Trump-hatred, fear, and cutoff

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 there have been intense reactions, and prominent among them has been Trump-hatred, fear of Trump, Trump Derangement Syndrome – whatever you want to call it. It’s something I’ve noticed escalating over time, reaching more and more people and getting more and more serious.

I’m not talking about people who just don’t like Trump or his policies and choose not to vote for him. I know plenty of people like that. But there’s a subset who consider Trump nothing less than demonic.

I mean that quite literally – even though they’re not necessarily religious. The idea is that he’s uniquely evil, up there with the worst of history.

During the last few months of the 2024 campaign, as we know, the opposition compared him to Hitler and called him a fascist over and over. But now that he’s poised to become the next president, most Democrats don’t seem to really think Hitler is coming to power, and certainly the Bidens have given no indication that they believe such a thing, either.

But some people do believe it. They really really do. And I know a couple such people. One – a longtime good friend – is at the moment not talking to me because I support Trump. And this isn’t because I ever talk politics to her, because I don’t bring it up. It’s just because of wrongthink on my part.

The right may joke about Thanksgiving conversations and TDS but it’s truly a terrible thing when it causes that big a rift between family members and/or friends who were formerly able to get along well despite their political differences. It’s tragic, actually. And as far as I know it’s always or nearly always Democrats cutting themselves off from Trump voters. Maybe something similar has happened now and then when Biden was elected and coming from the right, but I never read about it and I certainly never did it nor would I ever think to do it. My perception is that Trump’s first term didn’t have nearly the divisive effect this second term seems to arouse – and it hasn’t even begun yet.

The fears I see expressed are way over-the-top and out of step with anything Trump has actually done or said he will do. It seems to be stirred up by MSM articles, pundits, social media, and the like, stating things about Trump that he never said he’d do and I don’t see any reason he ever would do. Or it’s about generalized fears that have no basis in reality and aren’t even specifically related to Trump, but often are blamed on him. Take this example of the latter:

“I’m afraid I’m going to be murdered” isn’t something you hear a 10-year-old say every day. However, that’s the message a child named Violet delivered during a shocking CNN segment featuring multiple transgender children and their parents.

“[I’m worried that] one day I’m going to be walking down the street, and someone is going to come up and like shoot me or something,” Violet said somberly in the opening exchange.

“That’s a really scary thing to be worrying about at 10 years old,” the CNN reporter replied, affirming this bizarre paranoia as if it were justified.

It is not.

While the debate over the medical transitioning of gender-confused minors, currently before the Supreme Court, is intense, often heated, and sometimes toxic, no one is randomly murdering 10-year-olds who identify as transgender. The other children on the CNN panel similarly indicated that they falsely fear their “lives” and “existence” are at stake throughout the shocking six-minute segment. This is just an extension of the false narrative, routinely propagated by so-called LGBT activists, that transgender people are frequently murdered for their identity when, in fact, their murder rates are below average.

Such fears are hardly limited to children, and sometimes they take the form of believing that Trump will do the killing (or incarcerating) himself or send troops to do it.

Do a search for “my loved ones stopped talking to me because of my politics” and you will probably see, as I did, plenty of discussions. All the ones I saw featured conservatives who said they had been shunned by friends or family or both. But it was the responses to them that were especially depressing. Many of the commenters said the equivalent of, “Of course they don’t want to talk to you; you’re a bigot (or some other extreme misstatement of what conservatives believe).”

Just to take a few typical examples:

You can have whatever belief system you want, but you have to understand that most people in today’s world don’t align with conservative politics, as the entire platform is based on stripping rights and discriminating against disenfranchised people. Most people don’t want to associate with that, and for good reason.

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.

If you’re a republican and feel that half the population should lose autonomy over their bodies, that’s going to lose you a lot of female friends.

And others said things like “if you vote for Trump you vote for someone who thinks black or brown people have no right to be in this country.” Or worse.

But every now and then you see something like this:

To so grossly caricature half of our country (160 million human beings) with such antagonistic generalizations and flippantly condemn them as malicious or degenerates is irresponsible at best and catastrophic at worst.

Once upon a time, we all knew it was possible for one person to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, with political considerations falling all across a broad spectrum. We used to believe that listening to and celebrating differing opinions made us better, as a country and as people. But now it seems that tolerance has been infected by these dangerously divisive assumptions and absolutizations.

Echo chambers and free-thought are analogous to incestuous gene pools and evolution. Without the constant injection of variation, stagnation leads to the end of your kind. These people, who believe themselves to be highly intelligent, seem completely ignorant to the fact that ideological diversity is key to our survival and success as a nation. We need as many perspectives as we can get because who knows what problems tomorrow might bring.

