Trouble among the Swedish literati

The New Neo Posted on by

And I mean big, big trouble.

No Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded this year as a result. Pity (that’s sarcasm, in case it’s not clear).

That first link I gave is to a very long story about the rot on the Nobel committee that ordinarily awards the prize, and the repercussions. If you don’t want to read something that long, that second link is much shorter. Here’s an excerpt from the latter:

The Academy, the 18-member body that chooses a laureate and awards the Nobel Prize in Literature annually, has seen seven of its members depart, including its first-ever female leader. In a release, the Academy noted that this would be the eighth time in its history it had chosen to declare what it called a “reserved prize,” and the fifth time the delayed prize would be awarded at the same time as the following years time.

But this time is different. The Academy has been reckoning with accusations of sexual harassment as the #MeToo movement continues to spotlight sexual abuse and misconduct that has long gone unaddressed in numerous entertainment industries, including the literary and publishing worlds.

The uproar surrounds the behavior of French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, an associate of the Academy—he is married to one of its former members, Katarina Frostenson—who has been accused of sexually assaulting at least 18 women, including, possibly, the princess of Sweden. Arnault, through his lawyer, has denied all claims.

It’s a lot more complicated than that, actually, and also involves Frostenson, who’s been accused of separate (non-sexual) offenses. The longer article goes into that in exhaustive detail, but the bottom line is that these people seem to be incredibly full of themselves and to feel that rules are only for the little people.

Is “moderate Democrat” a complete oxymoron? Take the case of Jeanne Shaheen

The New Neo Posted on by

Jeanne Shaheen is a US senator from New Hampshire. New Hampshire is still considered to be a purple state, although it has gotten more blue in recent years. Shaheen is a Democrat and was a three-term governor of the state, who came to the Senate in 2008 and was re-elected in 2014. She was popular in New Hampshire as governor by positioning herself as a moderate who appealed to both sides, and although she did propose various taxes in a state which prides itself on not having a sales or income tax, her proposals were shot down by the legislature. For most of her ten years as senator she’s tended to keep a fairly low profile and has been a loyal Democrat voting the party line.

Today Shaheen tweeted the following:

Extraordinary.

Or, it would have been extraordinary even a year or two ago, particularly from the “moderate” Shaheens of the political world. But now it’s apparently standard to openly suggest such an unprecedented level of distrust and overreach. That someone with Shaheen’s history would tweet this sort of thing shows what the Democratic Party has become.

One of the saddest things about this is how few people probably realize how dangerous these developments are. Apparently anything is now okay, because TRUMP. And so far I haven’t seen all that much discussion of Shaheen’s tweet, except for this post by Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff, who writes sarcastically:

But why stop with the translator? Meetings with Putin aren’t the only opportunity to sell out the U.S. Why not demand testimony about what is said at meetings of the National Security Council or during conversations between Trump and John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Gen. Mattis, etc?

Why not make Trump wear a microphone and a body camera at all times?

Back when Obama was caught on an open mike talking to Medvedev about his own increased “flexibility” post-election (when he no longer would have to answer to the public), and Medvedev said he’s convey the message to Putin, no Republican suggested increased oversight of Obama’s dealings with Russia. He was the president, after all, although he had said something incredibly suspicious there, thinking it was off the record.

Shaheen’s behavior is an indication that the Democratic Party must see this sort of behavior on their part as a winner with the public, because otherwise they wouldn’t be speaking (and tweeting) so freely about their intentions. If Shaheen of New Hampshire feels free to be this route—or even compelled to go this route—it’s a very bad sign.

Would he or wouldn’t he?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today President Trump has said he actually meant “wouldn’t” instead of “would” when he uttered this phrase during the Helsinki news conference:

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be [Russia]. But I really do want to see the server.

Hmmm; that seems somewhat odd. But it’s actually somewhat believable. People become exhausted and they really do sometimes make errors like that. When Obama did it I defended him (and others, as well).

And this correction by Trump actually makes more sense than the original, because of the word “but” at the beginning of that second sentence:

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be [Russia]. But I really do want to see the server.

If he had meant what he had originally said—that he didn’t see any reason why it would be Russia—then why wouldn’t he have said “And I really do want to see the server” instead of “But I really do want to see the server”?

Not that his explanations or excuses will make a particle of difference. Trump critics will laugh at “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” Those who like him still like him. The corrections also don’t change the basic thrust of Trump’s remarks, which was to try to take a middle position and not choose either side.

