On Trump’s illness: assuming the risk

The New Neo Posted on by

Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has written a post about the stirring of memory and emotion that Trump’s illness has caused. For Jacobson, the event has conjured up this:

John F. Kennedy was assassinated when I was four years old. It was the first emotion I remember — Being that young I’m not sure if I remember the event, or remember what my mother told me about the emotion I felt. She wrote out and mailed a two-or-three sentence note I ‘dictated’ to the Kennedy children telling them I felt sorry that they lost their dad. She made a copy of the note and showed it to me repeatedly over the decades. I have the note somewhere, but it’s one of those things I find when I’m not looking for it, and can’t find when I am looking for it.

I was older than Professor Jacobson when Kennedy was killed. But that’s not the emotional memory Trump’s illness stirs up in me. The Kennedy assassination was, for me, a sudden and violent blow, an unthinkable act that immediately changed history and changed the country, ushering a different era: that of the Sixties.

Trump’s illness is a continuation of something that we’ve lived with since February: fear of COVID, particularly in those over 70. Most of us here and elsewhere have probably thought about the illness and its risks quite often, including the idea that President Trump might come down with it. We’ve all had discussions here and with friends and family about the best way to prevent it and the best way to treat it. And Trump himself has been very prominent in such discussions, especially in the early days when he was part of the daily news conferences on it.

When Boris Johnson came down with COVID in late March and came close to death, it certainly occurred to me that Trump was vulnerable. I would suspect it occurred to you, too.

Trump’s critics and enemies have accused him of being cavalier about COVID, reckless even. And of course now that he has gotten it, that hue and cry has only increased (as has their delight, for the most part, although some are displeased he is not sicker or even deceased at this point). But of course, it’s not as though people who wear masks all the time don’t get COVID. And it’s not as though people who don’t wear them always get it – although that sort of reasoning doesn’t enter into the political calculus of those who’d like to excoriate Trump for this and who do so regularly.

Nevertheless, it is indeed true that Trump has been somewhat cautious about COVID but has drawn the line at taking every single precaution possible. I don’t blame him for making that choice. We all make it every day about everything, don’t we? And not just about COVID, but about every step we take in life. It’s a tradeoff between liberty and risk, and people come down at different points on that line. Trump is not a timid or risk-averse person, and although he tries to use good judgment he decided long ago what risks to accept. I don’t think he was foolhardy. I just think he has been in so much contact with people in the course of doing his job and trying to project strength and optimism that it finally caught up with him. And I fervently hope he has a speedy and uneventful recovery.

I don’t go to sites that feature the bile and vicious wishes that have spilled out of many Democrats and the left. Who needs to be exposed to that? I’ve got enough stress in my life as it is.

The memory that Trump’s illness has stirred up for me is of my father. He died when I was in my twenties, and had been in heart failure for ten years prior to that. In those days there were some medications to treat it, but nowhere near what we have today, and surgery had also been ruled out for him. He was younger than I am now as his health sank to the point where merely walking across a room exhausted him, and climbing the stairs was clearly extremely taxing and required many minutes of recovery.

My mother wanted to get one of those seats that electrically transport you up the stairs as you sit in them. But my father refused to use one. And the night he died, he expired right after climbing the stairs to go to bed. His heart simply gave out.

At the time, I didn’t quite understand his choices. Why was he so stubborn? Why hadn’t he used an electric assist in the form of a chair like that? But then, when I thought about it, I realized that it was his decision and he was drawing the line there. I wasn’t sure of his reason, but I felt that he just didn’t want to give in to that particular sort of limitation even though he was clearly greatly limited in other ways. His refusal was symbolic, but it was very important to him.

There’s no real analogy here, except in a very general way. We all make such decisions, and we make them constantly. My father made his decisions. Trump made his decisions. JFK made his decisions – to be in an open car in a motorcade, something that no longer is allowed presidents, for obvious reasons.