I have yet to see a single comment on these threads from those who advocate cutoff citing actual policies of the actual Republican Party or of Trump himself. It’s all based on things like “he’s going to end abortion” or “he’s a racist who wants to kill black and brown people” or “he wants to take away our human rights,” or “he’ll take away Social Security.” That’s the sort of thing many people sincerely believe – as I said, I know some – and it’s tearing people apart.

This is the consequence of the opposition’s attempt to get Trump and to portray him as an awful person out to do serious harm. There are people who are very vulnerable to it, and with them it has had its intended effect.

Luigi Mangione, Bonnie and Clyde, Tsarnaev, and Raskolnikov

The New Neo Posted on by

Twenty-six year old Luigi Mangione has been detained as a person of interest in the murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson, and he’s emerged as a popular figure with a certain segment of the left. Call it the romantic nihilist segment, perhaps. But whatever you want to call it, this is a familiar phenomenon, a variation on a theme.

First analogy I thought about were the bank robbers and murderers Bonnie and Clyde, who were somewhat popular with some of the public – and notorious with the rest – in the 1930s and were made into tragic romantic hero and heroine in a popular movie of the 1960s. The real duo:

… escaped the police at Joplin, but left behind most of their possessions at the apartment, including Buck’s parole papers (three weeks old), a large arsenal of weapons, a handwritten poem by Bonnie, and a camera with several rolls of undeveloped film. Police developed the film at The Joplin Globe and found many photos of Barrow, Parker, and Jones posing and pointing weapons at one another. The Globe sent the poem and the photos over the newswire, including a photo of Parker clenching a cigar in her teeth and a pistol in her hand. The Barrow Gang subsequently became front-page news throughout America.

The photo of Parker posing with a cigar and a gun became popular. Jeff Guinn, in his book, Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, noted:

“John Dillinger had matinee-idol good looks and Pretty Boy Floyd had the best possible nickname, but the Joplin photos introduced new criminal superstars with the most titillating trademark of all—illicit sex. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were wild and young, and undoubtedly slept together.”

Then there’s Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who became something of a girl fan favorite when Rolling Stone featured a glamour shot of him on their cover.

Mangione himself seems to have been an admirer of the Unibomber, who was brilliant, a Harvard graduate, and who wrote a lengthy manifesto. The Unibomber (Ted Kaczynski) defies easy categorization, but he was anti-industrial and “called for a revolution to force the collapse of the worldwide technological system, and held a life close to nature, in particular primitivist lifestyles, as an ultimate ideal.” And, accordingly, he has been admired by ecofascists, the murderer Breivik, and assorted other nihilists and anarchists.

But another person Mangione most reminds me of – at least from what I know of him at this point – is the fictional character in Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolnikiv. This is what I’m referring to:

An impoverished student with a conflicted idea of himself, Raskolnikov (Rodya as his mother calls him) decides to kill a corrupt pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, with whom he has been dealing, with the idea of using the money to start his life all over, and to help those who are in need of it. It is later revealed that he also commits the murder as justification for his pride, as he wants to prove that he is “exceptional” in the way Napoleon was.

From the book’s text, Chapter VI:

Six weeks ago [Raskolnikov] had remembered the address; he had two articles that could be pawned: his father’s old silver watch and a little gold ring with three red stones, a present from his sister at parting. He decided to take the ring. When he found the old woman he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her. He got two roubles from her and went into a miserable little tavern on his way home. He asked for tea, sat down and sank into deep thought. A strange idea was pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very much absorbed him.

Almost beside him at the next table there was sitting a student, whom he did not know and had never seen, and with him a young officer. They had played a game of billiards and began drinking tea. All at once he heard the student mention to the officer the pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna and give him her address. This of itself seemed strange to Raskolnikov; he had just come from her and here at once he heard her name. Of course it was a chance, but he could not shake off a very extraordinary impression, and here someone seemed to be speaking expressly for him; the student began telling his friend various details about Alyona Ivanovna.

“She is first-rate,” he said. “You can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy….”

And he began describing how spiteful and uncertain she was, how if you were only a day late with your interest the pledge was lost; how she gave a quarter of the value of an article and took five and even seven percent a month on it and so on. The student chattered on, saying that she had a sister Lizaveta, whom the wretched little creature was continually beating, and kept in complete bondage like a small child, though Lizaveta was at least six feet high.

“There’s a phenomenon for you,” cried the student and he laughed.

… I’ll tell you what. I could kill that damned old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without the faintest conscience-prick,” the student added with warmth. The officer laughed again while Raskolnikov shuddered. How strange it was!

“Listen, I want to ask you a serious question,” the student said hotly. “I was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman, not simply useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what she is living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any case. You understand? You understand?”