Trump actually took a somewhat different position today as a whole (not just about “would” or “wouldn’t”), now that he’s home:

President Donald Trump says he meant the opposite when he said in Helsinki that he doesn’t see why Russia would have interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Back at the White House on Tuesday, the president told reporters that he said he meant he doesn’t see why Russia “wouldn’t” be responsible.

He also said he accepts the American intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election, but he denied that his campaign had colluded in the effort.

This furor will probably die down. But Trump didn’t help himself at that Helsinki press conference.

A suggestion for Trump (or for anyone): when answering a “gotcha” question, go process instead of content

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall that I’ve written about the content/process distinction before, particularly here:

When I was studying interpersonal communication and how to track an argument, one thing that was very much emphasized was the difference between content and process. Content is just what it sounds like: the subject matter about which two people (let’s say, a married couple) are arguing. “Did you do the dishes last night?” Process is everything else—for example, the emotion with which something is said, the type of vocabulary used, tone, repetition, body language, and the unspoken subtext.

Some of the most confusing disputes are the ones where one person begins an argument on the content level and the other person introduces a process rebuttal at some point. It can be especially tricky when someone switches back and forth between one level and the other in rapid succession. In the heat of the moment, the other person can fail to notice it, so that the person doing the switching gets at least one step ahead of the other.

That’s about arguments. But the same is true for interviews or any question-and-answer process.

Once you understand the distinction between content and process, you can notice it constantly. For example, when Trump responded to questions at the Helsinki news conference, one of the problems as I see it is that he sometimes went content when he should have gone process. In this case, “process” would have been to have called the press on the nature of the question itself.

If you go back and look at the transcript of the press conference or read my post on the subject, you’ll see that most of Trump’s more talked-about remarks were made in the context of answering questions rather than during his prepared statements. And some of those questions were “gotcha” questions—as was the entire situation concerning the indictment of 12 Russians right before Trump’s meeting with Putin.

It had been obvious to anyone paying a particle of attention that the timing of the indictments was no accident. A trap was being set and Trump would be left with no good response to the inevitable questions about the subject that would be asked at the Trump-Putin press conference.

Here’s one exchange I’m referring to; the question asked of Trump was this:

Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did.

What — who — my first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?

Trump had the following choices in terms of a content response:

(1) I believe our intelligence. In other words, Putin’s lying—and of course Putin was standing right there and the eyes of the world were on them both, so whatever negotiations and rapport that might have been established at their previous meeting would have probably been undone by a statement like that from Trump

(2) I believe Putin. In other words, our intelligence is lying, which would create another firestorm if he’d said it.

(3) I’m somewhere in-between. Trump actually chose door #3, which seemed safest, when he answered:

…I’ve been asking…for months…Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia.

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server.

But I have — I have confidence in both parties. I — I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server…

So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.

And what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer. OK?

But as you know, this resulted in an enormous hue and cry, and it pleased just about no one. It gave an opening to many people to declare that Trump was saying that he believes Putin over our intelligence, although he didn’t say that. But it was a reply from Trump that was neither fish nor fowl, and it was somewhat confusing as well.

I actually have sympathy for Trump’s position and the trap he was placed in, but Trump is usually very good at getting out of such traps. This time I think his instincts somewhat failed him, because I believe that the best way out would have been a process response rather than any sort of content response at all.

Now don’t get me wrong—I actually don’t think any answer Trump could have given would have failed to draw harsh criticism. So what I’m about to suggest would have drawn criticism too. But I believe it would have drawn criticism from fewer people, and I believe it would have been a course of action that would have given them the least ammunition possible.

Something like this sort of response is what I’m talking about:

We’re in Helsinki, we just had a conference between the heads of state of Russia and the US, and we talked about all kinds of extremely important and substantive issues which I mentioned in the address I just gave. But you’d like to get me to be accusatory towards Russia right now, or accusatory towards US intelligence agencies right now, and I won’t do either thing. I won’t play that game, although you’d like me to. I’m going to focus on the task at hand, and I’d like you to do that, too.

That’s a process response. It’s evasive and sidesteps the issue, to be sure, but it was an issue that needed to be sidestepped. There’s plenty of time to address it later, and Trump has already addressed it earlier as well.

