China gives in (a little bit) to Hong Kong protestors

The New Neo Posted on by

But it may be too little too late to quell the anger and the desire for more liberty.

Remember? The Hong Kong protests were originally (seemingly) about extradition:

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said Wednesday that the government would withdraw a contentious extradition bill that ignited months of protests in the city, moving to quell the worst political crisis since the former British colony returned to Chinese control 22 years ago.

The move eliminates a major objection among protesters, but it was unclear if it would be enough to bring an end to intensifying demonstrations, which are now driven by multiple grievances with the government.

I’m fairly sure they were always “driven by multiple grievances with the government.”

Lam and others might do well to study American history, although of course Hong Kong and China represent a very different culture and tradition from that of the US. But I seem to recall that the American Revolution—our own war of independence from Britain–was sparked originally by protests over a tax law. However, it was probably also “driven by multiple grievances with the government.”

What’s more, some of the Hong Kong protestors have been explicitly evoking comparisons to the US:

The protests that have engulfed Hong Kong have morphed into cries for full democracy, something that has to be Beijing’s worst nightmare. As Austin Bay, citing the reporting of Michael Yon on the ground in Hong Kong, has noted., the protests have moved well into the realm of civil unrest. Anecdotally, the whole world has seen how they have featured American flags, the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner, and signs calling for a Second Amendment…

There’s a feeling a Rubicon has been crossed, a bridge has been burned.

It really depends on two things: how ruthless China is willing to be, and how far and deep the feeling of rebellion and the desire for more liberty goes. The feeling may be spreading—at least a little—to mainland China:

Chinese citizens have been caught sneaking over the border into Hong Kong for no other reason than to join the protests. The impact of the protests has already spread — far into the Chinese interior and into Taiwan…

In that Twitter thread, however, several participants point out that Lam merely made a motion to withdraw the bill and that it hasn’t been withdrawn yet. They think this is just a bluff to calm the protestors. For example, see “Eric” below:

I am not optimistic for the people of Hong Kong, and even less so for the people of China. But I hope I’m wrong.

Rufuspetasumphobia

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a sufferer from this malady:

It’s easy to mock a tweet like that. But I’m going to take it seriously, for what it represents. Makkai is not alone; there are tons of people who believe—or want you to think they believe—that MAGA hats are signs of such bigotry and such evil that even red caps of any type and any message “trigger” them into fear and loathing.

Here’s another tweet from Makkai, later in the thread:

Makkai is symptomatic of a lot of recent trends, including (of course) the use of Twitter to drum up responses by expressing an emotional reaction or a political point of view—or, in this case, an emotional reaction to a political point of view. Makkai may be describing an extreme reaction to MAGA hats and by extension to any red cap, but she’s certainly not alone. And she seems quite proud of her reaction, as well.

That’s the most interesting thing about it. I looked Makkai up to find out who she is, and discovered that she’s a 41-year-old novelist and a mother of two. Somewhat older than what one might expect for such a reaction, which echoes the current generation of college students and their seeming fragility at the hint of the display of any political position they deem threatening.

When did it become a virtue to be so frightened of a political point of view held by half of Americans, and to label it as abnormal and actually hateful? It’s been building for decades, and it focuses mostly on the perception and careful cultivation by the press and the Democratic Party (especially its leftist wing, which has grown so large as to seem like the main body at this point) of the idea that the opponents are not mainstream but are vile haters who must be opposed with any and every tool possible.

In Makkai’s tweet, that idea is a given: MAGA-hat wearers are racist haters. They should strike fear and loathing into the heart of every “normal” person. So you normal people out there, who don’t want to give offense, think twice before you wear even a red cap that might trigger the likes of Makkai and other kind, good, loving people like her.

That this makes perfect sense to a lot of people is the result of major, decades-long effort. One of the clearest manifestations of this campaign—and it occurred long before Trump’s 2016 candidacy—was the labeling of the Tea Party as racist. This was successful and the perception persists to this day. It was also a subset of something candidate—and then President—Obama encouraged: the labeling of opposition to him as motivated by racism rather than being a mere political disagreement (a tactic I documented when I first heard him use it; see this, for example).

