Is Trump playing 3-D chess or not?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not a copout to say “it depends on what you mean by 3-D chess.”

If you mean something so advanced and esoteric it’s the equivalent of Einstein’s Special Theory (in the political sense), I’d have to say “no.” But I don’t think that’s what it means.

If you think (as I do) that playing 3-D chess means someone with a good grasp of strategy and advanced gamesmanship, working on a number of levels at once, some of them not immediately obvious to the casual observer—well then, I think it’s got to be “yes.”

I say that for several reasons. The first is how Trump beat the odds getting elected in the first place. It confounded nearly all the pundits and prognosticators. He either did it through luck, chance, or skill; at the time it wasn’t completely clear which it was (and it could have been a combination).

But a pattern began, and then that pattern kept repeating over time. It can be described this way: Trump does something that his enemies—and even some of those who support him—criticize. There’s a big furor. It’s widely reported that now, now he’s really done it; now he’s put his foot in his mouth and now he’s sunk himself for real. And yet, when the dust settles (and sometimes it settles rather quickly), we usually find that one or some or all of the following have occurred: Trump didn’t actually say what they said he said, his opponents do something in response to what he said that makes them look like the fools, the public in general responds by agreeing with Trump and his polls go up (sometimes after a bit of a dip).

Strange, isn’t it, if he’s such a fool, that these things keep happening over and over and over? Can anyone have that much good luck? The pattern points to a different explanation, which is that he’s an excellent tactician and strategist who acts in ways that flummox people and tend to have a result ultimately favorable to him.

That doesn’t mean he’ll always win. Not even everyone who plays 3-D chess wins, right? Trump could finally make the big misstep everyone keeps predicting and many are desperately hoping for. He could lose the 2020 election even if he doesn’t make that slipup; with the entire MSM against him, often distorting his words in various ways, it’s amazing he has any approval left at all. But either way, it appears that he’s playing a clever game, given the situation and given his own particular set of gifts.

What are those gifts? One is a certain gut-level intuition that has stood him well over a lengthy life of negotiating and maneuvering. The other is his actual experience in the art of the deal. And what is the art of the deal? Is it not something akin to the sort of gamesmanship Trump has shown as president? Knowing when to press, knowing when to back off, knowing the psychology of the other side, knowing how to bob and weave in order to get to a goal? Trump’s been doing that sort of thing his whole life, and wrote (with help, but the ideas were certainly his) a book on it.

Most of his opponents don’t have that particular background. Most of them are skilled at politics as it’s usually played, but Trump doesn’t play that way. So he is more apt to confound them—and the pundits, too.

I’ll close with a passage from today’s article by Andrew C. McCarthy that sparked this post. Often I agree with McCarthy, and in this case I agree with much of his article, but not this particular passage:

I don’t believe Trump is a master strategist who did this to force Speaker Pelosi and other mainstream Democrats, at their electoral peril, to embrace the radicals. That’s just the lemonade that Trump supporters are trying to make of the president’s never-ending supply of lemons.

But what degree of mental gymnastics would it take to imagine that forcing Pelosi to defend her radical flank was indeed Trump’s goal? Is that reasoning so twisted, so esoteric, so difficult to believe, knowing the man? I think it’s actually a relatively obvious thing to do, particularly for someone like Trump who clearly thinks along strategic lines. Trump supporters don’t have to strain very much to think of that explanation, plus in the past an awful lot of Trump’s lemons really have gone to make a pretty tasty and tangy beverage for those on the right to drink.

McCarthy adds something that is in some ways a lot more telling [emphasis mine]:

In any event, while it is beneath a president to carp in Trump’s juvenile way, I have less heartburn in principle with a president’s attacking radicalism than I do with a congresswoman’s claim that any criticism of her is an implicit criticism of immigrants, women, black people, etc.

McCarthy has an interesting history regarding Trump, and it parallels that of a lot of people on the right. He didn’t like him to begin with and doesn’t really like him now, and some of that is for stylistic reasons. But he has come to appreciate what Trump actually accomplishes, while still disliking what one might summarize as Trump’s style.

