Mueller: one smart fellow, he felt smart

The New Neo Posted on by

Robert Mueller hasn’t exactly been covering himself with glory lately.

Among other things:

At the arraignment [of the Russian company accused by Mueller of having tried to influence the US election], Concord’s lead counsel, Eric Dubelier, was asked whether he represents Concord Catering, another one of the charged Russian companies. He replied that he did not and added, “I think we’re dealing with the government having indicted the proverbial ham sandwich. That company didn’t exist as a legal entity during the time period alleged by the government.”

Then, hinting at more of the graymail yet to come, he remarked darkly that, “We now know that the special counsel apparently has access to [Concord’s] confidential filings at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which in and of itself is a disturbing fact.”

Dubelier stated, “Your Honor, we waive formal reading of the indictment. We enter a plea of not guilty. We exercise our right to a speedy trial.”

So, what does all of this mean? Metaphorically speaking, it would appear that the yapping dog [Mueller] chasing the car has sunk its teeth into the spinning tire. There is no way for Rover to escape injury. Even if Mueller and his pit bulls win the discovery battle and the case at trial, what’s the prize? A $500,000 fine or compensation to victims? How will they collect?

This is a no lose situation for Concord and a self-inflicted wound for Mueller. And, as the saying goes, self-inflicted wounds are always the most painful.

As I read those words, I thought “unforced error.” And sure enough, in the next sentence:

More importantly, this unforced prosecutorial error is a victory for 63,000,000 Americans who voted for Donald Trump and strongly oppose having the outcome of the election undone by Mueller’s politically motivated and rigged investigation. It will be a pleasure to see Team Mueller dragged kicking and squealing into an American courtroom where for it the process will be the punishment.

First Comey, now Mueller, are being exposed as a great deal less smart (and certainly less honest) than their previous reps would have had us think. About a year ago when Mueller was first appointed special counsel, I couldn’t remember much about him. I looked him up and wrote the following:

Who is Mueller? He was appointed by President George W. Bush, confirmed unanimously by the Senate, and took office as FBI director just one week before 9/11, serving his 10-year term in that position. He continued in the office for two years beyond that at Obama’s request, and was replaced in 2013 by Comey.

How objective will Mueller be in this role [special counsel]? I cannot predict, but I caution that when Comey first took office he was uniformly praised as incredibly intelligent and fair. We all know how that worked out. But one can hope.

Trump fired Comey, but there’s no real need to fire Mueller, because at the moment he appears to be self-destructing. That doesn’t mean he still can’t be dangerous, because of his unfettered power. But he really does seem to be in the process of hanging himself (metaphorically speaking) with just enough rope.

[NOTE: The title of this post comes, of course, from this:

Charming lady.]

Fourth generation warfare against Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

The media’s collusion with the Palestinians in condemning Israel and distorting and misrepresenting what is happening there has a long history, and this week’s events have given them lots of opportunity to continue that approach. They haven’t been shy about taking it.

For example:

With very little attention given to the fact that the terrorist organization Hamas, which runs Gaza, was directing its people to storm the security fence that lines the Israeli border, CBS anchor Jeff Glor and Foreign correspondent Holly Williams lament the deaths and painted Israel as the oppressive villain killing civilians in a “dance with death” at the border. CBS Evening News effectively doubled down on their network’s obnoxious anti-Israel coverage from earlier Monday morning.

“Mr. Trump said our greatest hope is for peace. The reality today was violence especially in Gaza, however,” Glor chided as he was leading into Williams’ report. “Israeli soldiers shot and killed more than 50 Palestinians, more than 1,200 were hurt,” he added. He failed to mention that those numbers were provided by the Palestinian Authority, which has a long and documented history of inflating numbers and even faking deaths. The rest of the media was eager to run with those dubious numbers as well.

More here, which features this quote from a panelist on MSNBC:

…[A]n emotional Glaude lashed out at Israel: “All of that is important. And all of those babies are dead. All of those people are dead. They’re dead. And we are talking about racehorses. I mean the politics,” he exclaimed sounding as though he were on the verge of tears. It’s doubtful that Glaude would say the same thing about Planned Parenthood and abortion.

