Galina Ulanova: Odette in Swan Lake, 1940

The New Neo Posted on by

The great ballet dancer Galina Ulanova specialized in the more human roles in the ballet repertory, such as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” and the title role in “Giselle.” Becoming the Swan Queen Odette, who was under a spell and became half-woman and half-swan, wasn’t considered Ulanova’s thing.

But in this pas de deux clip she dances the role in 1940 when quite young, and it’s a revelation. Ulanova does seem more human than swan in the part, especially compared to many other modern interpreters with far more extreme extensions and arches. But nevertheless, without ever exaggerating or forcing her poses, she creates impeccable lines with her whole body, extending the effect to her very fingertips, sometimes curving her entire form around her partner in an exceptionally beautiful and moving fashion. Watch in particular the way leans against him at 2:57 and 3:16. It’s so very emotionally expressive, showing that the initially frightened Odette has come at last to trust him:

The GOP: drawing the line on abortion

The New Neo Posted on by

There was an interesting discussion in yesterday’s post on the election in Wisconsin, and how abortion law in the state may have influenced it. Here’s one of the comments, from “Frederick”:

If it’s abortion to blame (for the victory of the “progressive” Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin), then shouldn’t Republicans give up opposition to abortion? If they want to win elections?

And if they do, then what’s the Republican Party about besides winning elections? Nothing. An echo, not a choice.

That’s what most of the Republican base understands, and what the party establishment never will. If the Republican Party will sell out on abortion what won’t they sell out on?

What does it mean for the GOP to “give up” opposition to abortion? The GOP has long been split on the subject between moderates who would draw the line at a number of different points, and absolutists who would allow zero abortion. This is not new, and it is a subset of a more basic dilemma in the party, one I’ve written about many times before: the difficulty of reconciling the wings of the Republican Party.

And I think that most GOP voters already trust that the party will sell out on something or other. That ship has already sailed.

I suppose some Republicans have campaigned on advocating total bans such as the one in the 1849 Wisconsin law under discussion in that previous post – but most have not. So a total ban is the position of only a certain proportion (and not a large one) of Republicans running for office. The far more common position of GOP candidates over the years has been to want to repeal Roe and leave the decision about abortion to the individual states. If I’d had to state the over-arching GOP position in recent years, I would have said it was that. Now that Roe has been overturned, that point of relative unity is gone, and the differences in opinion as to where to draw the line come out. But if Republican opposition to Roe meant anything, consistency would indicate that the decision should still be left to the states. That means that a few of the reddest states will probably have a complete ban, many blue states will have almost no restrictions, and all the other states will fall in-between.

The vast majority of Americans in both parties do not favor total bans on abortion. The statistics are as follows:

Eighty-six percent of Americans of all parties think a pregnant woman should be able to legally have an abortion if she becomes pregnant because of rape or incest, the PORES/SurveyMonkey survey found. That includes 94 % of Democrats, 88 % of independents and 76 % of Republicans.

That highlights the dilemma right there. Complete bans on abortion will almost certainly lose elections except perhaps in the reddest of states. Complete bans give the left an extremely visible and emotional campaign issue, as apparently occurred in Wisconsin. But then there’s that remainder of the Republican Party. If they are against any abortion under any circumstance, and the issue means a great deal to them, will they stay home and not vote if there is compromise from the GOP on abortion? If so, that would also lead to a GOP loss. And so either way you have a loss, and of course abortion is hardly the only issue that differentiates right from left.

Commenter “Turtler” observed: “There is something incredibly noble about drawing one’s line in the sand and fighting it out to the end, but that is not the only way to win a struggle.”

But actually, in this case, I believe it is one way (of many) to lose a struggle.

“Noble” is an interesting word, isn’t it? It makes me think of Don Quixote. He was so noble that he was pretty much insane – or perhaps he was so insane that he was noble.

Those who insist on total and complete abortion bans are noble (and not insane) in the sense that they remain faithful to an ideal. However, they lose sight of (or perhaps don’t care as much about about) the practical consequence of their actions, which is the opposite of what they intend. And they won’t listen to the Sancho Panzas on the right who suggest compromise, perhaps because the noble ones are less interested in practical results in this world and more interested in keeping their own moral hands clean.

The way I see it, compromise is necessary because the culture does not support a total ban on abortion. I’ve written a great deal on the subject, and one of my points is that abortion was already fairly common prior to its legalization at the federal level by Roe. The way to make it less common in the future is not to back unpopular total bans that will never become law in most cases but will instead enable the empowerment of the left. The way forward is to change the culture so that abortion is less favored as a solution to unwanted pregnancy.