“Yes, yes, I understand,” answered the officer, watching his excited companion attentively.

“Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman’s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals—and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange—it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta’s finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.”

“Of course she does not deserve to live,” remarked the officer, “but there it is, it’s nature.”

“Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of duty, conscience—I don’t want to say anything against duty and conscience;—but the point is, what do we mean by them? Stay, I have another question to ask you. Listen!”

“No, you stay, I’ll ask you a question. Listen!”

“Well?”

“You are talking and speechifying away, but tell me, would you kill the old woman yourself?”

“Of course not! I was only arguing the justice of it…. It’s nothing to do with me….”

“But I think, if you would not do it yourself, there’s no justice about it…. Let us have another game.”

Raskolnikov was violently agitated. Of course, it was all ordinary youthful talk and thought, such as he had often heard before in different forms and on different themes. But why had he happened to hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was just conceiving… the very same ideas? And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint….

Of course, bck then there was no social media. Now, there is.

[NOTE: See this for reactions from Mangione’s family and friends.]

Syria: Iran’s loss is whose gain?

The New Neo Posted on by

We certainly don’t know who the ultimate winner in Syria will be. But I think we can safely say a couple of things. The first is that the situation is fraught with peril. The second is that Iran looks like the loser:

The Assad regime was an integral part of an Iranian “ring of fire” that would encircle the Jewish state with heavily armed proxy terror armies. The ring of fire vision was pioneered by the late Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. It was one of the factors that turned the Iranian-led Shi’ite axis into the most capable and dangerous of Israel’s adversaries.

Assad’s downfall is a direct knock-on effect from the devastating blows that Iran’s main regional proxy, Hezbollah, suffered in neighboring Lebanon. Israeli aerial and ground operations left Hezbollah severely weakened. The Sunni rebels in neighboring Syria saw their chance and took it.

Whatever group ends up controlling Syria – or whatever remains of Syria, because it might split – it’s highly unlikely that it will be a friend of Israel. But it almost certainly won’t be an Iranian proxy. Turkish proxy? Perhaps.

There’s also this:

On the ground, U.S.-aligned Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces have moved into Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, while the Israeli Air Force repeatedly struck critical border crossing points between Syria and Lebanon. This means that Iran’s ground corridor—meant to allow the seamless passage of weapons and personnel from Iran and Iraq from the east, into Syria and Lebanon, has crumbled. …

The umbrella Syrian coalition of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and formerly tied to Al Qaeda under the name Jabhat al-Nusra, has emerged as the dominant Sunni insurgent force. The Syrian National Army—a nationalist rebel coalition backed by Turkey—is another major player on the ground.

In the meantime, Israel has been busy destroying weapons that the Assad regime had amassed. The idea is to prevent them from falling into the hands of whatever forces are taking over in Syria.

Interesting times.

Earliest sunset

The New Neo Posted on by

Depending on where you live in the US, the earliest sunset is in the next couple of days or even today.

I’m not an early riser, so the earliest sunset day represents an even greater milestone for me than the shortest day. I’m always happy to see the sunsets get later, even if only by a few seconds at first.

Caroline Glick on what’s going on in Syria

The New Neo Posted on by

No one really knows what will happen now in Syria. The Assad family has been in charge for over a half century, and now they’re gone. Some of the forces – maybe all of the forces? – vying for post-Assad control are noxious as well.

But I’ve long found Caroline Glick’s take on things to be worthwhile. Here she addresses the situation in Syria:

And here’s Glick on political power plays in Israel aimed at getting rid of Netanyahu.

And – could it be that some of the hostages really will be returned? And if so, how high will the price be?:

Speaking about Hamas, he says the Gaza-based terror group is “more isolated than ever” after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. “It expected help from Hezbollah — we took that away. It expected help from Iran — we took that as well. It expected help from the Assad regime – okay, that won’t happen anymore.”

“The isolation of Hamas opens another opening to making progress on a deal that will bring our hostages back,” Netanyahu says.

He promises that he and the government are “turning over every stone” to bring all the hostages home.

I don’t see that he mentioned the election and pending second presidency of Donald Trump, but I think most people know that’s somewhere in the mix.

Person of interest detained in killing of United Healthcare executive

The New Neo Posted on by

A suspect has been apprehended in the murder of Brian Thompson:

The man — who sources said is being eyed for the coldblooded, targeted execution in front of a Manhattan hotel last week — allegedly had a manifesto on him when he was taken into custody by cops in Altoona, Pa.

He also had a gun, silencer, four fake IDs and other items “consistent” with what authorities were looking for in the case, sources said.

