Republicans will hate it too, albeit for very different reasons.

And so the cries mount: “Down with Snowe! Maine Republicans should nominate a real member of the Party instead of a fake one!”

There’s certainly something to be said for doing away with RINOs like Snowe, who give the White House the appearance of bipartisan cover. But understand that getting rid of Snowe would almost undoubtedly result in having a real Democrat instead of a fake one as the Senator from Maine. Maine is most definitely a blue state.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that if Obama and the Democrats manage to offend enough people by 2012—when both Obama and Snowe would be up for re-election—that Republicans couldn’t take over both of their offices. But it’s less likely to happen to Snowe than to Obama. She is extraordinarily popular in Maine; she won in 2006 by 70% over her rival, and her typical winning margins have always been around 2 to 1.

Before you decide that Snowe has got to go, understand that Maine’s political composition is such that a true Republican is highly unlikely to win there, unless a tsunami of conservatism sweeps the country. Right now, the choices are a RINO or a Democrat.

I understand—and to some extent agree with—the argument that if a Republican is going to betray Republican causes as much as Snowe has, it would be better to have the same things done by a Democrat. But the thing is that Snowe hasn’t betrayed all Republican causes. Among the ones she’s supported are: the death penalty, the embargo on Cuba, the invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some tax cuts as an economic stimulus (her record very spotty on this latter issue, however).

Is that enough to make her of some value to the GOP, or should she be challenged—even if the challenge will almost certainly be unsuccessful—to make a point?

Not quite “death panels”—but the slippery slope of palliative care policy

The New Neo Posted on by

Several British doctors, experts on palliative care (which means the compassionate treatment of the dying in order to make them more comfortable), have registered alarm at a trend in British medical practice:

Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”

The current model for care of the dying in Britain was based on recommendations for cancer patients and was adopted by NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), the British government panel that oversees health policy. It’s been slowly expanded to cover patients who are supposedly dying of other illnesses.

Dr. Hargreaves, one of the doctors who has a problem with the program as currently implemented, says that its success:

…depend[s], however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.

He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in…

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”

He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.

“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

The difficulty, as the article goes on to state, is that there can be no “one size fits all” approach to medicine. That is one of the main problems with government getting increasingly into the picture—it tends to promulgate these sorts of rules, and the rules tend to spread to larger and larger populations, as in the program under discussion. The slippery slope is very real, and government intervention has a propensity to grease the skids.

The SEC Madoff investigations: shockingly inept

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone who’s been following the Madoff story already knew that the SEC botched its chances to catch him, and that it had plenty of them. But now we have a report that says as much.

I wrote back in February about the loudest of the Madoff whistleblowers, Harry Markopolus, an accountant and former investment manager who helpfully provided the SEC with not just a memo or a hunch, but the equivalent of several dissertations on the subject of Madoff’s suspicious activities, and a blueprint on how to trap him. And yet the SEC investigators (I use that term sarcastically) did virtually nothing.

Those same SEC investigators are called “inexperienced” in the IG’s SEC report. That they may indeed have been, but their failures went far beyond that lack. They also seemed to have been devoid of what one might call common sense—or really any sort of sense at all:

The SEC enforcement staff, conducting investigations of Madoff’s business, “almost immediately caught (him) in lies and misrepresentations, but failed to follow up on inconsistencies” and rejected whistleblowers’ offers to provide additional evidence, the report says.

But at least one “whistleblower”—in the person of Markopolus—had already provided evidence galore, scads of it. One of the difficulties was that the information never got to anyone with the background to understand it. This had nothing to do with inexperience; it had to do with knowledge and basic judgment. As Markopolus later described the situation:

Over the past nine years, Markopolos sent detailed and multiple reports to the SEC pointing out red flags in Madoff’s fund operation, all to no avail. He could not get the New York office to understand what he was saying…”In my conversations with [New York SEC head Meaghan Cheung], I did not believe that she had the derivatives or mathematical background to understand the violation,” Markopolos wrote”¦

As for Markopolos’ reference to her supposed lack of mathematical acumen, Cheung said, “Investigations are conducted by lawyers and examiners and investigators. We have experts available to help us.”

Cheung is a lawyer, with a degree from Yale University and Fordham University Law School. I have read nothing about her background in finance; my sense is that she didn’t have one. As for her reference to calling in experts, she seems to have not done so—certainly not the obvious ones who might have been able to explain the more arcane facts in Markolpous’s memo.