I wrote the draft of this piece a couple of days ago, before I saw the video Trump made in the hospital. I featured it already in this post, but now I want to highlight one short segment of it:

Note, also, that one of the very first posts I ever wrote on COVID was subtitled “assuming the risk” (the same subtitle I’ve given to the present post). In it, I wrote:

Of course, I wasn’t around in 1918. I wasn’t around when smallpox and tuberculosis or the Black Death killed far far more of the people on earth than any of the plagues of my lifetime have come close to killing. I cannot even imagine how terrible those things were; I don’t even want to imagine. And I doubt that people took them in stride at all. And I think a good part of the dread and fear now is that in the back of our minds – or for some people, even the front of our minds – we know that such catastrophes are still possible. Human beings know they are intensely vulnerable.

But COVID-19 is not shaping up to be that sort of event, and there’s no reason to think it will be. However, although many measures are prudent – handwashing, increased testing, hospital preparedness, some measure of social distancing at least for a while – the degree of fear I see and hear is far greater than anything I can recall in my lifetime around a medical event.

And it’s not just medical events, either. Students demand that colleges protect them from ever feeling bad or bullied or offended by anything anyone says. Woman have become so reactive to the idea of sexual harassment that many have redefined it to include what used to be considered standard compliments on appearance. People start bitter twitter wars about things like cultural appropriation. There seems to be a hair-trigger over-reactivity, a new emotional fragility and vulnerability, that is akin to what can happen when a person fails to develop normal immunities of the physical type, to use a medical analogy.

People are speculating as to how this will play out over the next month and how it will affect the election. I have no idea. But I think that those who believe in trying to eliminate all risk are probably not the ones thinking of voting for Trump in the first place. They are the ones for whom the image of a masked, sequestered, and subdued Biden is reassuring.

[ADDENDUM: The current plan is for Trump to leave the hospital this evening. I am relatively sure that, once in the White House, he will be monitored very very closely.]

A video message from President Trump in Walter Reed

The New Neo Posted on by

I think this sets a perfect tone. One of the things about the situation is that it tempers some of Trump’s harshness without reducing his optimistic fighting spirit:

Some of the usual suspects are, of course, saying it was pre-recorded or made through AI. To combat the first charge, he should have held up today’s NY Times.

Thanks for the dance – posthumous Leonard Cohen songs

The New Neo Posted on by

Somehow I missed the fact that a while back Leonard Cohen’s son and some other musicians and technicians put out a recording of posthumous new songs by Cohen, who had recorded the bare bones of them when he was near death. All they had to do was add the arrangements.

They also put out some gorgeous and mysterious videos. Here’s one:

Here’s how the songs were transformed into finished products:

And here’s Cohen’s son Adam, who looks somewhat like him at the same age and sounds even more like him but different, with a different emotional tone:

And by the time-travel magic of YouTube, here’s his dad at around the same age, same song, performing live:

Thanks, Leonard. And thanks, Adam.

Trump’s doctors are extremely happy with his progress

The New Neo Posted on by

So far so good.

This is day three. It’s days 7 through 10 that usually tell the tale.

ADDENDUM:

At RedState, there’s an interesting article about where Trump might have caught the virus. The media – of course – is focusing on the Amy Coney Barrett event, and on blaming lack of masks. But some people who wore masks there also got it, and everyone there was tested before being allowed to attend. And it was held outside.

Another possible venue was the debate, where some pre-planning and set-up people seem to have been infected. But I very much doubt the MSM will be emphasizing that possibility.

Caring about truth, caring about liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

Not everyone cares about either of the above. And among those who care, not everyone cares equally. To some, truth and/or liberty (usually both together) are essential. They are things worth pursuing to the utmost, and even in some cases worth dying for.

To others, not so much, or not at all.

Commenter “DNW” describes the phenomenon:

…[O]ne day – [a woman I knew who] liked to discuss such issues- …began talking [with me] about what was really important, or should be important to or valued by the individual: what persons should want or strive to achieve failing all else. I said something a bit pompous, like, “to know the truth, whatever it might be”. She actually snorted before laughing. “Truth? Truth! Who cares about that?!” And then, “I want to be happy!”.

