Today is the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following is a slightly changed version of a post of mine. If you follow the links in the second paragraph, you’ll find three other pieces I’ve written about the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.]

Once again it’s the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nagasaki followed three days later, and Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.

To date these two bombs remain—astoundingly enough, considering the nature of our oft-troubled and troubling species—the only nuclear warheads ever detonated over populated areas. (I’ve written at length on the subject of those bombs: see this, this, and this.)

Oliver Kamm wrote a while back:

Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire – and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.

This context always needs to be kept in mind when evaluating any “terrible thing”—and there is no question that the dropping of these bombs was a terrible thing.

But critics who are bound and determined to portray the West as evil, marauding, bloodthirsty— whatever the dreadful adjective du jour might be—are bound and determined to either avoid all context, or to change the true context and replace it with fanciful myth. As Kamm writes, those who want to portray Hiroshima and Nagasaki as American crimes cite evidence of an imminent Japanese surrender that would have happened anyway.

Trouble is, available information points strongly to the contrary. It’s difficult to know whether those who argue that the bombs were unnecessary and the deaths that ensued gratuitous are guilty of poor scholarship, wishful thinking, or willful lying – but most likely it’s some combination of these elements.

Truth in history is not easy to determine (see this), although it helps greatly if conventions of scholarship (sources, citations) are properly followed. Oh, the main events themselves are often not disputed – except for fringe groups – although the details are often the subject of disagreement. But it’s the motivations behind the acts, the hearts and minds of the movers and shakers, the “what-might-have-been’s” and the “but-fors” that are so open to both partisan interpretation and willful distortion, and so deeply meaningful.

It’s hard enough to determine what happened. How many died in Dresden, for example? Do we believe Goebbels’s propaganda as promulgated by David Irving, or do we believe this work of recent exhaustive scholarship? The former “facts” have reigned now in popular opinion for quite a while, and although the latter mounts a far more convincing case, how many have read it or are familiar with the facts in it, compared to those who have been heavily exposed to the former?

There’s what happened, and then there’s why it happened—the meaning and intent behind the policy. A combination of the two is what propaganda is all about. It takes a lot of time and effort to wade through facts, make judgments about the veracity of sources, and be willing to keep an open mind.

Much easier to stand in a public square (as a bunch of nodding, smiling, waving, elderly peace-love Boomers regularly used to do in a town where I lived) holding huge banners declaring “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.” Repeat it often enough, and the hope is it will become Truth in people’s eyes.

Especially in the eyes of the young, and of future generations, who don’t have their own memories to go on. It’s much harder to convince a WWII vet that Hiroshima was an unnecessary war crime than it is to convince a young person of same; the former not only has the context, he has own personal memories of the context. World War II veterans are scarce these days and getting scarcer by the minute. And propagandists from the left are more numerous, with larger platforms from which to distribute their products. They are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in history and the future.

[NOTE: The definitive essay on the dropping of the atomic bomb by a contemporary and a fine historian is Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” And for a good discussion of all the controversy about whether Japan was thinking of surrendering prior to Hiroshima, see this. For a discussion of the idea that Russia’s entry into the war against Japan rather than the atomic bomb was the cause of Japan’s surrender, see this.]

Another storm, another power outage

The New Neo Posted on by

I just had power restored after about an 18-hour power outage occasioned by yesterday’s storm. I’m more used to power outages in the winter, from ice storms, than in the summer. It’s somewhat easier to keep warm without heat than to keep cool without AC, a thought that occurred to me rather forcibly last night when I woke up sweaty and uncomfortable and had difficulty going back to sleep. And in the winter there’s less concern about the food in the freezer going bad.

First world problems, right?

And then, when the power was finally restored late this morning, the blog went down. Suddenly and inexplicably, but fortunately only for about fifteen minutes.

If I were a Democrat, this would make me cringe

The New Neo Posted on by

Actually, even though I’m not a Democrat, it makes me cringe.

This might be a good time to mention that I bet Biden’s handlers are rueing the day that Joe promised that his VP pick would be a woman. It narrows the already-narrow field down in a way that was unnecessary. The people considered at the moment to be the top contenders – Kamala Harris and Susan Rice – not only both have considerable baggage, but come across as cold and unlikable. Ah, but good old Joe has likability to spare, supposedly.

I know a lot of people keep saying that it will be Michelle Obama who ends up as the VP nominee. I’ve never thought she wanted it. But anything is possible in this extremely strange year of 2020.

Bad news for Boomers

The New Neo Posted on by

A study says they are experiencing more cognitive decline than previous generations.

