Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Some days there’s just so much news a roundup is in order.

(1) The Chinese economy appears threatened right now due to a mortgage crisis:

As of July 12, homebuyers in 22 Chinese cities had threatened to stop their mortgage payments over construction delays and sinking real estate prices, affecting 35 projects, Citigroup analysts wrote in a note. As of Monday, that figure had surged to over 80 cities, affecting over 200 projects, according to data from E-house China Research and Development Institution, a Chinese real-estate database.

Homebuyers’ discontent is spreading both offline and online. Now, Chinese online platforms are deleting crowd-sourced documents and social media posts tabulating the number of mortgage boycotts and project delays nationwide, according to a Bloomberg report.

(2) The ever-persuasive Joe Biden gets nowhere with the Saudis and his request for oil.

(3) We’ve known about the 1619 Project for quite some time, and its goal to rewrite American history and place slavery at the absolute center of it as unforgiveable original sin, motivating and dominating everything else. But meanwhile this sort of thing has also been going on for quite some time outside of most people’s awareness:

[Jeffery Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute]… recounted his previous visit to [Monticello] as being full of grandeur with a “sense of majesty about the place.”

“No longer,” he told host Brian Kilmeade. “It is depressing and demoralizing and truly upsetting.”…

Tucker described the house as looking like a rummage sale with contemporary paintings hung inside. He said tour guides repeatedly diminished Jefferson’s accomplishments, claiming his reputation is “wildly overblown.”

They won’t tear Monticello down, unlike the Jefferson statues. Instead they’ll use it as an opportunity to attempt to induce loathing and shame in visitors. And it’s not just Jefferson; it’s Madison, too:

No American flags fly at Montpelier, Madison’s plantation home in rural Virginia, and not a single display focuses on the life and accomplishments of America’s foremost political philosopher, who created our three-branch federal system of government, wrote the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers, and served two terms as president.

Instead, blindsided tourists are hammered by high-tech exhibits about Madison’s slaves and current racial conflicts, thanks to a $10 million grant from left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein.

“I was kind of thinking we’d be hearing more about the Constitution,” one baffled dad said when The Post visited the president’s home this week. “But everything here is really about slavery.”…

If the left has its way, everyone will be taught that all of American history is really about slavery.

(4) Speaking of Joe Biden, more evidence emerges from Hunter’s laptop:

…Eric Schwerin, the president of Hunter Biden’s investment company Rosemont Seneca Partners, was “named as a calendar invite recipient on 21 of 30 listed meetings, with a green check frequently indicating his confirmed receipt of the invite for meetings with the vice president.”

Previously released visitor logs from the Obama administration indicate that Schwerin visited the White House 19 times between 2009 and 2015.

Biden has long denied having anything to do with Hunter’s business or business partners.

(5) In a mall in a suburb of Indianapolis, a shooter kills three people and is shot dead by a man with a gun:

Ison also confirmed Sunday that the shooter was shot and killed by a man visiting the mall. The Good Samaritan, as police called him, was armed with a handgun.

Identified by police as a 22-year-old from Bartholomew County, the Good Samaritan had a legal gun permit and is fully cooperating with police.

“The real hero of the day was the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in the food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began,” Ison said.

He was lawfully carrying, but the mall had a gun-free policy. I would imagine the killer was aware of that policy and hoped to take advantage of it. Fortunately the other guy was carrying anyway, and here’s what the mall spokesperson had to say: “We are grateful for the strong response of the first responders, including the heroic actions of the Good Samaritan who stopped the suspect.”

I wonder whether they’re rethinking their policy on guns.

Those days before air conditioning

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems a bit like ancient history, doesn’t it? But when I was growing up and for quite a while afterwards, air conditioning was a rare luxury.

We didn’t have it in houses, except for the occasional bedroom. We certainly didn’t have it in cars. Not in schools, either. And subways? Fugetaboutit.

And in New York in the summer it can get awfully hot. Summer meant sweat. Summer meant seersucker suits for the men and light cotton or linen dresses for the women. When I was a toddler, we were fortunate enough to go for a month or so to a rented cabin at a lake, and my father commuted up there for the weekends.

