Home again!

The New Neo Posted on by

I returned home from Italy late last night.

So what’s on tap for today? Unpacking, laundry, grocery store, blog. Staying inside most of the day is made easier by the fact that the “real feel” weather report is that although it’s “only” in the high 80s at the moment, the “real feel” is 100 humid degrees (that’s once I readjusted the settings, because my computer still seems to want to give me the temps in Centigrade).

My nonstop flight from Rome to Boston on Alitalia was smooth and completely on time, as my flight out to Italy had been. And they even served food, some sort of thing they called lasagna but which consisted mostly of noodles, but was pretty tasty. They also gave us a snack that looked promisingly like it might be an apple turnover. But it turned out to be the worst imitation of a calzone I’ve ever bitten into, made of a WonderBreaddish sealed wrapper surrounding a dollop of tomato sauce that tasted like ketchup.

I can’t complain too much about a flight that gets me (and my luggage) there on time and in one piece, which is by far the most important thing. But the seats had the least leg-and-arm-room of any plane I’ve been on in my life. And I’m a small person; I have no idea how bigger people do it. With the person in front of me reclining somewhat, getting out of my seat to walk around or visit the bathroom was nearly impossible without formidable gymnastics—and I was on the aisle.

Another peculiarity was that towards the back of the plane, in the middle section (the one with four seats across), there was a curtained enclosure that was roughly rectangular in shape. Thick beige curtains hung on all four sides so that it could not be seen into, and I kept forgetting to ask what it was when the harried flight attendents came briefly by. Speculation included a dead body in a coffin, but apparently they get transported in the cargo hold, so it’s a mystery to me. Any pilots out there who might know?

I’ll say more about my Italy sojourn later. For now, though, I’ll just state that I’m very happy to be home. It reminds me of one of those lightish poems they made us memorize in grade school, like this one which has stuck with me like some sort of patriotic glue. Looking up the full version of the poem at that link, I realize that our teacher spared us by leaving out the last two verses. So I’ll just copy the ones I know, and note that this poem would never, never ever, be assigned to memorize today in a New York City public school:

“AMERICA FOR ME”

‘TIS fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,—
But now I think I’ve had enough of antiquated things.

So it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!

Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home…

Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
To the bléssed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars

And that’s pretty much the way I felt on returning home. Italy was lovely, the people welcoming, the terrain beautiful, the art and architecture glorious, but it seemed expansive and relaxing to get back home.

[NOTE: By the way, looking up the author of that piece of verse, I see that Henry Van Dyke—who was also a Presbyterian minister and Princeton professor of English literature—was rather prolific as a writer of popular poetry and some stories. He also penned the lyrics to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”: “Joyful joyful we adore thee.”]

The Italian war on banisters

The New Neo Posted on by

Italy has a lot of hills and a lot of old buildings built on a grand scale, and it has a great many staircases both inside and outside.

Many of the staircases have old steps that slope downwards, made of slippery material like marble or stone worn smooth. In addition, the depth of the steps is often rather shallow, without enough room for the feet.

Uphill is tiring, and it would be nice to have a banister at times. Downhill is both tiring and somewhat frightening without same banister. And yet Italy is very very banister-challenged.

I don’t know why it’s so, but it’s so. Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

What’s going on with Pope Francis and the sex abuse scandals?

The New Neo Posted on by

I certainly don’t know—even though yesterday I visited the Vatican and did the tour thing. Nary a word was said about the current crisis facing the Pope. It was silence in the Sistine Chapel all the way.

One thing about visiting the Vatican, though, is that it underscores the long history of the Church as well as the tremendous riches it possesses, both in money and art. That place is big, and parts of it reminded me of some strange combination of the Roman Empire and royalty. The influence of the Church has been mighty across time, and it’s still quite large although nothing like it was in the past.