“I mean, there are a lot of folks who are dead today. For what? I’m sorry, this is me being a moralist, I suppose,” he added, serruptitiously patting himself on the back. Host Katy Tur even thanked him for his ridiculousness, saying, “I’m happy you’re always the moralist. You bring it back down to Earth, that’s important.” That wasn’t even Glaude’s first anti-Israel smears of the show.

You can’t say that the MSM doesn’t know enough to distrust Palestinian statistics. Remember Jenin and/or al-Durah? I certainly do (see also this). Whether the MSM is duped (some probably are) or complicit (that choice gets my vote for most of them) in spreading lies—especially of the blood libel variety—the lies work. I know plenty of people who swallow them hook, line, and sinker, and believe the Israelis are cold-blooded baby killers.

Richard Landes (the man who exposed the al-Durah fraud, and who is a friend of mine) has been explaining this sort of thing for a long, long time. About a month ago he published a piece by Doyle Quiggle on Landes’ blog The Augean Stables, dealing with the “March of Return” that Hamas has staged and which yesterday’s “protests” were part of:

…HAMAS displays a remarkable deftness in defining the March of Return as a peaceful demonstration while surreptitiously waging insurgent warfare. Violating the Geneva Conventions, HAMAS have planted its operatives, armed with explosives and weapons, among the so-called peaceful demonstrators. They have also sent little girls to the frontlines, directly into harm’s way.

By getting the world media, including much of the Israeli media, to define (and thus to perceive) the March as a peaceful demonstration, while using it to wage insurgent warfare, HAMAS have scored a major victory in 4GW [Fourth Generation Warfare]. Anything the IDF does to protect the border or even the lives of its own troops will make the IDF look like they’re using excessive force, never mind the fact that the limited force they’ve applied so far has, in all likelihood, kept the “demonstration” from becoming even bloodier.

Pretending to hold “peaceful” demonstrations and deftly tricking the world media into defining the March (marching is a martial metaphor) as a peaceful demonstration by unarmed civilians, HAMAS have created a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t moral predicament in which anything Israel does short of withdrawing from the area will undermine the legitimacy of the Israeli state. By making its defense forces appear “immoral,” HAMAS make Israel itself appear illegitimate.

And Israel understands this only too well. As Yair Lapid, leader of a main opposition group put it:

“Israel’s moral power is part of national security and is also what gives us the qualitative edge over our enemies.”

That is precisely the tactical goal of 4GW insurgency:

“While the three classic levels of war carry over into the Fourth Generation, they are joined there by three new levels which may ultimately be more important. Colonel Boyd identified these three new levels as the physical, the mental, and the moral levels. Furthermore, he argued that the physical level ”“ killing people and breaking things ”“ is the least powerful, the moral level is the most powerful, and the mental level lies between the other two. Colonel Boyd argued that this is especially true in guerrilla warfare, which is more closely related to Fourth Generation war than is formal warfare between state militaries.

“This leads to the central dilemma of Fourth Generation war: what works for you on the physical (and sometimes mental) level often works against you at the moral level. It is therefore very easy to win all the tactical engagements in a Fourth Generation conflict yet still lose the war. To the degree you win at the physical level by utilizing firepower that causes casualties and property damage to the local population, every physical victory may move you closer to moral defeat, and the moral level is decisive.” (William S. Lind and Gregory A. Thiel, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook).

As the Gaza situation now stands, Israel is losing both the moral and the mental levels of this 4GW battle. The media depict the narrowest possible view of the situation at the border, which does make the IDF appear to be using excessive force. However, when the entire border situation on the ground is viewed as it is faced by the IDF, including the game-changing fact that HAMAS peppers armed operatives throughout the crowd (thereby violating Geneva Conventions), then the IDF appear to be demonstrating remarkable trigger discipline…

…the IDF and Israel; they are burdened by a moral imperative HAMAS does not share: The duty to protect their own citizens and troops.