My bedroom at home had very little ventilation. Even with the two tiny windows open it could be oppressive in there on a hot still night. There was a large fan that could be hauled in, but all it did was circulate the heavy air, and even as a kid it was hard to sleep. My parents finally got an air conditioner in their bedroom, and my brother and I would haul in cot mattresses to put on their bedroom floor on the worst nights.

In New York City, school lasted until June 30th and began again the day after Labor Day. Those last few weeks in June could be awfully hot, coupled with the lame-duck situation of not too much learning going on towards the end anyway. Boring, tedious, draining. Some summers after school was finally over I went to sleep-away camp, and although that was a solution to the heat, it was located in the mountains and often so bitterly cold there that I remember almost never having any desire to plunge into the ice-cold lake, although we were forced to do so every day.

In those days cars had little side vents that did almost nothing at all to circulate air, and if you wore shorts or a skirt you’d stick to the vinyl seats. My family once drove through the Mohave desert in the summer – ’nuff said.

There was one place that was reliably air-conditioned: movie theaters. It could be so cold inside them, though, that one had to remember to take a sweater or risk shivering through the entire film.

Even when I was a teenager and young adult, neither the New York subways nor the ballet classes I attended were ever air-conditioned. The sweaty bodies in close quarters exacerbated the heat, and the humidity in a dance class became formidable. Dancers’ hands would keep sliding off barres which had became slick with sweat, and sweat dripped onto the floor and pooled there. We could have used a few of those guys who appear during basketball games to towel the floor. Every dancer had a little towel draped over the barre with which to try to absorb some of the sweat that stung our eyes and made our leotards sopping wet.

And now I think it’s about time for this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: Trump is a lawless authoritarian who tore up the Constitution

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “JFM” writes:

I’m very confused when people on the left start, in all media, talking about Trump as “lawless” and “ripping up the Constitution”. Where did he do that? When did he do this?

And commenter “Wendy Laubach” adds:

JFM–I read this almost every day, the casual statement that the Republican party has embraced authoritarianism and that Trump was a lawless dictator. There is never any explanation, just as there is none for the “everyone knows” assumption that Trump’s term was nonstop “chaos.” It’s amazing how many people will read assertions like this in the paper, or hear them on TV, and adopt them serenely and uncritically.

The phenomenon is indeed very noticeable, and has been almost from the start of Trump’s political journey. It is in the nature of a creed – a formal statement of faith – rather than an observation requiring proof, defense, or even discussion.

Not only that, but belief in this creed is also a badge of honor and a sign of belonging to the righteous and the reasonable. Disagree with it, or even ask that an example be given, and receive disdain. You will be marked as an outsider to virtue, and perhaps even a Trump supporter or Trump defender, which puts you beyond the realm of reasoned discourse.

I am not overstating this. It’s not universal, of course, but it is very common on the left and even in rank and file Democrats. I think it accounts at least in part for the position of the NeverTrumpers. The effect is amplified, as all such effects are, by the echo-chamber nature of the left and of the MSM. If all the “smart people” believe that Trump is all those awful things, the only ones to doubt it must be dumb or evil or both. And a related conclusion is that if Trump is tearing up the Constitution, then the opposition is also justified in cutting constitutional corners and “cutting a great road though the law to get after the devil.”

All of this goes way beyond logic and way beyond any refutation through argument on the part of someone on the right. The weight and amount of evidence that would be required to refute it would be enormous, and even then the recipient of the information would have to be at least somewhat open to it on some level. This goes to the heart of people’s identity as good people who opposes evil, and since Trump is evil one must oppose him in order to be good.

I first noticed the strength of this feeling early on, when MAGA hats became the supposed symbols of racism, frightening and terrible to behold. Never before do I recall having seen the campaign symbols of the opposition be demonized to that extent, even if the opposition was despised (as it was, for example, with Reagan and George W. Bush). Now something that seemed so innocuous – a hat with an acronym that stood for “Make America Great Again” – was said to transmit tremendous evil.

Propaganda is a very real thing with very real effects, and Trump has been the target of negative and relentless propaganda from the beginning. The perceptual mental edifice that propaganda has built over the years is enormously strong.

