I guess Michelle Obama must be a riveting speaker …

The New Neo Posted on by

… if she’s in fact making close to $750K for a one-hour speech, as reported in this article:

The 59-year-old former lawyer spoke to an estimated 5,000 attendees on how to “push past self-doubt while discussing the importance of inclusivity and diversity” at the annual Bits and Pretzels forum in Munich — a start-up event held on the sidelines of the annual Oktoberfest beer festival, according to the event website.

For her speech, Obama was paid 700,000 euros, which is roughly equivalent to $741,000, two unidentified sources close to the conference organizers told the Daily Mail.

Organizers told the outlet that the former first lady “topped the list” of people whom participants wanted to hear from “year after year.”

That comes out to be $12,350 per minute, and about $206 per second.

No doubt the speech was Churchillian.

These sorts of fees are one of the reasons politics is so corrupt these days – or one of the ways in which it’s so corrupt. And Michelle Obama isn’t even a politician – yet. Some say she will end up as the Democrats’ nominee in 2024. I have my doubts.

“Anti-racism” trainings and suicide

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “huxley” observes, first quoting commenter “Irish Otter49” in a discussion of the man who committed suicide after being insulted in an anti-racism training mandated by his employer:

“So he took his own life because he couldn’t deal with harsh words from a stupid female woke black race hustler? Very sad.”

IrishOtter49:

Well, yes. I believe I’m with you.

I rather dislike the anti-racism folks, but if someone imputes that I am a white supremacist, or really any other smear, it’s on me if I kill myself.

Maybe lawfare in this case is good tactics, but in the long run it reinforces the woke “hate speech” strategy which works against conservatives and the Constitution.

The thing is, this is not a case of a random person coming up to someone and calling him a name. This was done by a person whose business it is to do this as a professional hired by another business which is an employer. As far as I can tell, the training is mandatory and therefore a condition of the job. According to this article, it can render the targeted person “unemployable” and cause the person to be ostracized.

Nor does it ordinarily involve a simple nasty comment. In my post on the subject, when I described these trainings as “struggle sessions,” I was being only somewhat hyperbolic. They are actually forms of brainwashing meant to break a person down psychologically and then reconstruct that person’s value system in order to get the person to see the world – and himself or herself – differently and with guilt and remorse (if white) or blaming others (if black). They are public humiliations in front of colleagues, as well, and the trainers have methods of invalidating all attempts by the target at self-defense, labeling them racist no matter what the person says in his or her own defense.

There is no way out except for the very strongest among us. People on the right are probably more resistant, for the simple reason that they don’t already buy into the premises. But people on the left or even in the middle are very vulnerable. You might think you could shake it off quite easily, and perhaps you could. But don’t be so sure, unless you’ve undergone something similar and been able to emerge intact.

When I was quite young, about twelve or so, I read a book entitled The Rape of the Mind (yes; I seem to have had an early interest in the topic). It was about brainwashing. Orwell also gives an account of brainwashing, helped by torture, in his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith resists, but in the end he’s a broken man who loves Big Brother.

I’m not saying an anti-racism training is the equivalent of imprisonment and torture; it is not. But you might be surprised at how destructive and effective and relentless the pressure can be, especially to someone with a tendency to any sort of self-doubt or conscience. Group pressure is an especially powerful tool.

This is from the book’s description at Amazon:

In The Rape of the Mind [the author, Meerlo] goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion.

The first chapter is called “You Too Would Confess.”

What does Meerlo mean by “verbocracy”? This:

Propagandistic lies and catchphrases are an inexorable feature of totalitarianism. Repeated countless times from countless angles, the effect is to drill the desired thinking until accepted as truth. “Double talk” characterizes much of the narrative, with words like “freedom” redefined to support the lies. Words become emotional triggers and conditioners instead of sources of independent thought.

In such a training, the idea that white people are all guilty of some sort of white original sin that cannot be expunged or denied but only accepted and atoned for, and that black people are always the innocent victims, is a big part of this. The more the white person mounts a defense, the more guilty and anti anti-racist (therefore, racist) the person is deemed to be. It is an intense and sophisticated psychological public pressure that taps into a highly emotional element of people in America today: their attitudes towards race and the racial history of the country.

Hunter Biden sues Giuliani for “hacking” the laptop hard drive that isn’t Hunter’s except when it is

The New Neo Posted on by

Have I got this right?:

The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California states Giuliani is “primarily responsible” for the “total annihilation” of Biden’s digital privacy. It also names Robert Costello, a former federal prosecutor who previously represented Giuliani, as a defendant, Fox News has confirmed.

“For the past many months and even years, Defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms, including what Defendants claim to have obtained from Plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer,” Biden’s attorneys wrote in the complaint, claiming that the data was not even from a “laptop,” but from an “external drive.”

More here:

An independent analysis, by two cyber investigators from Minneapolis-based Computer Forensics Services, found no evidence that the user data had been modified, fabricated or tampered with. But some versions of the hard drive circulated later appeared to have had data added after April 2019, a sign they could have been tampered with, according to reports in other media outlets, including The Washington Post.