When I first started this blog, I used to write about that sort of thing over and over. That was more than ten years ago, and the situation has not changed, which is depressing. But I take issue with that sentence in the article: “Israel is losing both the moral and the mental levels of this 4GW battle.” This is certainly true in Europe. It is certainly true in our MSM. But no matter what Israel does, no matter how many times the truth has been demonstrated to both Europe and our own MSM, they are not going to change their minds. I base this on the simple fact that there is more than enough evidence already, and if evidence were enough to change the equation than it would already have been changed.

No, as I wrote earlier, the media is complicit. They are dedicated to this “narrative,” and they perceive things through that lens and write their reports through that lens.

However, the American people as a whole have not succumbed to the propaganda: American voters are pro-Israel, particularly Republicans [see *NOTE below]. So I don’t think that the Palestinians are winning the FGW battle in this country, at least not yet, despite the Herculean efforts of the MSM to change that point of view.

[*NOTE: The results of the poll show a stark split between the parties:

Democrats are almost as likely to sympathize with the Palestinians as they are with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian peace conflict, while support for the Jewish state among Republicans is nearly three times higher than Democrats, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Twenty-seven percent of Democrats told the Pew Research Center they sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians, compared to 25% who said their sympathies lie with the Palestinians.

Among Republicans, those numbers were 79% and 6%, respectively…

The survey said the partisan divide in support for Israel was “wider than at any point since 1978,” when 49% of Republicans and 44% of Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians.

Although the percentage gap in support for Israel remained fairly steady between the parties in the two decades after 1978, the parties’ views on Israel began to diverge in 2001, since when support among Democrats has fallen from 38% to 27% today, while among Republicans it has risen from 50% to 79%.

That’s quite a shift.]

Top 10 mosquito cities

The New Neo Posted on by

The top 10 mosquito cities tend to be in the South, with Atlanta the perennial number one and various Texas cities not far behind. But I figured that New York City had to be among them, from the evidence of my youth. When I was a little kid, every summer I was just covered with bites.

And yep, New York is on the list, just as I thought. Number three!

When I was a slightly-older child at summer camp in the Berkshires, the DDT trucks used to come and spray the whole place. No more (see also this).

Funes and sudden genius

The New Neo Posted on by

This article about how head injuries sometimes (although very very rarely) lead to savant powers made me think (once again) of the Jorge Luis Borges story “Funes, the Memorious.” Fortunately, the work appears in its entirety online, so if you haven’t read it before I highly recommend doing so now.

Borges is somewhat of an acquired taste, perhaps. But I acquired the taste the first time I ever read anything he wrote, which was the collection of stories (although the word “story” doesn’t begin do them justice; they are far stranger than that) in his book Ficciones.

“Funes, the Memorious” tells of a man thrown by a horse who becomes a savant of memory. But it’s really about memory itself, and the paradoxical limitations of having an unlimited memory, which would function as a handicap of sorts if it were to operate without the memory filter most of us possess.

Here’s a lengthy except, which also gives you an idea of Borges as literary stylist:

…I was told that [Ireneo Funes] had been thrown by a wild horse at the Francisco ranch, and that he had been hopelessly crippled. I remember the impression of uneasy magic which the news provoked in me…They told me that Ireneo did not move now from his cot, but remained with his eyes fixed on the backyard fig tree, or on a cobweb. At sunset he allowed himself to be brought to the window. He carried pride to the extreme of pretending that the blow which had befallen him was a good thing. . . . Twice I saw him behind the iron grate which sternly delineated his eternal imprisonment: unmoving, once, his eyes closed; unmoving also, another time, absorbed in the contemplation of a sweet-smelling sprig of lavender cotton…

[He told me that on] falling from the horse, he lost consciousness; when he recovered it, the present was almost intolerable it was so rich and bright; the same was true of the most ancient and most trivial memories. A little later he realized that he was crippled. This fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (or felt) that immobility was a minimum price to pay. And now, his perception and his memory were infallible.