I don’t think, however, that the word “juvenile” actually applies here. Trump does sound juvenile at times, like a schoolyard taunter. I don’t think the tweets under discussion here were actually one of those times, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that they were. The question is whether they (or other tweets) reflect a juvenile mind and emotional makeup, or whether they are part of a decision Trump has made that this is an effective way for him to fight in the dirty and vicious game that is politics.

Obama is a good contrast. He was strategic, too, but his style tended to be lofty, intellectual, polished. Nevertheless he fought dirty and he made no bones about it; he’s the guy who said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

No, politics ain’t beanbag. It’s a bitter fight, and although for the most part the weapons are rhetorical (at least in this country, at least so far), they are meant to destroy. Each politician deals with the givens dictated by his or her own personality and style. Obama had that professor thing going; Trump is the loudmouthed wheeler-dealer. But I submit that, at least so far, Trump has proved to be a better chess master than his opponents.

The Justice Democrats are just following their own game plan

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: On February 6, 2019, I wrote a post entitled “Pelosi isn’t just worried about Trump; she’s watching her own left flank.” It was about the Justice Democrats and in particular about the people behind them who aren’t elected but are strategists. It spelled out exactly what was going to happen and what in fact has happened since.

It didn’t take an amazing amount of prescience to write the post, because they were saying as much themselves. I’m not sure why not all that much attention was paid to their plan back then by the right, but it wasn’t compared to now.

I’m going to repost it here, with a few small edits.]

I don’t how far to the left Nancy Pelosi really is. Probably much further than she lets on. But my guess is that she’s not too happy about the radical wing of the Democratic Party, the one whose members stayed seated when President Trump said in his SOTU address that the US will never become a Socialist country.

They have a name, too: Justice Democrats. It’s the latest euphemism, I guess, because too much of the American public may have finally caught on to what “progressive” actually means. But who can be against progress and justice, right?

The Justice Democrats aren’t fooling around. And they’re not bothered by many of the considerations that dog their more moderate colleagues. The Justice Democrats (can we call them JDs for short?) must feel the time is right to lay at least a few of their cards on the table and to oppose the party members they call “radical conservatives.”

We know the name of the photogenic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but some of the others are quite obscure so far—and by “others” I include those behind her rise. From the article:

“I am talking about the radical conservatives in the Democratic Party,” said Saikat Chakrabarti [AOC’s chief of staff]. “That’s who we need to counter. It’s the same across any number of issues—pay-as-you-go, free college, ‘Medicare for all.’ These are all enormously popular in the party, but they don’t pass because of the radical conservatives who are holding the party hostage.”

Not long ago, this would have been an outlier position even among American liberals. Today, it’s the organizing principle of a newly empowered segment of the Democratic Party, one with a foothold in the new Congress…

Although it’s Ocasio-Cortez who gets all the headlines, she arguably wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place without the group Chakrabarti founded: Justice Democrats, a new, central player in the ongoing war for the soul of the Democratic Party. It was the Justice Democrats who recruited her in a quixotic campaign early on, providing a neophyte candidate with enough infrastructure to take down a party leader. And it is the Justice Democrats who see Ocasio-Cortez as just the opening act in an astonishingly ambitious plan to do nothing less than re-imagine liberal politics in America—and do it by whatever means necessary.

If that requires knocking out well-known elected officials and replacing them with more radical newcomers, so be it. And if it ends up ripping apart the Democratic Party in the process—well, that might be the idea.

“There is going to be a war within the party. We are going to lean into it,” said Waleed Shahid, the group’s spokesman.

Here’s an article by Shahid that maps out the plan in more detail, published in the leftist periodical Nation. This group means business. I suggest you read it.

Will they overplay their hand? I hope so, but I am not the least bit sure that will be the case. The ground has been prepared for them in so many ways, particularly the Gramscian march through education.