I don’t know how to do that, but I strongly believe that is the only answer. What Breitbart said remains true: Politics is downstream from culture.

[NOTE: Please see this previous post of mine.]

The death of Bob Lee

The New Neo Posted on by

We still don’t know who stabbed Bob Lee to death in San Francisco, and we may never know. This article points out the empty words of the DA of the city who said, “We do not tolerate these horrific acts of violence in San Francisco.”

And yet it does seem such acts are “tolerated” – after all, criminal prosecution has been easing, and crime increasing, with the “tolerance” of authorities. Brooke Jenkins, who uttered those words, replaced the recalled previous DA Chesa Boudin who helped destroy San Francisco. She is indeed more of a “law and order” DA compared to Boudin, who was nothing of the sort, but she’s done little to change things so far and I’m not at all certain she will or even can.

But I really want to write about two other things in that article. This is the first:

Lee had recently left SF to move back to Miami because he felt that San Francisco was “deteriorating.”

If that is true, it reminds me of this story about fate:

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

I still get a chill when I read that, as I did the first time I saw it many years ago.

Here’s the second thing that caught my eye:

Bob Lee had been stabbed repeatedly.

Passersby ignored his pleas for help and drove on.

Police called arrived too late.

Here’s my question: what would you have done if you were driving in San Francisco at 2:30 AM and saw a man bleeding from the chest, trying to flag down your car? I am pretty sure I would have been terrified to stop, and most likely would have “driven on.” First of all, I have no idea what useful aid I could have offered except to call 911, which I would have immediately done anyway – from the relative safety of my car. I would have described what I saw and where I saw it, as I’ve done a few times in my life when I’ve driven past something suspicious and/or alarming.

I would also have been frightened that, by stopping, I might expose myself to attack by the same person who stabbed Lee.

And lastly, I would have also wondered whether the whole thing might possibly be some sort of scam or hoax, to get someone to stop and then to rob or harm that person. Was this man really bleeding, or was it staged? This last suspicion would have been the weakest and least likely of all; nevertheless I think it would have at least occurred to me.

All of these things would have combined to make me a coward who drove by, but who also immediately called 911 in great urgency and agitation. Are we certain that none of the people in the cars that “drove on” did the same?

I’ve been wondering this, too

The New Neo Posted on by

Roger L. Simon asks, “Where’s the Manifesto?“:

In the immediate aftermath of the murders the police informed us the obviously emotionally disturbed shooter was transgendered, something that was ratified by the video of the killings at the Christian school showing the female-by-birth Audrey Hale dressed entirely like a macho terrorist.

Further, they told us she had left behind documents and a manifesto, explaining her actions.

Then, as if by magic, we heard no more of the word transgendered in any of its forms, from the media or anywhere, nor, almost simultaneously, anything of the manifesto, except that it had been handed to the FBI for review.

We can probably safely conclude it doesn’t reflect poorly on the right, or it would have already been released.

Wisconsin and the influence of the abortion question on elections

The New Neo Posted on by

The result of the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court justice election is troubling, as I wrote on Wednesday.

Here’s an article about what happened and why:

Protasiewicz [the Democrat] defeated Kelly [the Republican] by a whopping 11 points. She successfully framed the election as a referendum on Wisconsin’s current no-exceptions abortion ban, which went into effect last summer when the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers has challenged the ban in court. Protasiewicz has made it clear that she’s ready to strike it down. Her state’s electorate is too.

The election reinforced two political trends. The first is that if voters believe abortion is on the ballot, they will mobilize to protect access to it. That is what happened in Kansas last summer and, among other places, in Michigan last November. The centrality of abortion is what explains the difference in outcome between this week in Wisconsin and last November’s Senate race.

Both contests took place after the end of Roe. And yet, six months ago, Republican pro-life senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was narrowly reelected over his state’s then-lieutenant governor, Democrat Mandela Barnes. Why did Johnson win by 1 point while Kelly lost by 11? Because Johnson had plenty else to talk about, including President Biden’s job performance, inflation, and crime.

The judicial election presented a binary choice on a single issue. Nor did it help Kelly that the Wisconsin abortion ban is total. Even pro-choice polling data show that voters are willing to restrict abortion—as long as provisions are made for rape, incest, and life of the mother. Remove those conditions, and the public veers in a pro-choice direction.

Total and absolute abortion bans are not at all popular in all but the reddest of states, and maybe not even in those. Whatever you may think of abortion, that is just the practical truth. Because Protasiewicz was running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court – which will almost certainly have a direct role in deciding the question for the state – she was able to capitalize on the unpopularity of that law.