I’m no financial expert—au contraire!—but at least I know I’m not. Had I been in Cheung’s shoes I would have gotten to those experts and even conducted an independent audit; this sort of decision is not rocket science. Cheung apparently didn’t even follow the most basic course of action, which would have been to speak to Markopolus. He stated back in February, in testimony before Congress, as to the shocking level of ignorance and omission not only on Cheung’s part, but on the part of most of the SEC officials:

[Markopolus] believed only one SEC staff member, Ed Manion, understood Madoff’s scheme and “the threat it posed to the public.” “My experiences with other SEC officials proved to be a systemic disappointment and lead me to conclude that the SEC securities’ lawyers, if only through their investigative ineptitude and financial illiteracy, colluded to maintain large frauds such as the one to which Madoff later confessed…“Ms. Cheung never expressed even the slightest interest in asking me questions…

This is more than inexperience, this is stupidity. And apparently the problem extended to almost all the SEC investigators, who seem to have almost uniformly been lawyers.

Now, unlike many people, I’ve got nothing against lawyers (some of my best friends are…). I believe they run the full gamut of good and bad, just like most of humanity. But I cannot believe it would have been all that difficult for the SEC to have hired a bunch of lawyers who not only knew a fair amount about law, but a fair amount about finance and the stock market as well—and, even more importantly, who knew what it was that they didn’t know, and who might have been able to judge when to call on the help of people more expert. After all, what good are “available experts” if the person in charge lacks the judgment to know when it’s time to make use of them?

Even Madoff was shocked, positively shocked, at the SEC’s ineptitude in that most basic of ways, the failure to undertake any independent audit of him (and although Madoff could have rightly been called an “expert,” he wasn’t about to offer the SEC any help on that score):

[IG] Kotz said the SEC’s “most egregious” lapse was its failure to verify Madoff’s purported trading with any independent third parties, even after it took testimony from Madoff in May 2006.

Madoff later admitted that he thought it was “game over” after testifying to having cleared his trades through the Depository Trust Co, part of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and provided his account number. He said he was “astonished” that the SEC did not follow up.

Here’s more from Kotz’s report:

Kotz quoted one senior-level SEC examiner as saying, “Clearly, if someone … has a Ponzi and they’re stealing money, they’re not going to hesitate to lie to create records,” and thus “some independent third-party verification” such as through the DTC would be essential.

He said the SEC had made a “surprising discovery” earlier this decade that Madoff’s hedge fund business was making far more money than his better known market-making business, but no one thought this was a “cause for concern.”

Mind-blowing incompetence. If I were a Madoff victim, I’d be nearly as angry at the SEC as at Madoff himself.

[NOTE: In another Madoff-related matter, I reported back in April that Madoff right-hand man Frank DiPascali was about to spill the beans on his former boss. Somehow I missed the fact that in mid-August he began to do so. DiPascali still doesn’t seem to have implicated any Madoff family members in knowledge of the Ponzi scheme aspect of Madoff’s operations, an issue that has interested me from the start. So the jury remains out on that.]

[ADDENDUM: The full text of the IG’s executive summary on the failures of the SEC investigation is here. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I hope to.]

How tyrannical takeovers happen: past, present, future

The New Neo Posted on by

Today commenter “Artfldgr” asked the following question, “anyone else realize that what happened in germany took 12 years to go from start to finish?”

Coincidentally, last night (before that comment was posted) I had spent some time reading “The Rise of Hitler” at The History Place. It’s a relatively short summary of a relatively long process, rather than a comprehensive book such as The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (which I had read as a young teenager but not understood). But I read it with a new sense of urgency; I suggest you do so, too.

The urgency comes not from the idea that Obama=Hitler. I am not sure what figure in history Obama most resembles, although I don’t think it’s Hitler. Nor do I know Obama’s plans. But I have observed that every single step of the way he has shown his propensity for consolidating government and his own power, stomping on or eliminating the opposition (this propensity goes back to his very first election; see also the second half of this), affiliation with figures of the far Left, lying and misrepresenting himself in a host of ways, secrecy about his past, and cozying up to dictators such as Hugo Chavez.

At present, it’s Chavez whom I see as closest to Obama, both in goals and in modus operandi. Fortunately, our Constitution is more of a stumbling block to tyranny than that of Venezuela, but it’s not an absolute impediment. I wrote here (before I had even an inkling of anything about Obama other than the fact that he would probably run for president, and that he was an articulate young man who seemed to be a rising star in the Democratic Party) of what I called “the vulnerability of an easily amended constitution.”