Trump tweets and the uproar ensues

The New Neo Posted on by

Just go to a site like Drudge today and you’ll see the furor in the list of headlines, which I reproduce here minus the links:

Get out of USA, Trump tells congresswomen!
Cortez fires back: We don’t fear you!
President Defends…
‘Many people agree with me’…
Republicans muted…
Tweet too far?
Hollywood Erupts…
Canada, UK Condemn…
Dem to force impeachment vote…
FLASHBACK Lindsey Graham: Trump is ‘race-baiting, xenophobic bigot’…
‘He doens’t have a clue about anything, he is just trying to get his numbers up’…

That’s above the photo (of Trump and Ilhan Omar, not together but side-by-side head shots), and below it we have: “‘YOU CAN’T LEAVE FAST ENOUGH'” in huge block letters.

Then we have analyses of what Trump actually wrote, why he wrote it, whether it was a good idea or a bad idea, and nearly endless variations on these themes. I suggest reading this by John Hinderaker, for example. And after you read that, take a look at this comment on the thread:

“..his ill-advised theme that the Congresswomen should go back to the countries they came from–ill-advised..”

If you are going to take on the president, you should quote him correctly. President Trump NEVER said they should go back to the countries they came from”…………

Why are you distorting the President’s tweet?

Let me be the one to correct you…

President Trump tweeted:

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”

Go back and HELP; that is completely different than your inference that Trump said leave this country, go back to where you came.

Another interesting exchange.

Trump plays hardball. He’s not conventionally “nice.” He is strategic and tactical. Whether this particular tactic will work as he wishes, I don’t know. But my guess is that it won’t change anyone’s mind about Trump or about AOC and company.

As for the tactics, and an analysis of what Trump actually wrote (rather than what people imagine he wrote, or imagine he meant, or would like you to think he meant) Ann Althouse does the job here. I could quote it all, but just read the whole thing and you’ll see what I mean.

However, people don’t ordinarily parse things that way. In fact, my guess is that most people outraged at what Trump has written are (1) always outraged at whatever Trump says or writes; and/or (b) merely read someone else’s paraphrase of what he wrote.

Because this is what he actually wrote, with the sequence of tweets put together into paragraphs by Althouse:

So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……..and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how…. ….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

And from later on:

So sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel with a true and unbridled passion. Whenever confronted, they call their adversaries, including Nancy Pelosi, “RACIST.” Their disgusting language….. ….and the many terrible things they say about the United States must not be allowed to go unchallenged. If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior, then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!

Althouse adds that it made her think of the Vietnam era slogan “America, love it or leave it.” That’s true, but although I’m of that era, that’s not what it conjured up for me.

For me, it was the memory of my maternal grandmother.

I loved my grandmother very very much. She was a woman of dignity and intelligence and warmth, and she was very civically active and involved. She was also a real patriot.

And a liberal Democrat.

What I’m remembering in particular was family dinners when my uncle (we’ll call him “Joe”), my father’s brother, was in attendance. I’ve written about this uncle before; I don’t have time to find the posts now, but he was a leftist, a Communist or Communist sympathizer and constant critic of the US and booster of the USSR. This uncle was the source of many a family argument, and his way of thinking was my introduction to the mindset of leftist fanatics.

Suffice to say, it probably inoculated me from leftism for life, although I was a liberal Democrat at the time, as was my entire family.

If my grandmother happened to be there she would listen with mounting anger. Finally, in a voice absolutely quivering with rage, she would say, “Joe, if you like Russia so much, go back there.”

Uncle Joe had been born in Belarus and brought to this country at the age of three by his parents. My grandmother’s family had come here in the 1840s, on the other hand. But he had an answer for my grandmother, and I remember it this way, “I’d love to, but I need to stay here and fix all the things wrong with this country.”

So that’s what Trump’s tweets conjured up for me.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when these exchanges between my uncle and my grandmother occurred, her sentiments were the sort of thing that mainstream liberal Democrats could get behind. Not any more.

Here are the thoughts of Arthur Chrenkoff, an immigrant who sees it my grandmother’s way:

…[L]et me make this observation as a migrant (from Poland to Australia, on the insignificant oft-chance you have not heard me telling you this about twenty times before) who happens to be very happy in his new home and very grateful to the nation that adopted me.