I can well imagine that it’s true. I think earlier generations were tougher, and the weak were winnowed out earlier. Plus, who knows what all that Boomer turning on, tuning in, and dropping out did?

Catastrophic Beirut explosion

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday an enormously large and destructive explosion occurred in Beirut, and no one is yet certain what caused it or how many people it killed. What is known is certainly bad, and probably will get worse as time goes on and the damage is assessed.

Initial reports are that a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate were stored in the port and exploded. Here’s a Times of Israel article on that, and here’s another. From the latter:

The scale of the damage — from the epicenter of the explosion at the port of Beirut to the windows blown out kilometers (miles) away — resembles other blasts involving the chemical compound commonly used as an agricultural fertilizer.

But the compound itself typically doesn’t detonate on its own and requires another ignition source. That likely came from a fire that engulfed what initially appeared to be fireworks that were stored at the port.

So it was a chain of events, compounded by the storage of potentially dangerous substances in a highly populated area? More:

Online videos of the disaster’s initial moments show sparks and lights inside the smoke rising from the blaze, just prior to the massive blast. That likely indicates that fireworks were involved, said Boaz Hayoun, owner of the Tamar Group, an Israeli firm that works closely with the Israeli government on safety and certification issues involving explosives.

I have no doubt that other theories will be entertained.

The death toll is likely to rise well into several hundreds, with many more injured and immense property damage.

Also:

What initially started the fire at the port remains unclear. Beirut was sunny before Tuesday’s explosion, with a daily high of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

Lebanese Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi, in comments to a local TV station, made no mention of ignited fireworks but said it appeared the blast was caused by the detonation of more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored in a warehouse at the dock ever since it was confiscated from a cargo ship in 2014.

Based on the timeline and the size of the cargo, that ship could be the MV Rhosus. The ship was initially seized in Beirut in 2013 when it entered the port due to technical problems, according to lawyers involved in the case. It came from the nation of Georgia, and had been bound for Mozambique.

“Owing to the risks associated with retaining the ammonium nitrate on board the vessel, the port authorities discharged the cargo onto the port’s warehouses,” the lawyers wrote in a 2015 article published by shiparrested.com. “The vessel and cargo remain to date in port awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal.”

If all of this is true – and at the moment I believe it is – what a massive failure on the part of authorities to prevent a foreseeable catastrophe.

The George Floyd video matches the transcript

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve previously analyzed the George Floyd transcripts here. Now the British paper Daily Mail has obtained the videos despite the efforts of prosecutor Keith Ellison to suppress them. Here’s a discussion by shipwreckedcrew of Red State about what the videos reveal, and it’s unsurprising that it’s in line with what I wrote based on the transcript – because after all, it’s a transcript of the video. At the link you can also find the videos themselves, if you wish to view them.

The only new information I can discern is that the visuals of what happened when the officers tried to place Floyd in the squad car tell the following tale:

At 4:40 Officer Lueng begins to open the back door on the driver’s side of his car, but it remains locked after a couple of efforts. While trying to resolve the issue, Floyd begins to protest about having to get in the car.

At about the 5:00 minute mark Floyd’s protests begin to take the form of some physical resistance — not really combative but just turning his body back and forth to keep the officer from holding on to him. Floyd is not a small man…

Lane is perfectly calm and measured at all times up to this point. Nothing about his actions or comments show him to be agitated or irritated by Floyd’s actions.

At 6:10 a second officer has joined Lane — he may have been there for a period of time and been off-camera and didn’t make a comment — to assist in getting Floyd to enter the vehicle. Floyd says at one point “I’m getting in” but he is at the same time resisting their ability to “move him” forward into the vehicle, and the officer responded “No you’re not.” He’s told repeatedly to “take a seat”, and he responds “I’m not that kind of guy”, something he said numerous times throughout the encounter. At this point, he has turned around to face the officers and is stiffening his body in resistance to their efforts to push him into the back of the car.

At 6:35 he says “I’m going to die in here”, and the officer responds “I’ll roll the windows down.” The officers succeed in getting him to sit on the backseat but with his legs still outside the car, and his upper body not inside the door frame as he continues to resist going inside the car. The efforts by the officers are still not violent — they are simply trying to “force” him enter the car by depriving him of other opportunities to move and pushing him backwards into the backseat.

There is no other way to describe Floyd at this point other than bordering on irrational.

There are more efforts to get Floyd into the squad car, described at the link. In the end, Floyd (who at one point asked to lie on the ground) ends up being restrained on the ground, as a bystander video which has been beamed around the world has already revealed.

