Donations, please! [BUMPED UP – scroll down for newest posts]

The New Neo Posted on by

(This post will be retired after the weekend. But of course, you can donate any old time.)

I would be deeply grateful if you decide to click on that Paypal button on the right sidebar (or towards the bottom of the blog if you’re on a phone) – the one that says “donate” – and contribute to the running of the blog. Every single bit adds up, and you’d be surprised at how much it helps. I thank you all in advance.

I don’t have ads because I don’t like them. I don’t have paid content. It’s just me, myself, and I, doing this for the last nearly-sixteen years. Yikes!

I will probably keep this notice at the top of the blog for the next week, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat.

And many many thanks to all who have contributed in the past. I’ve been very touched and gratified.

On humans, naked and clothed

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day a commenter wrote, in a thread about buying clothes:

As a hardcore nudist I probably find this more interesting/amusing than most. I’m also retired, so I no longer feel any need to try to impress anyone with my wardrobe. (In reality I don’t think I ever did.)

Why do we humans think that our garments make us look good? It seems pretty odd to cover something and claim to have improved its appearance. Maybe you shouldn’t go out in public. I know that most of us think there are fundamental flaws with our bodies, but it is not your clothes that make your butt look bigger than you like, and your clothes don’t really hide it either. Your body is what it is. Accept it, or work to change it. Don’t hide it, it’s beautiful.

Why do we find it necessary to cover our bodies with expensive fabric creations that require so much care? Imagine how much could be saved if we wore clothing only when required for warmth or protection. Think of the savings from reduced air conditioning. Think of how good it feels to remove even your most comfortable clothes.

People are different from each other, I guess. Very different. For example, I love wearing my most comfortable clothes, which are really comfortable as in: comforting. Soft, non-binding, soothing.

And we wear clothes because we are human, not just to keep warm. They serve so many purposes. Warm in winter, cool in summer (sun protection and sweat absorption, for example), and just plain pretty and even beautiful. It is part of human nature – for most people, although apparently not that particular commenter – to want to adorn oneself, to gild the bare forked lily. As King Lear says, in the extremity of his emotional suffering:

Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.—Is man no more than this? Consider him well.—Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here’s three on ’s are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.—
Off, off, you lendings! Come. Unbutton here. (tears at his clothes)

In some anthropology course or other I recall learning (can’t find a link now) that all human societies practice adornment, if only of a very perfunctory type. A string around the waist will do, or a necklace for the milady, without which she is considered shockingly naked.

Clothes – or some form of adornment, even if it only be this or this – are somehow a human near-universal. Ever wonder why? It’s not because of the clothing industry. And it’s not because of negative body image, either. Modesty? The urge to not let well enough alone?

If nudists don’t share that feeling, that’s fine. I have nothing against nudist camps; I just don’t want to go to one. But nudity among consenting nudists is 100% okay with me.

It is also of interest, however, that in the Bible the story of Adam and Eve has them eating from the Tree and then for the first time feeling the need to cover their nakedness. I have long interpreted that story as being a parable describing the dawn of human consciousness, which includes self-consciousness and the distinguishing of humans from animals, which are always naked (unless humans dress them in funny little outfits). In Genesis you find the story:

Genesis 2:22-25 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed…

[3:6-7]And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

There’s some question about the word “aprons,” but for our purposes let’s just accept that they were coverings serving the function of loincloths, at the very least. And if you want to take the word literally, you can purchase your very own Adam and Eve aprons.

Clothing is old, very very old – even older than some of my clothing:

Scientists are still debating when people started wearing clothes. Estimates by various experts have ranged from 40,000 to 3 million years ago. Some more recent studies involving the evolution of body lice have implied a more recent development with some indicating a development of around 170,000 years ago and others indicating as little as 40,000. No single estimate is widely accepted…

According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the earliest clothing likely consisted of fur, leather, leaves, or grass that were draped, wrapped, or tied around the body. Knowledge of such clothing remains inferential, since clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared to stone, bone, shell and metal artifacts. Archeologists have identified very early sewing needles of bone and ivory from about 30,000 BC, found near Kostenki, Russia in 1988. Dyed flax fibers that could have been used in clothing have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia that date back to 34,000 BC.

As I said, very very old.