Why didn’t Trump answer in that manner? I’m not sure, but I do know that he made a different decision. What motivated him? The issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election isn’t a neutral one for Trump. In addition to the more general issues involving the US and the protection of its election process, the topic has more personal elements. The first is the accusation that Russian interference was biased in favor of Trump and therefore he didn’t really win the election. It has the potential to taint his victory, and that’s certainly very personal. The second related personal element is the charge that Trump actually colluded with them to do it.

Those two personal elements probably account for Trump’s repeated need to deny that Russian interference happened at all. Most people think not only that Russians meddled with our 2016 election but that they’ve been meddling in our elections for a long long time—as have other countries—and that we meddle in the elections of other countries as well. That seems pretty obvious, actually (although I doubt their meddling mattered in the outcome of our 2016 election).

So why deny it? Well, I just stated the special reasons Trump has for denying this particular act of alleged interference.

In addition, at this point, why would anyone trust our intelligence agencies? I used to trust them, for the most part. But no longer.

They’ll make a conspiracy theorist of me yet.

At the drop of a fly or a hat or a goose

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I was talking to a friend and I mentioned that something was “dropping like flies.”

And then I paused to wonder what on earth is the origin of the phrase. After all, it’s not as though we see flies dropping right and left, struck down in mid-flight. Why not “dropping like fall leaves?” Why flies?

So I looked it up and found that nobody knows the answer. Oh, there’s speculation, the leading one being that the life of a fly is short. But that doesn’t make sense to me in terms of the expression, because it’s not as though we notice the brief span of the individual life of the individual fly: “Oh, that cute one I named Henry was around yesterday but I haven’t seen him today; I wonder if his short life is over? I wonder if he dropped—like a fly?”

The best explanation was the one I’d suspected all along, and it involves what happens when we swat a fly. It drops immediately, like a stone—or like a dead fly.

All of this brought to mind the phrase “at the drop of a hat.” I had to guess at that one, too, and I thought maybe they used to start races by dropping hats. That seemed a bit dubious, but sure enough, it turned out to be the case, at least partially:

In the 19th century it was occasionally the practice in the United States to signal the start of a fight or a race by dropping a hat or sweeping it downward while holding it in the hand. The quick response to the signal found its way into the language for any action that begins quickly without much need for prompting.

Then there’s that old expression, “to drop like a goose.” You never heard it? Well, watch this clip, which I found in a link at Ace’s (some language here):

Yeah, I know; there’s no expression “drop like a goose.” However, while watching that, I thought, “Hey, those guys could actually tell their wives that they were on a wild goose chase.”

That phrase is nicely illustrated by the video. It’s awfully hard and awfully tiring to try to catch a goose. The phrase has a long history:

Our current use of the phrase alludes to an undertaking which will probably prove to be fruitless – and it’s hard to imagine anything more doomed to failure than an attempt to catch a wild goose by chasing after it. Our understanding of the term differs from that in use in Shakespeare’s day. The earlier meaning related not to hunting but to horse racing. A ‘wild goose chase’ was a race in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation.

Hey, it’s better than talking about politics—right?

The NY Times is homophobic

The New Neo Posted on by

Or rather, homophobia is excused and even celebrated by the Times if it’s in the service of anti-Trump propaganda.

I already wrote such a long post today on the Trump-Putin news conference and the media storm around it that I’m loath to say much more. But this hypocrisy cannot be ignored:

The staid Gray Lady no more.

That cartoon (which you can watch if you click on the still) is part of a series of animated shorts being reviewed by the Times, so it’s not something they generated all by themselves. But choosing to include it in a tweet is really quite extraordinary.

Trump and Putin and the fear-mongering MSM

The New Neo Posted on by

The MSM has long been an organ of the Democratic Party. But as the Democratic Party moves further and further left (or is merely more comfortable showing its leftist core and banishing its more moderate wing), the MSM has been right there keeping pace.

One of the pillars of MSM coverage of the Trump administration is that it’s taken as a given that Trump is Putin’s puppet. You almost have to admire the left for its ability to choose a narrative early in the game and hammer it home at every opportunity, ignoring evidence that discredits it and spinning all news to conform to it.

The Trump-Putin summit is made to order for them, of course. Continue reading →

Why do people hate hearing recordings of their own voice? (And, listen to a recording of mine)

The New Neo Posted on by

And do they really hate them, actually?

Apparently a great many people do, and here are some theories as to why. The most common one given is that it’s a surprise; we hear our own voices differently than they sound to others.

