Professor Jacobson: on students and free speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Professor William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has been doing tremendous work promoting free speech. Two years ago he spoke at Vassar on the subject, amidst turmoil from activists spreading lies about him and seeking to silence him.

Recently he reflected on that experience, and what he has to say may surprise you [emphasis mine]:

So we were in what I think is the largest classroom there, lecture hall…It was over capacity, students overflowing into the hallways. So we probably had close to 300 students, and as soon as I started speaking, they realized, I think, they’d been had, that I was not who I was portrayed to be.

I spent 45 minutes with a basic lecture about the First Amendment, the history, why it’s important, why historically it’s actually protected left-wing speech, that the anti-war movement and the other movements could not have developed if not for the protections.

…And then I went through the rest of the Bill of Rights and I went through each of the rights of the Bill of Rights and I said, “While they may not technically apply here on campus, I’m sure you don’t want the college administration to take your stuff without some process by which you could contest it, some due process.” I said, “You don’t want to give up that right here.”…

I went through all of these and I said, “Why is it you want all of these rights in the Bill of Rights on this campus, even if it technically doesn’t apply, but the one right you’re so willing and eager to give up are your free speech rights?” I said, “Why is that?” I said, “Maybe it’s because on this campus, you have power and therefore your speech is not going to be stifled. But go outside those gates and guess what? That’s Trump country, and you wonder why the nation—or at least half the nation—voted that way even though you don’t know anybody who voted for him.”

I said, “So if you give up First Amendment rights on this campus and you are willing to suppress speech on this campus, you have no right to complain if somebody does it to you beyond the fence and beyond the gate.”

It was a great 45 minutes, no interruptions, although they came ready for a fight…and then we had question-and-answer. [An] hour and 15 minutes, the students lined up to ask [questions], including someone dressed in black. There were mostly good questions. I mean, I think questions that reflected that they’d never really had to think about these things before, but they were, let’s say, good-faith questions.

…it was one of the best nights I’ve ever had on a campus.

One thing it taught me is that there is a hunger out there on behalf of students to learn about what you would think are basic civic lessons that they’ve never had. And they’ve never had anybody explain it to them, and why it’s important, and why even allowing speech you consider offensive is really important.

Our educational system has become a complete failure in terms of giving students the truth and the foundations for this country’s system. But that’s no accident; the trashing was intentional.

Hillary Clinton: “I think about what kind of president I would have been all the time”

The New Neo Posted on by

In an interview with the BBC, Hillary Clinton said this:

“I think about what kind of president I would have been all the time…How, obviously, I would have been different. How I think I would have been a better, more successful president…”

Hillary is not alone. The right thinks quite often about what a Hillary Clinton presidency would have been like, and 99.9999% of them are ecstatically happy that it never came to pass, and hope to continue that fortunate streak.

Her supporters probably think about it even more, grinding their teeth in woe and sympathy for her and for the country at its enormous loss.

Hillary went on:

“And I think about the presidential campaign of 2016. I thought I was as gutsy as I could be, but I probably could have been gutsier — if I figured out a way to reveal what was happening in a more effective way.”

“You know when we talked about how the Russians were behind the theft of material, a lot of people thought, ‘What are they talking about?’ They just dismissed us in both the public and the press…”

Again with the Russia, Russia, Russia. And again with the “we just didn’t communicate well enough,” which was an ongoing refrain of the Obama administration whenever anything went wrong. Everything was a framing problem, a narrative problem, and so every solution was to tweak the message.

I think Clinton is polling madly to see what her chances might be in 2020. She doesn’t want another laborious run with an ignominious ending. She’d rather carp and blame.

[NOTE: This is a small point of grammar, but Hillary should have put the “all the time” after “I think,” as in: “I think all the time about what kind of president I would have been.”]

Here’s a thread for the latest act of the impeachment theater

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a long-running play.

I’m not watching today’s show. I will be attempting to keep up with it periodically, but I’ve got a busy day otherwise. Here’s a thread to discuss the hearings and the entire misbegotten mess.