We, in a glance, perceive three wine glasses on the table; Funes saw all the shoots, clusters, and grapes of the vine. He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho. These recollections were not simple; each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, etc. He could reconstruct all his dreams, all his fancies. Two or three times he had reconstructed an entire day. He told me: I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world. And again: My dreams are like your vigils. And again, toward dawn: My memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal.

A circumference on a blackboard, a rectangular triangle, a rhomb, are forms which we can fully intuit; the same held true with Ireneo for the tempestuous mane of a stallion, a herd of cattle in a pass, the ever-changing flame or the innumerable ash, the many faces of a dead man during the course of a protracted wake. He could perceive I do not know how many stars in the sky…

…In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it. He determined to reduce all of his past experience to some seventy thousand recollections, which he would later define numerically. Two considerations dissuaded him: the thought that the task was interminable and the thought that it was useless.

[NOTE: There are people with memories that are at least something like Funes’, although not quite as extreme. I wrote about that phenomenon here.]

Trump gives Israel a 70th birthday present

The New Neo Posted on by

The US embassy has officially moved to Jerusalem today. All that had to happen in the architectural sense (for now, anyway) was the sprucing up of a building that was already operating as a consulate, but in the psychological sense the move is much bigger.

I read a number of articles and portions of articles published today on the subject in the MSM, and so far all of them have made two points that are basically propaganda. The first (quoting the Vox article I just linked) is this:

It’s a controversial move that breaks with decades of official US policy…

And similarly, from CNN:

The US officially relocated its Embassy to Jerusalem on Monday, formally upending decades of American foreign policy…

Oh, really? In fact, the move actually fulfills decades of American foreign policy. The CNN article doesn’t breathe a word of this fact.

The Vox article is marginally better, but only 696 words into it. For the first 696 words (and how many readers will ever read that far?) the text ignores it—and then suddenly, any readers who have hung in there get a startling surprise (if they were previously unfamiliar with US policy on this, which I assume most people are):

To be clear, Trump isn’t the first US president to talk about moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. As Politico points out, Bill Clinton said he supported the idea in principle. George W. Bush declared he would move the US ambassador there in 2000. And Barack Obama, for his part, referred to the city as the capital of Israel and said it must remain “undivided.” Congress has also repeatedly passed legislation calling for the embassy move.

But none of the previous presidents followed through…

Why didn’t they follow through? Because they didn’t want to be seen as favoring Israel, which of course (until Obama) was an absurdity, because until Obama all US presidents quite obviously favored Israel. They wanted to keep Jerusalem as a bargaining chip, too, although Trump has also said that he will be doing the same. But the Vox article waits till 1439 lengthy words have been written—many of them alarming, such as predictions that this move of Trump’s will make peace in the region unattainable (as though it was so close to being attained before by conventional diplomatic means)—before it reveals the following:

The Trump administration says that it’s not taking a stance on final status issues like the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. And during a White House call on Friday, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said the move was done to create “a better dynamic for peace,” and that “from a broader perspective, this helps stability.”

But of course:

And experts say this move essentially shuts down any potential talks with Palestinians.

Those “experts” have done so very well so far in the region, haven’t they?

I wrote that there were two points all the articles I read seem to mention. The second points tends to be mentioned in the articles’ headlines: the fact that Palestinians protested and were met with a violent response from Israel. For example, the sub-headline in the Vox piece reads like this: “Israeli soldiers have killed at least 50 Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border today as tensions ramp up.” Oh, those murderous Israeli soldiers, killing those peaceful protestors!

This time it takes Vox fewer words than before to get to the clarification, which appears in paragraph 6:

But as the embassy event got underway on Monday, Israeli soldiers killed more than 50 Palestinian protesters and wounded more than 2,200 others on the Gaza border. Many of the protesters were unarmed, though some hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails. The Israeli military said that they shot three protesters who were attempting to detonate a bomb. Thousands of Palestinians are in their seventh week of protests there, calling for the right of return to territory that is now part of Israel.

And how did that “50 killed” statistic get reported?:

Gaza’s health officials say a total of 52 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,200 wounded by Israeli fire on Gaza’s border, 1,113 from live rounds.