In just about every Western society I am aware of there is a sizable minority of probably between 10 and 20 per cent of the population who appear to be deeply and profoundly unhappy about the shape and the direction of their own country. This sentiment ranges from a sheer hatred and loathing of the society, which is deemed irredeemably unjust, oppressive, racist, and any number of other characteristics usually ending in -ist or -phobic, and it only deserves to survive if radically transformed, all the way to a milder disappointment and despondency that the society (and the general population) constantly fail to live up to one’s standards of what is good and desirable.

To all these people I always want to say: You know that you are not imprisoned and kept by force where you are, don’t you? If you really so passionately dislike just about everything about your country, you have to ask yourself a question – why suffer? why keep putting yourself through this endless unhealthy rage and frustration? There are many different types of societies around the world, some of which are without doubt a lot closer to your vision of what an ideal community should be like. Wouldn’t you be happier living somewhere else? It just doesn’t make sense to me that you would want to live in a place you don’t like when you have options to live in places you would.

In moments of my own great frustration I call it the FOSE principle, which simply stands for “F*** Off Somewhere Else”.

The principle is colour blind and doesn’t discriminate between people who are “native” and those who might have only recently arrived from somewhere else…

Of course, if you are indeed a recent immigrant then the FOSE principle sometimes can be inelegantly phrased (as it has been in this case by Trump) as “go back to where you came from”. Going back to where you came from might in any case be impossible or would not actually result in a greater personal satisfaction, but going somewhere else can…

In closing, I offer a very little-known poem by Robert Frost, published in 1947. It’s not one of his poetic poems; it’s more of a verse, and it’s political. I’ve discussed this poem before, in this post. I’ll merely reproduce it here:

A CASE FOR JEFFERSON

Harrison loves my country too,
But wants it all made over new.
He’s Freudian Viennese by night.
By day he’s Marxian Muscovite.
It isn’t because he’s Russian Jew.
He’s Puritan Yankee through and through.
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens:
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it all made over new.

[ADDENDUM: And here are some interesting comments at Althouse’s thread:

GRW3 said…

It’s what the Normals are thinking. One of the things Trump does is put the Normal opinion on issues on the mainstage. That’s why a lot of people like him. No he doesn’t act “Presidential” because for the Normals, acting Presidential means a Republican being silent while vile forces thrash them and the country they love. They’re tired of that. OK, only one was born ex-US but two of the other three espouse the policies and government structures of their parents homelands. AOC is welcome to go to the socialist paradise of Venezuela and fix it, make that socialism work.
7/15/19, 6:25 AM

AllenS said…

We don’t care if Trump is not precise in his words, we know what he’s talking about.
7/15/19, 6:31 AM

Unknown said…

This is the greatest happening of my lifetime
7/15/19, 6:31 AM

Unknown said…

He says what everyone thinks.
7/15/19, 6:32 AM

gspencer said…

“America, love it or leave it”

Applied then.

Applies today.
7/15/19, 6:32 AM

Unknown said…

Forcing them to band together to defend their worst

is instinctive genius.
7/15/19, 6:33 AM ]

[ADDENDUM II: Here’s what Bookworm has to say—that Trump is just pushing the Overton Window back to normal.]

Dreaming of math class

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Socratease” calls my calculus class “the stuff of nightmares.” That is quite literally true, because after experiencing the horror of that class, and the ensuing and resounding “F” I received (my first and only in a long student career), I proceeded to have the classic student anxiety dream on a regular basis for about three decades.

And it almost always involved a math exam.

You know the drill: you’re sitting in a classroom, bluebook in front of you, and don’t know a single answer (which is what actually had happened to me in that class). Sometimes the dream begins earlier in time, when you know an exam is coming and you know you’re unprepared, and you know there’s not nearly enough time to learn the material. Sometimes (usually, in my case) you’ve even forgotten you were taking this course and haven’t even attended the lectures or read the book.