I think some of my words then bear repeating now [emphasis mine]:

I haven’t followed every in and out of Chavez’s rise to power and his successful grab at more power, but I am under the distinct impression it was done with the appearance of following the rules of democracy.

You might think that, as a neocon, I champion democracy in all its guises. But the type of democracy I support (and I actually prefer a republic, but we’ll leave that aside for the moment) is one that includes a constitution that explicitly protects freedoms and individual rights, and features a system by which it is extremely hard to change that constitution and expand a leader’s powers as Chavez has done.

…Chavez gained his expanded powers through a vote by Venezuela’s Congress, which is at present overwhelmingly composed of his supporters. This unanimity was gained because the opposition boycotted the last election, held in 2005…[T]he boycott enabled Chavez to attain”“–between his own party and allied parties”“–virtually 100% control of Congress, far more than the 2/3 it would need to amend the Constitution. One thing appears true: the election was controlled by a National Election Council totally sympathetic to Chavez, and the opposition perceived that, even if they participated, the voting would be rigged.

The entire process points out the utmost”“–and I mean utmost–”“importance of guarantees against such usurption of powers (which, by the way, Hitler used, as well, in his ascendance to becoming Fuehrer; Germany had a similar clause that allowed dictatorial powers to be given a leader by a 2/3 vote of the Reichstag, which Hitler then proceeded to abolish).

If you follow the Hitler link in the above paragraph, you’ll find an excellent summary of Hitler’s rise to power that contains the following statement:

Unfortunately, the [German] constitution also contained several fatal flaws. One of the worst was Article 48 of the constitution, which granted dictatorial powers to the president in times of national emergency.

Our own constitution is different. The process of amendment is more arduous: a vote of 2/3 of both houses Congress is required for the initial proposal, and then approval by 3/4 of the states’ legislatures or special state ratifying conventions.

This makes for a longer course of action in passing amendments, and involves a far less centralized decision-making process, one that includes many stages. So even if Congress ends up with a strong majority of representatives who are in the pocket of a President with tyrannical ambitions, subsequent usurption of power through changing the Constitution would have to be approved by three-quarters of the states.

Wartime has always been a period of special vulnerability, when US presidents tend to assume greater powers. But they cannot throw out the Constitution (or rewrite it, as Chavez did Venezuela’s). The story of how Chavez and his supporters rewrote the Venezuelan constitution can be found here. Note for our purposes that the process involved a single national referendum, and then a vote for delegates to a new constitution-writing assembly. The most recent move in Chavez’s consolidation of power has been a referendum to abolish terms limits for the presidency and allow him to become more fully Venezuela’s Castro.

If you really want to delve into some of the many twisting and turnings through which Chavez undermined the electoral process in Venezuela, in both little ways and big ones, please study this for details. I would bet that Obama is studying it (or its equivalent), too.

Our founding fathers understood tyranny. They could not foresee the future, and they could not protect us against any and every eventuality. With a strong enough cult of personality, a friendly enough Congress, and a rigged voting system, even this country can end up giving up its freedoms.

The writers of our Constitution were determined to avoid that eventuality if possible. But they were not naive enough to think that protection would not be needed, because they understand the seduction of power and the vulnerability of the people to the machinations of smooth-tongued tyrants. Therefore, the framers realized they needed to make sure the Constitution was not so rigid that it could not be changed in ways that were desirable, but rigid enough to protect us as best as possible against the sort of power grab we’ve seen in Venezuela and elsewhere.

I keep speaking of Venezuela, although I began with Hitler. Each case is different, and some more relevant than others, but there are lessons to be learned from all of them. One could also study the regimes of Bolivia, Ecuador, and so many others. One of the commonalities is the drive to pervert the voting process by intimidation and/or rule changes; to dramatically amend, rewrite, or even abolish constitutions; and most particularly to do away with term limits.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have written quite a bit about Obama’s policy on Zeleya and Honduras. This isn’t just because I am concerned for the people of Honduras—although I am that—but for what Obama’s support of Zeleya’s attempt to expand his power in these time-honored ways tells us about Obama himself, and his own propensities and possible plans.

It’s not a mere question of Obama looking on and doing nothing while a Chavez-inspired Zelaya grabs more power; I could understand non-intervention in the Honduran process. But Obama has gone out of his way—in a manner that contradicts his own stated preference for the autonomy of other nations—to actively intervene in Honduran affairs in order to protect Zeleya and his undermining of Honduran due process and its constitution.

There is no benign explanation for this policy of Obama’s. If the American people don’t understand what it tells us about him, it would mean that we have failed to understand history and learn from it.