If all of that is true – and early reports are sometimes erroneous – he certainly sounds highly suspicious. Four fake IDs is a lot of fake IDs. And as far as I know, most people who carry guns don’t also ordinarily carry silencers for them. If this really is the guy, I’m surprised he hadn’t ditched the gun somewhere along the way, unless he was planning further murders to great internet acclaim from the left.

The manifesto is reported to have been “critical of the health insurance industry.” Another thought occurs to me – perhaps the guy was contemplating suicide, and leaving the manifesto as his message to the world?

And now I see that the suspect has been ID’d as Luigi Mangione: he is 26 years old, from Maryland, and “is an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski — and apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, law-enforcement sources told The Post on Monday.”

That’s a lot to digest. Come to think of it, admiration for the Unabomber would make sense for this killer’s profile, as would a generally leftist orientation:

Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.

He said at the time of graduation that he planned to seek a degree in artificial intelligence, focused on the areas of computer science and cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.

He says in online posts that he graduated from the prestigious school with a master’s of science in engineering and a bachelor’s degree in the same field.

His LinkedIn suggests he is a data engineer at a car company based in California, although he lists his current home as Honolulu in Hawaii.

He’s also very into gaming. Interesting, in the sense that it occurred to me yesterday, on thinking about some of his online supporters, that they sounded as though they regarded Thompson’s murder as a move in a game, in which the shooter was the animated hero against the forces of evil.

The police were alerted to Mangione’s presence by a MacDonald’s customer recognizing his resemblance to a photo released from a surveillance video.

Daniel Penny found NOT GUILTY

The New Neo Posted on by

I have to say this verdict surprises me, and I’m happy about it. I thought the best Penny could possibly hope for would be that the jury would hang on the second count as well. Instead, they acquitted him. So now he’ll be a free man – although he may have to go into some equivalent of the witness protection program.

Then again, a great many people are on his side. And many of them even live in New York City.

I repeat: I’m surprised.

My hunch on what may have happened is that this: We only knew the jury was deadlocked on the first and most serious count. We never know whether the majority leaned towards acquitting him or convicting him. Now it seems fairly clear that that there were probably only one or two jurors willing to vote Penny guilty on that first count. Then the judge gave an Allen warning – basically, that the state had spent a lot of time and money on the case and the jurors really needed to go back and reach a unanimous verdict – but the holdout or holdouts remained.

They may have thought that would be the end of the case, based on the judge’s earlier instructions. But no, they were sent back to deliberate on the second count – the lesser one. At that point, the holdout or holdouts may have decided that enough was enough, and voted with the majority for acquittal rather than spend a lot of time and effort only to be deadlocked again. And they voted not guilty rather quickly, at that.

I believe that justice has prevailed here. But the case never should have been brought.

Centerville piecrust

The New Neo Posted on by

Back in the days when I did a lot more cooking, I used to make my own piecrust. It always was okay, but I never mastered the art of making it really really good. Oh, I got lots of tips that I tried to follow, about the proportions of this and that and how long to rest it or chill it or any number of other tricks of the trade that people swore by. But my piecrust remained merely passable.

So finally I decided I’d done my time in the piecrust saltmines and I started buying prepared crust. That was only marginally better (sometimes worse), and I tried a great many brands.

Over the years, I’ve come to the point where I cook much more simply and hardly ever make pies of any kind. But this past Thanksgiving I decided to make a pecan pie, because the prepared one I had bought at the grocery store was awful.

So this was the first time I’d looked at prepared piecrusts in many a year. I decided to go for the easiest type: frozen. There was a slightly cheaper type and a slightly more expensive type, and I decided to go for the latter. It was made by a company called Centerville Pie Company.

I didn’t have especially high hopes for all the aforementioned reasons. But this piecrust was absolutely delicious, the cadillac of piecrusts. It’s a New England company, though, so it might not be available outside of the area – the website says they’re at the following stores in the Northeast (whatever that means): Market Basket, Big Y, Harris Teeter, Schnucks, Publix, and some Walmarts.. I got mine at a Market Basket. It was everything a piecrust should be. It came in a package of two, so I still have one in the freezer. I’m planning to make a quiche.

They also ship nationwide, but as far as I can tell that refers to the pies rather than just the crust. I haven’t had a pie, but I bet they’re good. And I don’t even get a commission from this. Just the joy of spreading piecrust around.

Please use my Amazon links for your holiday shopping

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s that time of year again: Christmas, Chanukah. If you’re like me, you’ve probably postponed your shopping – although this year I’ve mostly done it ahead of time and I’m up to the wrapping stage.

If you use Amazon, please click on the Amazon portal on the right sidebar on desktops and laptops, and towards the bottom of the site as it displays on cellphones and the like. I get a small percentage from every purchase. The Amazon link is in the text below the “donate” button. You may have to disable your ad-blocker to see it. Thanks very much!