So far—

Fancy that:

George Kent, a diplomat in the State Department, testified that America has always placed conditions on all loans to Ukraine:

“There are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine. Conditions include anti-corruption reforms, as well as meeting larger stability goals and social safety nets. The International Monetary Fund does the same thing. Congress and the executive branch work together to put conditionality on some security assistance in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.”…

Kent, a diplomat in the State Department, noted that in 2015, he raised concerns to then-Vice President Joe Biden when Hunter, his son, had was named to a position on the board of the natural gas firm. The elder Biden was acting as the chief diplomat to Ukraine at the time.

Anyone with a modicum of sense realizes that the US always can attach such conditions, and that Hunter Biden’s appointment was problematic. I can’t remember when I first heard about Biden’s involvement, but it was long before the brouhaha over the Trump phone call.

But of course, what’s standard and unquestionably allowed every other president is not allowed Trump.

More here.

Also, on the topic of the supposed quid pro quo:

During the first day of public impeachment hearings, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) asked former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor whether there was any “linkage” of security assistance dollars to investigating Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian company where Joe Biden’s son Hunter served on the board despite not having any experience in the industry. Taylor testified that he met three times with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and that there was “no linkage” of these issues in any of those meetings…

…”to my knowledge, Ukrainians were not aware of the hold on assistance until the 29th of August,” Taylor said. “The third meeting that you mentioned with the senators… there was discussion of the security assistance… but there was not discussion of linkage.”

Right there, should be a slam-dunk case for dismissal of the entire sorry charade. But that won’t happen.

Whither Comey?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s today’s rumor about IG Horowitz’s report:

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s much anticipated report on his investigation into the FBI’s probe into President Trump’s campaign is expected to be made public before Thanksgiving and the outcome is alleged to contain several criminal referrals, according to sources who spoke with SaraACarter.com…

According to several sources the report will be ‘damning’ and will allegedly contain criminal referrals on former FBI officials. The report will apparently have at least two criminal referrals, said two sources, with knowledge. One of those criminal referrals is expected to be Comey. However, the Inspector General’s office has not been providing comments on the report.

Grain of salt duly taken. And of course, even if there’s a criminal referral for Comey, that doesn’t mean Barr will prosecute.

Here’s my other thought: if there is a criminal referral and Barr does prosecute, will that change any minds? After all, Sara Carter also reports:

“If it’s strong and comes out soon, the IG report will do some real damage to the Democrats’ impeachment charade. It would show that Resistance bureaucrats really are conspiring to take down Trump,” said a House Republican source. “It would also fatally undermine the credibility of Schiff, who argued vehemently that there were no FISA abuses—it will mean that, as Intel Committee Chairman, he’s ignoring severe abuses for purely political purposes.”

In a logical world, that would be the case. But the world doesn’t necessarily work that way. My own cynicism suggests that, if Comey is prosecuted, all of Trump’s opponents will call it vengeance on the part of Trump and will consider it merely another reason to impeach him.

Meet San Francisco’s new DA: Chesa Boudin, the ultimate red diaper baby

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not as though any of the choices for San Francisco DA were conservatives or even close to it. But of all the far leftist candidates for San Francisco DA, winner Chesa Boudin was the most leftist of them all, a sort of leftist’s leftist.

His margin of victory was small, but he’s got big plans:

“The people of San Francisco have sent a powerful and clear message,” Boudin said in a statement. “It’s time for radical change to how we envision justice. I’m humbled to be a part of this movement that is unwavering in its demand for transformation.”…

Boudin, a public defender and former translator for the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s administration, ran on a progressive platform of criminal justice reform, including the elimination of cash bail, ending mass incarceration, and eliminating racial bias in the criminal justice system. Boudin also said he would demand the police be held accountable for police brutality.

The San Francisco Police Officers Association responded by spending $600,000 to launch attack ads calling Boudin “the number one choice of criminals and gang members,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Boudin’s candidacy and election is no accident whatsoever. It is part of an extremely organized movement to get leftist radicals into such positions in cities and even states around the US, funded in part by George Soros’ deep pockets. Michelle Malkin discusses that and more in this piece on Chesa Boudin and others who are part of this push:

Boudin is the top fundraiser in the San Francisco DA’s race, raking in more than $623,000 in donations this year — a significant chunk from out-of-state academics, entertainment industry executives, and East Coast lawyers in New York and D.C. I discovered from Boudin’s most recent campaign finance disclosures that one of his top donors is Chloe Cockburn. She is a prominent partner of globalist billionaire George Soros’ Democracy Alliance. Cockburn moderated a crucial 2017 summit with Soros and other deep-pocketed liberal philanthropists to strategize on taking over local and state offices to reclaim “our progressive future.” Other bigwig Boudin donors hail from the Soros-allied Tides Foundation and Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice.