Now I suppose if we were both more conventional -me less priggish and she less aged – a psychologist might have said that we should both have said ” love” or something. But I feel fortunate to have said what I did, because it allowed me to gain insight into what this pleasant Episcopalian church lady and social activist really considered the proper ranking of truth in the hierarchy of her value system. It didn’t mean jack shit to her when push came to shove.

Reminds me too, of the politically minded mail lady who after asking me what I thought was the most important issue in a previous election, responded by laughing derisively and shouting at the ceiling: “Freedom?! You sound like Mel Gibson! Hahaha. ‘Oh, freedom, oh freedom. Let me have my freedom’ hahaha”.

The first lady reminds me of the saying in AA: “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” “Right” is not exactly the same thing as “truth,” of course, because “be right” can be interpreted as “win arguments” (which I must confess I also like to do). But to me “being right” isn’t just that, it’s pursuing truth as best you can. And although that endeavor can cut into happiness in many ways – especially interpersonal ones – it does bring a certain happiness of its own, which is the happiness and even perhaps joy of trying to tune yourself to the truth, a pursuit that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying.

The second lady reminds me of John Kerry’s remark back in 1971, when he was young and pompous and arrogant rather than old and pompous and arrogant:

We found most people [in South Vietnam] didn’t even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart.

I’m not sure who this “we” is who “found” this out – was Kerry using the royal “we,” or did he have access to a poll of the South Vietnamese people? And if they didn’t know the difference between Communism and democracy – or care – did Kerry? And how many of them cared later, I wonder, when the North Vietnamese took over and they learned the difference?

Or was Kerry really just saying that most people aren’t willing to endure a war to be free rather than Communist, and that most people reject the sentiment “Live Free or Die?”

The Grand Inquisitor passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (hmmm; I seem to be thinking quite a bit lately of Dostoevsky) indicates that the Inquisitor is with Kerry on this. Here the Inquisitor is speaking to a returned Christ, in words that always give me goosebumps of fear:

Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee–a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel…

…It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?…In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them–so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!

[NOTE: There’s also this fascinating essay from 1941 called “Who will go Nazi?”]

They say…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s “a precautionary measure”:

President Donald Trump is being taken to Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday “as a precautionary measure” following his coronavirus diagnosis, a senior administration official told NBC News.

“Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of his physician and medical experts, the President will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed for the next few days,” the White House press secretary said…

“President Trump remains in good spirts, has mild symptoms, and has been working throughout the day,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement to reporters at the White House.

Let’s hope that’s true. It does make sense to be very very cautious. Trump is 74 years old, and he’s no sylph, although as far as I know he has no special pre-existing conditions.

Denouncing white supremacy: Say it my way. And do it now. Again and again.

The New Neo Posted on by

This may seem insane and/or stupid on the part of Roberts, but rest assured it is not. It is a talking point that has remarkable staying power with enormous numbers of Democratic voters, who have become convinced that Trump is a white supremacist or that he is sending a host of dog whistles to the many millions of white supremacists supposedly in the US. It doesn’t matter how many times it is proven that Trump has condemned them. It is enough to pretend that he hasn’t, and to keep demanding in the present that he do so, so the press can assert that once again he has refused.

Dostoevsky’s Demons and Orwell’s Hate

The New Neo Posted on by

As I’ve written before, when I was in college in the late 60s I happened to take a course called Russian Intellectual History. I had always liked Russian lit, I’d been told the prof was good, and the course seemed an easy way to fulfill a history requirement.

It was all that, and more. I was very fortunate to take it during that particular era, because I could not help but notice – in fact, it was glaringly obvious – that despite the distant time and place and many different details, and despite the fact that we young people thought ourselves to be inventing a new and better world, there were enormous parallels.

That course kept me from idealizing my own generation or their ideas, and served as a warning about intellectual or political hubris. Recent events have only solidified those notions, and added layers of present-day observation about current generations and the danger their ideas present. It’s a variation on a theme.