On the current Pope, from a piece by Steven Hayward at Powerline:

Among the reasons I decided against becoming a Catholic is my worry that someday we might get a Pope like . . . Pope Francis. I loved John Paul II and Benedict XVI, but feared that what has come to pass would come to pass. It is bad enough that Francis is a left-wing liberation theologue (liberation theology being merely Marxism with salsa), but there is credible testimony that he has covered up for pedophile priests, bishops, and cardinals…

…We know from many previous proven cases that pedophilia among Catholic clerics took place, and that the Church hierarchy covered it up, stonewalled, and in some cases attempted to declare bankruptcy to avoid civil damage judgments (unsuccessfully in most cases). It should also be noted that sex abuse cases have occurred in Protestant denominations. I know that the Mormon Church has quietly settled a number of sex abuse cases, and cases involving the Boy Scouts continue through the courts, but these cases haven’t received any commensurate media coverage because the media hate the Catholic Church (also the Boy Scouts), which makes their troubles a big story.

In fact, some time in the past I remember reading an article (can’t find the exact piece right now, but this one mentions similar statistics) that stated that other clergy abuse children and/or teenagers with about the same frequency as Catholic priests. So what? All clergy have a higher responsibility than the normal run of people, and we have (or used to have) higher expectations for them, and the Church as an institution has a heavy responsibility too. And some recent allegations regarding a ring of child-abusing priests in Pennsylvania (see this) are shocking on a larger scale than usual.

So, what’s going on with Pope Francis? The story is a convoluted one; please read Hayward’s post as well as this one. The summary version is that there is evidence that Pope Francis protected a particular cleric accused of abusing young seminarians in the Catholic Church. Some of this is based on the following (from Hayward’s article):

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò of Ulpiana (a diocese in the Balkans) has released his full testimony about the matter here, in which he declares that “the [sex abuse cover up] corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy”—meaning Pope Francis himself.

Vigano’s testimony is quite an extraordinary document; here’s an excerpt:

To restore the beauty of holiness to the face of the Bride of Christ, which is terribly disfigured by so many abominable crimes, and if we truly want to free the Church from the fetid swamp into which she has fallen, we must have the courage to tear down the culture of secrecy and publicly confess the truths we have kept hidden. We must tear down the conspiracy of silence with which bishops and priests have protected themselves at the expense of their faithful, a conspiracy of silence that in the eyes of the world risks making the Church look like a sect, a conspiracy of silence not so dissimilar from the one that prevails in the mafia.

Vigano tries to explain his own silence till now this way

I had always believed and hoped that the hierarchy of the Church could find within itself the spiritual resources and strength to tell the whole truth, to amend and to renew itself. That is why, even though I had repeatedly been asked to do so, I always avoided making statements to the media, even when it would have been my right to do so, in order to defend myself against the calumnies published about me, even by high-ranking prelates of the Roman Curia. But now that the corruption has reached the very top of the Church’s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths…

It is incendiary stuff.

Vigano’s statement “I had always believed and hoped that the hierarchy of the Church could find within itself the spiritual resources and strength…to amend and to renew itself” strangely parallels the reaction of many in the Church hierarchy towards the offending priests themselves—the idea that spiritual healing and renewal would occur. Many years ago, however, it became clear this wasn’t the way it happens for sex offenders. The overriding motivation of the higher-ups and the coverup seems to have been the desire to protect the Church itself from scandal.

That certainly didn’t work.

And Pope Francis’ response to Vigano? Silence:

The pope refused to address these allegations on Sunday, telling reporters, “I will not say a word about this.” One of his prominent allies in the United States, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, questioned the veracity of several of Viganò’s claims in a statement. And the pope’s defenders have characterized the letter as a smear against Francis, in part because of Viganò’s past clashes with the pope.

Vigano is conservative; the Pope is not, and they have a history of conflict. That is part of the background to this sordid mess.

US and Mexico trade: this deal could be a big, big deal

The New Neo Posted on by

More work to be done, but this is promising:

But the deal left open the question of whether Canada, the third country in NAFTA, would agree to the changes — and Trump himself said he wanted to throw out the name NAFTA altogether.

“They used to call it NAFTA,” Trump said. “We’re going to call it the United States-Mexico trade agreement. We’re going to get rid of NAFTA because it has a bad connotation.”

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the agreement was “absolutely terrific” and would modernize a trade deal that had “gotten seriously out of whack.” He said he hoped Congress would approve it with broad bipartisan support.

Does Congress do anything with bipartisan support anymore?

And if this really is successful, will any of Trump’s critics give him credit?