Jose Alba and assault: update on the NY bodega case

The New Neo Posted on by

More has been revealed about the incident leading up to the death of Austin Simon at the hands of bodega employee Jose Alba. If you’re not familiar with the story so far, please see this previous post of mine on the subject.

Read the newer article and you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s based on the release of a version of the videotape that also contains audio. It starts with the now familiar story of the woman’s EBT card not going through when she wanted to buy her 10-year-old daughter (who was present) a bag of chips, the woman’s resultant anger, and her angry contention that Alba had snatched the bag of chips from the daughter.

The audio reveals a conversation that went like this, after the card failed to go through:

“Did you put food?” the girlfriend can be heard on video asking Alba about how he rang up the sale.

“OK, mama, let me do it another time. My God,” Alba says.

“There’s money on there,” she insists.

The footage, which was edited, then cuts to other customers, and the woman yells from off camera, “You can’t touch my daughter. Don’t snatch that out of my daughter, you f–king piece of shit!”

Lovely lady.

More:

Alba is not seen in the footage taking away the chips.

The woman goes on to say “I’m gonna bring my n– down here and he gonna f–k you up. My n— is gonna come down here right now and f–k you up!”

So that’s the prelude to Austin Simon’s arrival on the scene, almost certainly setting up a very strong and completely understandable expectation on the part of Alba that if Simon arrived it would be with the intent of doing him harm, perhaps grave harm.

And so when Simon – a much younger and fitter man – entered, he immediately went behind the security barrier that separates store clerks from the customers, and greeted Alba this way:

Then Simon can be seen walking in and going immediately behind the counter.

“What’s up with you? N—-r what is wrong with you?” he demands.

That’s Simon talking to Alba, by the way – not the other way around.

There’s quite a bit more at the link, but that’s the most important new information. It makes it even more clear what threats Alba faced, and why he felt that his life and limb were at stake. But as we know, he’s been charged with murder.

Also, the girlfriend is seen from another video angle stabbing Alba in the arm, but that seems to be during or right after Alba was stabbing Simon. She has not been charged at all so far or even named.

Once upon a time there used to be a crime known as assault which was part of the familiar phrase assault and battery. Here’s the old definition of assault:

Assault is generally defined as an intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact. No physical injury is required, but the actor must have intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the victim and the victim must have thereby been put in immediate apprehension of such a contact.

I’m not sure whether “mere words” (such as those uttered by the girlfriend about getting her boyfriend to come and f*** Alba up) could ever have been defined as “assault,” even if followed by a battery (a touching). But it’s moot now, because now assault is usually defined differently, and that is the case in New York, which has various degrees of assault that all require an injury of some sort to have occurred.

However, there’s also a crime in NY called menacing, which I’d never heard of before but which seems somewhat similar to the old definition of assault. Menacing is defined as “intentionally plac[ing] another person in ‘reasonable fear of physical injury, serious physical injury or death.'” Verbally threatening is included, and I think it is pretty clear from the audio that Simon’s girlfriend could be successfully prosecuted for menacing, which carries a penalty of up to six months’ imprisonment.

I’d be shocked if Bragg ever decided to prosecute her for that.

As far as the girlfriend’s stabbing of Alba goes, I’m not so sure that would be a crime if in fact it occurred while Alba was in the act of killing Simon. Even though it may have been justified self-defense on the part of Alba, the girlfriend was trying to save her boyfriend’s life, which I believe (I’m not an expert on this) would make it self-defense on her part, because “self-defense” includes an act committed in the course of trying to save the life of another.

So, why weren’t the charges against Alba dropped the minute prosecutors saw the video, especially with the audio? (Rhetorical question.) Bragg says oh well, I’m thinking about it. But IMHO he can afford to drop the charges now because he’s already gotten his message across, which is don’t defend yourself or you could be charged with murder. And you better hope there’s video to document things, or it will be even worse for you.

The Democrats’ climate agenda is on hold…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for the moment, courtesy of Joe Manchin.