When I read Boudin’s name I immediately recognized his provenance; I’d heard of him before. Boudin is the son of leftist self-styled “revolutionaries” Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, who were convicted in the murders of one guard and two police officers in the 1981 Brinks robbery. You can read about his parents’ crime here, and make sure you study the violent details so that when you read some of the other links that mention it you understand how brutal it really was. Gilbert is still in prison all these years later, but Kathy Boudin has gone on to a position at Gilbert’s alma mater, Columbia, as I wrote about previously here:

I have been unable to find anything to indicate what might be called “repentance” on Boudin’s part; neither has John Hinderaker of Powerline. And indeed, there’s absolutely no reason to think she has any regrets about what she did. Boudin comes from a long line of prominent leftists (and especially lawyers), and although the rest of them don’t seem to have been terrorists, in her politics she’s really just been following the family business.

So Chesa himself is just following the family business as well, with a little (actually a lot of) help from his friends and donors. Just to round things out, since he was a mere 14 months when his parents committed their crime, he was raised by none other than Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who have also found cozy homes in academia (in Dohrn’s case in the field of law, and in Ayers’ case educational “reform”).

Chesa’s parents were impatient revolutionaries involved in violence. If you have the stomach for it, you can read a 1985 interview with dad here; it’s typical self-justifying leftist tripe. But Chesa Boudin has been made aware (as has his mother and his surrogate parents) that a better way to accomplish what his parents attempted is the slower Gramscian march through the institutions which has been progressing (pun intended) quite nicely lately.

Chesa has impeccable academic credentials – Oxford, Rhodes scholar, Yale Law School – and he was a translator and propagandist for that wonderful guy, Hugo Chavez. Now he hopes to bring his helpful skills to San Francisco. Chesa Boudin says:

Growing up in that household, he was immersed in the world of leftist politics and groomed to be an overachiever: Yale. Rhodes Scholar. Yale Law School. “I lived in parallel worlds,” he once wrote. “My family taught me radical politics from the beginning, but I also learned to prove myself in elite institutions.”

That’s what makes a man like Chesa Boudin so dangerous: he’s polished, smart, and patient. Here are just a few of Boudin’s plans: protect illegal immigrants from deportation who have committed other crimes, and go after ICE:

The Immigration Unit proposed by candidate Chesa Boudin would work to assure that defendants are not offered plea deals that have unintended consequences on their immigration status…

The unit would translate complicated immigration law for prosecutors. In many cases, immigrants who commit certain crimes can be convicted of comparable charges that still result in punishment but do not impact their status in the country, Boudin said.

For instance, Boudin said an immigrant accused of drug dealing could be offered a felony plea for being an accessory after the fact rather than possession with the intent to sell, which carries with it “drastic” immigration consequences.

Protecting immigrants from deportation is just one aspect of the proposed unit that Boudin plans to announce Wednesday. Boudin said the unit would also be tasked with investigating and prosecuting “illegal tactics” by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“There are lots of situations in San Francisco where ICE is making arrests,” Boudin said. “We know it’s racist, we know it’s targeting immigrants, and unfortunately right now no one in the DA’s office has the resources or the mandate to investigate those interactions.”

Boudin said he might consider ICE making good on President Donald Trump’s threat to transport undocumented immigrants from the border to San Francisco “human trafficking” or “kidnapping,” for instance.

As I said before, it’s not as though any of Boudin’s rival candidates were much better, either.

[NOTE: Here’s a note on the fate of Joseph Trombino, one of the Brink’s guards wounded in the 1981 robbery, who lived twenty more years only to die in the 9/11 attacks.]

[NOTE II: And expect to see a lot more public urination in San Francisco. Hey, there can never be enough public urination, right?

If you don’t prosecute “quality of life” crimes, it stands to reason that quality of life will decline.

Related.]

Jet Blue is all excited about its new fare structure

The New Neo Posted on by

I got one of those “We’re so excited to be able to offer you something new and we’re sure you’ll love because it’s so fabulous!” emails today. It’s from Jet Blue, and they’re announcing a new and more complicated fare structure (not available on all flights) which they just about guarantee you’ll love, love, love.