The lawsuit is the latest move in a monthslong effort by Hunter Biden’s legal team to aggressively push back against his Republican antagonizers.

Poor Hunter! Bullied by those mean Republicans.

RIP David McCallum

The New Neo Posted on by

David McCallum was one of my favorite actors when I was young. I only saw him in two things, but I loved him in both. I’m not sure I could explain why, either. I found his blond looks exotic and attractive, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough. He was an understated actor, but I was very drawn to him.

The first role was in the TV show “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”:

I had forgotten that Leo G. Carroll – aka “Cosmo Topper” – was in that show.

I was hardly alone in my adolescent crush on McCallum:

The Man from U.N.C.L.E., intended as a vehicle for Robert Vaughn, made McCallum into a sex symbol, his Beatle-style blond haircut providing a trendy contrast to Vaughn’s clean-cut appearance. McCallum’s role as the mysterious Russian agent Illya Kuryakin was originally conceived as a peripheral one. McCallum, however, took the opportunity to construct a complex character whose appeal rested largely in what was shadowy and enigmatic about him. Kuryakin’s popularity with the audience as well as Vaughn and McCallum’s on-screen chemistry were quickly recognized by the producers, and McCallum was elevated to co-star status.

Although the show aired at the height of the Cold War, McCallum’s Russian alter ego became a pop culture phenomenon. The actor was inundated with fan letters, and a Beatles-like frenzy followed him everywhere he went.

The second of McCallum’s early roles that I well remember was the character Ashley-Pitt in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Great Escape (1963). I saw the film in a movie theater when it first came out. I was a youngish teenager and was expecting an adventure story with a happy ending. I got something quite different and far more moving and tragic, as well as humorous at many points. Lots of male pulchritude, too.

For this post I was looking for a particular clip of McCallum – anyone who knows the movie probably recalls the scene I mean, which takes place at a train station after the escape. I couldn’t find it, so the following one will have to do. It’s brief. His role wasn’t a huge one, but he made a deep impression on me nevertheless:

Apparently, McCallum was a nice guy and a family man:

His son Peter made a statement on behalf of his family, saying, “He was the kindest, coolest, most patient and loving father. He always put family before self. …

“He was a true renaissance man — he was fascinated by science and culture and would turn those passions into knowledge. For example, he was capable of conducting a symphony orchestra and (if needed) could actually perform an autopsy, based on his decades-long studies for his role on NCIS.

“After returning from the hospital to their apartment, I asked my mother if she was OK before she went to sleep. Her answer was simply, “Yes. But I do wish we had had a chance to grow old together.” She is 79, and dad just turned 90. The honesty in that emotion shows how vibrant their beautiful relationship and daily lives were, and that somehow, even at 90, Daddy never grew old.”

He lived to be 90; not a bad run. He kept on acting, explaining that he was doing what he loved and what he was born to do. What a blessing.

I’m all for this sort of lawfare

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw two encouraging signs today. The first is this story about a lawsuit against an “anti-racism” DEI trainer because of a suicide that occurred in Canada. Here’s the story in a nutshell:

Kike Ojo-Thompson, a Toronto-based diversity trainer and founder and CEO of the KOJO Institute, told a class of about 200 administrators that Canada is more racist than the United States, according to a lawsuit filed by Richard Bilkszto in April.

Richard Bilkszto, a progressive and principal of Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute and Adult Learning Center, challenged Ojo-Thompson’s assumption by citing Canada’s publicly funded education system and socialized health care, according to the lawsuit and audio obtained by The Free Press. …

[Thompson replied,] “What I’m finding interesting is that, in the middle of this Covid disaster, where the inequities in this fair and equal healthcare system have been properly shown to all of us. . . you and your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on with black people—like, is that what you’re doing, ‘cause I think that’s what you’re doing, but I’m not sure, so I’m going to leave you space to tell me what you’re doing right now,” she responded.

Bilkszto killed himself July 11. Several of his friends noted that he was not doing well and struggled after the public discussion with Ojo-Thompson because he felt his character was assassinated for being labeled a “white supremacist,” The Free Press reported.

Lawsuits could get them right in the pocketbook, which might be where it hurts.

Note the language in the article – Bilkszto “struggled” after the discussion. That struggle is of course the point, because these confrontations are less physically violent forms of leftist struggle sessions a la the Chinese Communists, a public shaming meant to tear a person down and replace his or her ideas with new ones conforming to the cult:

Struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being “class enemies” were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured by people with whom they were close. Usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, “students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents”. Staging, scripts and agitators were prearranged by the Maoists to incite crowd support. The aim was to instill a crusading spirit among the crowd to promote the Maoist thought reform. These rallies were most popular in the mass campaigns immediately before and after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and during the Cultural Revolution.

The denunciation of prominent class enemies was often conducted in public squares and marked by large crowds of people who surrounded the kneeling victim, raised their fists, and shouted accusations of misdeeds.

The second piece of encouraging lawfare news is that some gender clinics are halting puberty blockers, hormones, and so-called “gender-affirming” (Orwell take note) surgeries on minors, for fear of the lawsuits that are just beginning:

There has been a wave of bans on gender-affirming care for minors in Republican-led states in recent years, but some states allowed those already receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy to continue.

