Interesting change story with great quote about the process of political change

The New Neo Posted on by

The young man in the following video tells his political change story, and in doing so he describes a process that I think—having contemplated the process of political change myself for about a decade and a half—is the heart of the matter. The quote begins around 1:06 or so, and I’ve transcribed it:

So it became fairly evident very quickly that these people [many of his fellow progressives, who he describes as being proponents of “an authoritative sort of progressivism”] weren’t actually standing up for anything relating to liberty. They were just standing up for a divisuve brand of politics that would tolerate no dissent whatsoever.

I’ve always tried my best to think as clearly and logically as I can. And that necessarily entails poking as many holes as I can in my own beliefs, until I’ve managed to narrow in on the beliefs that best model the world, or at least that model the world a little more accurately than my beliefs did before.

What I think is so marvelous about that quote is that it describes two elements very well. The first element is that it’s quite obvious that this man sets a premium on liberty. I’ve referred to liberty as “the great dividing line,” and noted that some liberals value it and others don’t, and that this particular difference is an enormously important one:

I don’t know the relative size of the two groups, because I don’t seek out political discussions with my friends and family; I don’t want get-togethers to degenerate into the useless, repetitive, unproductive arguments I witnessed in my youth, which they easily could, with me now as the sole conservative. But I know that those two groups exist, and I think that what differentiates them are (a) the person’s need to control others and/or society; and (b) the degree that the person thinks he/she can do so effectively and get the desired results.

Among most of my friends their motives are “good”””that is, they want people to be happier, healthier, and in general just better. Some leftists I know have the same motivation (I would add that most of the people who think they are doing good are also motivated by the need to feel that they are good people for wanting that). But many leftists””we’re talking about quite a few of the leaders of the movement, and certainly people such as Stalin””have a different motivation: they are motivated almost purely by the desire for power and control.

There is an unholy alliance between the two groups. The first is the much-larger pack of would-be do-gooders who believe that liberalism is the way to go about it, whose minds are formed by a combination of their families growing up, present-day peers, the MSM, eduction, politicians, literature, the entertainment business, and in some cases their “progressive” churches and synagogues. The second is the smaller but extremely influential group of leftist activists, some proudly out as unrepentant “progressives,” and some just quietly going about their business, some motivated by the desire for power/control plus the idea that they’re doing “good,” and the rest just wanting the power/control part.

I believe that this dividing line of liberty represents two very different types of people, and that it’s rare that someone from one group turns into someone from the other although it might happen on occasion. It’s also my observation that left-to-right political changers tend to be disproportionately drawn from the group that highly values liberty. What’s more, during the last decade in this country, the Democratic Party has become more and more populated by people who do not.

The second element the man in the video talks about is also key: the desire to poke “as many holes as I can in my own beliefs, until I’ve managed to narrow in on the beliefs that best model the world.” Long ago I used to think everyone felt like that, but it became abundantly clear to me about fifteen years ago that it wasn’t that way at all. Many or perhaps even most people ( (on left or right, I might add) cling tenaciously to what they already believe, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. That’s why a mind is a difficult thing to change. And so change is much more likely in people who already have the habit of challenging their own beliefs.

[NOTE: You may have noticed that this video has a subtitle: “My Red Pill Story.” That’s a reference to the movie “The Matrix.” It refers to a moment in your life that completely changes your outlook about the makeup of the world or politics (and not just politics). Here’s the quote from the movie:

“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” ”•Morpheus, to Neo [not me; the character in the movie] The term redpill refers to a human that is aware of the true nature of the Matrix.

There are a ton of videos at YouTube on the subject, and although it sometimes refers to a left-to-right political change, it more often refers more specifically to leaving feminism or rejecting feminist beliefs:

The term “red pill” has been used by people in the men’s rights movement as a metaphor for the specific moment when they come to the belief that certain gender roles they are expected to conform to (e.g. marriage, monogamy) are intended to benefit women, not themselves…

The term “red pill” or “red-pilling” is common on 4chan’s “politically incorrect” /pol/ board, where taking the red pill refers to being presented with both sides of an issue (usually with a particular focus on the controversial or unpopular opinion).]

Viral video du jour

The New Neo Posted on by

This one:

Looks bad for the cop, who is a Salt Lake City police detective. He must have known it was being recorded, too.

I can’t find anyone defending this guy, but if you go to the YouTube comments for that video, you’ll see a lot of 60s/early70s stuff like people calling him “pig” and saying they hope he dies.

The most complete treatment of the story I’ve seen so far can be found here.

On memorizing poetry (redux)

The New Neo Posted on by

Molly Worthen has written an article in the the NY Times recommending the memorization of poetry:

Since ancient times, humans have memorized and recited poetry. Before the invention of writing, the only way to possess a poem was to memorize it. Long after scrolls and folios supplemented our brains, court poets, priests and wandering bards recited poetry in order to entertain and connect with the divine. For individuals, a poem learned by heart could be a lifeline – to grapple with overwhelming emotion or preserve sanity amid the brutalities of prison and warfare.