You need a lawyer to figure it out, as happens with so many of today’s “deals.” But I spent some time studying it, and I’ve concluded that it’s the usual. They tout the fact that they offer small and relatively meaningless perks, many of which most of their competitors offer – FREE brand-name snacks, FREE carry-on, whoopdeedoo! – and take something away in the bargain.

Just as an example (and I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds with this, because it’s not worth it), starting today their very lowest fare category involves forfeiting the entire fare if you cancel or change, even if you’re a member of their elusive frequent flier club Mosaic. But you know what? The next higher-up fares, which have change fees, are actually not much better because until you get above a one-way $200-and-up fare, the change fees are nearly as much as the fares themselves.

And so on and so forth.

And believe me, I’m not picking on Jet Blue, which is a good airline in my book. It’s everywhere and it’s everything.

“Okay, Boomer,” I say to myself.

Farage’s Brexit Party will not block Johnson’s Conervatives in coming UK election

The New Neo Posted on by

This is potentially big news:

In a massive boost to Prime Minister Boris Johnson-led British Conservatives, Nigel Farage has pulled hundreds of Brexit Party candidates ahead of the December 12 election. The Brexit Party will not field candidates in all 317 seats that the ruling Conservative party won in the last general election.

“The Brexit party will not contest the 317 seats the Conservatives won at the last election,” Farage said. “We will concentrate our total effort into all the seats that are held by the Labour party, who have completely broken their manifesto pledge in 2017 to respect the result of the referendum, and we will also take on the rest of the remainer parties. We will stand up and fight them all.”

The Brexit Party had the potential of costing Prime Minister Johnson the election, a “wargaming” simulation conducted by the Daily Telegraph concluded on Monday. The newspaper predicted, “Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party could decide [the] election by denying Conservatives 90 extra seats.”

So that’s got to be good for Johnson and the Brexit forces. But here’s my question: why doesn’t Johnson pull out of the contests for the seats Conservatives don’t presently hold? Isn’t there still a good possibility that the Brexit candidates and the Conservative candidates in those districts will split the pro-Brexit vote and allow a Labour candidate to win those particular seats?

Remember 2016, the Flight 93 election? Well, the 2020 election figures to be…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the Nineteen Eighty-Four election, according to Victor Davis Hanson:

It is becoming a stark choice between a revolutionary future versus American traditionalism.

I don’t think there’s any “becoming” about it. This has been true of elections ever since at least 2008 and perhaps earlier. After all, remember “hope and change” and Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of this country?

Some of this transformation had already occurred, of course, with events such as the reform of immigration laws during the 1960s. I’m not going to argue about when it really began – for example, you could start with Wilson or TR the “progressive,” or you could talk about FDR or the income tax or even the popular election of senators – but now it’s reached a sort of fever pitch and is far more open in its manifestations and goals.

More from Hanson:

The choice in reductionist terms will be one between a growing, statist Panopticon, fueled by social media, a media-progressive nexus, and an electronic posse. Online trolls and government bureaucrats seek to know everything about us, in Big Brother fashion to monitor our very thoughts to ferret out incorrect ideas, and then to regiment and indoctrinate us to ensure elite visions of mandated equality and correct behavior—or else!

In other words, the personality quirks of a Trump or an Elizabeth Warren or a Bernie Sanders will become mostly irrelevant given the existential choice between two quite antithetical ideas of future America. In 2020 we will witness the penultimate manifestation of what radical progressivism has in store for us all—and the furious, often desperate, and unfettered pushback against it.

We are also well beyond even the stark choices of 1972 and 1984 that remained within the parameters of the two parties. In contrast, the Democratic Party as we have known it, is extinct for now. It has been replaced since 2016 by a radical progressive revolutionary movement that serves as a touchstone for a variety of auxiliary extremist causes, agendas, and cliques—almost all of them radically leftwing and nihilistic, and largely without majority popular support.

One of the things that stuns me is that so many people who are about to vote Democratic in 2020 seem unaware of the extreme leftist and anti-liberty nature of today’s Democratic Party despite the fact that it is no longer hidden. When Obama was running, he was smart enough to present a facade that was somewhat moderate (you might say it was moderately moderate), especially in 2008. But now the mask is off for the Democrats, and yet many people still cling to an antiquated notion of what voting Democratic means. And of course, a growing number of people (especially the young and the college-educted) know full well what it means and they approve and applaud.