The track record of truthfulness in such reports from Gaza health officials, however, is very very poor. Digging a bit deeper:

In a show of anger fueled by the embassy move, protesters set tires on fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air, and hurled firebombs and stones toward Israeli troops across the border. Later on Monday, Israeli forces fired from tanks, sending protesters fleeing to take cover.

The military said its troops came under fire in some areas, and said protesters tried to break through the border fence. It said troops shot and killed three Palestinians trying to plant a bomb.

So which is it, three bombers killed by Israel, or fifty sort-of-peaceful protestors?

By late afternoon, at least 52 Palestinians, including five minors, were killed, the Gaza Health Ministry said. One of the minors was identified as a girl.

The [Gaza Health] ministry said 1,204 Palestinians were shot and wounded, including 116 who were in serious or critical condition.

The statement says about 1,200 others suffered other types of injuries, including from tear gas.

Just for starters, what on earth would children be doing at protests that were guaranteed to be violent? Other than being offered as propaganda martyrs? Remember, also, the Pallywood theater of al-Durah. And yet every single article I’ve seen reports these Palestinian statistics as though they are undisputed facts, with no reason to disbelieve their veracity.

There’s much more I could say, but this post is long enough as it is. For an alternate point of view to that of CNN and Vox and those diplomatic “experts,” I refer you to this. If you read only sources such as CNN, you might be forgiven for thinking that the move to Jerusalem is simply a mindless provocation devoid of plan or strategy. But actually:

As the United States takes a historic step towards recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol, a point vehemently protested by Palestinian leaders, the senior administration official told the Free Beacon that this new reality is not being viewed as an impediment to peace.

The United States is in the “late phase,” in fact, of finalizing its peace plan that will be presented to both sides in the coming months.

The plan has been in the works for at least the past year, according to Trump administration officials, and will be presented “when the time is right.”

“We’ve been working hard and want to give the plan the best chance for success,” a senior administration official told the Free Beacon. “We want to get a lasting deal that is livable for both parties.”

Details of the plan are being kept tightly under wraps, but it is expected a public roll out of the peace plan will arrive within the next month to two months, sources said.

“We’re not going to preview elements of the plan because no one is going to like everything in it””so anything you reveal is going to make someone angry because it will not be in context,” the administration official said, explaining that the Trump administration is being extremely sensitive to both sides.

Should be very interesting. One prediction I will make is that, if any good comes of this, the left and the MSM will be highly reluctant to give Trump any credit whatsoever.

{NOTE: Also, see this from Roger L. Simon, as well as this at Legal Insurrection.]

Cold comfort

The New Neo Posted on by

I was away in New York for a few days and came back last night with a cold. So this morning I canceled a bunch of things I was supposed to do and just crawled back into bed, hunkering down. When I got up again, hours later, I felt a mite better.

A cold is a funny thing, and I don’t mean funny ha-ha. If you’re not in poor health already, it’s a minor blip in your life. But still, for a few days or longer, you feel miserable. Sometimes I think that if you didn’t know it was a cold, if you didn’t know it was of no real import, you’d think you had some dreadful ailment and would be really worried.

On the other hand, colds vary. Some are a piece of cake, but some bring with them quite a bit of misery. The duration is unknown at the outset—is it going to lay you low just for a few days or will the cough and congested nose linger on…and on…and on?

Each person has a basic pattern, although there are variations on that theme. I tend to have long drawn-out colds, although zinc lozenges have helped modify that in recent years. But when I was younger a month of soreness and stuffiness and hacking away was not unusual for me. A friend of mine recently said that her colds last about two days. Two days! I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that short a duration.

Recently my son and his wife visited, and we were looking at a baby book of his that I’d kept when he was an infant and then a toddler, recording incidents funny and/or touching and/or frustrating. I came across something he’d said when he was about three years old: “It’s a little bit fun to be a little bit sick.” Hmmm. I think he might have been referring to the chicken soup, the hugs, and the unlimited TV.

Happy Mother’s Day!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of what has become my annual Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]

Okay, who are these three dark beauties?