Let’s hear it for the NBA’s Jonathan Isaac

The New Neo Posted on by

These days, this takes great courage:

Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic stood, while everyone else took a knee. He also did not wear a Black Lives Matter shirt.

After the game, Isaac faced a hostile press populated by reporters who played gotcha games with him. Note the wording of the first question to Isaac.

Reporter to Isaac: “So you didn’t kneel during the anthem, but you also didn’t wear a Black Lives Matter shirt? Uh, do you believe that black lives matter?”

Isaac, who is black, handled the ridiculously biased question gracefully.

“Absolutely. I believe that black lives matter. A lot went into my decision,” Isaac responded…

“My life has been supported through the Gospel, Jesus Christ” Isaac said, “and that everyone is made in the image of God and that we all fall short of God’s glory and that each and every one of us, each and every day do things that we shouldn’t do…I felt like we all make mistakes but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that there’s grace for us. That Jesus came and died for our sins and that if we all would come to an understanding of that and understand that God wants to have a relationship with us, that we can get past skin color, we can get past all the things in our world that are messed up, jacked up. I think we need to look around. Racism isn’t the only thing that plagues our society, that plagues our nation, that plagues our world.”

Even though I should know better, I still experience a sense of disbelief about what’s going on

The New Neo Posted on by

Some days I wake up and it takes a while for it to hit me that so many Americans seem to have lost their minds.

Oh, I’m not talking about the small number of people who are doing the burning and rioting. I’m not even talking about governors like Michigan’s Whitmer, who seem to be handling the COVID crisis in ways that combine Draconian edicts for the general population with looseness regarding the vulnerable nursing home population.

What I’m referring to is the fact that half the country seems to be willing to vote for the Democrats to perpetuate this sort of thing, Democrats who advocate (or fail to oppose) the most radical proposals ever to air in America. These voters are either unaware of what’s going on with the party or are okay with it all. They also are willing to vote for someone who is quite literally suffering from dementia, has a history of political corruption, has not answered off-the-cuff questions, may not agree to a debate, and will be a couple of weeks from his 78th birthday come Election Day.

This is almost literally unbelievable.

I’m also referring to the many governors and mayors of blue states and blue cities who are doing little to nothing to stop the destruction of their own cities – a destruction that is almost certain to cause the flight of part of their tax base and to grievously harm their economies in myriad ways. I’m talking about a populace that has become afraid of its shadow in terms of COVID, and willing to put up with almost any restriction on liberty in the name of supposed protection from the illness.

I’m also talking about a racist philosophy that calls itself “anti-racism” and that is doing far more for the revival of racism in this country than any small group of noxious neo-Nazis that remains. The anti-racism movement is also causing enmity among an unknown but probably significant number of relatives and friends who disagree on whether the anti-racism movement is a good development or a destructive one.

I could probably list more things that are hard to believe but are nevertheless the case, but I’ll stop there.

How did we get to this point? That’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer: Gramscian march (especially in the field of education), the proliferation of social media and cancel culture, the MSM becoming a pure propaganda machine – we’ve discussed it all before.

The speed with which it has happened puts in mind the famous Hemingway quote about bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

Indeed.

Fun with words: Antifa and “The Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan.”]

Leftist radicals are well aware of the importance of labels. There’s “Black Lives Matter” for a group run by Marxists, focusing only on those black lives ended by white police officers rather than on all black lives. And “Antifa” for a group that purports to be anti-facist but whose members act like brownshirts and have far left and/or anarchist goals.

And then there’s this interesting piece of Cold War history [my emphasis]:

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the “death strip”) that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails, and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the “will of the people” from building a socialist state in East Germany.

GDR authorities officially referred to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall). The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the “Wall of Shame”, a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt in reference to the Wall’s restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to physically symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

the wall was not an ordinary border wall designed to keep foreigners from coming in without permission. It was a very different thing – a wall designed to imprison the populace of East Germany, not to keep people out. As propaganda, the name “Anti-Fascist” didn’t work very well because for the most part the people of East Germany knew better:

The East German government claimed that the Wall was an “anti-fascist protective rampart” (German: “antifaschistischer Schutzwall”) intended to dissuade aggression from the West. Another official justification was the activities of Western agents in Eastern Europe. The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin. East Germans and others greeted such statements with skepticism, as most of the time, the border was only closed for citizens of East Germany traveling to the West, but not for residents of West Berlin travelling to the East. The construction of the Wall had caused considerable hardship to families divided by it. Most people believed that the Wall was mainly a means of preventing the citizens of East Germany from entering or fleeing to West Berlin.