Shipwreckedcrew wonders “where in the timeline the Officers made the decision to call for paramedics and an ambulance.” I don’t know the exact time, but from the transcript it appears to have been around the time they’re having so much difficulty getting Floyd into the squad car.

Shipwreckedcrew also seems to think that Floyd “quit breathing while he was on the ground, and the officers should have realized that and responded to his condition.” I say maybe yes, maybe no. He seems to have lost consciousness. But did he stop breathing? And did he go into cardiac arrest? I’ve never seen any official word on that. It’s important to know what the EMTs found when they arrived on the scene. At some point, we may finally learn.

Shipwreckedcrew also notes that there’s not a hint of any racial issue in the video. I would add there’s nothing in the transcript, either. But that won’t stop BLM and all the rest from asserting that the entire episode was a case of a race-motivated murder.

Cancel culture comes for MDs who support the use of hydroxychloroquine

The New Neo Posted on by

Dr. Simone Gold, a long-time and previously-respected emergency room physician, has been fired for expressing the non-approved view of the drug hydroxychloroquine:

Dr. Simone, 54, graduated from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine Science, The Chicago Medical School in 1989. She has worked in Emergency Rooms across Los Angeles, treating Covid-19 patients since the pandemic outbreak. She is currently registered with Providence Hospital located at 501 South Buena Vista Street in Burbank.

Simon stated she was fired from her job because of media slander, after her employer found out about the viral video where she claimed her patients have received positive results from using the drug to treat COVID-19. She is the founder of the newly created group called “America’s Frontline Doctors…

The hydroxychloroquine video, a 45-minute livestream of the first day of a “White Coat” summit by the group, was posted to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by Breitbart and quickly went viral on July 28. It was viewed over 17 million times on Facebook. The video has been taken down by social media citing “misinformation.”

The video can be seen here.

Everything is now politicized, and so a seemingly sane and competent MD with lots of experience cannot state a case for a medication that is – as they say – “controversial,” without losing her job. This is something that should be battled out in the pages of scientific journals and not cause any bona fide doctor, pro or con, to lose his or her job.

I wonder if they’ll be coming next for noted Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, who has written a comprehensive article making the current case for using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID (at that link there is another link to a PDF file that has the entire article).

.

Biden and the no-debates movement: the Democrats are testing the gullibility of the American public

The New Neo Posted on by

You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Ah, but you don’t have to. You just have to fool enough of the people enough of the time.

The Democrats are in trouble with their presidential nominee, even though the MSM is heroically and energetically covering for them and for him. I don’t know what will ultimately happen to Biden in terms of whether he will remain the nominee, but I do know that, if he does, the Democrats are desperate to keep him as quiet as possible. That includes, of course, the elimination of challenges such as tough questions from the press – easy to eliminate when the press is fully on your side – and avoidance of traditional presidential debates.

The latter is a bit tricky, in the sense that debates have long been a required part of running for president. I’ve never been a big debate fan because I think they tend to be a superficial string of “gotcha” sound bites as well as being skewed by the media for the Democrat. However, what they are and always have been is a test of the ability to verbally express ideas at least somewhat spontaneously. Candidates practice answering all the questions that can reasonably be anticipated, but there is still a factor involving thinking quickly on one’s feet, under pressure.

That’s an important skill, too. And it’s one that in this case is even more important than usual, since one of the candidates gives every indication of being in the early-to-mid stages of senility. If that’s the case, then a debate would be a format that might be particularly likely to expose that fact. And if so, the Democrats are highly motivated to make sure that a debate will not occur.

But the dilemma is how to do that without arousing a great deal of suspicion that the reason for avoiding a debate is that Joe Biden’s advancing senility would be too nakedly revealed. That would be damaging, too. So the solution the Democrats and their handmaidens in the MSM seem to have arrived at is to pooh-pooh the necessity and value of debates themselves. Debates, who needs them?

What sort of fool would be convinced by arguments such as this?:

Longtime Democratic strategist and former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Zac Petkanas agreed with calls for Biden to back out of any and all debates with Trump in the coming months. As it stands currently, there are three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate scheduled between September 29 and October 22.

“Biden shouldn’t feel obligated to throw Trump a lifeline by granting him any debates at all. This is not a normal presidential election and Trump is not a legitimate candidate,” Petkanas tweeted last week, expressing his “opinion that no one asked for.”

Trump is president, but not a “legitimate candidate.” That’s been the Democrats’ mantra since Day 1.