When in Rome

The New Neo Posted on by

I was only in Rome one time before, as a fifteen-year-old traveling on a teen tour that was of the budget variety (we stayed in dorms and hostels, and ate in weird cafeterias), and I guess that coin in Trevi fountain worked because here I am again with considerably more years on me and sleeping in better beds.

But Rome was my favorite place in Italy at the time, and you know what? I still like it a lot. It’s a really big city but doesn’t feel overwhelming, and the presence of all those ruins lends it a special feeling that makes it easy to understand why it’s called The Eternal City. Plus, the absence of skyscrapers lends harmony and tradition to the landscape.

I was looking forward to the food in Italy, but so far it’s been more monotonous than expected. I love pasta and pizza, but there’s only so much pasta and pizza one can eat—and cheese and cold cuts. And yes, I’ve had other dishes, but they’re pretty plain and although fairly tasty, nothing special.

I see almost no variety in the menus no matter where I go. Even the wonderful and ubiquitous gelato—my favorite flavor is hazelnut—loses some of its punch after a while. But if that’s my worst complaint about the food, I’ll not ask you to weep for me.

The heat, on the other hand, is no fun. So, you might ask, why Rome in August, you big dummy? Well, remember that I’m only in Italy in August because of a family event in Tuscany—one of those destination affairs—and I decided to stay in Rome a couple of days before leaving because hey, how can you pass through Rome without stopping and looking around a bit?

Back in the 60s when I was last here it was in August, too, but the heat didn’t get to me as much, and the crowds were almost non-existent. I recall our bus pulling up to the Colosseum, for example, and our little group (which wasn’t so little; there were 200 of us with only two adults—a budget tour, as I said) got out and walked around with almost no one else in sight. Lines? Don’t remember any. Street hawkers of selfie sticks, scarfs with the Colosseum on them, and little laser-lighted thingumbobs? Nary a one to be seen back then, although now you have to run the gauntlet to get anywhere.

But there’s something really really pleasant about it. Maybe it’s the Italian people, who seem genuinely friendly and patient with people like me whose only words of Italian are “grazie” and a few greetings. The natives seem to recognize me as an American even before I open my mouth, which is a bit odd since I happen to look Italian (at least people in the states often think I’m Italian).

I was once told by someone that Americans can be distinguished from others not so much by their clothes—there seems to be an international style (or lack thereof) these days, although most young Italian women are a great deal more chic than I—but by their walk. This person said that Americans walk more boldly, with a sort of stride.

Maybe.

My cab driver asked me what I thought of Trump. My answer was careful; I said I probably like him better than a lot of people who ride in your cab. Trump enters conversation, even here.

#MeToo and the lesbian feminist lit prof

The New Neo Posted on by

From The New Yorker:

Ronell, who is sixty-six, is a literary scholar and philosopher at New York University and, by all accounts, one of the great academic minds of our time. Her accuser is Nimrod Reitman, her former doctoral student, who is thirty-two years her junior. Their relationship, as documented in numerous e-mails, was the subject of an eleven-month university investigation…

The case first came to public attention because of a letter dated May 11th, signed by fifty-one prominent academics, many of them feminist scholars—or, rather, what came to public attention was the draft of a letter, leaked through a philosophy blog. It was a terrible letter…It was based not just on flawed information but on practically no information at all: the university’s investigation of Ronell’s alleged abuse of Reitman was entirely confidential…The letter was designed to impress the university administrators to whom it was addressed, so its arguments stressed Ronell’s fame and influence and focussed on the potential loss to N.Y.U.’s reputation if she were fired. The letter could be read as a cynical project that betrayed not just the ideas that many of the signatories have worked on—ideas that challenge entrenched systems of power—but their very intelligence.

Hypocrisy and stupidity among scholars, among literary scholars, among feminist literary scholars—who woulda thunk it?

On reading the article, I have to say that this may be a case of two bad actors exploiting each other. But it seems clear to me that, as the professor in the equation, it was Ronell who had the much greater burden of responsibility, although both are adults (at least, by their number ages, if not by degree of maturity).

These murky professor-student relationships have long been a staple of academia and were winked at until quite recently. The nature of human beings is such that they will almost undoubtedly continue. It was inevitable that a case would emerge in which the usual PC considerations of “women tell the truth” and “believe the victims” will clash terribly and embarrassingly, and that the #MeToo movement’s answers would be inadequate.