Those of us old enough to remember the wall – and that’s most of us here – know full well what it was for, and know that pretty much the entire world knew it. Many of the young, however, probably haven’t a clue, and so analogies with our southern border wall may make sense to them.

But most of us who remember the Berlin Wall probably don’t remember its German name of “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” or “Antifaschistischer Schutzwall.” Note those first six letters.

And here’s the history of the original “Antifa,” which began in Germany during the final years of the Weimar Republic:

Antifaschistische Aktion, commonly known under its abbreviation Antifa, was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933. It was primarily active as a KPD campaign during the 1932 German federal elections and was described by the KPD as a “red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD”. Under the leadership of the committed Stalinist Ernst Thälmann, the KPD viewed fascism primarily as the final stage of capitalism rather than as a specific movement or group and therefore applied the term to all other parties. The front focused largely on attacking the KPD’s main adversary, the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany, whom they referred to as social fascists and regarded as the “main pillar of the dictatorship of Capital”.

In the [post-WWII] era, the historical organisation inspired new groups and networks, known as the wider Antifa movement, many of which use the aesthetics of the historical Antifaschistische Aktion, especially its abbreviated name Antifa and a modified version of its logo. During the Cold War, the Antifaschistische Aktion had a dual legacy in East Germany and West Germany, respectively. In the east, it was considered part of the history and heritage of the KPD’s successor, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. In the west, its aesthetics and name were embraced by West German Maoists and later autonomists from the 1970s.

And yet today in the US and Europe the term “Antifa” (or “anti-fascist”) is meant to be taken by those not in the know to mean simply anti-Fascist – as in, anti-Nazi. Of course, Nazis and Fascists are anyone Antifa defines as such.

AOC comes for Father Damien

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, Father Damien:

“Even when we select figures to tell the stories of colonized places, it is the colonizers and settlers whose stories are told – and virtually no one else. Check out Hawaii’s statues,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “It’s not Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii, the only Queen Regnant of Hawaii, who is immortalized and whose story is told. It is Father Damien.”

The New York socialist continued.

“This is what patriarchy and white supremacist culture looks like! It’s not radical or crazy to understand the influence white supremacist culture has historically had in our overall culture & how it impacts the present day.”

If Father Damien – a saint who gave his life caring for the sick and ostracized – is the face of white supremacist culture, then all hail.

And now it’s goggles

The New Neo Posted on by

Why not full hazmat suits? Wouldn’t that protect us even more?:

During a live chat with the American Federation of Teachers Tuesday night, Fauci said “eyes are also vulnerable, so if you can have goggles of some sort that can cover the eyes” it is “one way” to protect yourself.

On Wednesday, he mentioned again “if you have goggles, or an eye shield, you should use it. I mean, it’s not universally recommended. But if you really want to be complete, you should probably use it if you can.”

As with so much of the COVID warnings and recommendations, this is a subtle appeal to OCD. How far do you go? How seriously are people to take any of this? It’s a slippery slope. Some shrug and ignore it all as preposterous. Their ruling philosophy is that life is inherently risky but it is for living, without too many precautions except for the most basic. For other people, absolute safety is the goal and fear is the major motivator. They are willing to change every single aspect of their lives on the off chance that it will protect them from a menace they see as omnipresent and threatening.

I’ve noticed from the start that Fauci likes to say something and then hedge about it, not quite taking it back but not quite committing to it either. Goggles are typical: “You should use it” followed by “it’s not universally recommended” and then “you should probably use it if you can.” What on earth is the listener supposed to take from that? Nothing except confusion.

As for the science of it – we simply don’t know:

Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 response, recently told the AARP.org that, “The virus could enter the body through mucous membranes that cover the white parts of our eyes — but it would be very hard to prove.” Researchers do know that COVID-19 spreads between people who are in close contact to each other through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. But pinpointing exactly where the coronavirus took root in someone’s body — through the nose, the eyes, the mouth or a combination of all three — is next to impossible.