Although Biden may try to muscle it through anyway, with that tried and true method of bypassing the legislature known as “executive action”:

President Joe Biden vowed Friday to take “strong executive action” in response to moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin torpedoing his party’s efforts toward writing sweeping climate action and tax legislation.

“If the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” Biden said in statement, while overseas in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Biden didn’t mention Manchin specifically.

The President vowed to “create jobs, improve our energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and supply chains, protect us from oil and gas price hikes in the future, and address climate change,” but did not provide specifics on what kind of action he would take.

If they’re anything like his previous actions, they’ll come back to bite him in the butt.

More:

“I said, ‘Chuck until we see the July inflation figures, until we see the July, basically Federal Reserve rates, interest rates, then let’s wait till that comes out so we know that we’re going down a path that won’t be inflammatory, to add more to inflation,’ ” Manchin told Hoppy Kercheval on Talkline. “He says, ‘Are you telling me you won’t do the other right now?’ I said, ‘Chuck, it’s wrong, it’s not prudent to do the other right now.'”

I haven’t trusted Manchin in the past, but during the Biden administration he’s been a champ. I still don’t trust him, however. What does “right now” mean? Manchin is not up for re-election this fall, so he’s not talking about that in terms of himself. Does he mean it’s not smart to rile the voters prior to November, but if the Democrats keep control of the legislature it can all be done after that? I don’t know, and perhaps only Joe Manchin does.

Georgetown law professor calls justices who disagree with her “lawless”

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s persuasive, right?

Feldman is emblematic of the decline of legal reasoning and of reasoning as a whole in academic life. Law schools have long been the bastion of the “critical” approach to scholarship and argument, beginning in the late 1970s with Critical Legal Studies. I’ve written at some length about the movement and its philosophy in this post.

Of course, Feldman (and it’s certainly not limited to her) believes that it is she who is the one defending the rule of law. She calls the present SCOTUS “actively rogue.” Ironic, since it was actually the Roe court that was rogue in terms of reaching way past anything that is in the Constitution, and even some liberal law professors used to recognize that. The Dobbs court was actually trying to reinstate the primacy of the Constitution, which isn’t the least bit “rogue” except in the sense that it overturns the Roe precedent. But I doubt the left would be at all perturbed at overturning precedent if the action was in a cause they supported.

Here’s Feldman:

Again: people can take whatever tone they like toward me…I will not be intimidated into accepting theocratic decrees as legitimate legal reasoning in a secular, pluralist democracy.

That argument – that Dobbs was based on religion – is false on the face of it. But I’ve heard other people I know state with great conviction that this is all about religion, and nothing can dissuade them because of course they are mind-readers – as is Feldman. This is part of the source of the great animus towards this decision.

I’ve written about this point of view in this previous post:

(4) Many women on the left have bought the “Handmaid’s Tale” sort of scenario which goes like this: rigid fundamentalist Christian men are trying to control the reproductive organs of women and will stop at nothing till they get total control. This fear has been drummed up incessantly for many years.

(5) Many also believe that the Catholics on the Supreme Court are intent on imposing Catholicism on everyone and the ruling in Dobbs originates in their Catholicism. There is no separation of church and state here (#5 relies on their not understanding that the ruling actually takes the Court out of the business of ruling on abortion at the federal level, but there are plenty of people who not only don’t understand that but who are not interested in even listening to that sort of assertion, much less crediting it).

Feldman is a law professor, and so she of course understands that Dobbs “actually takes the Court out of the business of ruling on abortion at the federal level,” but she feels free to ignore it here and pretend this is a theocratic decree masquerading as legal reasoning.

Looking at Feldman’s Wiki page, I see that – among other things – she’s a big champion and supporter of Christine Blasey Ford. In addition:

In 2020, Prof. Heidi Feldman of the Law Center tweeted that “law professors and law school deans” should “not support applications from our students to clerk for” judges appointed by President Trump. “To work for such a judge,” Ms. Feldman continued, marks a lawyer as lacking in the character and judgment necessary for the practice of law.”