There are variations on the theme, but I had that dream every few months for most of my life, despite having been a stellar student. Or maybe it’s because I was a stellar student.

Then there’s this comment from Cato Renasci in that same thread:

I had difficulty with calculus as an undergraduate – passing with a then “gentleman’s C”, but not really confident that I understood it and not willing to pursue further mathematics courses. It was only several years later – when I was a graduate student – that a friend doing a doctorate in mathematics suggested that I should approach learning mathematics as I would a foreign language. That insight made all the difference for me. YMMV, of course.

Yep, my mileage most definitely differs—because it was actually two subjects that were the foci of my recurrent student anxiety dream: math (only after the calculus situation) and foreign languages, which I detested learning and did more poorly in than any other subject I took. I managed by some near-miracle to place out of foreign language study in college, so I’m only talking about high school. And I did well in terms of grades, even then. But I hated my Spanish courses, never felt confident about the subject matter, and couldn’t wait for them to end.

I don’t think I’ve had a student anxiety dream in many years. Maybe there are some perks to getting this old. I do recall that, a decade or two ago, I had the student anxiety dream as usual—about math, like most of the others. And then, as I was sitting in my chair in that classroom, the following thought dawned on me: I have a law degree. I must have graduated from high school, and from college, and from law school. So I don’t have to have this dream anymore.

Annals of math: how calculus did me in

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post I happened to run across the other day and enjoyed all over again. The original comments were entertaining, as well.]

The college I attended had a fairly rigorous set of science requirements for its liberal arts candidates: two (count em, two) year-long lab science sequences, or a year of a lab science and a year of math. Not business math either; math math.

Even though I’d been good at both science and math in high school, this was a daunting prospect. I started out thinking I’d do a year of biology and a year of math. The biology worked out, but not the math; not at all. I somehow managed to slide though the first course, differential calculus, although I can’t say my understanding of it was very deep. But with integral I hit the wall.

The professor was from Turkey and could not speak English in anything but the most rudimentary way. Each class meeting followed the same format: he turned his back on the students and his face to the blackboard, and then covered the board’s entire surface with a faint and squiggly scrawl of numbers and symbols that were virtually unreadable, all the while engaged in nearly-inaudible mumbling.

I tried to keep up by reading the book, but the text (although nominally in English) was impenetrable as well, at least to me. I don’t think I even knew that tutoring might be available—I’d never struggled with a subject before—and by the time I realized I was in deep do-do, I felt helpless to reverse the trend.

It was too late to drop the course, and I managed to pass the midterm. But the final was another matter. Finals at that particular university were three hours long, and this one consisted of five problems. I don’t remember anything about them except that I had no idea how to tackle a single one.

I spent about fifteen minutes staring at the questions and then at my empty bluebook, back and forth and back and forth, as though by sheer concentration and force of will I could figure out some way to respond. But absolutely nothing came to mind and—after looking around at the class of about eighty fellow students, most scratching away diligently, but some immobile and sweating, like me—I closed the pages, stood up, walked resolutely to the front desk, and placed my bluebook there.

The entire class gasped in unison. I never knew whether they were flabbergasted because they mistakenly believed I had completed the test in fifteen minutes, or whether they were stunned because they realized I had given up so very early and dramatically. But I walked out of the room knowing that my grade would be a big fat “F” and I would have to pick up either another entire year of a lab science to make up for it, or another math course that would almost undoubtedly be over my head.

I later discovered that about a third of the students in the class had failed along with me, although not as flamboyantly. I never knew what happened to the professor, because I transferred soon after, to a university that serendipitously required only a single year of a lab science and no math at all, a fact for which I was exceedingly grateful.

AOC, Pelosi, Obama, and the race card

The New Neo Posted on by

AOC is drawing some criticism from other Democrats:

Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) unloaded on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday for “using the race card” after Ocasio-Cortez accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of being racially insensitive.

Clay, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, fumed at Ocasio-Cortez and the group of progressive lawmakers that includes Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.).