And it actually predated Obama, although he made it an almost kneejerk response for criticism of the right. The tactic has been remarkably successful, and Makkai seems convinced that its assertions are so obviously true they need no proving. The trajectory is clear, and it goes like this:

(1) People who wear MAGA hats are evil bigots.
(2) I am a sensitive person, one of the most sensitive around.
(3) MAGA hats trigger me, as they might you if you’re a kind, unbigoted, sensitive person as well.
(4) I am so very sensitive that even innocuous, non-MAGA red caps trigger me.
(5) So please don’t wear a red cap, in order to prove your own kindness, sensitivity, normalcy, and lack of bigotry.

Is Makkai sincere and is she really triggered by something as mild as a red cap at this point? Maybe. Some (not all) of the liberals I know seem to have a constant need to assert their Trump-hatred at regular intervals and inject anti-Trump remarks of various kinds into ordinary non-political conversations.

It’s a cliche to say we have become increasingly polarized in recent decades. But it’s crystal clear that we have, and that much of it has been promoted on the left as a tactic for winning elections. Fear is contagious, as well. Is the fear real, or is it fake and just a way to prove who’s the wokest of them all? I don’t know, and it hardly matters, because the poison is out there, eating away at the fabric of our society.

Will anyone behind Russiagate be prosecuted?

The New Neo Posted on by

I have to say right upfront that I doubt it.

It just seems to go that way. The state agencies are reluctant to charge their own bureaucrats, no matter what the violation, and the higher up the person is the less likely that person is to be prosecuted, no matter how shocking and blatant the violation. Lois Lerner and Hillary Clinton, cases in point.

And yes, it seems to be mostly Democrats who skate. The two-tiered system of justice described by Andrew C. McCarthy here is very real.

However, some people feel that Comey and company will ultimately be indicted (for example, see this). I hope they are right, because if it is possible to get away with what they tried to do, then we are far far far down the road to banana republicdom.

And this should be the position of every American no matter what the party being targeted. But of course it is not.

Just to take one small point from that article I just linked:

The Steele dossier was uncorroborated, unverified, and false. That didn’t stop Comey and other political operatives at the FBI from turning it into evidence to support FISA warrants permitting them to spy on the Trump campaign.

Obviously, politicians should never, ever, ever be allowed to use their bought and paid for political opposition research to get their opponent investigated using clandestine measures.

Well, of course. This is basic stuff. And yet, all over the country, we see the MSM, the left, and most of the Democratic Party having no problem whatsoever with all of this.

That’s the real problem.

What happens in Guatemala…

The New Neo Posted on by

…doesn’t stay in Guatemala, according to Mario Duarte, Guatemala’s secretary of strategic intelligence. He has quite a story to tell, which if true indicates another little farewell gift from the Obama administration when it was on its way out:

To give you an example, we have had, in the past, State Department officials identifying themselves as Democrats. “On the day that President Trump was elected, those officials ultimately pushed for specific judges to be appointed to our highest courts in Guatemala — the Constitutional Court.”

Duarte went on, “And what happens when these magistrates or judges were appointed? They started with all these social justice warriors. [They] took away a lot of the rights of companies to be able to run their businesses in a fair way, and they even affected U.S. companies.”…

Duarte remarked, “It goes back to the policies of failure that people have tried to impose on Guatemala. I’m talking about … Democrats in the U.S. government, certain European countries, and even the UN. So we have socialist-oriented magistrates in the Constitutional Court forcing big companies [and] big businesses to shut down and lay off a lot of people, people with big families. These people have to eat and they have to survive, so they will look for an opportunity somewhere else.”

In other word, an increase in emigration.

“These are the same magistrates, so you know, who are right now ruling against President Morales, and are trying to block him from signing this migration cooperation agreement with President Trump,” Duarte stated. “The same people that have shut down all these companies are also trying to block these agreements.”

I have no idea whether what he describes was actually US-instigated. I have no idea how much Guatemala’ left-leaning courts have to do with that country’s current problems.

But Duarte is telling quite a tale, and he’s been saying it for a while. I found this article from February of 2019 in which he alludes to the organized nature of the caravans, and I have read that same accusation from many other sources, although not necessarily about courts and not necessarily about Guatemala (I wrote about it here as well as here and here).

Happy Labor Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

Labor Day is the bookend on the opposite end of summer from its holiday beginning, Memorial Day.