So how on earth did a purplish state like Wisconsin get such a total ban? When Roe was overturned, the state law that became operative was an 1849 statute that was a complete ban on all abortions. And why didn’t the GOP-controlled state legislature correct that in time for the election? It seems that a compromise bill was opposed by the most extreme anti-abortion wing of the GOP plus the Democrats:

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature unveiled a bill Wednesday that would create rape and incest exceptions to the state’s 1849 abortion ban and clarify when abortions that protect the health of the mother would be allowed, but would not return the same rights that were in place under Roe v. Wade.

Within five hours of being proposed, the Republican bill drew both bipartisan opposition and was ultimately shutdown. Some Republicans and the advocacy group, Pro-Life Wisconsin, said the bill’s exceptions for rape and incest went too far. Meanwhile, Evers and Democratic leaders soundly rejected the Republican proposal, calling it a cynical ploy to deceive voters just three weeks before a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

The GOP members of the legislature should have tried to do it earlier (I’m not absolutely sure that they didn’t try earlier, but I can’t find evidence of it). But even then, the effort probably would have met with the same two obstacles: one group opposing it being the most extreme anti-abortion faction on the right, and the other group opposing it being the Democrats as a whole, who needed the 1849 law to remain in effect in order to win that all-important judgeship. The latter win enables them not only to probably declare the 1849 law unconstitutional, but more importantly, to declare the GOP’s re-apportionment of the state to be biased and null.

Remember when the hard sciences were thought to be the last bastion of meritocracy?

The New Neo Posted on by

No more.

It’s not as though science has always been a pure meritocracy, however. For example, even I can remember, back in my youth, when women were discouraged in many ways from going into scientific fields, although it was possible to do it and to achieve some success. But many long years ago that situation ended and women were actually sought after. Same for black people of either sex.

However, it was originally thought that, once the correction occurred, there somehow would magically be de facto parity and each group would be represented in the sciences in approximate proportion to its percentage in the general population. When that didn’t occur – when the fact that differences remained in aptitudes for and/or interests in science at the tail of the distribution – the war on meritocracy began.

Ask Larry Summers. As I wrote back in 2005 in a piece about him:

…[T]his entire [Larry Summers being driven from Harvard] affair is extremely chilling. There seems to be a trend in academia to try to drag us into a new Dark Ages – this time one in which political correctness, rather than religion, triumphs over science. And some of its proponents are academics and scientists themselves.

It was already apparent almost twenty years ago.

And now we’ve come to this point:

The heads of some major institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are boycotting conferences if speakers are not deemed diverse enough.

University administrators, the panelists say, pressure faculty to substitute scientific discovery with metrics, including the number of articles published and the dollar value of grants as major grantors become increasingly politicized.

Activists engage in a proverbial statue toppling, calling for the cancellation of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and any paradigm-shifting scientist whose beliefs no longer conform to present-day sensibilities.

Leftists have also presented a claim that Kambhampati argues against: there is no objectivity, only lived experience that is formed by a person’s identity.

That’s not science, of course.

But speaking of “lived experience,” here’s a DEI whistleblower, who happens to be a black woman who took the word “diversity” seriously:

Lee served at California’s De Anza College in the role of faculty director since 2021.

“I’m not going quietly,” Lee (pictured) told The College Fix in an exclusive interview last month. “I cannot do that and I won’t do that.”

She’s made good on that promise by continuing to sound the alarm on what she experienced as a black woman fighting for true diversity, equity and inclusion on campus.

Lee, in a March 31 essay for the online magazine Compact, wrote that “my crime at De Anza was running afoul of the tenets of critical social justice, a worldview that understands knowledge as relative and tied to unequal identity-based power dynamics that must be exposed and dismantled.”

“This, I came to recognize, was the unofficial but strictly enforced ideological orthodoxy of De Anza—as it is at many other educational institutions,” she wrote in the piece, titled “A Black DEI Director Canceled by DEI.”

Lee stated that some of her adversaries on campus called her a “dirty Zionist” and a “right-wing extremist” for inviting Jewish speakers to the college to discuss antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Lee also described forming a “Heritage Month Workgroup,” a project to create a calendar celebrating multiple heritages and religious holidays. The student government approved it, but her dean and other colleagues told her the project was “unacceptable, because it didn’t focus on ‘decentering whiteness.’”

Lee is also a co-founder of a group called “Free Black Thought.” I wish her much success.

Trump made Bragg do it

The New Neo Posted on by

Is there no end to Trump’s superpowers?