Hanson discusses the aspect of this change that has resulted from indoctrination via the school system. He emphasizes universities, but the rot now goes all the way down to the youngest students:

Our universities effectively have eroded the First Amendment and the due process protections of the Fifth in matters of sexual assault allegations. Higher education is now controlled by a revolutionary clique. It institutionalizes racially segregated dorms and safe spaces, matter of factly promotes censorship, and either cannot or will not prevent students from disrupting lecturers with whom they disagree. What or who exactly say not to all that? Who would dare say that America in its third century is not going to change its use of English pronouns or decide that there are not three and more biological genders?

One of the problems is that it may be too late, and that’s true even if Trump is re-elected. Is his unique (to say the least) personality a mere speed bump along the way to leftist domination? In my darker hours I very much fear it may be:

Like it or not, 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. One side advocates a complete transformation not just of the American present but of the past as well. The Left is quite eager to change our very vocabulary and monitor our private behavior to ensure we are not just guilty of incorrect behavior but thought as well.

The other side believes America is far better than the alternative, that it never had to be perfect to be good, and that, all and all, its flawed past is a story of a moral nation’s constant struggle for moral improvement.

The election is almost exactly one year from now.

Veterans Day, Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to just barely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.

Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).

I’m also old enough–and had a teacher ancient enough—to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade—although without being given any historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.

You can find the story of the poem here . It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater (there is no separate URL for the discussion of the poem, but you should click on the link about it if you scroll down on the left sidebar). It’s not great poetry by any means, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.

The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice—and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.

The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed—even if each peace was only a temporary one.

And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence—or have continually threatened to—ever since.

So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one—and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has clearly not yet arrived—and, realistically but sadly, most likely it never will.

What’s with this “OK Boomer” business?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a thing.

William Shatner got into a Twitter fight about it.

Here’s an explanation of how the phrase is being used:

…[T]he term ‘boomer’ doesn’t precisely mean ‘baby boomer,’ not on the internet, anyway, where Kelly adds “we’re constantly navigating our identities.”

“We’re not using ‘boomer’ per se to take down people who were born after World War II in the baby boom. We’re using it in an ironic, often humorous, though sometimes malicious way as a catchall or stand-in for a set of attitudes. A ‘boomer’ [in this case] is an older, angry white male who is shaking his fist at the sky while not being able to take an insult. They have close-minded opinions, are resistant to change — whether it’s new technology or gender inclusivity — and are generally out of touch with how their behaviors affect other people.”

In other words: shut up, old white male person who hasn’t hopped onboard every stupid trend that’s come down the pike to be embraced (and required) by younger people ignorant of history, intolerant of liberty, and to a large extent devoid of one of the possible perks of old age: wisdom.

Oh, but I’m generalizing, something I don’t like to do based on age, or sex, or race, or much of anything else. People are individuals, and neither the young nor the old are any one thing.

However, if I may allow myself to generalize, I will add that people who use the phrase “OK Boomer” as a put-down, a way to insult someone and discount that person’s point of view if he or she happens to disagree and to be older, are themselves ignorant and arrogant fools.

Maybe they’ll learn better as they get older.

Of course, it was certain Boomers who popularized the phrase, “Never trust anyone over thirty” – which was actually coined by Jack Weinberg, activist leftist and member of the previous generation, the Silent one. Ooops! Both Boomers and Silents are now being reviled by some of those under 30 – although some Millennials are now feeling the hot breath of forty breathing down their necks.

Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall came down: how about those “experts”?

The New Neo Posted on by

It was momentous when it happened thirty years ago: the fall of the Wall.

No one quite foresaw exactly what it meant, and yet it seemed a day of great hope and optimism:

By the time the Wall came down, the Communists had already lost their grip on Poland and Hungary. Before 1989 was out, Soviet-style regimes would surrender power in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Within the next couple of years, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union itself would throw over their Communist leaders and break up along the lines of nationality…

For those who had lived much of their lives since the Second World War in a bipolar global configuration, and under the constant threat of “mutually assured destruction” in a nuclear holocaust, the fall of the Wall was an event they never expected to see. Both sides had long made clear their intention to give no ground along it, after all, and their armed forces glared at each other in high states of readiness day in, day out, around the clock, across its crude divide.