July Fourth is summer’s early peak, with the promise of long light-filled days ahead. But Labor Day is summer’s last gasp, the moment I dreaded as a child because it marked the end of vacation and the start of the school year. Spiffy new clothes, a shiny bookbag, freshly sharpened pencils, and the promise of the beautiful autumn leaves’ arrival were nice. But they couldn’t make up for the fact that a new school year was beginning. Where oh where had the summer gone?

And it goes even more quickly these days. But let’s celebrate the fact that we don’t have to worry about the start of school anymore—except, perhaps, for the teachers among us.

Here’s wishing you all a Happy Labor Day! Barbecues, picnics, parades, beach, just hanging out in your yard, whatever you desire. And for the historically-minded among you, some information the origins of the holiday.

Waking up in a strange place

The New Neo Posted on by

Did you ever wake up convinced you were in one place, and then look around and realize you’re in another?

Maybe you’re on vacation and you think you’re at home, until you look around the room and everything is unfamiliar. And then you remember—oh, I’m in Rome.

Sometimes it’s the other way around. You’ve been staying with friends for a week, and you wake up imagining you’re still there, and you discover that you’re home.

Usually you adjust almost instantaneously. But a couple of days ago I returned from a trip to New York, where I’d stayed for a few nights. I came home in the evening, and the next day I woke up knowing I was at home in my own bed. Strangely, it was the morning after that when I felt the dislocation.

And I felt it more powerfully than ever before. I was so convinced that I was not in my own room, even though everything in my line of sight told me that’s exactly where I was, that I looked around for a full minute or two before I could accept it. All the familiar items—the art on the walls, the mobile hanging from the ceiling, the paint, the rug, the location of the door—everything screamed “home” to me.

And yet it seemed a Potemkin mock-up of my bedroom, and that I was really somewhere else. The feeling was so powerful that for hours I had trouble shaking it entirely, even though I was well aware that I was home.

Had I been dreaming I was somewhere else? Was that the cause of the strange disquiet? If so, I don’t remember. For much of my life I remembered my dreams vividly and in great detail, night after night after night. Sometimes my dreams would linger throughout the day as a mood.

But for twenty years or so now it’s been rare for me to remember a dream, and even when I do it’s usually just a fragment.

…These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Some reactions to the Horowitz report

The New Neo Posted on by

Ordinarily I don’t watch a lot of TV news or opinion shows. But I have a tiny TV near my computer, and every now and then I turn it on and watch cable news if something especially important is happening and I’m curious to see what people might be saying.

The day that IG Horowitz’s report came out, I watched some reaction from the right on Fox. A few people’s remarks interested me—for example, Rudy Giuliani, who has the distinction of having been the person who first recommended Comey for a government job. Continue reading →

The Democratic field right now

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I can identify with the way a lot of Democrats must feel right now. I believe it parallels how I was feeling for much of the 2016 campaign season.

At first I was excited. After eight long years of Obama, he was finally going to be out of office, and his likely successor Hillary Clinton had a lot of negatives. The GOP had a variety of candidates. Some of them annoyed me and none were perfect, but I thought several were strong and had a good fighting chance to defeat the not-very-popular Hillary.

And then Donald Trump started rising, and rising, and rising some more. I had many reasons to dislike him—too tedious to reiterate at this point—but one of those reasons was that I thought he had no chance against her.

Of course, that turned out to be wrong. But that’s how I felt, and I felt it very strongly: nominate him and Hillary waltzes to the presidency.

It was a sinking feeling. It was like watching a batter hit an easy pop-up that could end the World Series with a win for your team, seeing the fielder take his place right under it with plenty of time to spare, and then staring aghast as the sun gets in the fielder’s eyes and the ball plops onto the ground.

Right now the rank and file Democrats must be feeling at least a little of that. They haven’t endured Trump for eight years, but it must feel like eight hundred to them. They don’t have as good a group of candidates as the GOP did in 2016—at least, it doesn’t seem that way to me, unless the voter favors the party’s going hard left.

And Joe Biden is the leader.

Biden is not a parallel to Trump. But he’s strange, very strange. And he’s old (makes Trump look like a youngster). Plus, Biden may be going gaga, at least that’s the appearance he gives at the moment. And yet he remains the frontrunner.

One compensation for the Democrats watching this is that Biden leads Trump in the polls. But Democrats who were around for 2016 also may have come to distrust polls, particularly polls involving Trump.

I don’t sense a lot of enthusiasm or a lot of security among Democrats about Biden or any of the others. I sense a lot of jitteriness. Will this one slip past their glove, as well, against the hated Trump?