Much of the last part of the article seems to indicate that people on the left and in academia may be belatedly discovering the importance of due process in such cases to protect the accused, who may in fact be innocent. Will wonders never cease?

On the importance of governorships

The New Neo Posted on by

[See ADDENDUM below.]

Think about this for a moment:

With John McCain’s death, the governor of Arizona gets to appoint his successor to the US Senate. The timing of McCain’s death is such that this person will get to serve in the Senate until after the 2020 election.

Right now the composition of the Senate is very close; at the moment it’s 50 Republicans, 47 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats, and one vacancy (McCain’s seat). VP Pence can break ties, but this is way too close for comfort.

What if the governor of Arizona happened to be a Democrat? You better believe a Democrat would be appointed, and the balance would become exactly even, with Pence needing to be called in constantly. Any defections from the GOP, even of one senator, would gum up the works.

That would mean that all of Trump’s federal judicial appointments would be in jeopardy.

That’s a governor’s potential power on the federal level.

ADDENDUM:

It turns out that in Arizona, the governor must appoint a successor of the same party as the deceased. That doesn’t mean, of course, that a governor can’t appoint a much more moderate member of that party—for example, in this case, there are plenty of Republicans out to thwart Trump’s agenda, and if the governor of Arizona wanted to do so, he could appoint one of them.

But Arizona is somewhat unusual. Most states have no such restrictions on the party of the appointee. See this for a more detailed explanation.

RIP John McCain

The New Neo Posted on by

John McCain has died of brain cancer.

He was a man who lived many lives, and lived them fully. He started out as the son and grandson of four-star admirals, went to the Naval Academy, and was a rebellious young man who was apparently a lot of fun to be around:

He was a friend and informal leader there for many of his classmates, and sometimes stood up for targets of bullying. He also became a lightweight boxer. McCain did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects that gave him difficulty, such as mathematics. He came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel and did not always obey the rules, which contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899), despite a high IQ.

Later he spent torturous years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. You can read the full story in many places, but this is from his Wiki page:

McCain fractured both arms and a leg when he ejected from the aircraft, and nearly drowned after he parachuted into Trúc Bach Lake. Some North Vietnamese pulled him ashore, then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him. McCain was then transported to Hanoi’s main Hoa Lò Prison, nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton”.

Although McCain was seriously wounded and injured, his captors refused to treat him. They beat and interrogated him to get information, and he was given medical care only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was an admiral….

Beginning in August 1968, McCain was subjected to a program of severe torture. He was bound and beaten every two hours; this punishment occurred at the same time that he was suffering from dysentery. Further injuries brought McCain to “the point of suicide,” but his preparations were interrupted by guards. Eventually, McCain made an anti-U.S. propaganda “confession”. He had always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he later wrote, “I had learned what we all learned over there: every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.” Many U.S. POWs were tortured and maltreated in order to extract “confessions” and propaganda statements; virtually all of them eventually yielded something to their captors. McCain received two to three beatings weekly because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements

There’s much more to the story, but suffice to say it was a formative experience. When he returned to the states after five and a half years in captivity, he proceeded to become a US congressman, then senator, and then the nominee of the GOP in 2008, losing to Barack Obama.

A lot of people on the right hated McCain for his lack of conservatism, his “reaching across the aisle,” and his loss in 2008. I would have liked him to have been more conservative in his politics, but I always admired him for his courage as a young man, and thought he had a lot of zest for life and a legendary sense of humor. I voted for him in 2008, and was disappointed in his loss.

RIP, John McCain.

Free climbers [Part II]

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I here.]

I have come to conceptualize many of the people who are drawn most powerfully (and obsessively) to these extreme activities this way: they don’t want to live without them. And for some of the most extreme practitioners, engaging in these things is the only time they feel alive—during the activity and preparing for it both mentally and physically. Ordinary life holds no special charms for them (or for some, perhaps no charms at all). For such people, ordinary life is barely living (that’s why Wallenda said that life is on the wire and the rest is just waiting). So risking their lives is an easy decision to make, because without these activities they don’t really have lives at all.

Why they are this way I don’t know, but I think they are and for them that’s that. So their calculations make sense, and that’s why the deaths of so many friends cause them grief but do not stop them from engaging in the same activities.