Or how about this in the NY Times from Elizabeth Drew (whose articles I remember from years past in The New Yorker) [emphasis mine]?

The debates have never made sense as a test for presidential leadership. In fact, one could argue that they reward precisely the opposite of what we want in a president. When we were serious about the presidency, we wanted intelligence, thoughtfulness, knowledge, empathy and, to be sure, likability. It should also without saying, dignity….

This, by the way, isn’t written out of any concern that Donald Trump will prevail over Joe Biden in the debates; Mr. Biden has done just fine in a long string of such contests. The point is that “winning” a debate, however assessed, should be irrelevant, as are the debates themselves.

That effort by Drew would be funny if it weren’t so sad. I wonder who Drew thinks she’s fooling. Unfortunately, I think I know the answer: an awful lot of people who read the Times and the rest of the MSM and just follow the meme du jour, nodding sagely and not remembering all the years the MSM felt the debates were ultra-important, and when they skewed their coverage to favor the Democrat.

Who sometimes was Joe Biden. Well do I remember his awful debate performance against Sarah Palin in 2008, when he at least supposedly had all his marbles.

Columnists such as Drew know exactly why they are now trashing the debates, but they hope the public doesn’t notice the obvious. Perhaps it doesn’t even matter. Many of the people who will be voting for Biden don’t care that he might belong off the world stage. They know that other people, particularly from the Obama administration and to the left of it, will actually be in control and Biden will only be a ceremonial figurehead, something like a modern-day monarch. That state of affairs is worth it to get rid of the “illegitimate” candidate, Donald Trump.

[NOTE: While I was looking for that post on the Biden/Palin debate, I came across this one from December of 2008 with the curious title of “Biden’s Bin Hidin’.” I couldn’t recall what I was referring to, but here it is:

…Joe Biden has been unusually invisible, even for a Vice-President elect.

Usually, Vice Presidents are forgotten after their terms in office. Biden seems to be on track for being forgotten before he even takes office. His profile has been so low it’s underground…

A strange foreshadowing of the present. Could it be that Biden was already showing signs of mental deterioration? There’s also this:

…[Biden’s] been kept under wraps post-election in a manner that’s reminiscent of the McCain team’s early handling of the Alaska governor:

“Still, being number two in the Obama campaign and then the transition has made the public persona of Washington’s most loquacious, happy-go-lucky politician nearly unrecognizable.

“The lack of interviews alone is an about face. Biden was the most frequent guest on the Sunday news shows – in just 10 months, from August 2007 to this past June, he appeared on the shows at least 13 times. His interview with Stephanopoulos will be his first Sunday news show junket since joining the Democratic ticket – and he is only on for half of the hour-long show.”

Interesting.]

[ADDENDUM: Elizabeth Drew herself was a panelist and moderator for some presidential debates during the 70s and 80s.]

Let’s do another re-write of history, and let’s establish a quota system in the MSM

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s keep changing history until we get it right – I mean left – enough:

From Rep. Ford’s press release:

“Rep. Ford Today in Evanston to Call for the Abolishment of History Classes in Illinois Schools

“Concerned that current school history teaching leads to white privilege and a racist society, state Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, D-Chicago, will join local leaders today at noon at the Robert Crown Center in Evanston to call on the state to stop its current history teaching practices until appropriate alternatives are developed.”

I thought that adopting the 1619 curriculum was a ready-made way to do that.

More:

Attendees at Sunday’s press conference will discuss how current history teaching practices overlook the contributions by Women and members of the Black, Jewish, LGBTQ communities and other groups.

Now “women” is capitalized? And how did the group ordinarily disfavored by the left, Jews, sneak in there? Now we’re going to have a celebration of famous gay people as gay people rather than because of whatever their actual accomplishments might have been, such as Alan Turing for example?

Hey, maybe they’ll teach how religious and racial quotas have traditionally hurt Jews and Asians. Yeah, I know better.

Speaking of which, there’s also this news:

On July 31, 2020 the NY Times Guild issued a set of demands to the Times, including an explicit hiring and staffing quota based on race, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion: New York Times Employee Recommendation Memo:

“We come to this meeting with a mandate for sustained change and urgency to engage in a very necessary and long-overdue discussion about how to improve the working experience of Black, Indigenous and people of color at the Times, BIPOC@NYT.”