I certainly had not expected to see the event; it caught me unawares. But as I wrote previously:

If the experts – academic, governmental, and media – had been unable to foresee this, then how could I trust them to guide me in the future? In retrospect, it was probably the first time I began to distrust my usual sources of information, although I certainly didn’t see them as lying – I saw them as incompetent, really no better than bad fortunetellers.

What they seemed to lack was an overview, a sense of history and pattern. Newspapers could report on events, but those events seemed disconnected from each other: first this happened, then that happened, then the other thing happened, and then the next, and so on and so forth. In the titanic decades-long battle between the US and the USSR, there had been a certain underlying narrative (yes, sometimes that word is appropriate) that involved the threat of Armageddon, and the necessity to avoid it at almost all costs, while stopping the spread of Communism. Although T.S. Eliot had said the world would end “not with a bang but a whimper,” who ever thought the Soviet Union would end in such a whimpery way, and especially without much forewarning? It seemed preposterous, something like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy throws the bucket of water on the Wicked Witch, who dissolves into a steaming heap of clothing, crying “I’m melting, melting.”

I realize that if I’d been more aware, there were signs that this was happening, and there were people – precious few – who planned and foresaw it. But in general:

Predictions of the Soviet Union’s impending demise were discounted by many Western academic specialists, and had little impact on mainstream Sovietology. For example, Amalrik’s book “was welcomed as a piece of brilliant literature in the West” but “virtually no one tended to take it at face value as a piece of political prediction.” Up to about 1980, the strength of the Soviet Union was widely overrated by critics and revisionists alike.

In 1983, Princeton University professor Stephen Cohen described the Soviet system as remarkably stable.

The Central Intelligence Agency also badly over-estimated the internal stability of the Soviet Union, and did not anticipate the speed of its collapse. Former DCI Stansfield Turner in 1991 wrote in the US Journal Foreign Affairs, “We should not gloss over the enormity of this failure to forecast the magnitude of the Soviet crisis . . . Yet I never heard a suggestion from the CIA, or the intelligence arms of the departments of Defense or State, that numerous Soviets recognized a growing, systemic economic problem.”

More background about the Wall itself:

Before the Wall went up in 1961, hundreds of thousands of East Germans had availed themselves of unhindered access to the West through Berlin to gain the precious gift of freedom. During the 28 years the Wall was in place, scores of mostly young people, trying to escape the prison encased by its concrete and barbed wire, died from East German bullets.

On Nov. 9, 1989, when East Berliners once again acquired the liberty to pass through the inner-city partition, it seemed as if all was somehow right with the world. The strains of Beethoven’s immortal Ninth Symphony soon filled one of the great Berlin concert halls, with the word for “Freedom” substituted for “Joy” as the focus of celebration in the choral text of the final movement. And, as subsequent events cascaded toward the reunification of Germany, the end of the Cold War, and the more widespread collapse of Communism, many of us allowed ourselves to believe that world peace was at hand.

I was not one of those people who believed any such thing. But I knew a big change had occurred, and I celebrated.

I also knew I had no idea what a change such as this ultimately might mean. But we go forward into a future that’s ever-evolving, and ever-surprising us – even (or maybe especially) the “experts.”

Posting is a bit late today: reflections

The New Neo Posted on by

Posting is a bit late today. One reason is that this morning I heard of the death of an old friend I hadn’t really seen in many years. The death was expected – I already knew this person was very ill – but the event stirs up memories and thoughts about the passage of time.

Getting old is no joke. Right now, I’m not even what I ever thought of as “old,” because when I was very young I had relatives who were well into their eighties but never seemed old to me. At this point, I’ve come to think that “old” starts around 95. And I keep revising that turning point upwards as I inch upwards myself.

But the truth is that more and more people I know are ill or are dead. That’s inevitable and yet sobering, very sobering, when it happens.

Growing old isn’t psychologically easy, and that’s in addition to the physiological changes. I’ve been wrestling with it in various ways myself. For now I’ll just add this, from one of my favorite poems:

Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.

[ADDENDUM: Please see this previous post for more ruminations on the subject, plus another poem).