Plus, they increase the risks by small increments over time. They get hooked on the activity itself immediately. But as they pursue it and practice it, they get better and better and soon activities that once seemed very risky seem very basic and simple to them and really aren’t all that risky. And all their friends are doing it; do they even have friends that don’t engage in the same activities?

So over time—and I’m talking years, ordinarily—they incrementally increase the risk factor to get the same high (to coin a phrase) and the same feeling of challenge. Along the way they must conquer any feelings of fear that they have, so they have become skilled at conquering fear and then at some point the usual calculations don’t kick in because by then they are so adept at conquering fear. From Potter again:

Potter was joined by a new companion on recent adventures: his miniature Australian cattle dog, Whisper. Bringing along his pet made him realize the danger of his calling, he said.

“It wasn’t until I started having to think through the likelihood of something happening to Whisper that I finally got it,” Potter told the Denver Post last month. “This is really serious stuff that we do.”

Whisper was not with Potter [when he died].

So perhaps Potter had reached the point where he had trouble assimilating the idea of risk for himself. Only for another being—his dog—could he see it.

Potter also wrote the following after a good friend had died base-jumping, indicating again that it was only through perceiving risks to other people that he could see the sport’s true riskiness:

“Though my body is warm inside the nylon suit I start to shiver and wonder if what we’re doing is right,” Potter wrote in the blog. “Wingsuit BASE-jumping feels safe to me but 25 wingsuit-fliers have lost their lives, this year alone. There must be some flaw in our system, a lethal secret beyond my comprehension.”

People who love these sports love the physical and mental challenges, but what appears to drive them is need. It is defined as a need for freedom, a need to pursue what one loves (from a piece about Mario Richard’s death):

Empinotti added that everyone in the BASE jumping community has been to the funerals of friends who succumbed to the risks of the sport. Richard had no illusions about his chosen activity, she said.

“This is your happiness and you have to pursue happiness and we are the kind of people who are not afraid to pursue happiness, though we know that the cost is high ”” if you get hurt then you get hurt badly, or you die,” she said.

“He wasn’t just out there not caring about his life or his life with his wife. You leave this tsunami behind you when you die, so you need to be aware of that, and he was.”

Puzzling that one over, it seems to me that it contains a contradiction. They know that it’s risky. There is not the slightest room for a mistake, and even the best (and Richard was one of the very best) can make mistakes if they jump enough. But the key to the whole thing is “this is your happiness.” Is it really their only happiness? Is there no other way for them to be happy? How do they define happiness? Does ordinary life not hold joy for them? Or is the joy that comes from free-climbing or base-jumping just so much greater that other joys pall, and they will risk everything—again and again and again—to feel that happiness again?

This poem by Yeats is about something quite different: a death in war. And yet I kept thinking of it as I read these articles and contemplated the state of mind that drives people to free-climb and base-jump. It seems to me that the poem expresses that state of mind perfectly [emphasis mine]:

AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES HIS DEATH

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

The Siena experience

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the places I’ve wanted to visit for quite some time is Siena. And yesterday, when I finally got there, I wasn’t disappointed.

One of the nicest things about the city is the fact that its hilltop location can now be reached from parking lots by a series of escalators that make it possible for less-than-tough tourists to get there and begin walking around without having exhausted themselves climbing the hill before they even begin. The inside of the town itself is hilly enough to constitute a workout walking around and seeing the sights, which are considerable.

It was hot, as Tuscany has been the whole time I’ve been here. But it was shady for the most part, and the city that is rightly called “medieval” is astounding. Everywhere you look it seems as though you’ve stepped into a many-centuries’ old set of some sort, except this set is real. And the colors of the buildings (and their interiors) make you understand why the old 64-crayon crayola box had a crayon called “burnt sienna,” a sort of dark terra-cotta.

I’m not especially into medieval art or church art, but it’s impossible to be in Siena and not be in awe of both. Its big cathedral is the sort of place you enter and immediately think “Wow!”—which isn’t very articulate but certainly expresses the overwhelming nature of the ornate and yet never-too-busy harmony of its decorative abundance.