Preliminary research suggests that we’re probably most likely to get infected through the nose and mouth. In fact, a recent study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that the SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — infects the cells in your nose much more easily than the cells in your throat or your lungs. And early research has found that only a small percentage of hospitalized COVID-19 patients whose eye fluid was tested came up positive for having the virus in their eyes — although it should be noted that swabbing eye fluid isn’t standard in coronavirus patient care, so there could certainly be more cases than have been recorded.

Plus, Dr. Thomas Steinemann, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, told NPR that the coronavirus would have to run “a more circuitous route” to travel from your peepers to your respiratory system. First, the virus would have to get through the eyes’ mucous membrane. Then it would need to be swept by tears behind your cheeks to reach your nasal cavity. And from there, it would need to flow from your nose to your throat. It’s certainly possible, but it’s less direct than inhaling the virus directly through your nose or mouth. And the CDC notes that while the nose and mouth are the main areas where the virus enters the body, “it may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes.”

Clear as mud, right?

Obama the divider

The New Neo Posted on by

At John Lewis’ funeral Obama sowed division, both racially and otherwise. One of Obama’s statements was, “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.”

But it’s Obama who is more like Wallace – not just in being Democrats, but in their attitude towards federal troops and/or agents. See this:

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s administration ordered the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division from Ft. Benning, Georgia to be prepared to enforce the racial integration of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In a vain attempt to halt the enrollment of black students Vivian Malone and James Hood, Governor Wallace stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”.

If you want to read more of Obama’s eulogy for Lewis, the full text is here. There are plenty of additional things there to criticize, but I’ll just summarize by saying that it’s Obama doing what Obama does best. I mean that without irony, because long ago I noticed that Obama has a particularly useful and well-developed skill, which is to say things that are often untrue, designed to engender anger and hatred towards the opposition and to exploit racial divides, and yet to continue to appear – in the minds of many listeners, at least – to be high-minded, sincere, and loftily above the fray.

That is his greatest skill, and his deft use of it has been instrumental in helping bring this country to the current sorry state in which we find ourselves. I first noticed it during his 2008 campaign, and it alarmed me immediately. Here’s a summary of some of the points I had made then, and here’s a post in which I discuss his dissing of his white grandmother. Here’s another discussion of Obama’s use of the race card during his campaign. Then, during the Obama presidency, we had his statements about the Trayvon Martin case.

But I think the earliest post I ever wrote concerning Obama’s rather sophisticated technique for sowing racial divisiveness was this one from June of 2008. I’m going to quote the whole thing right now:

Barack Obama, the candidate who wants to end divisiveness, and who wants to run a clean and honorable campaign without negativity, said the following in a recent campaign speech at a Florida fund-raising reception:

“It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

We have here a truly masterful attempt to flames of paranoia on the part of his followers and adopt the mantle of victimization for himself, thus raising rather than lowering the amount of divisiveness and vitriol in the campaign. Pretty good for just a couple of sentences.

Obama is correct in saying that there have been racist remarks against him. These have originated from fringe elements and/or commenters in the blogosphere and/or anonymous email campaigns. They focus on his “funny name,” for example, or the fact that he’s black.

But in this speech he appears to attribute—or to encourage his supporters to attribute—these charges to the entire Republican Party, couched as a threatening “they.” At the same time, he fails to differentiate these attacks – and actually connects them as part of an undifferentiated list – from extremely legitimate concerns that people have voiced about other characteristics of his, such as his inexperience.

In the final sentence of the paragraph he slyly encourages a phenomenon I’ve noticed happening more and more: the charge that any criticism of Obama emanates from racism. If the racism isn’t overt and clear, as in the emails, then it’s covert; “inexperience” (a valid concern based on the objective facts of his history) becomes a code word (wink wink) for hidden racism and fearmongering.

This is dangerous demagoguery.

Because one so seldom hears overt expressions of racism any more, and certainly not from mainstream candidates, there has been a tendency to imagine it is everywhere, but hidden. Here Obama cynically fosters that belief and encourages the definition of his entire opposition as energized by this impossible-to-prove—or, more importantly, impossible-to-disprove—motive.

No, it turns out that most of them haven’t mentioned he’s black, except in approving terms. But they don’t have to nowadays to be racists; Obama has taken care of that.

Obama was doing this from the start, so no one should be the least bit surprised that as an ex-president he continues his successful campaign to divide America. Obama had a wonderful opportunity to do the opposite, but that was never the goal of this community organizer par excellence.