One of the books we read for that course was Dostoevsky’s Demons, in a translation that at the time was called The Possessed:

The original Russian title is Bésy, which means “demons”. There are three English translations: The Possessed, The Devils, and Demons. Constance Garnett’s 1916 translation popularized the novel and gained it notoriety as The Possessed, but this title has been disputed by later translators. They argue that “The Possessed” points in the wrong direction because Bésy refers to active subjects rather than passive objects — “possessors” rather than “the possessed”. However, ‘Demons’ refers not to individuals who act in various immoral or criminal ways, but rather to the ideas that possess them: non-material but living forces that subordinate the individual (and collective) consciousness, distorting it and impelling it toward catastrophe.

I’m not so sure that “demons” refers to the ideas rather than the individuals as well, but I’m not here to argue that particular point. What made me think of the book again is something that’s probably obvious: the reaction of many on the left to the news that the Trumps have tested positive for COVID. But that’s just one example of a phenomenon we’ve seen a great deal of in recent years, and some of the worst things about it is the element of transformation of the formerly mild-mannered and kindly into seething malevolence.

Yesterday we discussed it as part of this lengthy thread. It’s deeply unsettling to see the rage come over a person, as I recently did when looking into the eyes of a previously genial acquaintance who was shrieking with rage at me, her eyes narrowed with what looked like hatred.

People don’t like what threatens them, especially if they don’t understand it and if (as happened with this particular woman) they have no factual answer to some of the things that are being said to them. What’s left to them is to explode – which she did, ultimately getting into her car and peeling off with tires screeching. I would guess – although I don’t know, and I’m certainly not about to ask – that either she or plenty of other people I know are rejoicing, openly or secretly, in Trump’s diagnosis.

Are they “possessed”? Is this “demonic”? I don’t know. I tend to think in the psychological terms I just explained in the above paragraph, because these people are for the most part not inherently evil. They are filled with self-righteousness, and they have been whipped up into a fever pitch by an MSM and Democratic Party bent on doing so for political reasons. This is no accident.

It is somewhat similar to a phenomenon described in another great literary work, Nineteen-Eighty Four, the “Two Minutes Hate“:

In the cinematic version of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), brainwashing of the participants in the Two Minutes Hate includes auditory and visual cues, such as “a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil” that burst from the telescreen. meant to psychologically excite the crowd into an emotional frenzy of hatred, fear, and loathing for Emmanuel Goldstein, and for Oceania’s enemy of the moment, either Eastasia or Eurasia. The hate session includes the participants throwing things at the telescreen showing the film, as does the Julia character. In the course of the Two Minutes Hate, the film image of Goldstein metamorphoses into the face of a bleating sheep, as enemy soldiers advance towards the viewers of the film, before one enemy soldier charges towards the viewers, whilst firing his sub-machinegun; the face of that soldier then becomes the face of Big Brother. At the end of the two-minute session of hatred, the members of the Party ritualistically chant “B-B . . . B-B . . . B-B . . . B-B.” To maintain the extreme emotions provoked in the Two Minutes Hate sessions, the Party created Hate Week, a week-long festival of hatreds.

[NOTE: This post may have set a new record for “number of categories.”]

How do you argue for the truth when at this point only moral “truth” seems to matter?

The New Neo Posted on by

A great article that asks the question but unfortunately doesn’t provide the answer.

We need an answer. Or maybe the answer is one we (or at least I) don’t want to hear – that there is no good answer because the situation is too far gone. Maybe even that some sort of violence is inevitable?

I’ve noticed the problem cropping up more and more in my own private life as I’ve been engaging more frequently in discussion with people who disagree with me politically. I’ve noticed that in these talks, if I utter a fact that contradicts their preferred version of what’s going on, and I offer to send a link about it, some of them reject that suggestion either by screaming that I’m lying, by changing the subject, or by abruptly turning their backs and leaving in rage.

I had the latter happen to me twice in one evening last week, from two different people. These are both people I’ve known for many years, and although they are not close friends, they are friendly acquaintances with whom I’ve never had a fight before. But what I was saying was apparently so threatening – even though I stated my case briefly and mildly – that they had to leave the field.