“What a weak argument, because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. That’s unbelievable to me,” Clay said. “I could care less. I could really care less. I agree with the Speaker. Four people, four votes out of 240 people, who cares.”

In an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of singling out newly elected women of color.

Pelosi had previously been dismissive of the four freshman female lawmakers, saying that despite their large presence on social media, they only account for four votes in the Democratic caucus.

“It shows you how weak their argument is when they have to resort and direct racist accusations toward Speaker Pelosi … it’s very disappointing to me,” Clay said.

Here’s what AOC had said about Pelosi:

…[O]ver the past week, it’s remarks that Pelosi herself made that appears to have angered a group of four lawmakers — shorthandedly referred to on Capitol Hill as a “the squad” — which includes Ocasio-Cortez.

“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday.
“But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

So, we’ve got continuing trouble in the Democratic Party, and Clay and others want to position themselves on the Pelosi side because Pelosi is still far more powerful than challenger AOC. They also know or believe they know that the ultra-progressive wing is unlikely to win many votes for Democrats in 2020, and they see that wing as a threat.

Perhaps there are even some principles involved here. Perhaps Clay and others condemned the repeated and near-ubiquitous use of the race card against the right during the Obama years, directed at anyone who criticized Obama for any reason whatsoever. If so, I missed it. Criticize Obama, and you were called racist. I chronicled this at the time it was happening, for example here, here, and here.

Did Representative Clay speak out against Obama for this, or call his accusations “weak” or “disappointing”? I certainly can’t find such a pronouncement, and I would be astounded if they exist. And Lacy’s been in office since 2001 (the Wiki entry for him that I just linked is worth reading, by the way, in terms of this section, including his interactions with Steve Cohen), so he certainly had the opportunity to call Obama on it during his entire presidency.

AOC is nothing if not arrogant, bold, and unafraid. Pelosi doesn’t scare her, nor does the Democratic phalanx defending the Speaker. If AOC were playing the race card against Republicans, it would be business as usual and no Democrat would bat an eye at her tactics. But attacking a Democrat in the exact same way—particularly a powerful Democrat such as Pelosi—probably makes them all feel potentially threatened.

However, AOC is not the first to use the race card attack on fellow-Democrats. The Obama-supporting wing of the Party did it before her, as William Jacobson pointed out way back when:

During the [2008] campaign, Obama supporters successfully ended scrutiny of Obama’s overstated opposition to the Iraq war by accusing Bill Clinton of racism for calling Obama’s narrative a “fairy tale.” False accusations of racism also were used against Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro and against John McCain in order to frame the political debate.

And then of course we have Kamala Harris’ move on Joe Biden during the last debate, in which she said she didn’t think he was a racist and then immediately accused him of being in bed with anti-busing racists.

AOC is 29 years old. She was about seventeen years old when Obama began running for president, and she has been shaped by the political climate of the Obama years. To her, it’s probably almost a reflexive reaction to accuse her accusers of racism or imply that they are racists, whether they be Republicans or Democrats.

[NOTE: Take a look at Trump’s agile rejoinder:

“I think [Ocasio] Cortez is being very disrespectful to somebody who’s been there a long time. I deal with Nancy Pelosi a lot and we go back and forth and it’s fine, but I think that a group of people is being very disrespectful to her and you know what? I don’t think that Nancy can let that go on,” Trump said before departing the White House on Friday. “She is not a racist. Okay? She is not a racist. For them to call her a racist is a disgrace.”

As Ace points out in the linked post:

…[T]his proves Nancy Pelosi is a racist, right? That’s how it works. David Duke endorsed Donald Trump, which means, somehow, that Donald Trump also endorses David Duke by the Principle of Implied Reciprocal Endorsement.

This means that Nancy Pelosi must also endorse Donald Trump, and must reciprocally believe that Trump is not a racist.

By the Transitive Property, this means also that Nancy Pelosi endorses David Duke.

That’s how the Geometry of Racism works, at least for Republicans.]

Language and politics: getting used to the newest Newspeak

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to highlight the ideas stated by “Paolo Pagliaro” in this comment:

One fundamental principle – identified and exploited by both Goebbels’ Propagandaministerium and the KGB in Soviet Russia – is that endless repetition of a slogan INFALLIBLY modifies most people’s perception and reaction.

Pavlov – think about that – has been one of the few (the only one?) scientists whose research was constantly supported and financed in the USSR, even if he openly refused to accept the Marxist ideology!

Then there’s the educated leftist, the one who reads at least the NYT…: everybody who comes from the left…knows that dissent means expulsion; so, any leftist develops a special ear capable of recognizing a new dogma: in articles and speeches given by the cool people in the cool places, a term begins to be used as if it were an indisputable evidence and those who “incredibly” refuse to accept it are gradually described as controversial, then conservative and eventually Fascist.

We constantly see this in action. “Moving the Overton Window” is another name for the goal of the same process, which is to change public perceptions of what is acceptable and what is radical. There are many ways the left does this, but a highly important one is through language. The left recognized early on that changes in language are not superficial, and it became a big tool of theirs.

In the French Revolution language was used for this purpose when people were encouraged to call each other “citizen”, and in the USSR it was similar:

Upon abolishing the titles of nobility in France, and the terms monsieur and madame (literally, “my lord” and “my lady”), the revolutionaries employed the term citoyen for men and citoyenne for women (both meaning “citizen”) to refer to each other. The deposed King Louis XVI, for instance, was referred to as Citoyen Louis Capet to emphasize his loss of privilege.

When the socialist movement gained momentum in the mid-18th century, socialists elsewhere began to look for a similar egalitarian alternative to terms like “Mister”, “Miss”, or “Missus”. In German, the word Kamerad had long been used as an affectionate form of address among people linked by some strong common interest…The term was often used with political overtones in the revolutions of 1848, and was subsequently borrowed by French and English. In English, the first known use of the word “comrade” with this meaning was in 1884 in the socialist magazine Justice.

In the late 19th century Russian Marxists and other leftist revolutionaries adopted as a translation of the word “Kamerad” the Russian word tovarishch, whose original meaning was “business companion”…as a form of address in international (especially German) Social Democracy and in the associated parts of the workers’ movement…

By the mid-1920s, the form of address “Comrade” became so commonplace in the Soviet Union that it was used indiscriminately in essentially the same way as terms like “Mister” and “Sir” are employed in English. That use persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union.

That’s just about forms of address, but the thing about these words is that they are used constantly in everyday life and are habitual. To change them is to change a great deal.

Some language changes are natural and emerge spontaneously from the people themselves, but some are imposed from above either through suggestion, coercion, or threat of punishment. Think, for example, about Canadian professor Jordan Peterson’s battle over the use of pronouns for transgendered people—he has said he would use a person’s preferred pronouns voluntarily out of respect for various individuals’ wishes but not under coercion or threat of punishment, either by government or by the SJWs.

The left is constantly attempting to alter speech in ways both little and big. Little ways are sometimes even better, because they can elude whatever radar the right may possess. Commenter Pagliaro added, in that same comment I quoted at the beginning of this post:

The sad and irritating fact is how easily the other side – classical liberals but also conservatives and, increasingly, mainstream religious churches and confessions – accepts not just the term, but its USAGE as intended by the left: in other words they, being decent people willing to honestly discuss even the most absurd issue…

Orwell devoted a great deal of his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four to this very issue of politically purposeful language change, which he viewed as central to leftist thought. In fact, I believe that his coinage and discussion of Newspeak was the beating heart of his book and a huge, memorable, and especially meaningful part of why it became so widely read and influential.

As Humpty Dumpty said [emphasis mine]:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’?” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’?”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Alex Acosta is out

The New Neo Posted on by

Acosta has resigned:

President Donald Trump announced Acosta’s resignation Friday morning with Acosta at his side. Trump said the secretary called him Friday morning to say that the decision to resign was his.

“I thought the right thing was to step aside,” Acosta said.

Acosta added, “I do not think it is right and fair for this administration’s labor department to have Epstein as the focus rather than the incredible economy that we have today.”

This could have been predicted, and in fact I predicted it yesterday, although I claim no special prescience for that. Acosta’s resignation was likely, for political reasons that are twofold. The first reason is that the Acosta/Epstein focus gave too much ammunition to Trump’s enemies. The second is that Acosta himself has never been particularly favored on the right, so he was starting out from a weak position.

A little addendum to the shoe post: signs of the times

The New Neo Posted on by

I am gratified to see all the responses to the shoe post of yesterday.

So much so that I thought I’d add that I noticed a listing on airbnb that said under “rules”: “This is a shoe-free house.”

I think the next step (pun intended) will be for some enterprising person to design a “shoe-free zone” poster—you know, with a drawing of a little shoe with a line across it. Actually, I thought that would be the next step—until I Googled it and sure enough, many many have trod that path already.

A little sampler from Amazon can be found here. Many of the signs have a Hawaiian flair, apparently because apparently this custom is quite commonplace in Hawaii (perhaps the Asian influence?).

Some of the signs at Amazon are rather straightforward, such as this one. And quite a few (such as for example this one) contain the following verse: “Since Little Fingers Touch Our Floor… Please Remove Your Shoes at The Door.” I would like to remind those parents who request shoe removal for that particular reason that when their children are out and about, the kids themselves might indeed be touching their little fingers to shoe bottoms, or fingering doorknobs touched by people who have touched a shoe now and then or touched the rugs that shoes have trod on, or even worse.

And let me remind such parents that many people don’t even wash their hands after using the toilet, and the vast majority of people who do wash their hands don’t do it correctly or effectively. Are you going to put signs in your bathroom with instructions? And a video camera to monitor compliance or non-compliance?

I’m all for protecting children from dangers and from disease. But be reasonable. Kids are not getting diseases from people wearing shoes on a floor.

Now, obviously, if people are stepping in dog poop and tracking it into the house, there’s something very wrong with those people that merely taking off their shoes isn’t going to fix. And yes, bacteria from all sources are on our shoes—and they are ubiquitous anyway. Unless we have compromised immune systems, we are made to be able to resist commonplace microbes and to even prosper from being exposed to some of them in moderation.

The Brooklyn preschool exposé

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not sure why I initially clicked on this article in New York Magazine entitled “The Battle of Grace Church What happened when Brooklyn’s oldest nursery school decided to become less old-fashioned? A riot among the one percent.”

Maybe because I’m interested in education, or my native New York, or just how a preschool becomes “less old-fashioned” (does it have to do with pronouns, for example?), or how the one-percent might have rioted without the event making headlines in the newspapers.

But click I did. And I was about a third of the way through what turned out to be a mega-long piece when I realized that it was likely that the sole reason the article was published was to stir up anger against a bunch of rich white women in Brooklyn.

Oh, I suppose that may not have been the sole reason. Another reason was to get clicks.

But I kept reading it anyway, hoping to get to something other than cattiness and pettiness and the stoking of bitterness, envy, and contempt in equal measure. If there was some higher purpose for writing the article I fail to see it.

The piece doesn’t ever describe anything that could remotely be defined as a “riot,” either, although it certainly describes turmoil of the type that so often happens in small fiefdoms when someone comes in and stirs the pot without really learning much about the prevailing culture and what might be best to preserve about it, and how to tactfully go about changing some of the rest.

Reading many of the comments after the article, I was struck by how many of the readers seemed to fall right in line with what I see as the propagandist aims of the piece. Many of the comments express rage at how entitled and white-privileged these parents—both nouveau riche and old money rich—are, as well as at the lack of racial diversity among the students at the school, which is a very expensive private operation.

I live in a very different sort of community than the one described in the article. Very. But what I see there is that parents worry about their kids and want the best for them, that the rich can pay for things the poor can’t, that private for-profit institutions can make their own decisions about these things, that people (both rich and poor) are often superficial and shallow and petty, and that it’s easy (and perhaps profitable) to stir up rage at those who have far more money than average.