Everything old is new again: Raymond Aron and other intellectuals of the anti-Left

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps many of you have heard of writer Raymond Aron before, but I hadn’t until I picked up a collection of essays by Roger Kimball published in 2002 and entitled Lives of the Mind.

Aron was the author of a book published in 1955 in France with the fascinating (to me, at least) title The Opium of the Intellectuals. According to Kimball, it was “a sensation” when it first came out in this country in translation in 1957. Although Kimball seems to assume his readership is at least familiar with Aron and his work, I think he’s giving most of us too much credit. But now I’ve put it on my lengthy “must read” list, because of Kimball’s description:

Aron’s subject is the bewitchment—the moral and intellectual disordering—that comes with adherence to certain ideologies. Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless towards the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines? Aron’s title is an inversion of Marx’s contemptuous remark that religion is “the opium of the people.” He quotes Simone Weil’s sly reversal of the epigraph, “Marxism is undoubtedly a religion. in the lowest sense of the word…[I]t has been continually used…as an opiate for the people.” In fact—and fortunately—Weil got it only partly right. Marxism and kindred forms of thought never really became the people’s narcotic. But they certainly became—and in essentials they still are—the drug of choice for the group that Aron anatomized: the intellectuals.

Aron was another “changer.” According to Kimball, he went from being a declared socialist to an important critic of the Left, although he never identified himself as a man of the Right. An intellectual, he was not an elitist, but “above all a spokesman for that rarest form of idealism, the idealism of common sense.” Aron also believed in the Enlightenment value of the power of reason, but recognized “that reason’s power is always limited.”

Here’s the part of Kimballs’ essay that spoke to me the most:

Aron’s generosity of spirit was a coefficient of his recognition that reality was complex, knowledge limited, and action essential. Aron, Shils wrote, “very early came to know the sterile vanity of moral denunciations and lofty proclamations, of demands for perfection and of the assessment of existing situations according to the standards of perfection.” As Aron himself wrote in Opium, “every known regime is blameworthy if one relates it to an abstract ideal of equality or liberty.”…Aron understood that political wisdom rests in the ability to choose the better course of action even when the best course is unavailable—which is always.

There’s more, much more. But that will have to do for now. It struck me as I read those words, based on a work written over a half-century ago, that certain truths are spoken over and over but are rarely heard, because the falsehoods they critique are so continually seductive. Apparently, these things must be discovered over and over again by generation after generation, and are always in danger of being lost.

An idea similar to this one of Aron’s has come up on this blog many times, particularly when discussing the “torture” allegations connected with the Iraq war or the US’s decision during WWII to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima. For example, I titled this post about the latter issue “Choices among crazinesses,” a phrase based on a quote from Lord Mountbatten, who said about Hiroshima that war requires choices among crazinesses:

“It would seem even more crazy,” he went on, “if we were to have more casualties on our side to save the Japanese”¦”

So the more things change the more they remain the same. Why do we keep having to relearn these things? Why does a truth so obvious remain difficult to take in and to understand? Part of the answer lies in the growing intellectualism of Western society. If the intellectuals have their own opium (Leftism itself), then the spread of higher education—although laudable in many other ways—causes the wider dissemination of idealistic and at the same time naive and selectively perfectionist thinking.

Books such as Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, which detailed the pervasiveness of this sort of thinking in American universities back in the 80s, are companion pieces to Aron’s work. It should come as no surprise to learn that Bloom was an admirer of Aron; according to Kimball he described Aron as “the man who for fifty years…had been right about the political alternatives actually available to us.” Both Bloom and Aron’s books are further augmented by Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed, which explores some of the same themes.

Sowell has also heard of Aron, of that you can be certain. Sowell says as much, in an article about Left/Right attitudes towards the poor, written in 2000 but every bit as relevant (if not more so) today:

Most of the leading opponents of the left, in the United States and around the world, began on the left. These include Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman and the whole neo-conservative movement, as well as Raymond Aron in France and Friedrich Hayek in Austria. There is no comparable exodus from the right to the left.

Sowell goes on to say—and remember, this was written nine years ago:

For those of us whose main concern is the well-being of ordinary people, it is a no-brainer to abandon the left as soon as we acquire enough knowledge about what actually happens, as distinguished from what leftist theories say will happen.