I certainly don’t know. But I think I can sense the feeling.

Joe’s “word as a Biden”

The New Neo Posted on by

Joe Biden is starting to worry the left, because it looks as though he might be nominated and would be a really bad candidate. That’s a nightmare they don’t want to relive.

And so helpful outlets such as the WaPo are pointing out some of Joe’s flaws, such as the tall tale he told on the campaign trail the other day, a war story that was “moving, but false.”

And outlets such as Esquire blame it on Trump, naturally:

The emerging consensus seems to be that Biden lied here…

This has launched some think-pieces on whether this is symptomatic of the post-truth world the current president has ushered in, where the facts and the details don’t matter much—or often, in fact, are irrelevant—when you’re in pursuit of some larger goal.

To those of us who have observed the left and the MSM for many decades, that’s pretty funny. The president has ushered in a “post-truth world”? How about—just to take one very small and relatively recent example—Rathergate?

It occurs to me that the Esquire article’s author, whose name is Jack Holmes, might—like so many others in the MSM—be very young. I don’t mean “young” in relation to me—that’s just about everyone—but I mean young in the more absolute sense. And sure enough, when I looked him up on Linked In, I discover that he graduated from college in 2014. That would make him something like 26 years old.

My memory may be getting foggy, like good old Joe Biden’s (I hope not), but it seems to me that years ago no one of the age of 26 would have been the politics editor of Esquire. And yet that is Holmes’ position at the moment. The youth of those in the MSM trying to shape the viewpoints of Americans is something I’ve written about before, however; I refer you to this post of mine from 2010.

But that’s somewhat of a digression, although not entirely. The point is that Biden either lied or is getting a bit gaga, or both.

But Biden has always told tall tales; he is somewhat known for it. Case in point, some things Biden said during his debate with Sarah Palin in 2008. I particularly recall this one, which got a fair amount of press at the time:

“All you have to do is go down Union street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me where I spend a lot of time and you ask anybody whether or not the economic and foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years,” said Sen. Joe Biden in the vice presidential debate to bolster his assertion he’s in touch with the concerns of the middle class.

That answer suggested otherwise.

“It came as a surprise to us in Delaware that Joe Biden recently had a meal and talked with patrons at Katie’s Restaurant on Union Street in Wilmington,” said an email to National Review Online.

“Katie’s Restaurant closed years ago. It was on Scott Street in Little Italy.”

The people who fill up at his neighborhood gas station can’t pay for a full tank of gas, Sen. Biden said. Sen. Biden lives in a 7,000 square foot estate on a four acre lakefront lot in Greenville, which is described as “northern Delaware’s priciest area.”

Sen. Biden says things which are not true with passionate conviction.

Yes, yes he does. He delivered his war story the other day with passionate conviction, as well.

More from that 2008 debate, to refresh your memory (we all could use some memory-refreshing, right?—not just Joe):

“Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch,” Sen. Biden said, dismissing Sarah Palin’s expressed intention to play a role in legislative affairs.

Article I of the Constitution defines the role of Congress, the legislative branch, and declares that “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.” That is the only responsibility of the vice president delineated anywhere in the Constitution. Article II describes the responsibilities of the Executive Branch. The election of the vice president is mentioned in Article II, but that Article says not a word about the powers and duties of the vice president as vice president.

Under Sen. Obama’s tax plan, the wealthiest Americans will “pay no more than they did under Ronald Reagan,” Sen. Biden said.

Sen. Obama wants to raise the top income tax bracket to 39.6 percent. Ronald Reagan had lowered it to 28 percent.

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon,” Sen. Biden said.

“Biden said the strangest and most ill-informed thing I have ever heard about Lebanon in my life,” said Michael Totten, who reported from there during the so-called Cedar Revolution. “Nobody has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody. Joe Biden has literally no idea what he is talking about.”

Ah, but he became vice-president nonetheless. And in 2020, twelve long years later, he might even be elected president.

One very curious portion of his recent war story is one I haven’t seen too many people focusing on. It’s the finale:

“This is the God’s truth,” he added. “My word as a Biden.”

Very very strange. Was someone questioning his veracity at the time? I don’t think so. Did he know he was lying, and was he “protesting too much“?

