Glenn Reynolds writes: “Twitter has been destructive for the left, but it has also been destructive for the nation. I hope Musk can fix the latter, at least.”
I have written about my own detestation of Twitter quite a few times. Twitter may be a cesspool, but at least let it be a cesspool that doesn’t favor the messages of the left and censor the right.
It seems pretty apparent from the Ukraine war that Russia has a problem with its military equipment. This article summarizes some of the reasons, among them [emphasis added]:
–Russia should theoretically have military equipment better than anyone but the U.S.
–One reason they don’t: Attempted capitalism without privately owned arms companies.
–“The Soviet military industry was full of unprofitable State enterprises, obsolete factories and, above all, a great deal of corruption.”
–The U.S. bids out contracts. The Soviets depended on state monopolies.
–“Russia has never embraced free market capitalism.”
“According to Vladimir Putin, the problem with communism was not the centralized economy but an economy based on ideological principles. In other words, if you want to improve the efficiency of the system, it is enough to change the managers and put technocrats in charge. Technocrats who have been forged in the bosom of the KGB and who have a pragmatic mentality, totally free of the romanticism of communism or any other ideology. This type of person has a name: “SILOVIKI”. And so, just what was Putin’s formula for bringing his military industry into the 21st century? Very simple: To put Silovikis in all managerial positions. This is how Rostec was conceived in 2007, a conglomerate of companies designed to be the great umbrella of Russian defense. Under this umbrella are more than 700 armaments companies: all of them State-owned.“
Nevertheless, Russia may have enough functioning armaments to take over portions of Ukraine. They certainly have enough to inflict terrible damage.
In a victory that was not a surprise, Macron defeats Marine Le Pen:
Macron’s victory over Le Pen—with 58.2% of the vote to her 41.8%, according to estimated results released at 8 p.m. local time after polls closed—was significantly smaller than the two politicians’ last face-off in 2017. Back then, 39-year-old Macron shot to power as an outsider, with a 32-point lead over Le Pen, by promising to modernize what he called a sclerotic, over-regulated country…
Macron, 44…is the first French leader in 20 years to win reelection—since 2002, when then-president Jacques Chirac won against Le Pen’s rabidly anti-immigrant father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who faced a wall of opposition that blocked his path to power.
Macron managed that despite barely campaigning for months, preferring instead to play the global statesman in the buildup to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Then over just a few weeks, Macron sprinted across France, warning voters that a Le Pen presidency would ravage their cherished humanist principles, and render the 27-country E.U. untenable…
Yet even so, his shrunken margin of 16.4% of victory signals the fraught political divide he now faces…
Le Pen made it clear her party would immediately begin campaigning for parliamentary seats. “Our historic score puts our camp in an excellent position,” she said in her concession speech Sunday night.
Not only that, but here’s a very familiar divide:
The economic inequality translated into a deep political divide in the election, with about 71% of professional voters choosing Macron, and 69% of working-class voters picking Le Pen, according to the polling company Elabe on Sunday night…
…[M]ore than half the voters in the election’s first round on April 10 chose, among 12 candidates, far-right or far-left politicians— a reflection of widespread anxiety and discontent with mainstream politics. “There is a sense of decline,” Nicolas Becuwe, senior director of Kantar Public in Brussels, said on Thursday, during an online presentation of the polling company’s data across the E.U. “France is the most pessimistic country in all of Europe.”
One problem for Le Pen in this election – and an especially ill-timed one, at that – is that she has long been Putin-friendly and is in favor of France’s withdrawing from NATO. Also, turnout was rather low, with many people not liking either candidate. Macron may have won by a wide margin, but he’s not beloved:
…Macron remains a deeply unpopular figure among a large proportion of the population…
…Euronews takes a look at some of the challenges ahead.
Five of them are listed in the article, including this one:
Macron may face a backlash, despite his victory…
The first round of the presidential election confirmed three newly entrenched blocs in France’s new political landscape: Macron’s pro-European centrists, Le Pen’s nationalist insurgency, and Mélenchon’s hard left.
Broadly, each has the backing of around a third of the public…
France is a very divided nation despite the decisive results in this particular election.
Prodigies, prodigies, prodigies:
[NOTE: I’ve decided to write an explanatory piece about my recent eye problems and surgery. It may be long and boring to some, but I think it might be helpful if anyone is going through a similarly confusing time with the medical profession. This is the first of several planned parts.]
I had good vision as a child and young adult, and it persisted through much of my life. I wore distance glasses for only two things: to see subtitles in the movies, and to drive at night. And I didn’t even really need them for either of those tasks, although they helped. I could also usually make do without reading glasses except for small print in low light.