So Feldman’s been on this crusade of delegitimizing the judges and justices duly appointed by the opposition for quite some time, and has even tried to deprive them of clerks by appealing to Georgetown and other law schools to not “support applications” from their students to clerk for these vile and evil judges. That this sort of recommendation from a professor is considered fine and dandy at an institution such as Georgetown Law School tells us a lot. It has become especially common post-Trump, because Trump is a lawless Hitlerian figure in their minds (or they pretend that he is; I actually think they really believe it, however) and any tools are appropriate to oppose him and anyone who might support him and who ever supported him. I have encountered this type of thinking over and over among ordinary people I know, as well.

And here is a clear expression of it by Feldman:

“In more ordinary times, we can study and teach U.S. law against a background that presidents, governors, state and federal legislators, and judges on all courts have a basic commitment and aspiration to rule of law and to justice,” Feldman wrote.

“With the rise of the Trump-Republican Party, this traction — the ability to argue within a shared expectation of commitment to rule of law and justice — has completely evaporated. Last term’s Supreme Court decisions are just the most recent high-profile evidence for this.”

It is intensely Orwellian, but Feldman fairly swells with righteousness.

Here’s another law professor who goes her one better (or worse):

St. John’s University law Professor John Barrett approvingly replied to the thread, tweeting that lawyers who fail to resist the Supreme Court are “Hitler’s butlers.”

“Lawyers are servants—butlers,” wrote Barrett. “But we get to choose whom and what we will serve. Rules of thumb: serve truth; assist people, not powers that hurt them; don’t do it for the money; don’t become Hitler’s butler.”

This isn’t merely about Dobbs, in case for some reason you thought it might be.

The cancellation of Jefferson at Monticello…

The New Neo Posted on by

…had actually already happened when I was there, around 2008. The docents were already droning on and on about slaves and Sally Hemmings, almost as though those were the main points of Jefferson’s life.

This NY Post article describes what’s going on there these days:

“The whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation,” Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the libertarian Brownstone Institute and a recent visitor, told The Post. “People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.”

The new emphasis is the culmination of a 10-year effort to balance the historical record, officials of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the estate, have said

So I guess it’s gotten even worse. More:

“Half of the comments on Jefferson were critical,” wrote William Bailes of Chester, Virginia, in an online review after visiting in June. “Even my 11-year-old daughter noticed the bias.”

Tucker described his guide last month as “surly and dismissive” of Jefferson’s accomplishments…

…[O]n a visit this week, The Post found, the grievance has become the predominant theme at Monticello, from the ticket booth in the visitors center — decorated with a contemporary painting of Jefferson’s weeping slaves — to its final gift-shop display…

Books by critical race theory proponents Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates enjoy pride of place in the visitor center’s gift shop, while the smaller Farm Shop store displays five titles on Jefferson’s slaves — and a single biography of the man himself…

“The entire focus was on his mistress,” complained Wesley Stevens of Tulsa, Okla. “They are trying to rewrite history to make it seem like the Founding Fathers were terrible immoral creatures that happened to start a country.”…

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is run by a roster of big-money Democratic donors and former Democratic officials…

Please read the whole thing, because excerpts don’t do it justice.

By the way – it’s much too complex a subject to explain here, but although it has become the Accepted and Obligatory Narrative that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Hemmings’ children, it is not what you’d call proven. It certainly seems to have at least been a male relative of Jefferson’s, however. If you want to wade through this or at least part of this challenge of the Thomas Jefferson theory, be my guest. Here’s a very brief treatment.

In line with all of this, I want to revisit a post of mine about something Allan Bloom wrote (in his 1987 work The Closing of the American Mind) about his own schooling, which occurred back in the 1940s and shows the seeds of all of this had already been firmly planted:

What began in Charles Beard’s Marxism and Carl Becker’s historicism became routine. We are used to hearing the Founders being charged with being racists, murderers of Indians, representatives of class interests. I asked my first history professor in the university, a very famous scholar, whether the picture he gave us of George Washington did not have the effect of making us despise our regime. “Not at all,” he said, “it doesn’t depend on individuals but on our having good democratic values.” To which I rejoined, “But you just showed us that Washington was only using those values to further the class interests of the Virginia squirearchy.” He got angry, and that was the end of it. He was comforted by a gentle assurance that the values of democracy are part of the movement of history and did not require his elucidation or defense. He could carry on his historical studies with the moral certitude that they would lead to greater openness and hence more democracy. The lessons of fascism and the vulnerability of democracy, which we had all just experienced, had no effect on him.