But the article gives some other theories that have come up as a result of research:

Through their experiments, the late psychologists Phil Holzemann and Clyde Rousey concluded in 1966 that voice confrontation arises not only from a difference in expected frequency, but also a striking revelation that occurs upon the realisation of all that your voice conveys. Not only does it sound different than you expect; through what are called “extra-linguistic cues”, it reveals aspects of your personality that you can only fully perceive upon hearing it from a recording. These include aspects such as your anxiety level, indecision, sadness, anger, and so on.

Interesting. I’ve always felt that people’s voices reveal a tremendous amount about them. I’m extraordinarily sensitive to voice tones on the phone, for example (I don’t know whether most people share that trait or not, however). I usually can tell from the first “hello” whether persons are going to give me trouble or not, whether I will like them, whether they are lying down, whether they are in a hurry or otherwise reluctant to talk, and much more. When I’ve had a chance to learn whether I’m right or wrong, I’ve almost always learned I was right.

As for my own voice on recordings, I’ve heard it so often over the years that I don’t have much of a reaction to it at all. The first time I heard it, though, I was indeed surprised. I was a child, and I just didn’t recognize that voice as me although I knew it was. When I was a teenager I owned a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and I thought my voice sounded lazier and less incisive than I’d expected it to be.

Many of you old-timers on this blog are quite familiar with my voice from the old PJ Sanity Squad podcasts, which are no longer available online. However, after our PJ gig ended, we went over to Blog Talk Radio, and that site seems to have preserved at least some of our podcasts there. I did a search and clicked on this one from May of 2008. Ten years ago.

I do the intro that night, so you can hear quite a bit of my voice right at the beginning (after the scream; the shrieking was not me, it was our theme). I probably sound similar today. The clarity of the recording isn’t great, so there’s a bit of extra muddiness and murkiness. But that’s essentially what I sound like, although my actual voice is somewhat more clear.

I went there just to listen to my voice rather than the content. But I found myself fascinated by the podcast itself. We are talking about the fight among the Democrats between Hillary and Obama during the primaries, which were ongoing. The discussion turns out to be exceedingly relevant to today because we are actually talking about the Democrats’ attempts to appeal to what later became known as the rust-belt Trump voter. Towards the end of the podcast we also talk about similar movements in Europe.

Some of the predictions aren’t correct, of course. But I was surprised by how very much of it holds up. If you have some time, give a listen. I don’t talk much except for the intro and a couple of later statements—I’m the moderator—but the entire thing is very very interesting.

[ADDENDUM: If you want to hear an 11-minute interview with me (circa 2013), you can go here.]

One of Victor Davis Hanson’s best

The New Neo Posted on by

And that’s saying a lot.

You can find it here. Please read the whole thing.

Excerpt:

The billionaire Trump was able to connect with red- and purple-state voters in a way past Republican candidates had not—and not just in terms of his signature and unorthodox focus on issues such as trade, globalization, and illegal immigration. Trump, the person, mattered just as much. Throughout Trump’s invectives a number of messages were implicit.

One, Trump, by his manner of speaking, his temperament, and his vulgarity, was not embedded in the existing establishment or Washington power structure, and thus in theory he was not beholden to it in either the way he spoke or acted.

In other words, what the Republican establishment saw as a bug, the Trump voter saw as both a feature and a signal of his likelihood of being a straight-talking, no-nonsense, Washington-outsider figure.

Hanson the classics professor continues:

Two, like Homer’s Achilles, or Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, he was a disruptive force who could end a common threat (in the mythological fashion of “man-slaughtering” Hector or General Mapache’s federales) by the use of skill sets unavailable to, or felt to be unattractive by, his benefactors. Whether concerning the missiles of Kim Jong-un or the overreach of the federal government, Trump supporters wanted someone to try something different.

For me, the comparison this immediately brings to mind is the mythological and popular figure of the trickster:

Tricksters are archetypal characters who appear in the myths of many different cultures. Lewis Hyde describes the trickster as a “boundary-crosser”. The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules. Tricksters “…violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.”

Often, the bending/breaking of rules takes the form of tricks or thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both. The trickster openly questions and mocks authority. They are usually male characters, and are fond of breaking rules, boasting, and playing tricks on both humans and gods.