But about twenty years ago I went for my annual visit to the eye doctor and as the technician was looking at my eyes he suddenly said, “Excuse me; I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I had no idea what was going on, but his abrupt departure made me uneasy.
He returned ten or fifteen minutes later with the eye doctor, who peered into my eyes for a while with some instruments, and then told me I would need laser surgery for something called “narrow angles.” My eye structure was such that the drainage system was now potentially compromised, something that happened more commonly in Asian people. I’m not Asian, but I had it anyway, and he told me that meant I could suddenly go blind in a matter of hours after getting the first symptoms, which would be eye pain. It could happen any time, any place, and I had to be near a hospital because I would need emergency surgery in the event of an attack of what’s known as narrow angle glaucoma (not to be confused with the more common sort of glaucoma, which is a different thing with a different cause).
He said that the laser surgery would be very simple, so simple that it really didn’t qualify as “surgery.” It was done in the office and took a minute or two. The procedure was called an iridotomy, with the laser putting a small hole in the patient’s iris so that the fluid would drain if there was an attack and the pressure would never build to damaging proportions. Complications were so rare as to be nonexistent. In one in a million people, the tiny hole in the iris let in light that the retina could perceive as an extra little gleam in the visual field. But that just about never happened.
The whole thing scared me, and I wanted to wait a while and think about it. If I waited, he said, I would have to avoid having my eyes dilated. That could precipitate an attack. I would have to avoid suddenly going into a very dark room – that could precipitate an attack. I would have to avoid taking the following medications – and he proceeded to hand me a very long list.
It was sobering, even though I felt like a wimp for being afraid. My vision was so good that it was hard to accept that I needed eye surgery, even a minor one. But after a year or so and a consultation with another eye doctor who told me I had very narrow angles and really needed the surgery, I decided to do it. The doctor wanted to do both eyes at once, but I insisted on one at a time.
The day came, and the surgery was an odd experience but not such a terrible one. They lasered my left eye first. Afterwards my vision was unclear because they put some sort of sticky substance into the eye, but after a few hours it cleared.
Except for the new light in my eye.
My iridotomy hole was at two o’clock in my vision and the light was at eight o’clock, reflecting the flipping of images by the retina. I was panicked and distressed, and went back to the doctor who had done the iridotomy. He was almost as upset as I was; maybe even more so. He said it was the first time this had ever happened in an iridotomy he’d done. He also said that my iridotomy opening was very large because when he used the laser my iris “split like a broken zipper.” Ugh. He told me, though, that over time the brain adjusts and the extra light becomes much less disturbing.
And that’s what happened. After a few months, I often didn’t even notice it, although at times it became quite annoying again depending on light conditions. But now I faced having the other eye done. This time I went to a fancy eye clinic in Boston, and the doctor used a different technique for the iridotomy on the right eye. Fortunately, no broken zipper and no extra light in that eye.
And that’s the way it remained for many years.
[To be continued….]
[NOTE: Part II can be found here.]
You’ve probably noticed the split I’m referring to, on this blog and others. I’m planning a piece on the topic one of these days. But till then, I recommend reading this article. The author is far more familiar with and knowledgeable about Russia and Ukraine than I am, including being able to read the languages.
A while back I saw a link at Powerline to an article in The Critic entitled, “On the chopping block.” I idly clicked on it, wondering what it was about, and saw that it concerned one of those all-too-common flaps over some author’s use of statements some group or other finds objectionable. This began a cascade of events that led to the resignation of Sir Philip Pullman, president of “the august writers’ institution the Society of Authors.”
These are Brits, in case it wasn’t obvious by now. But it could just as easily have taken place here, or in Canada, or just about anywhere in the Anglosphere. A bit of inside baseball; I hadn’t ever heard of that “august society” before. Nor had I heard of Sir Philip Pullman, or the book in question, or its author Kate Clanchy. But I became curious to learn what her offensive words or phrases had been, and so I quickly read the article and discovered that they’re not even quoted in it, although they’re described this way: “ableist” and racist. The book itself is entitled Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, and it won something called the Orwell Prize.
Orwell? Yes, that Orwell:
Each year, our independent panels award prizes to the writing and reporting which best meets the spirit of George Orwell’s own ambition ‘to make political writing into an art’.
So what language did Clanchy use that was so terribly offensive? I read another entire article on the brouhaha and then a third one before I found anything that gave me a more precise idea. It’s as though her words were so toxic that they couldn’t be mentioned, even in an article covering the episode.
But here they finally are, in an article in The Guardian entitled “Kate Clanchy to rewrite memoir amid criticism of ‘racist and ableist tropes’”.
Rewriting a memoir to suit current political demands – what could be more deserving of an Orwell Prize?:
Kate Clanchy is rewriting her critically acclaimed memoir after widespread criticism of her portrayal of her pupils, particularly children of colour and autistic children.