A hint: one of them is the very first picture you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo-neocon, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.

My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-eight years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.

Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.

The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.

Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.

We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).

My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.

I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.

So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?

All that Fosse

The New Neo Posted on by

Another confession: I never much cared for Bob Fosse’s choreography, except for the very early stuff in “Kiss Me Kate” and “Damn Yankees.” And Gwen Verdon—that wonderful, wonderful dancer and impish spirit—was very much a part of my early admiration.

After Fosse really got famous and he became the dance king of Broadway, his later work not only didn’t interest me, it rather repelled me.

Static, full of posing, hyper-sexual without being sensual or romantic, it reached its tentacles further and further into show dance and popular dance and cancelled out the flow of it and what I consider the dance of it.

Here’s a review of two new books about Fosse that don’t paint a pretty picture. I’m a bit surprised, actually; I thought I was very much in the minority on this.

[NOTE: Go here for some wonderful early Fosse.]

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kanye West

The New Neo Posted on by

Ta-Nehisi Coates weighs in on the Kanye West Trumplove, as might be expected.

I’ve written about Coates before (see also this). In that first post I wrote:

The larger message [Coates received from his father’s treatment of him] was that he would always get beaten at someone’s hands, either parental hands or public official hands via the police, and that his father attributed his own violence towards his son as originating from and being intended to forestall that official violence. His father was claiming that the private violence the father doled out to son was administered to prevent the public violence, both at the hands of the police and by the son or daughter who might be wanting to act in a criminal manner out in the larger and very dangerous world.

I think that Coates is describing some sort of powerful emotional (and also physical) trap that he got caught in early on, as a child, and has never gotten out of. The way it goes is this: I am a small powerless boy, my father whips me, my father loves me, he says he whips me so the others won’t, therefore they are causing my father to hurt me, it is their fault not my father’s, the world is a dangerous and violent place, how can I ever be safe?

I often can’t wade through the thicket of Coates’ prose; his style of writing is highly admired by a lot of people but I’m not one of them. It’s self-consciously ornate and pretentiously over-written, at least to my way of thinking, and his content (in the pieces I’ve read, anyway) sounds a single note, the one I’ve described above.

Coates’ opinion of Kanye West is in line with that single note, although he introduces variations on the theme. He starts with Zinnish history and finishes with West as white.

Here’s the Zinn part:

…[W]hat happened to America in 2016 has long been happening in America, before there was an America, when the first Carib was bayoneted and the first African delivered up in chains. It is hard to express the depth of the emergency without bowing to the myth of past American unity, when in fact American unity has always been the unity of conquistadors and colonizers””unity premised on Indian killings, land grabs, noble internments, and the gallant General Lee…

Coates seems to have greatly admired West’s musical output, writing, “when I heard Kanye, I felt myself back in communion with something that I felt had been lost, a sense of ancestry in every sample, a sound that went back to the separated and unequal, that went back to the slave.”

Okay, I confess it now—I tried to read the rest of the Coates essay and I got bogged down before I finished. But the message of it is pretty much encapsulated here:

…West calls his struggle the right to be a “free thinker,” and he is, indeed, championing a kind of freedom””a white freedom, freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant; freedom to profit off a people in one moment and abandon them in the next…

So Coates considers that West’s saying something laudatory about Trump (or not knowing every single relevant fact) makes West’s freedom of thought a suspect, “white” type of freedom, loaded with all the bad history Coates always seems to associate with whiteness.

As Andrew Sullivan says:

There was something about the reaction that just didn’t sit right with me, something too easy, too dismissive of an individual artist’s right to say whatever he wants, to be accountable to no one but himself. It had a smack of raw tribalism to it, of collective disciplining, of the group owning the individual, and exacting its revenge for difference. I find myself instinctually siding with the independent artist in these cases…

Or the individual anybody, I would add. Anybody—black or white or any other color, smart or dumb or eloquent or tongue-tied—has the right to think what he or she decides to think without anyone telling that person what color freedom is being demonstrated. What a deeply offensive thought, that freedom has a color.