For example, in the New York Times, law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman writes:

The 34-count indictment — which more accurately could be described as 34 half-indictments — was a disaster. It was a setback for the rule of law and established a dangerous precedent for prosecutors.

This legal embarrassment reveals new layers of Trumpian damage to the legal foundations of the United States: Mr. Trump’s opponents react to his provocations and norms violations by escalating and accelerating the erosion of legal norms.

Trumpian damage.

Maybe Bragg can use “Trump made me do it” as a defense if and when he ever is made to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

The very best woman is a biological man

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems to be the case in athletics. Mediocre male athletes can become champs by declaring themselves female. A man who has passed puberty has a lifelong advantage that doesn’t end even if that person starts taking female hormones.

One of the best examples is swimmer Lia Thomas, who was nominated by the University of Pennsylvania for 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year. Caitlyn Jenner (nee Bruce Jenner) was already a famous athlete prior to transition and did not do it for athletic reasons, but has received many honors originally meant for biological women:

In August 2015, Jenner won the Social Media Queen award at the Teen Choice Awards. In October 2015, Glamour magazine named her one of its 25 Glamour Women of the Year, calling her a “Trans Champion.”…

Feminist author Germaine Greer called Glamour magazine’s decision to award Jenner with a “Woman of the Year” award misogynistic, questioning whether a transgender woman could be better than “someone who is just born a woman.” Jenner also received criticism from individuals such as actress Rose McGowan, for stating – in a BuzzFeed interview – that the hardest part about being a woman “is figuring out what to wear”.

And USA Today named Rachel Levine as one of 12 “Women of the Year” in 2022.

Recently a person named Dylan Mulvaney has gotten a lot of publicity. I confess I hadn’t heard of Mulaney until a couple of days ago, but plenty of people had:

Mulvaney, who now has more than 10 million followers on TikTok and 1.7 million on Instagram, rose to prominence in March last year, when she started to chronicle her gender transition in her “Days of Girlhood” TikTok series. She was even chosen in October to be among a small group of young advocates invited to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House, where Mulvaney talked to the president about transgender issues.

As far as I can tell, Mulvaney is an intact biological male, but I can’t say I’ve investigated that issue in any depth. Mulaney has an acting background, and the whole thing appears to me to be an act (sincere or not, I also cannot tell). Caitlyn Jenner is not amused, by the way:

Caitlyn Jenner, who, like Mulvaney, is a transgender woman, joined in by sharing Blackburn’s tweet, writing: “@MarshaBlackburn thank you for speaking out and having a backbone — one of the best senators we have. Let’s not ‘normalize’ any of what this person is doing. This is absurdity!”

Here’s the sort of thing Mulvaney has done for Bud Light:

Tampax. Tampax.

Here’s Mulvaney for Nike women’s wear:

As I watch that video I get the distinct impression that Mulvaney is caricaturing women, or a stereotype of girlishness. Decades ago, such roles were played by actual women:

The right is in a bind

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Turtler” writes:

The End of America primarily isn’t happening because of Trump, but in spite of him. Moreover, his ability to “fade into the background” is limited not just by his ego (though there is plenty of that) but by a left wing propaganda machine that is simultaneously addicted to propping him up as a target and wants to utterly, publicly destroy him.

Trump emerged as a viable political figure because of the previous actions of the left since it’s been in power. After all, Trump had been talking about maybe running for office since the 1980s, but he correctly understood that the time was finally ripe for a run in 2016. One of the main reasons he was able to win that year is that the left didn’t have their full apparatus in place, probably because they underestimated his strength and the public’s dislike for their own favored candidate, Hillary Clinton.

They did not make that error in 2020, and they will not make it in 2024 no matter who runs. People who say that the destructive, manipulative, perhaps fraudulent, and “lawfare”-heavy tools of the left will be mounted against anyone who runs on the GOP ticket are correct.

That said, Trump has a lot of baggage that make him an especially rich target. He also has a lot of plusses along with his minuses. My opinion is that he probably is a worse candidate than DeSantis would be, but I’ve been wrong before and I might be wrong again.

That’s the problem – and it’s not just my problem. The 2024 election is, quite simply, impossible to predict no matter who runs on the GOP side. The tools of the left to prevent any candidate on the right from winning are many and varied; we cannot pretend otherwise. But another thing that is crystal clear is that the conflict on the right between people who have turned away from Trump (or never supported him in the first place) and those who think he must be the nominee is an old one that represents a basic split in the party that long predated Trump. Trump is not really the issue, but he is the lightning rod.

The left knows this, and exploits it.