The study of history is of vital importance. Not only has that discipline been watered down and even distorted in our schools in recent years, but even back when I was in school I believe the emphasis was wrong. Dates and battles are all very well and good, but we need to know more about the deeper patterns: for example, the ways in which tyrannies become established. There are commonalities there, and lessons to be learned from them.

But even if these things had been taught me in school, I wonder if it would have mattered. Would I have been able to understand and relate to them, or would I have considered them boring and irrelevant, from another time and place, an example of “it can’t happen here?” For most non-history-buffs—and that would include most people, including me—these facts have little meaning out of context, in the dry pages of a history text.

Until suddenly they do. Unfortunately, by that time it is often too late.

Anniversaries: WWII (70th) and Beslan (5th)

The New Neo Posted on by

September 1 is a big day for sorrowful anniversaries.

World War II began on this day in 1939—not Pearl Harbor Day as commemorated by Americans, but the combat in Europe that started with the invasion of Poland by Germany. Beginnings are often rather arbitrary, since this conflict was brewing for quite a while, Hitler’s boldness slowly encouraged by the appeasement he received at the hands of western Europe.

But the invasion of Poland finally jump-started the Allies into the realization that “peace for our time” would only come after a long and bloody war. As Churchill said:

Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.

September 1, 1939 was the day Britain and France realized that the result of their choice would be war. That war ended up dwarfing all that have come before—or since, at least so far.

The next anniversary marked today is that of the Beslan massacre. Except in Russia, the agony of Beslan has been mostly forgotten—perhaps because people prefer to not remember. I’ve written previously on Beslan anniversaries numbers one and two, here and here. But this year, because of the recent release of Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi, I got to thinking about the one Beslan terrorist who remains behind bars serving a life sentence.

His name is Nur-Pashi Kulayev. He is thought to have been the only surviving terrorist from the massacre, although some say there were more who escaped.

Kulayev deserves to be exactly where he is (or worse); make no mistake about that. But during his trial he told a tale that—if believed—poses a number of interesting moral and legal questions.

Note that huge caveat: “if believed.” I have no idea whether Kulayev’s story is true, because it is self-serving and he has much reason to lie. But that doesn’t mean it’s false, either, and the testimony of the surviving hostages doesn’t appear (at least as far as I can tell from a Google search) to have significantly contradicted the parts of it that they might have witnessed.

According to Kulayev, he didn’t know ahead of time that a school would be the target:

His defence laid in the claim that he was one of the recruited Chechens who were told they would be attacking a military checkpoint, and had no foreknowledge their target was the Beslan school; he was reportedly among several of the militants who argued in favour of capturing the local Beslan police station instead.

While no witnesses have claimed he shot any of the victims, several have testified that he ran around the gymnasium shouting curses and threatening to shoot various hostages with his assault rifle…

In addition, “Nur-Pashi reportedly saved the life of a young Alana Zandrovna, whose mother had left on the second day with her nursing son, after she was caught in the burning gymnasium.”

What are we to make of this? Legally, It is covered by a concept similar to that of felony murder, which basically says that if you’re going to be part of a serious crime that rises to felony level, then you are automatically responsible for every evil and violence that happens during the commission of that crime. Whether Kulayev thought he was setting out for a military checkpoint or not is irrelevant; as a terrorist knowingly engaged in a terrorist activity he is fully responsible and must suffer the consequences.

But a more interesting question psychologically (at least to me) is what such a person might decide to do if faced with such a situation. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that Kulayev is telling the truth. What might he have chosen to do instead in an attempt to protect the innocent?

He certainly could have sacrificed himself and tried to take down a few fellow-terrorists into the bargain, although since he was so outnumbered it probably wouldn’t have done too much good. Here’s some further testimony of his that reflects on that issue [emphasis mine—and please substitute the word “terrorists” for the weasel word “militants”]:

Nur-Pashi has testified that [terrorist leader] “Polkovnik” smashed his cell phone in rage, stating that Russian forces were unwilling to negotiate, and also killed three of the militants, including the two female suicide bombers who had objected to the scholastic target by detonating one of their bombs. Nur-Pashi was supposed to be shot himself, by his brother Hanpashi on orders from “Polkovnik”, but Hanpashi refused.