Sullivan adds:

Coates reserves the worst adjective he can think of to describe West, the most othering and damning binary word he can muster: white. Just as a Puritan would suddenly exclaim that a heretic has been taken over by the Devil and must be expelled, so Coates denounces West for seeking something called “white freedom”…

Indeed.

Botanical cultural appropriation

The New Neo Posted on by

All hail the tree peony, as I did a few days ago in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It’s that time of year, and the Brooklyn garden has a huge display of these gorgeous plants, which feature enormous blossoms that look like velvet or crepe paper or silk.

Hmmm—velvet or crepe paper or silk, all of which seem to have originated in China. As does the tree peony.

The tree peony was originally a Chinese plant, cultivated there for beauty and medicinal purposes for about the last 1500 years. In the eighth century peonies traveled to Japan and became popular, then to England in 1787 and next the rest of Europe, arriving in the US in 1820. Is this isn’t cultural appropriation? Then so be it. It just points out how preposterous the concept is.

The tree peonies at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are not just lush and plentiful, but they also have a special history. They were sent from the Japanese town of Yatsuka-Cho in orde “to bring peace of mind to people in the United States” after the events of September 11, 2001. The first shipment ran into a longshoreman’s strike, and languished in containers on the docks at Long Beach, California for 6 weeks with predictable results: their demise. The next shipment made it, and those are the peonies growing in Brooklyn today.

Here are some of the photos I took:

The cop stop that wasn’t

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day while driving in a moderate-sized town, I glanced down to look at my cell phone GPS for a quick moment. Next thing I knew, I saw a police car in back of me turn on its blue light, and I pulled over to the right in response. The police car pulled over directly in back of me and very close to me.

I racked my brain to figure out what I had done wrong. Glancing down to look at a cell phone for a moment didn’t seem to be any kind of offense, and I wasn’t even sure the police officer could have seen me do it. My registration and stickers were all up to date, as well as my headlights and taillights.

So, trying to compose myself—I am always upset by any encounter with police and a possible ticket—I waited, license and registration at the ready.

And waited.

And waited.

The policeman stood just a few feet behind my car, talking to another officer. I knew better than to get out of my car to ask what was going on, but about fifteen minutes passed. Traffic kept going by, but we were the only two cars parked on the side of the road.

Then the policeman crossed the street (it wasn’t a wide boulevard either; just a regular old street) and went into a store. I was beginning to suspect that I was the McGuffin of this tale.

Sure enough, a few minutes later the policeman came out of the store. By this time 20 minutes had passed since I was pulled over—or thought I was pulled over. And at this point he got into his car and drove away, without ever having said a single word to me.

So here’s my question: what should I have done once I realized about halfway into the incident that I was probably not the target of the officer at all? I couldn’t figure out how to get away without risking his ire. I couldn’t even come up with a way to safely get his attention and ask a question about it.

And what should he have done? There didn’t seem to be any sort of big emergency happening. Shouldn’t he have figured out that I had pulled over because of him—it seemed rather obvious—and just waved me on?

More news on the blue wave front

The New Neo Posted on by

At least in the Senate, here’s more evidence it might be rough going for the Democrats:

Among more than 200 experts and veterans of Florida politics surveyed in the latest Tampa Bay Times Florida Insider Poll, nearly six in 10 this week said they expect Scott to unseat the three-term Democratic Senator. Just over two months ago, more than 57 percent of the Florida Insiders surveyed expected Nelson to win.

“I’m very worried about Sen. Nelson,” said a Democrat. “I think the Democrats need to reevaluate our candidate and Gwen Graham should jump to the Senate Race immediately.”

A Republican had a similar thought: “Bill Nelson’s best chance is a run for Governor. He should pivot now before Scott pastes his face to the floor. At least Nelson would win his party’s nomination. Better chance to win in the general than any other declared candidate in his party.”

“Rick Scott is focusing on Hispanics way before Nelson is…”

Then again, how can you believe the experts anyway, especially when they’ve reversed themselves that much in about two months?