Yet poetry memorization has become deeply unfashionable, an outmoded practice that many teachers and parents – not to mention students – consider too boring, mindless and just plain difficult for the modern classroom. Besides, who needs to memorize when our smartphones can instantly call up nearly any published poem in the universe?

In fact, the value of learning literature by heart – particularly poetry – has only grown.

This is not unlike my own post on the subject, one of the earliest things I wrote on this blog. But I am rather puzzled by Worthen’s notion (and seemingly she assumes most people agree with her) that poetry is hard to memorize. No it’s not; it’s prose that’s hard to memorize. Poetry is relatively easy, like song lyrics—if it rhymes or has meter, that is. And older poetry (that’s the type Worthen seems to be talking about for the most part) almost always has rhyme or meter or both. That should make it easy to memorize.

I always found it so, anyway. But maybe, as a poetry lover, I’m not typical.

What follows is the text of my earlier post.

I think it may be a lost pedagogical device, but when I was in grade school, we were forced by our teachers (mostly elderly women, as it happens) to memorize poetry. Lots of poetry. Most of it doggeral, but not all of it, not by any means.

There was an old-fashioned quality to their choices: patriotic and seasonal verse, concerning Presidents and holidays (“If Nancy Hanks came back as a ghost, seeking news of what she loved most”; “There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood”).

I was a good poetry memorizer. I’m not trying to brag here, since I don’t think this ability implies any particular merit on my part. But no sooner had I written the thing down, copied from the blackboard on which the teacher had slowly and laboriously written it in her beautiful handwriting, then it was firmly ensconced in my head.

And there much of it stays. To this day, actually. Fortunately, along with the Edgar Guest and the others (“It takes a heap o’ livin’, in a house t’ make it home”) we were assigned some very fine poetry, mostly in junior high. Shakespearean sonnets and Wordsworth and Milton, some Robert Frost and Shakespeare, the Gettysburg Address (not poetry, but it might as well have been).

Much of this I simply memorized by rote. I understood the basic meaning, but it had no real significance to me, no depth. I had no context for it.

But since it had been filed away, somewhere, I experienced a curious phenomenon later on. I found that in crises or emotional times, a line of poetry would suddenly come to me—a phrase I’d never paid much attention to before—and I’d have one of those “aha!” moments.

At one point I sustained a serious and chronic injury. My physical limitations were such that for long periods of time I could not work, nor even read or write in any sustained way. I took to visiting a park near where I lived and slowly walking around a track there. Nearby was a small wooded area, and it was wintertime and snow was on the ground. Looking at the trees, the following line suddenly came to my mind, unbidden, (“Whose woods these are I think I know…”) memorized so long ago, and hardly thought of since.

But the words were all there, waiting for me, and when I came to the lines, “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep” they hit me with the force of near-revelation. Frost seemed to be talking about wanting to give up, to surrender to something dark and restful (what? death?) in a time of great weariness such as I was experiencing. And then the next line came, too, offering hope and resolution, “But I have promises to keep…”

This sort of thing kept happening to me. Keeps happening to me, actually. In situation after situation, a line or passage of poetry will announce itself—something that I’d apparently held in my mind, in suspended animation as it were, without any true reflection or understanding—and suddenly, it would be freighted with deep and poignant meaning.

So I’m hereby declaring myself in favor of the practice of poetry memorization in schools. I know there are many many children—adults, too—who hate poetry. I don’t think that will change; I’m not imagining that poetry will gain a lot of converts from the mere act of children being required to memorize it. But for the rest, I think there’s great value to be had in carrying around a small library of poetry in one’s head, to draw upon in the hard times—or even the joyful times.

Right after 9/11, Yeats’ “The Second Coming” was the poem that kept swirling around in my brain. It doesn’t really offer any comfort; it’s a very bleak vision, after all. But for me, even the act of recalling the lines, somber and frightening as they are, had its own sort of solace, saying to me, “Others have had this fear, others have passed through terrible times of chaos,” and, paradoxically, lending words of great beauty to the description of that terrifying state:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

Going to war with the populace you have

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “parker” writes:

…it is simple, but it seems simple is difficult to understand. Never go to war unless we are prepared to use all of the force we can muster to bring the enemy to a state of being where they grovel, kiss the dust, and ask how high we want them to jump.

A succinct statement of what Walter Russell Mead called the Jacksonian point of view:

Walter Russell Mead begins his indispensable 1999 essay, “The Jacksonian Tradition” by describing American savagery in war. “In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids claimed the lives of 900,000 Japanese civilians.”…

Mead goes on to explain the political tradition that underlies this ferocity, which he names after President Andrew Jackson. Jacksonians, Mead argues, view America as a country that just wants to be left alone. They have little interest in the “Hamiltonian” project of prying other countries open to American commerce or the “Wilsonian” project of spreading democracy and liberty across the globe. But when attacked, especially by what they consider dishonorable foes, Jacksonians believe that “wars must be fought with all available force. The use of limited force is deeply repugnant.”…

For Jacksonians, the problem comes when America does not fulfill it. When that happens, they often blame leaders for making America’s troops fight with one hand tied their backs. On the right, this remains the dominant explanation for America’s loss in Vietnam.

That description was written in May of 2016, before Trump became president, and it appeared in The Atlantic. The article isn’t pro-Trump by any means, and it’s not pro-Jacksonian either, although it does try to “understand” both.

When I first read Mead’s article about 15 years ago, I remember thinking that I was sort of a Jacksonian, because in many ways I agreed with the sentiment expressed: if you’re going to fight a war and let people die in that war, you need to be committed to that war and prepared to stay the course. Knowing what happened in Vietnam, I was very worried when we invaded Iraq that something similar would happen. And that’s the way it has played out, for the most part.

But I also somewhat disagree with parker, because I think I am being realistic in saying that although the mentality he expresses is not rare in the US, it is not the predominant point of view and if we followed parker’s prescription we would not fight any wars at all because such an approach would be successfully thwarted. What’s more, in a nuclear age, does fighting such a war include nuclear weapons?

In other words, are there any limiting factors? I think there should be as a general rule (exceptions might be made), but what would the limiting factors be?

In other words, what sort of fight is Jacksonian enough for the Jacksonians? And wouldn’t the left and the majority of Americans oppose such a war? Or if that’s not strictly true, it would be difficult to know what sort of war, if entered into, would not ultimately be undermined before it was won. And we’d be back where we started.

World War II was a special case, I think, in which the enemy was so clear and so evil, and its global ambitions so obvious, that the US was relatively united on the nature of the fight. Oh, there were those who objected, but they were nowhere near as numerous as today. Therefore we were able to mobilize for a total war. I’m not sure whether, given the exact same circumstances, that would be possible today. But it would take something just as big as WWII to do it, and of course there’s plenty of argument about whether the war on Islamic terror (can we call it that, for instance?) is just as big.

Blog choices

The New Neo Posted on by

I find that as a blogger I often bite off more than I can chew. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say more than I intended to chew. My estimates of how much time and effort a post will take are usually way off, and yet over and over again I’m fooled. I get an idea for a post and I think oh, this won’t take long at all, and then several hours later I raise my head from my computer, blink, look around me, and don’t understand where the time went.

That happened today. I just put up my first post for the day, and it’s a loooong one. Not only that, but it’s on a topic it would be difficult to justify calling “current,” the history of our involvement in Vietnam.

How on earth did I choose that topic? Something caught my eye in the comments section, as it often does, and I thought I had something I wanted to say about it. I believed it would only take me about a half hour to say it—after all, hadn’t I written extensively on Vietnam before, and couldn’t I draw on those writings? But as often happens, when I researched the topic, I was drawn deeper and deeper into it and into the details, and before I knew it many hours had passed.

Much of what I write isn’t just for my readers, although they (you!) are foremost in my mind. I do it for myself, too, and sometimes I think that learning the history is the really fun part. Or if not exactly fun—sometimes the facts are disturbing and disheartening and downright depressing—then the interesting part. Writing is just assembling the pieces of the puzzle and putting my own idiosyncratic stamp on it.

The kind of blogging I like to do isn’t very popular and it’s even less popular these days than it was when I began. Blogs by a single blogger, such as this one, are much less numerous than they used to be. The blog genre has been outpaced by Twitter and Facebook and a bunch of even newer social media platforms, and though I’ve tried to get into them they just don’t suit me or interest me and that’s that. I like the long form and I like the conversation, and there’s less and less patience for those things.

This article is from 2015, and the trend described has only accelerated since then:

[Ezra Klein writes] “Blogging encourages interjections into conversations, and it thrives off of familiarity. Social media encourages content that can travel all on its own.”…

…Ezra is right about the conversational nature of blogging. There was lots of that in the early days, and very little now. Partly this is for the reason he identified: traffic is now driven far more by Facebook links than by links from fellow bloggers. Partly it’s also because multi-person blogs, which began taking over the blogosphere in the mid-aughts, make conversation harder. Most people simply don’t follow all the content in multi-person blogs, and don’t always pay attention to who wrote which post, so conversation becomes choppier and harder to follow. And partly it’s because conversation has moved on: first to comment sections, then to Twitter and other social media.

Second, speaking personally, I long ago decided that blog posts needed to be standalone pieces, so I’m not sure we can really blame that on new forms of social media. It was probably as early as 2005 or 2006 that I concluded two things. Not only do blog posts need to be standalone, but they can’t even ramble very much. You need to make one clear point and avoid lots of distractions and “on the other hands.” This is because blog readers are casual readers, and if you start making lots of little side points, that’s what they’re going to respond to. Your main point often simply falls by the wayside. So keep it short and focused.

Anyone who reads this blog probably can see exactly how I fail to follow the recommended model. I do try (and have nearly always tried) to write posts that can stand alone. But not rambling? Sticking to one clear point? No, and no, and although I believe I could follow those rules, that’s not the way I want to write and if I had to do it I’d just as soon quit as straitjacket myself that way.

So here I am. One of the dinosaurs who write by myself, and write long and sometimes rambling pieces. I’d like more readers, but I have a decent number and not all of them are “casual” by any means. We have quite a bit of conversation here, too, and it’s not just that I converse and you listen.

Yes, I also write for a group blog at Legal Insurrection, maybe once a week or so. Most of what I write there is an edited version of something I’ve already posted here, and the posts I put up there tend to have a law-related slant or concern topics that I think would be of particular interest to the readers there. I write there in a style that’s a bit more removed and formal and less personal than my style here, and I think that’s appropriate.

This post was intended to be a rumination on the process of selecting and writing a blog post and how much more time it often takes than I think it will—and then, of course, I started rambling (as is my wont) into a related topic. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to choose my own topics and write about them as I please, and to be able to get some sort of audience for it, even if the audience is far from huge. When there’s a big story, of course, I usually try to cover it, but best of all (for me, anyway) are these lengthy, labor-intensive dives into some piece of history that I think is relevant to our times.

Who lost Vietnam?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve spent a lot of verbiage on the Vietnam War over my years of blogging. All you have to do is look at the category “Vietnam” on the right sidebar, and you’ll see that the number of posts on the subject is 84 (soon to be 85 when this one goes up). If you want to see the gist of what I have to say about that war, just start reading there.

But I’m going to add my reaction to this recent comment from “Ariel.” Here’s Ariel, who first quotes “Irv” and then reacts to that quote:

“The lesson that we should learn from the failed wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan is not that we shouldn’t engage in nation building, it’s that when we win a war we should not turn it over to the Democrats to change victory into defeat.” ”“ Irv

Seems to me that Vietnam is not like the others in this statement, given its timeline of dem leadership ”“ from the Start!”

I had no idea Eisenhower was a Democrat. In fact, Eisenhower the Democrat coined the phrase ”˜Domino effect’ specifically about Vietnam. He also warned about the ”˜Industrial-Military’ complex as a threat to democracy around 1961. Damn, friggin’ bleeding-heart liberal Democrat.

We weren’t in Vietnam until that friggin’ Democrat tried to make up for a French failure to recognize an opportunity.

There is no question that Eisenhower was indeed involved in the ongoing conflict in Vietnam during the 1950s. You can read about the reasons and the decisions he made here:

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Soviet Union.

Military advisors from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. PRC weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a regular army. In September 1950, the United States created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the United States had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort (during the early 1950s), shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war….

In the end, convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits, Eisenhower decided against the intervention. Eisenhower was a five-star general. He was wary of getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia.

The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and PRC. PRC support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from the PRC into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success…

There’s much much more, of course. But the gist of it is that we were involved in Vietnam during the Eisenhower administration as part of our general interest in fighting Communism around the globe during the Cold War. In accord with this goal, we supported the government of the South in various ways, but those ways were quite limited. As a person alive during that time and at least somewhat aware of the news in a very general way, I don’t remember much conversation about Vietnam and our involvement there at all at the time. It must have been reported on, but compared to our commitment in a place such as Korea it was very minimal and relatively non-controversial. And Eisenhower was very much against sending American troops to fight there.

In 1955, Eisenhower sent the first military personnel to train the South Vietnamese military. Here are some statistics:

On October 22, 1957, MAAG Vietnam and USIS installations in Saigon were bombed, injuring US military advisers. In the summer of 1959, Communist guerrillas staged an attack on a Vietnamese military base in Bien Hoa, killing and wounding several MAAG personnel. During this time, American advisers were not put in high-ranking positions, and President Diem was reluctant to allow American advisers into Vietnamese tactical units. He was afraid that the United States would gain control or influence over his forces if Americans got into the ranks of the army. The first signs that his position was beginning to shift came in 1960, when the number of official US military advisers in the country was increased from 327 to 685 at the request of the South Vietnamese government. By 1961, communist guerrillas were becoming stronger and more active. This increased enemy contacts in size and intensity throughout South Vietnam.

So at the very very end of the Eisenhower administration, the number of American military advisors more or less doubled, but the absolute numbers were very very low. This is not what is commonly thought of as the Vietnam War, and I think any argument that the Vietnam War was an Eisenhower enterprise are basically incorrect except in the most technical sense. And yes, we were also involved in helping the South Vietnamese government, just as we were involved in helping anti-Communist governments around the world to resist the inroads of Communism, but that was a standard Cold War approach on a widespread global level and not the nation-building aftermath of a US invasion.

The escalation of the war—the true beginning of the war for Americans. as I recall it having lived through it—was the sending of American ground troops there, which was indeed accomplished by a Democratic administration, LBJ’s (see this), and it was followed by an enormous escalation of the same. In fact, “escalation” became a big word during the 60s.

Military involvement under Kennedy was still very small; about 1600 advisors by the time of his death. His political involvement in the coup against Diem is the sort of thing you can read vastly differing accounts of, but the documentation from the time shows this:

The documentary record is replete with evidence that President Kennedy and his advisers, both individually and collectively, had a considerable role in the coup overall, by giving initial support to Saigon military officers uncertain what the U.S. response might be, by withdrawing U.S. aid from Diem himself, and by publicly pressuring the Saigon government in a way that made clear to South Vietnamese that Diem was isolated from his American ally. In addition, at several of his meetings (Documents 7, 19, 22) Kennedy had CIA briefings and led discussions based on the estimated balance between pro- and anti-coup forces in Saigon that leave no doubt the United States had a detailed interest in the outcome of a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem.

The removal of Diem was the result of a coup by members of the South Vietnamese military who had their own reasons for doing it, but the United States gave them support or at least made it clear they would not oppose them. The evidence also is that Kennedy never even considered what would physically happen to Diem and was shocked at his assassination. This seems naive at the very least.

So in summary we have very minimal involvement and caution from the Republican president (Eisenhower), a modest increase in military involvement from the Democrat (Kennedy) as well as political machinations in the internal affairs of the South, and then a very major increase in all respects (especially the military) from another Democrat (LBJ). After that, we enter what I usually refer to as the Second Act of the war, the Nixon years, featuring a gradual drawdown of our involvement. The postscript to that Second Act was the Ford years and the final abandonment. Both Nixon and Ford were Republicans, but it is important to realize that the withdrawal from South Vietnam was orchestrated by Democrats in Congress. In particular, the unelected Ford was virtually powerless to stop them even had he wanted to.

The main takeaway is that the Democrats both started the war and escalated it in terms of US military involvement, Republicans ended our military involvement but continued our support (fairly successfully, I might add), and then later under Republican president Ford the Democrats spearheaded the final withdrawal of US support for the South Vietnamese and enabled the fall of Saigon. The Democrats’ attitude towards the war represented a huge pendulum swing.

I’ve written extensively about the Second Act of the war here, here, and here.

And here is President Ford’s plea to Congress to increase aid to South Vietnam before it fell. It makes for very sad reading, and is correct about the precedent being set. An excerpt:

Two years ago…we had succeeded in negotiating an Agreement that provided the framework for lasting peace in Southeast Asia…Unfortunately, the other side has chosen to violate most of the major provisions of this Accord.

The South Vietnamese and Cambodians are fighting hard in their own defense…

At a time when the North Vietnamese have been building up their forces and pressing their attacks, U.S. military aid to the South Vietnamese Government has not been sufficient to permit one-to-one replacement of equipment and supplies used up or destroyed, as permitted by the Paris Agreement. In fact, with the $700 million appropriation available in the current fiscal year, we have been able to provide no new tanks, airplanes, trucks, artillery pieces, or other major equipment, but only essential consumable items such as ammunition, gasoline, spare parts, and medical supplies. And in the face of the increased North Vietnamese pressure of recent months, these supplies have not kept pace with minimally essential expenditure. Stockpiles have been drawn down and will soon reach dangerously low levels.

Last year, some believed that Cutting back our military assistance to the South Vietnamese Government would induce negotiations for a political settlement. Instead, the opposite has happened. North Vietnam is refusing negotiations and is increasing its military pressure.

I am gravely concerned about this situation. I am concerned because it poses a serious threat to the chances for political stability in Southeast Asia and to the progress that has been made in removing Vietnam as a major issue of contention between the great powers.

I am also concerned because what happens in Vietnam can affect the rest of the world. It cannot be in the interests of the United States to let other nations believe that we are prepared to look the other way when agreements that have been painstakingly negotiated are contemptuously violated. It cannot be in our interest to cause our friends all over the world to wonder whether we will support them if they comply with agreements that others violate.

Ford requested a modest increase in financial aid. Congress refused. Here’s a bit more background:

In the fall of 1974, Nixon resigned under the pressure of the Watergate scandal and was succeeded by Gerald Ford. Congress cut funding to South Vietnam for the upcoming fiscal year from a proposed 1.26 billion to 700 million dollars. These two events prompted Hanoi to make an all-out effort to conquer the South. As the North Vietnamese Communist Party Secretary Le Duan observed in December 1974: “The Americans have withdrawn”¦this is what marks the opportune moment.”

The NVA drew up a two-year plan for the “liberation” of South Vietnam. Owing to South Vietnam’s weakened state, this would only take fifty-five days. The drastic reduction of American aid to South Vietnam caused a sharp decline in morale, as well as an increase in governmental corruption and a crackdown on domestic political dissent. The South Vietnamese army was severely under-funded, greatly outnumbered, and lacked the support of the American allies with whom they were accustomed to fighting.

The NVA began its final assault in March of 1975 in the Central Highlands…

…Thieu angrily blamed the US for his decision, saying, “If [the U.S.] grant full aid we will hold the whole country, but if they only give half of it, we will only hold half of the country.” His decision to retreat increased internal opposition toward him and spurred a chaotic mass exodus of civilians and soldiers that clogged the dilapidated roads to the coast. So many refugees died along the way that the migration along Highway 7B was alternatively described by journalists as the “convoy of tears” and the “convoy of death.” On April 21, President Thieu resigned in a bitter televised speech in which he strongly denounced the United States. Sensing that South Vietnam was on the verge of collapse, the NVA accelerated its attack and reached Saigon on April 23.

A bit more here:

Congress places a $1 billion ceiling on military aid to South Vietnam for fiscal year 1974. This figure was trimmed further to $700 million by August 11. Military aid to South Vietnam in fiscal year 1973 was $2.8 billion; in 1975 it would be cut to $300 million. Once aid was cut, it took the North Vietnamese only 55 days to defeat the South Vietnamese forces when they launched their final offensive in 1975.

To summarize once again: our initial involvement in Vietnam was fairly small and part of our general Cold War strategy. and not especially controversial or partisan. Escalation began under the Democrats and reached enormous proportions under the Democrats. There was a strong political backlash and a Republican administration, with a hugely Democratic Congress, orchestrated the removal of our ground troops. Then the Democratic Congress pulled the financial rug out from under the South Vietnamese over the objections of the (unelected) Republican president, and enabled the final takeover by the North.

I think that a great deal of what has happened since the Vietnam years is a reaction to Vietnam. The Democrats are still reeling from their own initial role in the increase of our involvement there from minor to major. Everything else—including our financial withdrawal from South Vietnam in the 70s, and the Democrats’ current position on Iraq—is part of that Democratic backlash. Their steady movement to the left has occurred ever since Vietnam as well, caused not just by Vietnam but by multiple factors.

[ADDENDUM: In the comments section, several people have mentioned Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the war. For those of you interested in learning the more complete story of Cronkite and Tet and the war, please read this and this.]

Judge dismisses Palin defamation lawsuit against Times

The New Neo Posted on by

Sarah Palin’s defamation suit against the NY Times has been thrown out of court:

This is a case where the NY Times Editorial author James Bennet claimed to be so ignorant, so uninterested in doing any research, and so oblivious to his surroundings, that his ignorance turned into legal bliss.

[From the Opinion]:

Nowhere is political journalism so free, so robust, or perhaps so rowdy as in the United States. In the exercise of that freedom, mistakes will be made, some of which will be hurtful to others. Responsible journals will promptly correct their errors; others will not. But if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited to those cases where the public figure has a plausible factual basis for complaining that the mistake was made maliciously, that is, with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard of its falsity…

We come back to the basics. What we have here is an editorial, written and rewritten rapidly in order to voice an opinion on an immediate event of importance, in which are included a few factual inaccuracies somewhat pertaining to Mrs. Palin that are very rapidly corrected. Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not.

The key legal standard here is the definition of “reckless disregard” of a statement’s falsity. I’ve skimmed the entire Opinion, and it seems to rest on that element alone. Continue reading →

Stilettogate

The New Neo Posted on by

Just to prove how trivial the Twitter conversation can be, we have Stilettogate over this fashion choice of Melania Trump’s on the way to board a plane to view the floods of Texas:

Personally, I’m in extreme awe that Melania can walk in them at all, even on dry land.

But, unfortunately for the liberal/leftist wags of Twitter, Stilettogate’s scandals turned into the much more humdrum Sneakergate when Melania did the unthinkable and actually (gasp!) changed her shoes on the airplane:

That is one good-looking lady, by the way. If I were to wear that outfit, I sure wouldn’t look like that.

But the Melania critics of Twitter hardly missed a beat. Next it was her hat that upset them:

If you care to spend time reading any more about it, you can take a look at this piece by the sniffingly disdainful Robin Givhan in the WaPo. Givhan’s niche is the intersection of fashion and culture and politics, and she sees Melania is an empty artifact full of shoes and frocks, signifying nothing [emphasis mine]:

Melania Trump is the kind of woman who travels to a flood-ravaged state in a pair of black snakeskin stilettos. Heels this high are not practical. But Trump is not the kind of woman who has to be practical…

…[S]ometimes pretense is everything. It’s the reason for the first lady to go to Texas at all: to symbolize care and concern and camaraderie. To remind people that the government isn’t merely doing its job, that the government is engaged with each and every individual. Washington hears its citizens. That’s what the optics are all about…

And for her trip to Texas, the first lady offered up a fashion moment instead of an expression of empathy.

Observers were baffled by her shoes in particular. Those shoes. Those shoes. Good Lord, those shoes…Heading off to Texas, she looked dressed to view a natural disaster from a distance, from on high, not up close. Her ensemble implied that people’s personal stories would be ferried to her after they had been vetted and tidied up. There was no suggestion that Trump would be flat-footed in the muck, hearing their truth in messy, tearful open-ended confusion.

By the time Trump landed in Texas she had changed. She was still wearing black trousers, but they were paired with a white shirt and sneakers. She still had her sunglasses, but her hair was pulled into a ponytail. She also was wearing a black baseball cap that said “FLOTUS” in white letters. The cap was like a hedge against her blending into the crowd. A defense against any possibility that for just a split second she might seem regular. She is not like you, or you, or you, it says. She is the first lady.

I don’t know about you, but that article kinda makes me want to barf. I like to analyze and nitpick with the best of them (or the worst of them), but to me this just expresses cattiness and emptiness on the part of the writer, not on Melania’s part.

And in regard to the portion I’ve bolded, how on earth does Givhan suppose that Melania Trump could have offered up “an expression of empathy” through her clothing while walking towards an airplane? Perhaps wearing something of this nature would have been sufficient?

Would Givhan have preferred that Melania also give a speech as she stepped onto the tarmac? Does Givhan think that empathy and fashion are mutually exclusive? Did it not ever occur to Givhan that Melania might get into something more comfortable while on the airplane (she’s changed on airplanes before, by the way, and since even I know that, I’d expect the fashion editor Givhan to know it)? Does she think that Melania will go mum once in Texas and fail to express empathy through her words and interactions with victims or officials? Does she think that Melania might indeed conjure up some empathy later in the visit, but that her stilettos (and hat) have canceled out any empathy she might show during her time there, and branded it preemptively as false?

Harvey and anthropogenic climate change

The New Neo Posted on by

AGW is the gift that keeps on giving. Its supposed effects are protean enough that almost anything can be blamed on it. Both its adherents and its critics are often tremendously fervent, and I’m not going to go into that argument right now.

But when a scientist says that any particular weather event (such as Harvey) is caused or worsened by global warning, beware. Because each weather event is a single data point that cannot be pinned on a theory such as AGW, even if AGW is true in a more general sense.

In other words, scientists know that weather and climate are different. The former gets our temporary attention (and can be exploited for political purposes), but it’s the latter that has more impact in the end.

I would be highly suspicious of any scientist who tries to talk about Harvey and relate that particular storm to climate change in general. That sort of talk is basically propaganda, but of course that doesn’t mean we’re not going to hear it even from some scientists. So of course you’re going to get this sort of article at Politico, entitled “Harvey Is What Climate Change Looks Like: It’s time to open our eyes and prepare for the world that’s coming”:

Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast. Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167 percent increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours. Climate scientist Kevin Trenberth thinks that as much as 30 percent of the rainfall from Harvey is attributable to human-caused global warming. That means Harvey is a storm decades in the making.

While Harvey’s rains are unique in U.S. history, heavy rainstorms are increasing in frequency and intensity worldwide. One recent study showed that by mid-century, up to 450 million people worldwide will be exposed to a doubling of flood frequency. This isn’t just a Houston problem. This is happening all over.

Sounds convincing, right? But wait a minute:

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann said Sunday that, while global warming didn’t cause Hurricane Harvey, it surely “worsened” the effects of the storm through higher sea levels and increased atmospheric moisture.

Mann’s explanation, however, goes against the prevailing evidence of global warming’s measured impacts on storms. Many climate scientists have been careful not to tie individual weather events to manmade warming.

“I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear people blaming Harvey on global warming,” climate scientist Judith Curry wrote in a recent blog post. “How unusual was Harvey? Well, it will definitely be in the record books for ending the 12 year drought of major hurricanes striking the U.S.”

“Anyone blaming Harvey on global warming doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Curry wrote.

What’s a poor layperson to do?

This poor layperson has been very impressed by the writings of Curry, as I previously mentioned. She’s my basic go-to person on the subject, one of the very few who doesn’t seem to have an agenda but who goes wherever her devotion to facts and truth might lead her. Here’s an example of something she wrote a couple of weeks ago:

Sea level rise is the central issue for both cases. Jim Hansen states:

A reasonably stable seashore, our nation’s Founders would agree, is an asset that should not be stolen from young people.

Well, good luck with that one. Sea level has been overall rising since the last ice age, with some ups and downs. Sea level has been rising for the past 200 years. The rate of sea level rise during the period ~1925-1960 is as large as the rate of sea level rise the past few decades. Human emissions of CO2 became large after 1950; humans don’t seem to be to blame for the early 20th century sea level rise, nor for the sea level rise in the 19th and late 18th centuries. Humans are not going to stop sea level rise on the time scale of a few centuries by ceasing emissions of CO2…

We need to learn to live with continuing and possibly accelerating sea level rise. The solutions lie in land use policy and engineering/technology.

If you want to read more of Curry’s sensible approach to the question, read the whole thing and follow the links there. I also suggest regular visits to her blog.

Trump is America’s Netanyahu…

The New Neo Posted on by

…says Caroline Glick.

Or perhaps Netanyahu is Israel’s Trump.

I happen to think a lot more of Netanyahu than of Trump. Netanyahu has a history of physical and mental courage in a lengthy military career, as well as a great deal more political experience than Trump. But I think the points Glick makes are good ones, and food for thought.

An excerpt:

Netanyahu has never enjoyed a day in office when Israel’s unelected elites weren’t at war with him.

From a comparative perspective, Netanyahu’s experiences in his first term in office, from 1996 until 1999, are most similar to Trump’s current position. His 1996 victory over incumbent prime minister Shimon Peres shocked the political class no less than the American political class was stunned by Trump’s victory. And this makes sense. The historical context of Israel’s 1996 election and the US elections last year were strikingly similar.

In 1992, Israel’s elites, the doves who controlled all aspects of the governing apparatuses, including the security services, universities, government bureaucracies, state prosecution, Supreme Court, media and entertainment industry, were seized with collective euphoria when the Labor Party under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won Israel’s Left its first clear-cut political victory since 1974. Rabin and Peres proceeded to form the most dovish governing coalition in Israel’s history…

The 1996 election was the first opportunity the public had to vote on the Oslo process. Then, in spite of Rabin’s assassination and the beautiful ceremonies on the White House lawns with balloons and children holding flowers, the people of Israel said no thank you. We are Zionists, not post-Zionists. We don’t like to get blown to smithereens on buses, and we don’t appreciate being told that victims of terrorism are victims of peace…

n 1996, the Israeli elite greeted Netanyahu’s victory with shock and grief. The “good, enlightened” Israel they thought would rule forever had just been defeated by the unwashed mob. Peres summed up the results by telling reporters that “the Israelis” voted for him. And “the Jews” voted for Netanyahu. His followers shook their heads in mildly antisemitic disgust.

Their mourning quickly was replaced by a spasm of hatred for Netanyahu and his supporters that hasn’t disappeared even now, 21 years later.

Please read the whole thing.

Houston…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in trouble:

There is no indication the water will stop rising anytime soon. Swollen rivers in east Texas aren’t expected to crest until later this week, and federal officials are already predicting the deadly Tropical Storm Harvey will drive 30,000 people into shelters and spur 450,000 victims to seek some sort of disaster assistance.
And yet, forecasters say, more rain is coming. Lots more.

The death toll so far is reported to be seven. Each death is tragic, but that’s relatively low for a disaster of such magnitude, and it could rise as time goes on. I haven’t written about this story so far, but it’s a big one:

The average annual rainfall in Houston is 50 inches. The city has seen 25 inches of rain in two days. Another 25 could fall by Saturday.

That’s shocking.

Here are some dramatic photos. And here’s a piece on the mechanism of flooding in cities:

Under normal circumstances, rain or snowfall soaks back into the earth after falling. It gets absorbed by grasslands, by parks, by residential lawns, by anywhere the soil is exposed. Two factors can impede that absorption. One is large quantities of rain in a short period of time. The ground becomes inundated, and the water spreads out in accordance with the topography. The second is covering over the ground so it cannot soak up water in the first place. And that’s exactly what cities do””they transform the land into developed civilization…

The natural system is very good at accepting rainfall. But when water hits pavement, it creates runoff immediately. That water has to go somewhere. So it flows wherever the grade takes it. To account for that runoff, people engineer systems to move the water away from where it is originally deposited, or to house it in situ, or even to reuse it. This process””the policy, planning, engineering, implementation, and maintenance of urban water systems””is called stormwater management…

Houston poses both a typical and an unusual situation for stormwater management. The city is enormous, stretching out over 600 square miles. It’s an epitome of the urban sprawl characterized by American exurbanism, where available land made development easy at the edges. Unlike New Orleans, Houston is well above sea level, so flooding risk from storm surge inundation is low. Instead, it’s rainfall that poses the biggest threat.

A series of slow-moving rivers, called bayous, provide natural drainage for the area. To account for the certainty of flooding, Houston has built drainage channels, sewers, outfalls, on- and off-road ditches, and detention ponds to hold or move water away from local areas. When they fill, the roadways provide overrun. The dramatic images from Houston that show wide, interstate freeways transformed into rivers look like the cause of the disaster, but they are also its solution, if not an ideal one. This is also why evacuating Houston, a metropolitan area of 6.5 million people, would have been a terrible idea. This is a city run by cars, and sending its residents to sit in gridlock on the thoroughfares and freeways designed to become rivers during flooding would have doomed them to death by water.

Much more at the link.

As commenter “Bill” writes:

…for those of you who pray, please pray for Houston. It is unbelievable here. For myself and my family, we are still for the moment unflooded, but so many friends have lost their houses to the waters and have had to wait for boat rescue, taking just what they can carry.

Never, ever seen anything like this.