Of course, it’s much much worse now. I am pretty sure that Bloom’s professor respected America and its ideals; for the most part the academics and other elites in charge these days do not and are actively determined to destroy our respect for our past and make us hate our own country.

[NOTE: Here is Robert Frost’s take on related matters.]

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

I needed to write you the tiny word to finally thank you very much yet again regarding the precious secrets you’ve contributed above. I think there are millions of more pleasant moments ahead for people who examine your website.

Arguing content, arguing process

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “F” asked a question yesterday on the thread about the exchange between Bridges and Hawley concerning who can get pregnant:

I think the question of violence is where Bridges wins the point. It is a dishonest point — Hawley was not visiting violence on anyone — but it is one that rocks Hawley back on his heels for a second. So if we are to debate with woke people, we need to have a way to respond to the question of violence. Perhaps with a legal definition, perhaps with a syllogism that refutes the point, but the important issue is to be able to prevent people like Bridges from winning a point by saying “violence.”

Anybody have a good suggestion on this?

Years ago I wrote several posts on the content/process distinction in argument or discussion. I’m going to link to them again, because I think they’re relevant and I think the points made there are important. The first is this one, and the second is this. To recap a bit:

When I was studying interpersonal communication and how to track an argument, one thing that was very much emphasized was the difference between content and process. Content is just what it sounds like: the subject matter about which two people (let’s say, a married couple) are arguing. “Did you do the dishes last night?” Process is everything else—for example, the emotion with which something is said, the type of vocabulary used, tone, repetition, body language, and the unspoken subtext.

Some of the most confusing disputes are the ones where one person begins an argument on the content level and the other person introduces a process rebuttal at some point. It can be especially tricky when someone switches back and forth between one level and the other in rapid succession. In the heat of the moment, the other person can fail to notice it, so that the person doing the switching gets at least one step ahead of the other.

In the Bridge/Hawley exchange, both things are operating at the same time, as they usually are. But the question “F” asks concerns Bridges’ use of the term “violence” to describe Hawley’s words, which are not the least bit violent, as well as being words rather than acts. So Hawley, or someone in his position, can choose between a content argument or a process argument, or can combine the two.

An example of a content argument would involve challenging Bridges implication that Hawley’s words – his questions, and later his claim that men cannot get pregnant – will function to put already-vulnerable-to-suicide trans people at even greater risk. Hawley attempts a version of that challenge. Another example would be to challenge the claim that words can equal violence; Hawley also attempts a version of that.

He then resorts to some snark, which Bridges has already displayed as well; that’s a process approach. But my suggestion would be to eliminate the snark and go to a different kind of process move – you might call it a meta-process move – and to challenge the entire premise of what the left is actually doing here, which is to redefine reality through words and to reify personal belief systems as truth. That’s actually the heart of the matter, and I think it needs to be called out.

Not that it would convince anyone on the left; of course it won’t. But it’s an attempt to pull back the curtain and expose the inner workings of the tactic, and make it clear what’s going on and how revolutionary it really is.

Here’s an example, off the top of my head (there are probably better ones):

What you’re doing here is the sort of thing the left continually does, which is to attempt to redefine words as they see fit, in order to drive a political agenda. In doing that, the left throws out the obvious traditional meanings of a word such as “woman” or “violence,” and substitutes something that not only contradicts the word’s traditional meaning but contradicts reality, and substitutes a politically-driven completely subjective meaning for words, a meaning that denies reality. [Then I would suggest shifting to a more content-focused argument.] We all know – although you refuse to say – that only biological females who are past puberty – that is, young women or women – get pregnant, as opposed to biological males – that is, young men or men. To deny that is to deny reality. And we all know that words are words and are not violence, and that violence refers to acts rather than words. The left doesn’t get to determine these things, and the left sounds absurd when it tries to do so.