It is a very different story for those on the left whose goal is either a self-righteous sense of superiority or the political power with which to express their self-infatuation by imposing their vision on others. Here the poor are a means to an end. These kinds of leftists show remarkably little interest in the creation of wealth, which has raised living standards for the poor, as compared to their obsession with redistribution, which has not.

‘Nuff said. Except, it turns out it’s not enough said, since these points have been made over and over and over, and yet look at where we are today. If the words of that last paragraph don’t apply almost perfectly (I added the “almost” in deference to Aron’s observations about the perils of perfection) to the current administration and its Democratic allies in Congress, I don’t know what does.

Placebo on the increase

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Here’s a truly fascinating article on the subject of placebos. Commenter “Donna” brought it to attention in the thread on acupuncture, and it’s relevant to that subject and so much more.

I don’t have time to do an in-depth piece about it right now, but I’ll just mention that the article points out that the placebo effect has become, for mysterious reasons, more powerful and widespread. Drugs that years ago were proven to be better than placebo are now failing that test, not because the drugs have gotten weaker or less effective but because the placebo effect has gotten stronger.

[ADDENDUM: Stuart Schneiderman has more.]

The passionate reporter: how Castro got his job through the NY Times

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fidel.jpg

I had previously heard something vague about the NY Times having lauded Fidel Castro when he first came to power, but I didn’t know the details. Most people are ignorant (as I was) of the story of Times reporter Herbert Matthews, but it demonstrates—as does the Walter Duranty saga—how long the paper has been churning out misleading verbiage promoting Leftist causes while disguising the agendas of Leftist leaders. What’s even more disturbing (and familiar) is the reluctance of the reporters involved to recant, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

You can find the Matthews story here and here. It’s a cautionary tale of reporter hubris, naivete, and the persistence of stubborn and self-serving blinders. The occasion of both articles was a 2006 book about Matthews written by Anthony DePalma (another former Times reporter, by the way), entitled The Man Who Invented Castro.

Matthews, who had admired and supported Mussolini in his early days and then switched to the Republican cause in Spain, scored a journalistic coup when he trekked into the mountains of Cuba to interview Castro, proving that Batista had lied when he prematurely (very prematurely, as it turns out) reported the death of the young revolutionary. Matthews’s motivation for admiring Castro—according to this Reason piece by Glenn Garvin, and Matthews’s own words—was emotion:

Only a fool, Matthews wrote, would argue that a reporter “should have had no feelings or emotions or even bias about a story like the Cuban Revolution.” And a reporter’s heart should be pinned on his sleeve, or at least his copy. “One of the essentials of good newspaper work is what F. Scott Fitzgerald called ”˜the catharsis of a powerful emotion,’”…” Matthews said. “A catharsis is the escape hatch of the emotions that a drama arouses.”

Ron Radosh concurs that, according to De Palma’s book, Matthews seems to have been motivated mostly by feelings:

“I feel about Cuba somewhat as I did about Spain,” he confessed. “One . . . wants to share . . . if only as a sympathizer, what the Cubans are suffering.” Thus Matthews, in his own words, became “the man who invented Fidel.” Of course, as DePalma notes, that was simple bragging. Castro did not need Matthews to create him; he needed Matthews as a propaganda and publicity tool in Cuba.

And that’s exactly what Castro got, right to the end of Matthews life. Once it became crystal clear (contrary to Matthews’s repeated and fervent claims) that Castro actually was a Communist, the Times—to its mild but belated credit—finally stopped publishing Matthews’s apologia for the dictator, now that it had grown embarrassingly obvious how wrong Matthews and the Times had been.

But it was a bit late. The damage had been done—not to Castro’s reputation, which Matthews had made, but to the cause of anyone who might have opposed him when it might have mattered.

The title of my post, “Castro got his job through the NY Times,” is a reference to a William Buckley column on the subject that was famous in its time:

In those days, the Times had an ad campaign showing average citizens who had obtained jobs through its classified section. A soon-to-be-famous cartoon appeared in National Review, featuring a caricature of Castro with the caption, “I got my job through the New York Times.” Writing in The American Legion magazine, NR’s founder, William F. Buckley Jr., charged that Matthews had done “more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power.” Matthews, he asserted, had been guilty of “ferocious partisanship” when he displayed the future tyrant as “a big, brave, strong, rebellious, dedicated, tough idealist.” The headline of Buckley’s article was that of the cartoon.