Twitter and YouTube are biased political players attempting to influence the election and other world events through censorship

The New Neo Posted on by

I think the above has been clear for a long time.

I have never been part of Twitter, although if memory serves I initially set up an account. But as soon as I checked out the site, I realized it repelled me and I wanted nothing to do with it. And that was before it started censoring people.

Which it’s been doing for quite some time. For example (hat tip: Ace):

And YouTube isn’t far behind. There’s this, which happened just today (hat tip: commenter “Cap’n Rusty”). The poster is John Hinderaker:

Earlier today, Center of the American Experiment hosted a live-streamed presentation by Heather Mac Donald titled “The Truth About Crime, Race and Policing.” Heather’s talk, which lasted for around 40 minutes, was fact-filled. It delivered a knockout punch to the Black Lives Matter “systemic police racism” narrative, which can’t stand up to empirical analysis. Thousands of people watched the livestream on an event page, on YouTube and on Facebook. We intend that a vastly greater number–hundreds of thousands–watch the archived video on YouTube, Facebook and other platforms.

But within an hour after the program ended, YouTube deleted the video on the pretense that it violated YouTube’s “Community Guidelines.”

YouTube said it violated their community guidelines. Hinderaker sent off the following to YouTube:

This is obviously a mistake. The speaker is Heather Mac Donald, one of America’s top authorities on crime and policing. She is the author of a bestselling book on the subject, has testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the topic of her speech, and was described by a former Attorney General of the U.S. as “the greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today.” Her talk was data-rich and totally beyond criticism based on YouTube’s “Community Guidelines.” Please reverse this erroneous decision immediately.

Powerline put the video up at YouTube again, so I’m posting it here (watch it while you can!):

It also can be seen here.

North Korean defector surprised to find out that Americans are really nice

The New Neo Posted on by

Propaganda is difficult to shake, but personal observation and experience can go a long way:

A North Korean defector earlier this month revealed that he was “shocked” at the level of kindness and racial diversity he experienced when he first visited the United States.

The video is worth watching:

In the past, I’ve watched other videos done by foreigners talking about their experiences with Americans or in visiting America. When asked to list characteristics of Americans, almost all of them say that Americans are friendly and smile a lot, and that they can be distinguished from others by their confident way of walking.

RIP Herman Cain

The New Neo Posted on by

More sad news:

Herman Cain — the maverick American business czar and Republican presidential candidate who campaigned for a sweeping tax reform plan called 9-9-9 — died Thursday morning after a monthlong battle with the coronavirus. He was 74.

Cain, who recently joined Newsmax TV and was set to launch a weekly show, died in an Atlanta-area hospital where he had been critically ill for several weeks.

He was admitted on July 1, two days after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

It sounds as though the disease became serious for him very quickly. I don’t know whether he had any pre-existing conditions, although I do know that he was a colon cancer survivor after being diagnosed with Stage IV in 2006.

Note the way the following is framed:

Ten days before, Cain had attended a rally for President Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

But it is not known for sure where Cain, co-chairman of Black Voices for Trump, was infected. He had been on a whirlwind travel schedule in June, stopping in multiple cities.

So he could have contracted it anywhere. He was all over the map in June.

Here’s a portion of Cain’s resume of accomplishment:

He was born Dec. 13, 1945, in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up poor in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father worked three jobs — as a janitor, barber, and chauffeur — while his mother toiled as a domestic worker.

A stellar student who worked hard, Cain graduated from Morehouse College with a mathematics degree in 1967. A year later, he married Gloria Etchison, whom he met when he was a sophomore at Morehouse and she was a freshman at Morris Brown College.

Cain went on to earn a master’s degree in computer science from Purdue University in 1971, and helped develop fire control ballistics for ships and fighter planes for the U.S. Navy.

Next, he joined The Coca-Cola Company as a systems analyst, and after considerable success, moved to Pillsbury.

After serving as regional vice president of Pillsbury’s Burger King, Cain then took on the biggest challenge of his career as president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, a national chain teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

In 14 months, he returned Godfather’s to profitability and led his management team to a buyout of the company.

Much more at the link.

You may recall that, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Cain was sidelined by sexual harassment allegations in a familiar scenario (I chronicled it here). Because of that, as well as the fact that he was a conservative black man, there has been a lot of nasty leftist twittering on his grave.

Here’s an appreciation, though.

RIP.