It follows reports that the publisher, Picador, had been in discussions to update future editions of the Orwell prize-winning book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, after days of online scrutiny over offensive passages, and was criticised for not going far enough in its initial statement.
Readers and fellow authors had been critical on Goodreads and Twitter of descriptions in the memoir, including the use of racial tropes such as “chocolate-coloured skin” and “almond-shaped eyes”, and references to one student as “African Jonathon” and another being “so small and square and Afghan with his big nose and premature moustache”.
Another passage was highlighted for the inclusion of ableist descriptions, in which Clanchy, a poet and teacher, refers to two autistic children as “unselfconsciously odd” and “jarring company”, and writes “probably, more than an hour a week” in their company “would irritate me, too, but for that hour I like them very much”.
The award-winning teenage author Dara McAnulty, who is autistic, shared the passages and tweeted: “Some people didn’t believe me when I shared some of my education experiences and how teachers felt about me … We can understand how you really feel about us.”
Oh, the horror!
When Clanchy’s book was awarded the prize, the group described it as “moving, funny and full of life”. The publishing world and the woke twitterati seem bound and determined to leach those characteristics out of all future offerings.
This sort of educational project is being exposed more and more now, but for a long time such things have been happening outside of people’s awareness. And that was part of the left’s plan.
It’s hard to say how many states have experienced this degree of change in the goals of public education. What percent of the whole? Is it happening only in bluer-than-blue states, or has it penetrated elsewhere? My guess is the latter, at least to some extent.
Here’s part of the story in Minnesota (MDE stands for the Minnesota Department of Education):
When MDE appointed the standards drafting committee, it took the unprecedented step of excluding academic subject matter experts in history, civics, geography and economics. Instead, it stacked the committee with political activists, community organizers and their allies, who dominated the process.
These activists’ goal was not to revise and improve “rigorous standards” in “core academic subjects” in our state’s K-12 public schools, as law requires. On the contrary, they view Minnesota’s public education system — as drafting committee member Jonathan Hamilton, of Education for Liberation Minnesota, has described it — as a “white supremacist puzzle that must be taken apart and exposed for the lie it is (emphasis added).”
Activists’ weapon of choice in taking our schools apart is Ethnic Studies. Forget about teaching students about the historical leaders and events that shaped our democracy, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and America-led victories in World War II. MDE’s new “fifth strand” trains K-12 students to view our nation’s social and political institutions with suspicion and hostility and seeks to enlist them in what Hamilton has referred to as a “political struggle” to change the social, economic, and cultural system that underlies our polity.
How will Ethnic Studies play out in Minnesota classrooms?
When the Minnesota Legislature adopted our state’s social studies standards in 2004, it authorized MDE to revise them every 10 years to “raise academic expectations for students, teachers and schools.” By law, state standards must be both “objective” and “measurable,” and “consistent with” the U.S. and Minnesota Constitutions.
But MDE’s proposed standards fail on all these fronts. Under the new Ethnic Studies standards, one of which is entitled “Resistance,” for example, students are instructed to “organize” to resist America’s “systemic and coordinated exercises of power” against “marginalized,” oppressed groups.
“Education for Liberation Minnesota” – Minnesota is in need of liberation, but not the kind that Jonathan Hamilton seeks. No wonder the left is so against Florida, DeSantis, and what’s happening there, as well as demonizing writers such as Christopher Rufo who have been hard at work exposing the left’s racist education game. The left is well aware that most Americans are against this sort of pedagogy, but the hope was to accomplish it under the sneaky guise of something that sounds righteous such as “ethnic studies.” Now more and more of America is becoming alerted and alarmed.
I am reminded of some passages from Allan Bloom’s prescient 1980s book The Closing of the American Mind. He knew what was happening and what it meant, and tried to warn us. Here’s a passage of Bloom’s that I quoted in this previous post:
Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being. This intention is more or less explicit, more or less a result of reflection,; but even the neutral subject, like reading and writing and arithmetic, take their place in a vision of the educated person…Over the history of our republic, there have obviously been changes of opinion as to what kind of man is best for our regime…A powerful attachment to the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man’s reason, was the goal of the education of democratic man…
But openness…eventually won out over natural rights, partly through a theoretical critique, partly because of a political rebellion against nature’s last constraints. Civic education turned away from concentrating on the Founding to concentrating on openness based on history and social science. There was even a general tendency to debunk the Founding, to prove the beginnings were flawed in order to license a greater openness to the new. 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.