What’s more, what on earth does “my word as a Biden” mean? Are the Bidens known for extraordinary veracity? The only Biden of which I’m aware is Joe himself, and his reputation is hardly stellar in that regard. Not only has he been lying blatantly throughout much of his political career, but he’s committed plagiarism multiple times:

“My intent was not to deceive anyone,” Biden wrote at the time [1988]. “For if it were, I would not have been so blatant.”

So once again, what was it Joe Biden meant when he said “my word as a Biden”?

On IG Horowitz’s report and the meaning of Russiagate

The New Neo Posted on by

The revelations in the report by IG Horowitz released yesterday are disturbing on many levels, but one of the deepest and most basic is of the power of institutions such as the FBI if they become corrupted and corrupt. What used to be reserved for the plot of movies has now been revealed to have happened, and the maneuverings easily could have remained secret if just a few circumstances had been otherwise.

Talk about fostering distrust and paranoia!

Here’s just one example:

And in the comments section of this blog earlier today:

Un F’n believable.
A conspirator in the attempted coup to overthrow a fairly elected President, gets away with only a F’n report that says he violated established procedures.
No indictment, no arrest, no jail time pending posting bond; not a F’n thing.
So the lesson here is that members of the “correct” ruling class – appointed or otherwise – can really do whatever the F they want and not worry about getting in trouble…

When the citizenry no longer regards the government as legitimate, that’s when the wheels fall off the wagon of govt.

And from another comment:

Comey is strutting around and running his mouth, as if he knows that he will never be prosecuted, and perhaps whatever friends he still has in the FBI are telling him that—whatever show, however much gritting of teeth, shouting, stamping, apparent anger, whirling around, and head shaking, whatever Kabuki routine might be put on—in the end, that is what is going to happen, like Hillary, Comey will never be prosecuted.

This got me thinking, and a horrible thought at that.

Could it be that we have all been way too naive and blind to boot, and that all of this “resistance” by apparently every high level official in the alphabet agencies—from both those officials already in place, or starting immediately after their appointment—is a sign that the the coup we feared was taking place today actually took place some time ago and, moreover, that it was successful?

That despite the maintenance of the outward forms of our Republican government—now an ossified and dead shell—it is actually the members of the Deep State, working underneath that concealing, protective shell, who are de facto calling the shots and running the country, as they have been doing for quite some time now?

It’s certainly possible—and what’s for certain is that the revelations of what actually happened at the hands of Comey et al, and also what they intended to happen and nearly accomplished but did not, engenders the sort of thinking expressed above. While it’s not true that everyone was naive prior to this—some people have been alleging Deep State control of things for a long time—however naive we were, we are all less naive now. When paranoia, right or wrong, seems justified, it doesn’t bode well for the nation.

And as with Watergate and Nixon (which pales in comparison with this), the question can and should be asked: “What did Obama know and when did he know it?” But will that question be asked by anyone with the power to answer it?

This is not the first time the American public has seen what appears to be a two-tiered system of justice. Some people are hounded, harassed, and found guilty of infractions that seem minor while others (Democrats and members of the Deep State) are winked at when they appear to be committing acts that are far worse. A discerning person, looking at the situation, can’t help but notice it. And way too many Americans are willing to look the other way if the person committing the infraction is a member of their party and is out to kneecap a member of the opposite party. Rule of law? What’s that? That clip I’ve used so many times from “A Man For All Seasons” is once again, sadly relevant.

I do have a caveat, however. The fat lady has not yet sung on James Comey. The IG report that came out yesterday is not in the nature of the final report. It only concerns Comey’s taking and leaking of the memos, and the DOJ declined to prosecute on that issue alone. Many analysts are saying that this was because that was a weaker case compared to other cases that can and will be made later against Comey. So the DOJ’s decision in this more narrow matter doesn’t mean that Comey will not be prosecuted for something connected with Russiagate.

That said, I wonder whether Comey will ever be indicted. I tend to doubt it.

I believe that this entire incident has damaged respect for many institutions: the law and the FBI, for starters. But if they are damaged institutions (which they appear to be, at least for now), we should lose respect for them because they don’t deserve respect.

However, the loss of such respect—and the loss of integrity within these institutions that has caused that loss of respect—is a profound loss to the nation. It leads us down a dark path towards more and more chaos and a scrambling for power with no objective rules. That is the deeper meaning and the deeper threat behind all these events.