In addition to recommendations to form new committees, increase “diversity” initiatives, and so on, comes an explicit call for quotas, referencing census data for New York City:

“We recommend:

“A. Setting a goal of hiring, retention and promotion? for the New York Times workforce to reflect NYC demographics by 2025. ?https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/newyorkcitynewyork…”

And here’s a great response:

What did blue city mayors and governors think would happen if they allowed their cities to become boring and yet unsafe?

The New Neo Posted on by

I understand that the current mayors of cities such as New York and Minneapolis and Seattle, as well as some of the governors in their states, are far leftists trying to please a far left base. But they are also mayors of large cities and governors of states with large cities that need to continue to function in such a way as to not drive away city residents and their money, which is needed for taxes to fund city and state services.

Of course, if there are no city services left, there’s no need for the money. But do these mayors really want their own cities to become dysfunctional crime-ridden underpopulated burnt-out shells of their former selves?

Or didn’t they foresee any of this? Have they become so unmoored from reality that they think tax revenue is an unending fountain that can never dry up? Did they think they were in Oleanna?

Surprise! It doesn’t seem that way:

New York is faced with swelling budget holes as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and the state’s governor is concerned the state’s financial situation may get worse if the city’s wealthiest taxpayers leave for good.

This week, the state’s Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo voiced concern that the longer work-from-home policies are in place, the less likely it is that people who have left the city will return….

Many wealthy individuals abandoned Manhattan for nearby suburbs, or other states entirely, to escape the densely-populated metro as it became an epicenter of the virus outbreak earlier this spring.

Moving executives told FOX Business that the exodus from New York City during the past few months has been “insane.”

Roadway Moving President Ross Sapir, for example, told FOX Business that people are moving out of Manhattan in numbers he has “never seen before,” as his company deals with its busiest season since its 2008 inception.

And many of the residents who have left belong to higher-income brackets.

Well, yes. They have the money to do it, and they don’t even necessarily have to sell their NYC places, because to them the price of a home in the boonies is chump change. It’s not just the virus, either, or the policies around it. Neither the article nor Cuomo mention the other glaring and obvious reason: riot-induced crime and the simultaneous reduction in policing.

Why do people live in New York City in the first place? Some are born and raised there and all their friends are there, and leaving would mean leaving all that. But many are there for the excitement and the culture. If you’ve got money, you can go out to a new play or concert or dance performance every night of the year and not repeat yourself. The same with restaurants, art exhibits, parties – all the offerings of a great (or once-great) city, as well as access to the levers of power. Now all the cultural offerings are meager, and the computer with its possibilities for remote working has made it possible to have some power while living elsewhere.

[NOTE: See also this.]

Three Biden questions

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Who will be Biden’s (or his handlers’) VP pick?

(2) Will Biden engage in a debate with Trump, and if so under what circumstances?

(3) Will Biden last till November as the candidate?

Of course, there’s also the question of whether Biden would win, if the answer to the third question is in the affirmative. But it’s those first three that interest me at the moment.

I think the answers will be Kamala Harris, no, and yes. But I admit I’m not confident that I’m correct. In this, the most bizarre presidential election of my lifetime, we’ve already had not just a black swan but a whole flock of them.

[ADDENDUM: See also this from Roger Kimball:

The narrative that catapulted Biden to his present subterranean eminence centered on his supposed political moderateness compared to some of the more outlandish bijoux on offer…

But what has made Joe Biden palatable to the actual power brokers in the Democratic party—far-left, woke commissars who combine a breathtaking arrogance with a deep hatred of America—was not his supposed “moderateness.” On the contrary, it was his empty vesselhood.

Biden, in short, is the toxic suppository, the smooth and unguent capsule, through which the enemies of democratic capitalism and traditional American values hope to insinuate their gospel of radical transformation into the tissues of American society…

As Joseph Simonson notes in his summary of the eighty-page document, “the party intends to circumvent Congress,” turning instead to unelected bureaucrats of the administrative state to push through its woke, politically correct goals. The fine print is disquieting to say the least.

“Racial equity” is a phrase that is repeated over and over again in this document. But what it means is the opposite of “equity” as traditionally understood, i.e., treating people the same regardless of their race…

On every contentious issue—immigration, defense spending, regulation, education, healthcare, taxes, housing policy, student debt—the Democratic platform calls for a huge increase in government intrusiveness and consequent loss of individual freedom.

Naturally, the truly radical nature of this platform is somewhat concealed by bureaucratese and a clever deployment of uplifting abstractions.

Please read the whole thing.

I believe that most people willing to vote for Biden and/or another Democrat don’t know what’s actually planned. Some of them would approve. But a very significant number would not, I believe – if they knew. They don’t.]