All cultures have tales of the trickster, a crafty creature who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. In some Greek myths Hermes plays the trickster. He is the patron of thieves and the inventor of lying, a gift he passed on to Autolycus, who in turn passed it on to Odysseus. In Slavic folktales, the trickster and the culture hero are often combined…

In later folklore, the trickster/clown is incarnated as a clever, mischievous man or creature, who tries to survive the dangers and challenges of the world using trickery and deceit as a defense. He also is known for entertaining people as a clown does.

I will add something else. Long before Trump ever declared his candidacy, I had written one and only one post about him (one or two earlier ones had briefly mentioned his name, but they weren’t about him). Here’s an excerpt; it was written in April of 2011 (note the classical references here, too):

[“Gadfly” is] a word I’ve thought of often in connection with [Trump] and the Obama presidency, one that was originally used by Socrates to describe himself.

Here’s an explanation of what Socrates meant when he used the term [punctuation and spelling corrected]:

Socrates liken[ed] himself to a GADFLY (a horsefly). Just as a gadfly constantly agitates a horse, preventing it from becoming sluggish and going to sleep, so too Socrates, by moving through the city stirring up conversations in the marketplace, prevents the city from becoming sluggish and careless and intolerant.

It fits pretty well, although Trump’s most assuredly no Socrates. More and more, he also reminds me of a jester, although not one directly in the employ of the Obama court.

Why a jester? Well, he combs his hair funny. But mostly it’s because he fulfills this function of the traditional jester:

In Renaissance times, aristocratic households in Britain employed licensed fools or jesters, who sometimes dressed as other servants were dressed, but generally wore a motley (i.e. parti-coloured) coat, hood with ass’s (i.e. donkey) ears or a red-flannel coxcomb and bells. Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticise their master or mistress and their guests.

Jester/fools could say things no one else could say, ask questions no one else could ask, because they had little to lose and were given license to tweak. Trump has already voiced the unspeakable birther concerns, and now he gets into the very un-PC question of how Obama gained admittance to the two Ivies, Columbia and Harvard.

Interesting, no? That was Trump’s function then, as a popular and somewhat-outrageous outsider. Now he’s an insider of sorts—the president of the US, after all. But at least sometimes he still functions as an outsider to the usual norms of the presidency, as a gadfly, trickster, and jester. None of those terms are strictly pejorative, either; all have very positive aspects.

Back to Hanson:

Three, Trump’s own history and brand ensured he would not be able to partake fully of, or be accepted by, the restored society he sought to salvage, given his own distance from those he championed. Certainly, Trump’s own randy past, excessive appetites, and high-stakes financial dealings made him somewhat unappealing to those in York or Merced. But, ironically, his constituents thought he was nevertheless a champion who at a distance could be turned loose on their behalf against those they had grown to despise.

Very insightful, I think.

More thoughts on The Smirk: pride goeth

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ll leave Strzok alone after this, I promise (maybe). But I just thought I’d comment a bit more on The Smirk.

Have you noticed that just about everyone on the right has used that same word, smirk, to describe Strzok’s default facial expression during the hearings? It was almost the textbook definition of a smirk.

But why does he do it? Surely he knows he’s smirking? Surely he knows it’s offputting?

Well, maybe he knows and doesn’t care, because—as many people have suggested—he also knows he’ll be getting away with everything he did. There’s certainly some truth to that; I doubt Strzok will incur any further official punishment. But he’s already experienced demotion, as well as (I would imagine) trouble in his marriage, publication of his meant-to-be-very private emails, and a lot of ridicule and anger as a result.

For a proud man (which he clearly appears to be) that’s no fun. On some level it has to be embarrassing.

And that’s what I see as another reason—a big one—for his smirk: bravado, as well as defiance.

Strzok really had two choices of demeanor at the hearing. The first would have been contrition and admission of guilt. But Strzok appears firm in his feeling that he’s guilty of nothing (he doesn’t even seem contrite about the affair). Whatever he actually feels or doesn’t feel, even if he does feel a modicum of guilt, to display it to the world would cause further shame in someone who operates from an honor/shame point of view.

I think Strzok is an honor/shame kind of guy rather than a guilt kind of guy. Half the world thinks you’re despicable? Laugh at that half of the world. Wrap yourself in the flag. Say how despicable they are, not you. Put a sardonic, condescending little smile on your face to show your contempt for them and your superiority to them.

[NOTE: By the way, I think Trump should coin one of his trademark nicknames for Strzok. Maybe “Smirky Strzok”?]