Radosh goes on to say:

Matthews, DePalma writes, “exulted in Castro’s triumph, for it could be said he had a hand in it.” All pretenses to journalistic objectivity were gone. He had now “chosen the winning side in an ideological battle.” For the rest of his life, Matthews remained true to his original mythical portrait of Castro as democrat, despite the vast amount of evidence to the contrary. He was pleased that he had helped bring down a “murderous regime”; the fact that Castro’s new government had within Matthews’s lifetime proven itself to be far more oppressive and violent than the Batista regime had ever been somehow evaded him.

Sound familiar? Apart from the historical interest of the Matthews/Castro case, I find the above paragraph particularly fascinating in psychological terms. Matthews is an excellent example of the oft-noticed tendency of those who have staked their reputations on a certain perception, and later are confronted with evidence that negates it, to deny that evidence and persist in their folly. In other words, a mind is a very difficult thing to change.

This is especially true in a case such as that of Matthews, of whom it could be said that he suffered from “Castro Arrangement Syndrome.” Not only was his reportage about Castro the highlight of his career, but it was a very emotional cause as well. To have admitted error would have been to realize that he’d been wrong in both respects, and had been taken in and deceived by a tyrant.

To the end of his life, Matthews denied Communist sympathies, although I think that probably was more of a semantic quibble than anything else. My guess is that Castro himself may have regarded Matthews as an especially useful idiot—so useful that, in 1997, on the fortieth anniversary of the Matthews/Castro interview, the government of Cuba erected a plaque at the mountain site of the encounter to commemorate the glorious historical occasion.

[ADDENDUM: The UN loves Castro almost as much as Matthews did.

And as far as Castrophilic reporters go, it’s not just Matthews—not by a longshot.]

Obama, disingenuous? Say it isn’t so

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Here’s a little coda from Britain about the release of the Lockerbie bomber. The Brown government claims that Obama and Clinton had full knowledge of what Scotland was about to do re Al Megrahi and voiced no objection until the resultant storm broke in this country over the news of Al Megrahi’s release and triumphant arrival in Libya:

British officials claim Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton were kept informed at all stages of discussions concerning Megrahi’s return.

The officials say the Americans spoke out because they were taken aback by the row over Megrahi’s release, not because they did not know it was about to happen.

”˜The US was kept fully in touch about everything that was going on with regard to Britain’s discussions with Libya in recent years and about Megrahi,’ said the Whitehall aide.

”˜We would never do anything about Lockerbie without discussing it with the US. It is disingenuous of them to act as though Megrahi’s return was out of the blue.

Disingenuous, Obama and Hillary? Hard to believe, isn’t it? Of course, it’s possible that it’s Whitehall that’s being disingenuous here. There’s plenty of disingenuousness to go around.

Happy Labor Day

The New Neo Posted on by

Labor Day is one of those holidays I ordinarily don’t think too much about, except as an excuse for a barbecue and a day off. It has bad associations for me because it always came around the time of the beginning of school in the New York City school system of my youth—thus, the name had special significance; “labor” indeed.

Here’s the history of the holiday. To a certain extent, it’s connected philosophically with International Worker’s Day, which I wrote about here, celebrated in other countries on the first of May.

I hope you all are having a good holiday, wherever you might be.

And here’s how Michael Moore is celebrating.

Today’s Honduras (and SEC investigation) updates

The New Neo Posted on by

See Fausta for more on Honduras, much more.

And this editorial by Monica Showalter at IBD is must-reading on the topic of US policy towards Honduras, the reaction of other nations, and the likely consequences.

In a completely unrelated affair, please read the 22-page report from the IG investigating the SEC’s “investigation” [sic] of Madoff. As bad as previous articles made the SEC out to be, the full 22-page version is worse.

Far worse. Words like “inept” and “stupid” don’t begin to describe the SEC’s behavior in the Madoff case, going back over sixteen years of missed opportunities and shockingly stupid moves on the part of supposedly intelligent public servants. Reading the report left me almost wishing that the SEC was purposely covering up for Madoff. Corruption might be preferable to negligence on this pervasive a scale.

But hey, let’s put them in charge of health care.

The IG has already released an even longer report on the same subject, 457 pages worth. It’s available here, for those of you who thirst for more. But I don’t think I’ll subject myself to that particular tome; I’ve had enough for a while.

Predicting the Obama future: Cassandra or Chicken Little?

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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

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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.