In my post, I added this observation:
I find that passage about the obtuseness of Bloom’s history professor astounding as well as very descriptive of how we got here. The complete dominance of the radical professors as far as numbers go are a more recent manifestation, although there have long been some. But Bloom was a student of that history professor back in the mid-1940s, having been born in 1930 but having also been precocious enough to get his undergraduate degree at the age of eighteen from the University of Chicago after having entered at fifteen. The unnamed history professor Bloom describes in that passage was almost certainly not a radical. At most he was probably only mildly liberal. Perhaps he even passed for what was then known as conservative. If so, he was also unaware of the lessons to which Bloom refers to in that last sentence I quoted, even though – as Bloom notes – they had just experienced those lessons in WWII. The professor did not see any relation between what he was saying about the Founders and what would ultimately undermine our republic and all the values he probably held dear.
But Bloom, his student, saw it, even back then, even at so young an age.
Note also the tone of barely-restrained sarcasm; Bloom seems to have had a certain amount of contemptuous anger at those academics who could have been so stupid as to not have realized the effects of their throwing out the precious baby and leaving the dirty bathwater (it seems his first history professor was none too happy with his challenges, either). As the book goes on, some of the best passages involve Bloom’s description of the faculty’s craven abdication during the student uprisings of the 1960s, when he was one of those who tried (in vain, as it turned out) to hold his finger in the dike of the best traditions of Western Civilization.
So here we are.
Here’s someone who’s not inclined to judge Russia harshly. And yet this war has caused him to rethink his former love of the country and its people.
It’s a very sad reflection on how it is that events can challenge and change even long-held and deeply-entrenched beliefs. I know the feeling well, although not regarding Russia. However, like the writer, I have loved Russian literature from the moment I first encountered it (which in my case was in high school), and took college-level courses in the subject as well as some Russian history. As a young child, I saw this wonderful movie in a Manhattan movie theater, and it opened my eyes early on to the fact that the Russian people were not our enemies and how deeply they had suffered during World War II. But I never lost sight of the tyranny of the Soviet government towards the Russian people and to the inhabitants of the countries of Eastern Europe, and rejoiced when they gained their autonomy.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
I have been a Russophile for as long as I can remember. Or, to put it more exactly, since I was eight years old, when I attended a school play performance of Gogol’s The Government Inspector…
At the age of 26, I moved to the Baltic State of Estonia, and I was seeing Cyrillic signs on the building and hearing Russian spoken around me. I was meeting real Russian people who were angry about the loss of their Empire, and bitter to find themselves suddenly a minority in a country which had abruptly seceded from the USSR. But I also found that such people were invariably generous and happy to discuss literature and answer my questions over a cup of black tea.
That was 25 years ago, and in the intervening years, Russia and its culture consumed my adult life. I became interested in other post-Soviet countries—Hungary, Romania, Estonia—but as they say in Hungary, “When it rains in Moscow, the umbrellas go up in Budapest.” Everything in this region, like it or not, begins and ends with Russia. Not a week has gone by when I haven’t tried to understand it better. I can speak Russian now, I converted to Russia’s Orthodox church, and I have a half-Russian daughter who knows barely a word of English. What was once so distant and unfamiliar has become a part of my daily life and, in my child, a part of my family too. I often said while I was living there that the Russians did not feel like a foreign people to me, and that in my Southern Russian city I felt, to a great extent, that I was among my own. I continued to feel that way until the early morning of February 24th, 2022, when a chasm suddenly opened up, perhaps permanently.
Please read the whole thing. It really cannot be summarized.
When I read that Robert Morse had died at the age of 90, my first thought was “Drat!” My second thought was, “How could he be 90? Impossible!” Because to me Robert Morse always looked like a kid.
Morse rose to fame as the lead in the Broadway musical “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” He also starred in the film version, although I never saw him in either except in video clips. This one, which is a song he sings to himself in a mirror, perfectly captures his impish (the adjective that’s so often used to describe him) verve and humor, and that gappy grin with the dimples. The guy can really sing, too:
(For a more recent revival and comparison featuring Matthew Broderick, who in my opinion can’t hold a candle to Morse, see this beginning at 00:40).
However, I have very strong memories of seeing Morse on stage before that, in a musical practically no one knows anymore called “Take Me Along.” It was a musical version of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah Wilderness,” and I had to look it up to see the year: 1959. Wow. It starred Jackie Gleason, who had been a big TV personality as Ralph Kramden (a show I used to watch), as well as Walter Pidgeon. But to me, and to most of the audience, the real star was Morse, who lent it tremendous energy and comic earnestness as the family’s teenage boy, although he was close to thirty at the time. Every number he did stopped the show. Morse’s talent beamed out into the audience with wattage that couldn’t be denied.
Alas, there are no clips of him in that production. But here he reminisces about the experience:
A completely and utterly unique actor.