Again, we must take this all with a grain of salt—after all, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was testifying to save himself. But (although I can’t find any details on this either) some corroboration of his testimony might come from the fact that two female terrorists were found to have been killed prior to the massacre’s final debacle.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that some of the terrorists were not told the identity of the target until the last minute. I recall that this was true of at least some of the 9/11 hijackers, who were formed into teams, some of whom knew ahead of time (that would be the pilots-to-be, certainly) and some of whom did not. At any rate, terrorist indoctrination and dedication seem to ordinarily result in the previously uninformed perpetrators’ accepting whatever target they are assigned without protest, and cooperating in its destruction. But if Kulayev is telling the truth, we see what tends to happen to terrorists who express doubts or second thoughts—they are killed by their fellows.

But for the families of the Beslan victims, this is all a side issue of little import. They still grieve, five years later:

At exactly 9:15 a.m., a bell rang out over the city of Beslan and the remnants of School Number 1, where 32 heavily armed militants took more than 1,200 people — children, parents and teachers — hostage on the first day of school in 2004.

Russian television showed hundreds of people lined up at the school’s gymnasium, where the hostages were herded.

They brought flowers, toys and water bottles — symbolizing the water the captives were denied.

I think it is important that we all remember.

Teased hair and other follicular torments

The New Neo Posted on by

I spent quite a few of my early teen years developing a skill I haven’t used since: the ability to coax hair into tangled masses and then smooth the top layer over the whole thing in order to create volume, a process known as “teasing.” It involved a fine comb, much patience, and iron will, things the teenage girl has in abundance when it comes to fashion and her hair.

It also involved another lost skill set, that of rolling the wet hair around large metal cylinders almost as big as Coke cans and then pinning them in place, tying the whole thing down with a hairnet, and sleeping on it. Yes, sleeping on it, which was perhaps the most acquired skill of all, involving the ability to stay in one position all night, carefully putting pressure only on the spot designated most comfortable (or rather, least uncomfortable).

It meant, among other things, that a girl couldn’t comb or brush through her hair once it had been arranged, until the next time it came to wash it. And unless you had very greasy hair that needed washing very often (I did not), you spaced out the washings as long as possible because hair teased much better when less than squeaky-clean.

I was reminded of all of this by a single photo I came across last week, in an article celebrating the music of Ellie Greenwich. I’d never heard of her before, but I’d certainly heard some of the songs she wrote—most notably “Be My Baby,” “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” and especially “Leader of the Pack” (vroom, vroom!)—that spanned a long career as a very successful songwriter. Ellie died just a few days ago, and as I was searching the tributes I came across the following very fine example of the art of teasing. Blond Ellie is on the left, her husband and co-writer Jeff Barry in the middle (sans teasing), and on the right (and sporting the higher, and therefore better, “do”) is someone I believe to be Ellie’s sister:

ellie-greenwich-11.jpg

But these hairdos are models of restraint compared to the ones I frequently encountered—and sometimes sported myself—in the public junior high and high schools I attended. Alas, I have very few photos of myself in those years and none readily available for scanning. So you’ll just have to trust me when I say that I achieved great heights during the time I wore a hairdo known as the artichoke, which was a shortish (but not too short) and highly teased and layered coif.

Sorry, can’t find a good photo of an artichoke—even on someone else, even after a Google search—except for pictures of the vegetable. But here’s the beehive, courtesy of the singing group known as the Ronettes:

teasehair2.jpg

Lest you think that only black entertainers did this to themselves, let me just say that I recall a very Caucasian girl in my high school who daily sported an even loftier version of this very same hairdo, and she did it without using a false hairpiece or any such nonsense. Marie Antionette would have been proud:

marieantionette.jpg

The whole thing collapsed, as it were, sometime in the mid-to-late 60’s. First came post-Beatles British fashion and then hippies, and shiny straight hair was the thing.

You’d think that would liberate us females. But no, girls with un-shiny, un-straight hair (otherwise known as curly) had to decide whether to use straightening irons (or even regular irons, after protecting the hair by placing a thin towel over it and putting the iron on a low setting—not recommended!) or whether to go au naturale.

Curly hair came in later, of course, and then for a brief and unshining moment it was our straight-haired sisters who suffered through perms. Here’s an example of a typical bad, bad, super-bad one:

badperm2.jpg

But those days are gone—fortunately for all of us, curly and straight. Now, however, we have the odd habit of the fashionistas to flatten any natural tendency of the hair to wave or even to fall in any normal sort of manner. They straighten it via the ceramic iron. Here’s the desired result:

straighthair.jpg

To me it looks as though every ounce of life has been squeezed out of the girl’s poor tresses. But fashion is a cruel master, and twas ever thus.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a video featuring stills of Ellie Greenwich. It’s a tour of some of the hairstyles I mention, from all sorts of teased do’s to the long straight look. Ellie’s the blond: