I wonder…

The New Neo Posted on by

…when I see articles like this one written by Charles P. Pierce and published in Esquire, entitled “Trump’s New York Times Interview Is a Portrait of a Man in Cognitive Decline,” just how it might feel to be on the left and to be continually finessed by a man in such cognitive decline.

Or how the author thinks Trump managed to win the GOP nomination despite his cognitive decline (I know, that one’s easy: Republicans are both stupid and evil, and so they will vote for a man in cognitive decline as long as he says the right buzzwords).

Or how the author thinks Trump managed to be elected over Hillary Clinton despite his cognitive decline (I know, that one’s easy, too: the American people are both stupid and evil, and so they will vote for a man in cognitive decline as long as he says the right buzzwords. Plus, Hillary was unfairly hurt by [fill in the blank, including but not limited to Russian collusion, Comey, voter fraud, gender bigotry]).

So I guess I don’t really wonder after all.

Iran: the police and protestors

The New Neo Posted on by

There have been large anti-government protests in Iran for several days—and, unlike in this country, the “resistance” in Iran runs the real risk of being shot for its pains. Until today, that hadn’t happened in the current round of protests, but recently news was reported by the Saudis that three protestors had been killed by the Revolutionary Guards. The news hasn’t been confirmed yet, however, so I’m not sure the account of their deaths can be trusted.

More:

Reuters reported that footage on social media showed riot police clubbing and arresting the demonstrators, and said protesters were also arrested elsewhere in Tehran.

It also reported anti-Khamenei marches in the western towns of Dorud and Shahr-e Kord, and quoted reports that Iranian forces used tear gas against protesters.

There were also counter-demonstrations “held on Saturday to mark the defeat of the last major protest movement in 2009.” You may remember those 2009 demonstrations; President Obama was criticized for not supporting the protestors, and the mullahs were successful in cracking down on the movement. That might have happened anyway, of course, but Obama’s actions (or inactions) certainly didn’t hurt the mullahs. He was already courting the government of Iran in hopes that they’d ultimately make a deal, which of course they did.

Here’s an article I wrote for PJ back in 2009 about Obama’s cutting off funding for the Human Rights Documentation Center:

It’s a shock because, according to the Boston Globe, the group has been “widely seen as the most comprehensive clearing house of documents related to human rights abuses in Iran,” and it would appear that such work is needed now more than ever. It’s a mystery because no explanation for the denial of the center’s funding request has been given by Harry Edwards, spokesman for the agency responsible for the decision (USAID).

What are we to make of this? Glenn Reynolds writes: “They’re planning a sellout, and data on what the Iranians are doing to their protesters would make it more embarrassing.”…

…The Obama administration might be following Takeyh’s prescription, with the cutoff of center funding (and the mildness of Obama’s earlier remarks after the travesty of the Iranian elections and the regime’s harsh treatment of demonstrators) being analogous to Nixon’s third tactic, the easing of rhetoric and criticism. This entire approach, however, depends on some huge unknowns: What do the Iranian leaders really want? How serious are their threats, and are they rational actors who can be negotiated with?

Obama bet on the latter, and the infamous Iran Deal was the result.

Why did I lead this post with the story about the possible death of demonstrators at the hands of police? Historically speaking, in Iran and elsewhere, it has been a game-changer and turning point when police and/or the army refuse to fire on demonstrators. Police and the army are the enforcers of any tyrannical regime, and without them it’s a lot harder to contain a population sick of its leaders.

I wrote at length about this phenomenon here and here (both written in 2009):

However, the real questions are (1) how far the demonstrators are willing to go, and how much violence against them are they willing to absorb; (2) how far the mullahs are willing to go, and how much violence they are willing to perpetrate; and (3) will the police, the Guards, and other forces called in by the mullahs to quell the crowds be willing to fire on them, or will they stay their hands?

That last question may be the most important of all. Like all tyrants, the mullahs can do little without the help of the vast numbers of henchmen they employ, and without the exercise of fear. Sometimes there is a great deal of opposition and unrest under the radar screen even within the groups assisting tyrants, and once dissatisfaction as a whole reaches a critical mass and events transpire to release it, there can be a sudden change and a refusal to defend the regime.

That’s why this tweet by Amir Taheri yesterday caught my eye:

Another tweet of interest from Taheri, this one posted today:

I have no idea whether he’s correct or not, but it’s certainly of interest. Trump has a chance to react in a way that’s different than Obama, but I’m not sure what approach would be both effective and realistic. At any rate, this has been the response so far:

[NOTE: “The world is watching” conjures up this moment for those of us old enough to remember.]

Faith, hope, the tax bill, and charity

The New Neo Posted on by

There have been a great many claims that the new tax bill passed by the GOP will have a chilling effect on charitable giving because it reduces the incentive represented by a tax deduction by increasing the standard deduction. In other words, fewer people will feel the need to itemize their deductions (particularly on the lower end of tax filers), and it’s only by itemizing that people get to count charitable deductions into the deduction mix.

You can find all sorts of estimates of the amount that charitable giving will supposedly be reduced as a result, but I have yet to see an article that explains exactly and in detail how those estimates are arrived at. In addition, quite a few of the slightly more detailed articles I’ve read were written after only the House version had been passed and therefore don’t reflect anything about the updated unified version that became law.

I’ve also read comments around the blogosphere and at news sites where many commenters give the impression that they think the GOP meanies have eliminated the tax deduction for charitable contributions, which is certainly not the case. To be fair, most of the articles try to make it clear that this is not the case, but apparently some people who read only the headlines have gotten the wrong impression, or just don’t understand the way tax deductions work (and on that last point I can sympathize).

But the bigger bucks donors will still have plenty of incentive to give to charity, since they will still be itemizing their deductions because they will have total deductions higher than the new standard deductions. And many small givers (like me, for example) rarely or never itemized because it wasn’t worth it to them, and yet many of them (like me, for example) nevertheless regularly gave money to charity. The fact that I couldn’t deduct that money didn’t mean that I didn’t give it. Nor did it mean I gave less.

I don’t think it’s possible to estimate how many people operate like I did, because their charitable contributions don’t appear on their tax returns.

The new standard deduction potentially handicaps only those charity-givers in the middle range of giving—that is, people who gave to charity under the old rules because their itemized deductions would then become higher than the old standard deduction (in 2017, $6,350 for a single and $12,700 for a couple). We don’t know (at least, I’ve never seen an article specifying) what percentage of charity-givers that represents or how much they now give.

Just as importantly, we don’t know why that group gave to charity or how their giving habits would change if they began to take the higher standard deduction rather than itemizing as they used to. In other word, how much did the fact that they could itemize those contributions determine whether they gave to charity and/or how much they gave to charity? Remember also that the new standard deduction level does not change the itemization picture for those who weren’t itemizing their deductions in the first place—who tend to be on the lower income end of things. Nor will it affect the people who were already itemizing deductions and will continue to do so—who tend to be on the higher income end of things.

For this middle group who used to itemize but now probably will take the standard deduction, will they actually contribute less to charity? In other words, were they giving to charity before only in order to get that higher deduction? Remember, these are not the big charity-givers—we’re not talking people who give $100,000 to charity a year. We’re talking about charitable contributions that are maybe in the few thousands range.

If you want to understand how a contribution of that sort used to affect a person’s taxes under the old rules, see this for example. It goes through the figures for a hypothetical single individual with an income of $50K who gave $9K to charity (that, by the way, is a MUCH higher percentage of income than most people give; it is not typical at all). The savings on that person’s taxes under the old rules would be $800, which is definitely something. But of course that would be offset by the $9K of the gift. In other words, the person gives a gift of $9K and yet it only costs the person $8.2K to do so. The tax deduction is nice, but the person’s income goes down $8.2K by giving that gift. Looking at that, one can only conclude that the person must be giving to charity because that person wants to give to charity, not because of the relatively small tax deduction the person ends up getting. Is the person giving more because of that $800 deduction than then he/she otherwise would? Perhaps, but there’s more to the picture. That “more” includes whether the person’s general tax burden is going up or down, and whether the person’s income and/or wealth is going up because of the improved economy.

Let’s say that same person gets a higher standard deduction under the new bill and perhaps even sees his/her taxes go down in other ways. I can easily see the same person giving exactly the same amount as before to charity (maybe even more) because he or she has more money now to begin with. I can also see people in the lower income levels, who perhaps didn’t give to charity before, starting to do so because they have more income to keep in the first place.

Not only might people tend to give to charity as the economy improves in general, but a big reason people do give is that they’re religious. They’re not going to lose that particular motive for charitable giving because of the new law, either.

For some unknown reason, donations from the middle class have decreased in recent years, even before this tax bill:

Data unveiled not long ago by Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy on its website, Generosity for Life, shows that volunteering and charitable giving overall has fallen 11 percent since the early 2000s. Another study, released last year by the Institute for Policy Studies, found that “while itemized charitable deductions from donors making $100,000 or more increased by 40 percent, itemized charitable deductions from donors making less than $100,000 declined by 34 percent”¦ According to one estimate, low-dollar and midrange donors to national public charities have declined by as much as 25 percent over the 10 years from 2005 to 2015. These are the people who have traditionally made up the vast majority of donor files and lists for most national nonprofits since their inception.”

There are a few possible reasons for this decline in giving. Secularization is one, but the bigger factor is probably that most U.S. households have experienced flat incomes for many years in an era of soaring inequality. Many people lost ground during the Great Recession and have not recovered. At the same time, housing and healthcare costs have soared. So it’s no surprise that ordinary folks don’t give as much as in the past; they can’t afford to.

It’s actually possible, IMHO, that these rates will increase rather than decrease if the economy keeps being strong and people have more money in their pockets. That’s true at many levels of income. I’m not saying this will happen. But I’m saying it’s highly possible.

Chess whiz

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember this post about the teenaged Iranian siblings who were banned from playing chess on their national team?:

Dorsa and Borna Derakhshani, two of the country’s leading youth chess players, were told they can no longer be part of the national team.

Dorsa, an 18-year-old student in Spain, was banned after she did not wear a head covering during the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival earlier this month.

Her 15-year-old brother, Borna, who still lives in Iran, was told he couldn’t compete after playing a match against Israeli chess player Alexander Husman during the same tournament.

Now Dorsa has written an op-ed in the NY Times explaining why she has defected from Iran to the US:

From 2011 until 2015 I played for the Iranian national team. I had to follow the official Iranian dress code, which requires women to cover their hair in public. I understood that being a member of the team meant that I was an official representative of the country, so I never broke the rules. But I chafed under them.

By 2015, when I was 17 years old, it was clear to me that other things mattered more to the federation than talent. Just one example: I had won the Asian championship three times in a row when I arrived at the tournament in India in 2014. I was favored to win, given my record. Yet federation officials weren’t focused on my game, but on my clothing. On the very first day of the tournament, they told me my jeans were too tight. I told them I would not participate in the round unless they stopped scolding me.

In the end, I played and won that tournament in India. But time and time again, those in charge of the Iranian national team showed that they cared more about the scarf covering my hair than the brain under it…

My parents have always been my champions and I never wanted to leave home and live without them. But under the circumstances, they decided it was the wise decision to make ”” not just for my chess career, but for me as a person…

The last time I felt this kind of stability was at my high school in Tehran. The school was a haven for me, a place where I could express myself and the teachers fully respected the students. I have craved to be in a similar environment and, finally, I have found it. What’s more, I managed to join the U.S. federation in a matter of weeks ”” a rarity and something I remain deeply grateful for.

Unlike on the Iranian team, I am now surrounded by people who respect me as a player and don’t care or notice what I look like. Unlike on the Iranian team, where the officials could ignore a player’s earned right to play a tournament and replace that player with someone they preferred, here the rules are consistent and fair.

In this sense, America at its best reflects the best values of chess. Chess doesn’t care how old you are or what you wear. It doesn’t care about what gender you are, or how much money you have. It is blind to all of that. It cares only about merit.

That’s why I’m applying for United States citizenship and why I hope to someday represent this country in the Olympics.

I applaud Derakhshani, and wish her great success. I also wonder what’s going to happen to her younger brother and her parents, who apparently remain behind. I also wonder how long chess will continue to be just about merit. Many things aren’t, these days.

[NOTE: Actually, one category chess does pay some attention to is gender. Dorsa is certainly correct that in terms of winning games or championships, chess doesn’t care, but in other ways gender is an issue. There are a lot fewer female than male participants and champions, and many people have wondered why. See this and this, for example.]

How cold is it?

The New Neo Posted on by

So cold that yesterday when I came in from the cold (not a spy) and I washed my hands, the cold water coming from the tap felt warmish.

And I’d had my super-warm mittens on while outside.

And I was only outside for maybe fifteen minutes.

Further reflections on living in New York—and that couple in the 300 square foot apartment

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Here’s the original post.]

Commenter “skeptic” writes:

Neo, I think you are on to something here even if you may not realize it. The dweeb couple in the video also raised my, and many of your commenters’) hackles even though they clearly do not bother you. This is just an example of the urban vs. smaller city+rural divide that so profoundly affects our politics. You are clearly a big city gal so you seem immune or a lot less sensitive to it than most of your readers.

Why do leftists congregate in big cities? Regardless of the reason, they do…

…The current meme by the Democrats is the limits on state and local tax deductions in the new tax bill will lead to a large migration by Leftists from cities to the hinterlands thus eliminating the Republicans’ advantage. But seeing how this couple puts up with living in their shoebox convinces me that they will not move back to Oklahoma not matter what they pay in taxes.

I grew up in New York, but it was a section of the city far enough away from Manhattan that it was relatively suburban. And of course this was many many decades ago, when Manhattan itself was less hectic and crowded and expensive. But it was already hectic and crowded and expensive enough for me. I loved it, though, because of the theater, dance, restaurants, stores, and bustling streets full of dynamic people.

Yes, some of those people were crazy and/or dangerous, even then. But fewer of them. And it seemed a small price to pay for all the rest of the benefits. The city was also relatively affordable; one could imagine living there on a non-astronomical salary and not living in a shoebox, although it was always more expensive than elsewhere and you had to make do with being somewhat cramped. Now, of course, it’s gotten far worse.

But despite all of this I never felt that I was going to live there when I grew up. I’m not sure why, because a lot of my friends and family stayed there and never really doubted that they would. I felt—in a way I couldn’t and still can’t quite describe—that I really didn’t belong there and that it was not my real home.

Of course, I don’t think I ever found a real home. But that’s another story.

I left New York at seventeen to go away to college and I never lived in New York again, although I stayed there for as long as a couple of months when I was in my 20s. I still visit often, and I usually enjoy my visits or at least portions of them. But I rarely regret my decision to move away when young; New York still doesn’t feel like a good fit for me. The main thing I do regret about not living there is that had I stayed and bought property aeons ago, I could sell it now for a pretty penny and move just about anywhere on earth. Instead, I’m quite limited as to where I can live.

But I still ♥ New York, although you might say I have a lover’s quarrel with it.

And that’s why I feel I deeply understand why a couple like the one in the video will put up with living in such cramped quarters to be able to sample the offerings of the city, which are myriad.

However, I take issue with “skeptic’s” comment at the end: “they will not move back to Oklahoma no matter what they pay in taxes.” Actually, there’s a good chance they might. They might never strike it rich enough to move out of that teeny tiny place, for example, and they might get tired of that—especially if they have children.

People come to New York for the experience and/or a job, but they often move away after a few years— sometimes back to where they came from, sometimes to some other place. They’re tired of the city or disappointed or they want something else or they’ve extracted what they wanted.

There’s a song from the 1970 Stephen Sondheim musical “Company” that captures this phenomenon. The show is one I like very much, but it’s not produced all that often outside the city, perhaps because it’s so New Yorky. Another reason may be that some of the songs are quite difficult to sing, including the following one called “Another Hundred People.” I’ve posted the original version, because I think it’s the best rendition of all the ones I listened to on YouTube. The words are here; note the lines, “and every day/some go away”:

“Darkest Hour”

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t seen the new Churchill movie, although I plan to. Maybe I’ll wait till it’s released on video, but it sounds like a good one (with a few reservations).

We’ve got two reviews to guide you on your way. First, there’s here’s our very own “Cornhead,” (David Begley).

Next, we have Victor Davis Hanson.

I’m a big Churchill buff, as you can see if you can decipher the bottom book title in my masthead photo. So any departure from reality—any depiction of Churchill as doubtful and wavering where he was resolute and firm—ruffles my feathers. Cornhead makes the point that it was done in the movie for dramatic effect, and I have little doubt it works in that sense. But to me the facts are plenty dramatic enough, and preferable. If you’re going to make a movie about history, stick to history.

But it sounds like that’s a small part of the movie, and the rest is excellent.

The left and feminists…

The New Neo Posted on by

…aren’t known for their rollicking sense of humor.

Case in point.

Sense of humor is a funny thing. It seems superficial, but it tells you something about a person that’s not superficial. It may even be that one of the reasons Trump got elected instead of Hillary is that he has a fairly decent sense of humor and she doesn’t.

“Could we be wrong?” asks a journalist

The New Neo Posted on by

I agree with the sentiment expressed here, that journalists need to question themselves more:

With the rise of the Internet and disruption of institutional media, many journalists have cheerfully shrugged off the ideal of objectivity. This certainly makes tweeting easier, and I suppose forthright bias is more honest than the camouflaged kind.

But better still is the genuine objectivity of an open, curious, careful mind. Readers won’t always like what it produces; seeing the world in all its mixed-up shades of gray is not necessarily comforting. But most of them respect it when they see it. Journalists who strive to deliver it bank credibility in small doses over time, humbly acknowledging their blind spots and errors.

Katharine Graham is having her Hollywood moment because she gave the right answer when history popped its quiz. But her crucial lesson for today is that she asked the right questions: Are we sure we’ve got it right?

Could we be wrong?

The author, David Von Drehle, was the Style editor of the WaPo back in Graham’s days (and his credentials go much further than that, as well). Most of his piece is a reminiscence about how wonderful and how forthright she was, plus how right it was to publish the Pentagon Papers back then.

But Drehle ignores two things. The first is the double meaning of the word “wrong.” The first meaning is “incorrect,” as in “factually wrong.” The second meaning is in the moral sense of wrong vs. right. Many journalists seem to believe it’s okay to commit the first type of wrong—the factual type—in the service of avoiding the second type of wrong, the moral type.

That brings us to the second thing Drehle is ignoring, or maybe he’s not even aware of it, which is that the WaPo (and in particular the NY Times, which also published the Papers) got the content of many of the important parts of the Pentagon Papers wrong.

How can that be? After all, didn’t they publish the Papers themselves? No, not exactly; they published summaries and highlights because the Papers were extremely long. If you’re unaware of the problems with their coverage, please take a look at this (unfortunately, some of the links have gone dead because this is an old post of mine):

So, what about the press lies about the government lies? Who will tell that story, and who has the patience to listen? It’s a marathon, not a sprint; to tell it requires a laborious wade through a mind-numbing number of documents, and to even read about it requires a bit of work, as well, and a troubling rethinking of old perceptions.

For example, just for the Pentagon Papers alone, the task of evaluation would require actually reading the original Papers, and then reading all the major press stories about them, sorting through the excerpts from the Papers that were published in newspapers at the time, and seeing how they compare to the Papers as a whole. It’s something I must confess I’ve never done, and probably never will do. But others have, and they report some curious goings-on.

A fascinating piece on the subject of war coverage by the MSM–both then and now–was written by James Q. Wilson and appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal. Take a look at this, on the Papers:

Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has shown that in crucial respects, the Times coverage was at odds with what the documents actually said. The lead of the Times story was that in 1964 the Johnson administration reached a consensus to bomb North Vietnam at a time when the president was publicly saying that he would not bomb the north. In fact, the Pentagon papers actually said that, in 1964, the White House had rejected the idea of bombing the north. The Times went on to assert that American forces had deliberately provoked the alleged attacks on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify a congressional resolution supporting our war efforts. In fact, the Pentagon papers said the opposite: there was no evidence that we had provoked whatever attacks may have occurred.

In short, a key newspaper said that politicians had manipulated us into a war by means of deception. This claim, wrong as it was, was part of a chain of reporting and editorializing that helped convince upper-middle-class Americans that the government could not be trusted.

We’re not on that island of the truth-tellers and the liars, where a single cleverly-worded question can discern the truth. Would that we were; our task would be a great deal easier. But it’s plain that there were enough lies to go around, and that the MSM’s lies must lead every thinking person to question the earlier version of history that was learned back when events were happening, and when newspaper and television coverage combined to give us our primary perception of the blooming buzzing confusion around us.

In writing this post, I went back and read a few of the comments to my earlier Vietnam essays. I happened across this one, that deals with the very subject at hand: media coverage of the Pentagon Papers:

The NYT and WaPo reporters (Neil Sheehan, et al) who provided a highly abridged (paraphrased and quoted) version [of the Pentagon Papers] to the public of that era (’71) distorted the originals in sundry and fundamental ways in order to imply or more directly state that Pres. Johnson and others employed deceptions at critical junctures in the conflict when in fact (as stated in the original document as well as the scaled down version) they did not. A specific example (and a critical one in that era) taken from Michael Lind’s Vietnam: The Necessary War:

The June 14, ’71 NYT edition of their edited version of the Pentagon Papers indicates Pres. Johnson had virtually concluded his decision to initiate a bombing campaign against the North by Nov. 3, 1964. (If true this would have made Johnson out to be deceitful toward the American public at an early and critical stage in the conflict.) However the Pentagon Papers itself states: “… the President was not ready to approve a program of air strikes against North Vietnam, at least until the available alternatives could be carefully and thoroughly re-examined.” That quote, reflecting November, 1964 circumstances, can be located via a search in this section of the Pentagon Papers.

This single distortion may not appear to be dramatic in and of itself, but there were other overt and more subtle distortions in the NYT’s and WaPo’s paraphrased versions of this document. In sum they always and consistently distorted the picture in a manner which eroded Pres. Johnson’s (and others) reputation, broadly characterizing him as being willfully deceitful; that general mischaracterization is what proved to be critical at the time rather than any single aspect of the paraphrased report.

I’m not trying to absolve Johnson of all wrongdoing; there’s enough blame to go around. And some of it most definitely goes to our old friends, those dragon slayers in the MSM.

I wrote that over eleven years ago.

The healing power of time

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I was doing some YouTube surfing (oh, just the usual: makeovers and renovations and twins separated at birth and dancers and anything that isn’t even remotely political) and discovered that I suddenly and inexplicably had audio but no video.

Not a good thing.

I quickly exhausted whatever personal resources I might have for solving the problem unaided, and turned to Google. There was no dearth of suggestions, because it turns out I’m not the only person who’s ever had this problem.

But none of the suggestions I could comprehend worked, and the rest of them I couldn’t even try because I couldn’t comprehend them. They seemed to be written in computereze, or else they referred to something that couldn’t be found on my computer (which, to be fair, has a rather elderly operating system—but then again quite a few of these discussions of the problem were pretty old themselves).

So I activated one of my tried and true options: forget about it till tomorrow, and you may find that the computer or the YouTube program or Flash or whatever it was had healed itself.

And lo and behold, it did! Today everything worked just fine.

That doesn’t mean it will continue to do so, of course. Everything’s temporary in computerland. But I first noticed this phenomenon of the healing of inanimate objects, even machines, many a long year ago. Have you ever experienced it? It’s handy to know about.

Pocket’s got my number: the reluctant patriot

The New Neo Posted on by

When I updated to the new Firefox, a bunch of things came with it. On my home page there was a sampler of websites I’d recently visited, and searches I’d done. I got rid of that almost immediately; I don’t want to be reminded of the fruits of my wanderings.

But there was also a feature that I kept, something called “Recommended by Pocket.” Since my browser knows everything about me (probably more than I know myself), it shows me articles it thinks I would like to read. And sure enough, it often seduces me into reading them, because Pocket is just that smart about people.

So that’s how I ended up back at the New York Times (well you might say oh no, not again!), having clicked on an article called, “Letter of Recommendation: Passport to Your National Parks.” (I actually read it on Chrome, by the way, since I’ve used up my allotment of NY Times articles on Firefox already and I refuse to pay for access.)

The topic seemed innocuous enough, and I like national parks. But this is the Times, and this is the year 2017, so I should not have been surprised that the article (by someone named Jamie Lauren Keiles) began, “I cringe at the thought that I might be patriotic, but the next thing I know, I’m…”

Now, I don’t want to be too hard on Jamie. Seriously, I don’t. She’s young, and that intro is almost obligatory if she wants to remain in any sort of good graces with her peers. After all, she’s writing a piece in praise of—or sort of in praise of—visits to National Park Service sites as listed in a booklet. So her article must begin with the sort of hat in hand, shuffle-shuffle disclaimer that says in effect, Don’t hate me! I’m one of you. I’m not one of them, not one of those troglodyte knee-jerk America-First Trump-loving uneducated bigoted….

It’s hard to be a young person these days, and although I may sound sarcastic I’m actually not meaning to be. Thought-crime is very real and the punishment is swift and cruel, particularly among the young.

The article continues, and the first paragraph expands on the apologia for what she’s about to write:

…I like to think of America [as] less a set of monolithic ideals than a junk drawer full of halftime shows, regional-style pizzas, feuds over what exactly to call “soda” and snippets of marches by John Philip Sousa. But that sort of patriotism, while good enough as entertainment, offers little comfort when I’m up late at night consuming my 25th hour of news. Lately, my America has felt too vast and fragmented, and fixating on regional curiosities like state-fair butter sculptures and St. Paul sandwiches only exacerbates this crisis of faith. I’ve been searching for new ways to keep liking this country, meaningful ways that don’t feel like work.

Once she’s gotten that out of the way, most of the rest of the article is straightforward. But every now and then there’s that little hiccup to let us know Jamie’s on the side of the good.

For example, I find the following to be a fascinating example of the push/pull back-and-forth feelings the author experiences when she comes face-to-face with the grandeur that is one of the greatest sites on earth:

Standing at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, I imagined what it must have been like to ride a horse through unfamiliar land and come face to face with this immense hole in the ground. I found myself drawn, if only for a moment, to the tantalizing myth of European “discovery.”

She’s drawn—but only for a moment. This myth to which she’s drawn simply must be put in scare quotes to even be uttered (or in this case written). Well, Jamie, I suggest you look at it this way: although the Native Americans were definitely there first—some even lived there—in 1540 they showed it to the Spaniards, and the rest, as they say, is history. You can think of this “discovery” as the canyon’s reveal to the rest of the world of one of the wonders of that world. And thanks to a bunch of dead white guys, we can all stand and see approximately what they all saw that day when it really was an amazing “discovery”—without the scare quotes.

In fact, I’d say it’s still a discovery for anyone who goes there for the first time.

There’s more in the essay, but I’ll tiptoe away now with a request (almost certain to go unheeded) that travel articles could just be written without the political overlay that doesn’t belong there and doesn’t enhance a thing.

Speaking of getting organized, this couple has getting organized nailed down

The New Neo Posted on by

I am seriously in awe. A three hundred square foot apartment, and look what they manage to do with it:

Yeah, it’s really really small, and those of you who don’t live in mega-expensive cities such as New York may be horrified. But forget about that part for a moment and see how creative they’ve been in merging form and function and making the most of every inch, without the place looking cramped. It’s the dining table and the couch that especially impress me, but I think the whole thing is creative, harmonious, and well-planned.