Two such states, Missouri and North Dakota, have halted children’s prescriptions because medical providers are wary of harsh liability provisions in those same laws.

The article doesn’t treat this as good news at all. But as a person who is against the medical transition of minors because it is not empirically supported and is often dangerous in its effects as well as spread by social contagion, I see it as good news.

Looking back at Churchill’s “Finest Hour” speech

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve said many times that I don’t much care for political oratory. In my lifetime, I don’t recall any political speech that interested me at the time, although in retrospect I would rate some of Reagan’s as quite good. But I think Lincoln and Churchill were geniuses of the art, with Churchill maybe edging out Lincoln but just by a hair.

Yesterday I had occasion to quote this famous 1940 speech of Churchill’s, and it got me to thinking:

Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

There are so many things about that speech that would never be said today. The first is a statement about the Western world that characterizes it as “Christian civilization.” The second is the idea of Empire as something of which to be proud; even in Churchill’s time, speaking that way was somewhat of an anomaly and he was considered an old-fashioned throwback. But he was the throwback Britain – and the West – needed at the time. And the idea the speech conveys of World War II as a nearly apocalyptic crisis, pitting the forces of good against evil, was actually not an exaggeration.

But it’s this sentence that seems so apropos to me: “But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.” Does it not feel as though we’re on the brink of something like that now, only not from an external enemy but from internal weakness? A sort of cultural, moral, and spiritual suicide being committed by the West? And science has only become more and more advanced as well as more “perverted” in its uses, particularly the propaganda and surveillance and control made possible by the internet.

It’s certainly not our finest hour. But we can hope that our finest hour will come – perhaps in some way we can’t foresee – and that we’ll measure up to it. And let us also fervently hope it doesn’t involve carnage, unlike the terrible catastrophic bloodbath that was World War II.

The polls and Biden

The New Neo Posted on by

They are many indications from polls that Biden is in trouble for 2024, and lots of articles and posts about it. I refer you to this, this, and this, to take just a few examples.

So, is Biden in trouble in terms of the 2024 presidential election? I have my doubts. Here they are:

(1) I’ve long said I think he will run, because a good alternative (and a way to get rid of Kamala) hasn’t presented himself. But it’s certainly possible that things will become so bad for Biden that they’ll “retire” him and decide on someone else. I still don’t think that will happen, but it would hardly surprise me if it did.

(2) Polls, especially at this point in time, probably don’t mean much. For example, most Democrats I know might be worried that Biden is cognitively challenged and might yearn for someone better to run, but that someone would always be a Democrat. They would never vote for the Republican. But they might stay home if not enthusiastic, right? Not if Trump is the opponent. They would crawl over broken glass to vote for the proverbial yellow dog Democrat if it’s that or Trump.

(3) National polls don’t tell much, even close to the election, because it’s swing state polls that matter. I haven’t read anything about those.

(4) Who knows what might happen with Trump’s trials, and how much that could affect the vote in 2024. Right now is the relative calm before the storm. Mollie Hemingway believes that persecuting/prosecuting Trump and other opponents has hurt the Biden administration and the Democrats. Again, I’m not at all sure, although it certainly doesn’t seem to have helped them. I hope Hemingway is correct and that as the trials go on, more and more Americans will find the whole thing repellent and take it out on the Democrats. But I don’t know.

(5) The amount of fraud that the left can pull off, and whether it will matter enough, is a wild card.

I like to look at singers while they sing

The New Neo Posted on by

I find that I like to be able to see singers when they sing. That means I prefer watching live performances of my favorites.

I wonder why. Maybe I like to see the physical effort. Also, the emotion on the face seems to matter to me. And, since most of the singers I like happen to be men, I can’t eliminate the element of sex appeal – which is not necessarily handsomeness in the conventional sense (although that certainly doesn’t hurt), but just some je ne sais quoi.

Singers reveal themselves when you watch them sing – tough or tender, cold or warm, schmaltzy or cool, tense or relaxed. The Gibb brothers and Mickey Thomas (in “Fooled Around and Fell in Love“, anyway) and the Beatles in their younger days seem to be having so much fun while singing. Joplin wore more than a piece of her heart on her sleeve. Dylan does little for me; he just seems so detached. Mark Knopler’s concentration is very deep and still and yet he moves me greatly, perhaps because his guitar expresses so much emotion. Leonard Cohen has a knowing air, sometimes sardonic. Richard Thompson is another favorite of mine who stands still in concert without seeming to emote very much, and yet his voice has that sob in it and there is always a bittersweet quality of experience.

Okay, so sue me – but I love love love Barry Gibb here. He was at the height of his looks and his voice, and strikes just the right regretful and poignant emotional tone (Streisand doesn’t quite do it for me emotionally, although her voice is lovely). Barry knows how to subordinate his voice when singing with someone else – after all, much of his career was based on singing with other people, in particular his brothers. And here he never loses focus on the interaction with Barbra and continues to face her for much of the song except the beginning part, when he hovers almost protectively over her. And no one – no one – can wear white like Barry: