Rethinking Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

One aftermath of the Kavanaugh hearings is that quite a few NeverTrumpers on the GOP side have decided Trump’s not so bad after all, and have said so in print. Public declarations of having changed one’s mind about something important and basic are unusual, particularly for well-known pundits.

A mind is a difficult thing to change, indeed. And yet minds do change.

Those who follow this blog probably recall that during the primaries I was not a NeverTrumper, but I was very negative about Trump and would have preferred almost any of the other candidates (almost—I drew the line at Kasich) to have won the primary instead. This was for several reasons: I thought Trump had no political track record, I noted that his previous statements on politics were inconsistent and many were liberal and some were alarming, he had character flaws that were quite obvious, and I felt he was very likely to lose to Hillary Clinton and the prospect of her presidency filled me with dread.

But I always understood Trump’s appeal (for example, see this). And once he became the GOP nominee I always said that if he were to win I’d be happy, very happy, to be proven wrong about how he would perform. Since Trump has become president I feel that I’ve evaluated him fairly and objectively, and most of the time I’ve been pleasantly surprised. In fact, at this point, I’m no longer surprised to be pleasantly surprised when he does things of which I approve (which does not mean I approve of all things he does).

But one group I’ve never seen change their minds about Trump has been the Democratic Party and of course the left. It’s been total opposition and ridicule from the get-go. That’s why this article by Devin Stewart, a self-described Democrat and an adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University and New York University, surprised me.

Here are some excerpts:

Like most Democrats, I reacted to the stunning 2016 election of Donald Trump with a combination of confusion and dread. After all, Hillary Clinton was the favorite and, to Democrats like me, a Trump victory seemed to portend certain economic disaster, nuclear war, and pretty much the end of America as we knew it.

But now nearly two years into his administration, Trump has presided over a “winning streak” that includes a booming economy and stock market, an unemployment level at a nearly 50-year low, two Supreme Court appointments, no new foreign wars or domestic terrorist attacks emanating from abroad, a significant degree of progress on trade relations with Canada and Mexico, a “needed reset” on the China relationship, and the prospect of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Perhaps it is time that even his opponents reconsider Trump…

Trump’s presidency marks a return to realpolitik and great power politics. No one knows what goes on in Trump’s mind or if even he believes he has a strategy. What matters is what Trump does, so this essay looks at his actions, considers the bias of his critics, and seeks a new way to understand his policies. It considers the possibility that Trump has a method to his madness…

Of course, the verdict on Trump’s effort with North Korea is not yet in. But much of the press has not paid sufficient attention to the progress Trump has already made. His approach has secured the remains of some American troops lost during the Korean War, contributed to successful inter-Korean talks, and promised a follow up U.S.-North Korea summit. He is trying an unorthodox approach, but it is too soon to render conclusions about them because we are right in the middle of it. Experiencing the discrepancy between mainstream coverage of North Korea and my own analysis was eye-opening….

Like many Gen-Xers who studied politics or international relations in the 1990s and 2000s, I absorbed this gospel of liberal internationalism almost completely. But Trump’s early successes have already caused me to question those tenets of my education.

The Trump Doctrine takes previous policy assumptions and turns them on their head. Trump’s “America First” approach is a reversion to the idea of realpolitik and great power competition. It is better suited to a moment in which American power is much less dominant. The president takes each state-to-state relationship on its own terms. That’s why he’s often antagonistic with allies and friendly with threatening dictators. The consequences of insulting friendly countries, such as Canada, might be hurt feelings in exchange for better trade terms, while souring relations with an antagonistic one, such as North Korea, could result in serious security threats. He pursues the optimal outcome in a utilitarian sense rather than follow previous rules about diplomatic etiquette.

The entire article is worth reading.

The author appears to still be a Democrat, but he’s clearly an open-minded one who thinks for himself. Writing an article like that is no small act of courage.

Ever wonder what’s happening in Iraq these days?

The New Neo Posted on by

Austin Bay tells you:

After four months of vote recounts and bitter negotiations following May’s indecisive election, in September Iraq’s strife-ridden Council of Representatives voted to form the nucleus of a stable government when its parliamentarians agreed to select Barham Salih as president…

The three main posts are still distributed according to an ethnic-sectarian formula. The largely ceremonial Iraqi presidency has been reserved for a Kurd and Salih is a Kurd. Adel Abdul Mahdi, in the prime minister’s power position, is a Shiite Muslim Arab. The Speaker of the Council of Representatives is Mohammed al-Halbousi, a Sunni Muslim Arab.

All three have flaws and possess complex political backgrounds, but then Iraq is a complex place. Iraqi media regard Salih and Abdul-Mahdi as “consensus” political leaders, meaning they have worked with almost everyone.

When Iraq is relatively quiet, that’s a good thing. It’s been relatively quiet lately, as far as I can tell. Good.

Here’s an article from last March, not long before the election:

Iraq has defeated IS [ISIS] and avoided the wave of Shia-on-Sunni violence that many predicted would follow. The number of civilians killed each month in fighting is a fraction of what it was in 2014. The government in Baghdad saw off a premature Kurdish push for independence last year. Oil production is up and the state has money. The power of foreigners, including Iran and America, has diminished as Iraqi politicians have learnt how to play one off against the others. In six weeks Iraq will hold an election, affirming its status as the only Arab democracy east of Tunisia.

Good.

Thanks to everyone who donated to thenewneo!

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to thank everyone who donated during my recent funding drive. I really cannot express how grateful I am. Every single contribution, small or large, is important to the continuation of this blog. All are deeply appreciated.

Of course, you don’t have to wait for me to ask. You can donate any old time, and there’s also a mechanism for monthly donations. And now that it’s October, don’t forget to use my Amazon portal if you are Amazon shoppers. That’s a big help to me, as well.

It’s my readers who make this blog possible, and also make it rewarding in the personal sense, whether you donate money or not. I don’t think I’d be writing this blog if I didn’t get to read your comments and receive your emails. Yes, getting some money is great, and it helps me to continue on, although so far I certainly haven’t gotten rich on writing this blog. But the interaction is what it’s really about for me.

A friend of mine keeps teasing me about my “seething cranium.” And it’s true that I’ve always had a lot of thoughts swirling around and little outlet for expressing them. My friends not only often disagree, but for the most part they’re not interested in the topics that fascinate me. This blog has given my seething cranium an outlet, and provided a bunch of readers with seething crania of their own. It’s been hard work, but it’s been a pleasure, too.

Greece’s old Jewish city: Salonika

The New Neo Posted on by

Paul Mirengoff of Powerline has written a post about the Greek city of Salonika (also known as Thessalonki) and the fate of its Jews during World War II. It’s a beautiful piece, unusually personal because his father-in-law was a Jew born in Salonika, who was fortunate (or prescient) enough to emigrate to France during the 1920s and to live out WWII in Casablanca, thus surviving the conflagration.

I had heard of Salonika before, in the context of the Holocaust, particularly in the writings of the late great Primo Levi, who encountered the Greeks of Salonika at Auschwitz. Continue reading →

The politics of reporting on left-wing violence against the right

The New Neo Posted on by

Senator Rand Paul has had a rough couple of years of it. He was present but not injured when Steve Scalise was almost murdered on the baseball field by a Republican-hating shooter. And Paul had his very own incident of being beaten quite badly by a neighbor with a political beef.

Both incidents have almost certainly left Paul very aware of the escalating violence on the left, and how verbal threats can lead unhinged people to actual physical attacks. He is also aware of how the MSM covers up the leftist origins of such attackers, and has called them out on it:

“I was there at the ball field when Steven Scalise almost died from a very, very angry violent man who was incited really by rhetoric on the left,” Paul said.

“And this hasn’t been reported enough, when he came on the field with a semi-automatic weapon firing probably close to 200 shots at us, shooting five people and almost killing Steve Scalise, he was yelling ‘this is for healthcare!” Paul said. “He also had a list of conservative legislators, Republicans, in his pocket that he was willing to kill.”

The fact that it “wasn’t reported enough” is no accident. Inconvenient truths about the left are ignored as much as possible. The Scalise shooting has been minimized, but it was extremely serious and the only thing that prevented a massacre was the fact that the shooter was killed by police before he could do more damage. As it was he put a lot of people in the hospital and nearly killed Scalise. From my post:

Hodgkinson [the shooter] was a Sanders supporter and worked on the Sanders campaign, as even Sanders has admitted in the course of his own condemnation of the attack. More importantly, I think, Hodgkinson was member of groups such as one entitled “Terminate the Republican Party” and “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans.”

But much of the media tried to cover that up or at least minimize it, and I bet they succeeded with a lot of people. If the parties had been reversed we’d never hear the end of how the awful right-wing extremist tried to kill virtuous Democrats. But instead, here’s what we got, according the The Federalist‘s Mollie Hemingway:

Progressive Democratic activist James Hodgkinson spent years on social media and in local and national politics focusing on his hatred of Republican politicians. On Wednesday, he went after a group of Republican politicians as they practiced baseball in the early morning, shooting a member of the Republican leadership, two capitol police, a legislative aide, and a lobbyist. Rep. Steve Scalise remains in critical condition.

Hodgkinson’s social media trail and the accounts of neighbors leave no question that the man was politically engaged, aligned with progressives, and upset with Republicans.

Some media coverage of the incident has been fine, if restrained. The media have not chosen to make this shooting a referendum on leftist political violence, on the use of extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theorizing by major mainstream media, on the dangers of the resistance movement. There has been no rush to introspection.

Some media treatment has been disgusting. The New York Times ran an editorial that is dangerously dishonest.

The article then describes how the right was wrongly blamed for the Giffords shooting (including a Sarah Palin PAC) although the Giffords shooter was a paranoid schizophrenic. The contrast with the Scalise shooting is stark. Here’s what the Times wrote. “Disingenuous” would be a euphemism for what this is; it’s an Orwellian lie in which up is down and down is up:

Was this [Scalise] attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear [sic]. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They’re right. Though there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack [sic], liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.

Hemingway goes on to fisk the Times editorial very effectively. But Hemingway is not the audience the Times is addressing, then or now. It doesn’t need to be logical or truthful, it merely needs to be good at writing propaganda and spreading the desired meme, which is, as Hemingway succinctly put it:

…[The Times’] standard is to blame Republicans for violence against Democrats when there is no relationship of any Republican to that violence, and to blame Republicans for violence against Republicans when the perpetrator is a progressive Democratic activist.

But most people are unaware not only of this ploy, but of the fact that it’s not the least bit new. In fact, it was already well-established over fifty years ago with the press response to the JFK assassination.

Kennedy’s assassination was an act of extreme political violence perpetrated against a Democratic but moderate president by a leftist. There is zero doubt that Oswald was a rabid leftist, but some of the media of the time managed to blame the right in an act of journalistic jujutsu that has rarely been equaled. And that blaming continues to this day.

At the time of the Scalise shooting I wrote this post comparing the reaction of the press and the left after Kennedy’s assassination to the left and press reaction to the Scalise shooting. In both cases it was blame the violence of leftists on the “climate of hate” supposedly created by the right. Here’s an article from 2013 by Mark Hemingway (husband of Mollie, by the way) describing how, all these years later, the left is still blaming the right for the act of rabid leftist Oswald.

[NOTE: I have written many times before about the Kennedy assassination and the popularity of conspiracy theories about it, and why they are all bunk. I know that many of my readers disagree, and we’ve had it out many times. If you want to take a look at just a few of these posts of mine and the discussion threads that ensued, please see this, this, and this.

I’m not interested in another go-round of that discussion. But I do want to add that conspiracy theories abound on right and left, but many of them have the effect of clearing the left of responsibility for the act.

I also wrote a post in 2009 that quotes some of the general liberal/leftist rewriting of JFK assassination history in order to exonerate the left and blame the right. Here are some samples:

Exhibit A – Liberal talk radio host Mike Malloy, August 27: …I remember feeling that way in 1963 and in 1968-when [Ted Kennedy’s] two brothers were murdered by the right wing in this country…

Exhibit B – Novelist Lorenzo Carcaterra, September 13:…In the summer months of 1963, the voices of the right were tossing hate bombs at another young President…messages of hate, threats and warnings.

One such warning was for President John F. Kennedy to stay out of Texas.

To stay out of Dallas…

Exhibit C – Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, September 18:…A President was killed the last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this

That being John F. Kennedy, who was gunned down in Dallas, of course…But I’ve been thinking about Dallas in 1963 because I’ve been recalling the history and how that city stood as an outpost for the radical right, which never tried to hide its contempt for the New England Democrat.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose ]

The “new” Democrats: “We kick them”

The New Neo Posted on by

Eric Holder, who used to be the Attorney General of the United States not so long ago, said this recently:

Michelle [Obama] always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.

I guess they’re not planning to run Michelle in 2020, unless she gets with the program. Even Obama seems tame now.

Of does he? Remember this from June of 2008?

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

Obama made the comment in the context of warning donors that the general election campaign against McCain could get ugly. “They’re going to try to scare people. They’re going to try to say that ‘that Obama is a scary guy,’” he said. A supporter yelled out a deep accented “Don’t give in!”

That’s pure Obama. In Obama’s 2008 campaign, when I first began observing him, I noted quite early on that he liked to demonize Republicans by predicting what they would do or say before they ever did or said anything of the sort. For example, he kept predicting they would be racist in their attacks on him. It was a rather sophisticated way to blame the opposition for doing what it hadn’t done, and quite sneaky. But that was Obama.

And the above quote from him was pretty scary, too, and said in the context of saying he wasn’t scary and that the Republicans would be accusing him of being scary. At the time Obama said it, the tone of the rhetoric was noticeably different from the sort of thing we usually heard back then in politics.

It’s not so different from what we commonly hear now, though, is it? Obama set the tone, and now his students have exceeded him, and they are falling all over themselves to be the toughest guy (or gal) on the block. Of course, they blame Trump and his tough talk. But I don’t recall him using violent images, except for talking about punching out protesters at his rallies during his campaign, something I condemned at the time and have not changed my opinion about (I haven’t got time to find the original post right now, but it’s there somewhere). I can’t recall Trump talking that way about the Democrats in general, though, although I don’t have total recall of everything the man has ever said.

The truth, though, is that this has been going on from Democrats for at least a decade. Speaking in this more explicitly violent way seems to have been introduced by Obama, as far as I can remember. And lately among the Democrats it’s certainly gotten far more frequent, widespread, and bold.

Words are just words, but they can incite. Lately, the violent words of Democrats have been followed by actions. As Rand Paul recently noted, someone could easily get killed soon. It has almost happened already.

I wrote a post a little while ago mentioning that I keep hearing casual Trump assassination rhetoric among people I know. These people are Democrats, and not formerly especially radical or activist. They’re not about to assassinate Trump themselves, but my guess is that if it were to happen they wouldn’t mind one little bit and might actually applaud.

Workplace segregation of the sexes: this could certainly have been predicted

The New Neo Posted on by

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

Men are trying to protect themselves against false accusations in the workplace and on business trips. They observe that these days the woman doesn’t have to offer much or any evidence of sexual wrongdoing in order to make a “credible” [sic] accusation, and so men are thinking that one way—and perhaps the only way—to protect themselves would be to strictly limit their contacts with women at work.

But I don’t see see how that would succeed in keeping false accusations at bay, although I hear the suggestion often. After all, if an accusation is false it can be false in its entirety, can’t it? A man doesn’t actually have to have been alone with the woman to be falsely accused of making a sexual advance, although it helps. So I suppose it might reduce the chances of being falsely accused. But if a woman is willing to make up the story of a sexual assault or harrassment, why wouldn’t she be willing to make up the part of it that indicates the two people were once alone? And if she isn’t asked to offer proof of the assault, why would she be asked to offer proof that they were once alone?

If it’s the stupid and dangerous mantra “believe the women,” it’s “believe the women” all the way, isn’t it?

Gentleman Lindsey

The New Neo Posted on by

This sort of thing is why Lindsey Graham felt so betrayed at the Kavanaugh attacks. It’s Graham’s statement in 2010, explaining his vote for Elana Kagan:

We lost. President Obama won. I’ve got a lot of opportunity to disagree, but the Constitution, in my view, puts an obligation on me not to replace my judgment for his, not to think of the hundred reasons I would pick someone different… I view my duty as to protect the Judiciary and to ensure that hard-fought elections have meaning in our system. I’m going to vote for her [Kagan] because I believe this election has consequences. And this president chose someone who is qualified to serve on this court and understands the difference between being a liberal judge and a politician. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a hard decision… She would not have been someone I would have chosen, but the person who did choose, President Obama, chose wisely.

If you read the article the quote comes from, you’ll find an ironic statement, this time from Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois:

Graham’s comments spurred Democratic Whip Dick Durbin to call him an “extraordinary senator” who had prompted Durbin to rethink some of his previous votes against conservative nominees.

I guess Durbin didn’t recall it during the Kavanaugh hearings. But I bet he was shocked when the previously mild-mannered Graham unloaded on the Democrats of the committee.

I recently came across a video interview of Graham taken back in the summer of 2015, when he was running for president. Here’s a passage I found very moving; I hadn’t known this about Graham’s history, and it tells you a great deal about him (I cued it up for the part I’m referring to, but for some reason it autoplays again after that, and although I’ve tried and tried to turn off the autoplay it hasn’t worked, so you need to stop it yourself after it’s gotten to the cutoff at 6:05):

Graham was orphaned at 22 and his younger sister was 13. He adopted her.

Pushback

The New Neo Posted on by

There are quite a few interesting things about this incident.

The first is that there are still Republican students and a Republican Club at Stanford these days.

The second is that involves a male college student filing assault charges against a female one, for pushing him in the chest during a political discussion.

The third—and to me the most surprising thing of all about it, by far—is that the male student, president of Stanford College Republicans, is apparently Susan Rice’s son.

As far as number one goes, I’m surprised mostly by the fact that Republican students are brave enough to come out into the open and reveal themselves, in the current university climate.

As far as number two goes, of course females sometimes assault males. But there’s a stigma against a male filing charges unless the assault leaves visible injuries. Even then, a great many men would just keep quiet about having been assaulted. Women are used to having their pushes and shoves and hits ignored as being of little consequence, because of their lesser physical strength. Of course, a woman can do great damage and even kill when armed with any sort of weapon. But even with just her hands, an assault is an assault is an assault and women should get used to the fact that if they assault a person it ought to be treated exactly the same as it a man had done it.

As for number 3, I think the reason for my surprise is probably obvious. I would love to hear the story of how John Rice-Cameron came to be a Republican, and an activist Republican at that.

NOTE: I had no sooner written the above post, and its last line, when it occurred to me that I could easily look it up. And here’s the answer to my question:

John David Rice-Cameron can trace his conservative roots to his middle school years. Back then, his father would often have talk radio on during rides home from school or tennis practice.

“Sometimes my dad would listen to Rush Limbaugh and he would kind of argue with him,” recalls Rice-Cameron, 20, a sophomore at Stanford University. “I just found myself agreeing with basically everything Rush Limbaugh was saying.”…

… despite his parents’ political leanings, “they believe extensively in debate and engaging the other side and exposing people to different viewpoints,” he said.

Well, good for them.