I have never been so fascinated by a floor, and that’s quite a feat considering how much else of beauty there is to see in this cathedral. But the floor, the floor!:

The inlaid marble mosaic floor is one of the most ornate of its kind in Italy, covering the whole floor of the cathedral. This undertaking went on from the 14th to the 16th centuries, and about forty artists made their contribution. The floor consists of 56 panels in different sizes. Most have a rectangular shape, but the later ones in the transept are hexagons or rhombuses. They represent the sibyls, scenes from the Old Testament, allegories and virtues. Most are still in their original state. The earliest scenes were made by a graffito technique: drilling tiny holes and scratching lines in the marble and filling these with bitumen or mineral pitch. In a later stage black, white, green, red and blue marble intarsia were used. This technique of marble inlay also evolved during the years, finally resulting in a vigorous contrast of light and dark, giving it an almost modern, impressionistic composition.

It was all that, and more. In addition (and something I hadn’t realized), I was highly fortunate in that the floor is only uncovered during a couple of months of the year. I happened to have visited during that time:

Siena Duomo floor uncovering 2018 dates: June 27 to July 31, 2018, and then again from August 18 to October 28, 2018.

That site I just linked has a lot more information on the floor.

And the ceilings are no slouch, either. So without further ado, here are a couple of photos I took of floor, ceiling, and in-between, as well as the ceilings of the old hospital building in Siena. It’s probably not like any hospital you’ve ever seen:

Trump talk

The New Neo Posted on by

And by “Trump talk” I don’t mean the chatter of the president. I mean the verbiage of those who talk a great deal about him, and who clearly hate his guts.

I know quite a few such people, although I only experience it when they get together in groups. The phenomenon is something like this:

President Trump is depicted as a monstrous usurper who seeks to destroy American democracy and impose authoritarian rule. John McNeill of Georgetown University awards Trump “26 out of 44 Benitos” on his scale of fascist tendencies, and public figures from Cher to Abraham Foxman have labeled Trump “Hitler.” Leftist documentarian Michael Moore insists that Trump will never give up power peacefully because he believes that his election entitles him to a lifetime office, and so he must be forced out; and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg says that Trump “certainly would really like to” round up people and murder them.

But, as the author of that article I linked and quoted points out, if Trump’s a tyrant he’s a tyrant of a very odd sort:

But if victorious dictators typically wage such campaigns to punish their foes, why is it that Trump’s associates—and not the president’s enemies—are the ones facing life in prison for tax fraud? The same president accused of undermining democracy, of incipient authoritarianism, and of conducting Stalinist purges because he removed a former official’s security clearance complains haplessly on Twitter that he can’t control his own staff, and makes sarcastic, Borscht Belt-style jokes about what a terrible lawyer he has. If, as his critics allege, Trump really aspires to be a ruthless dictator, he isn’t doing a very good job at it.

All too true. But it doesn’t matter to most Trump critics.

And in fact, it doesn’t seem completely unusual these days in liberal circles for people to casually and approvingly discuss assassinating Trump (speaking of tyranny), or at least of wishing him dead. Among people I know, it’s just idle talk—they’re not about to do anything—but the depth of blood rage is stunning, and a topic that should be verboten about any president seems quite acceptable in many groups.

On the Cohen plea

The New Neo Posted on by

I think this comment at Powerline is quite descriptive of the Michael Cohen plea situation:

So the real trick here is pretty simple. Threaten a man with 8 counts that would cost him millions to defend and could send him to prison for decades. Embed within them counts that implicate your true “target”, then accept a plea, which includes pleading guilty to the counts that implicate said target. So doing effectively makes the target appear to be guilty without ever going to trial, which is the real point of the exercise. Then delay sentencing until we see how strong his testimony is against the target…There is something fundamentally wrong with this.

It is a technique akin to that sometimes used to get known gangsters or organized crime figures convicted and put away. The prosecution decides who they want to get, then they nab some underlings and associates—often on technical violations that commonly involve tax evasion—and they throw the book at them to get them to squeal on the real target. “Squeal” must be language I got from some Grade B movie watched in my youth, but that was the sort of thing I recall, and it goes back a long way.

What I’ve never seen is this sort of general technique used by partisans of one party to get the president of the United States, although I’ve seen something like it on a lower level; Ted Stevens comes to mind. In Stevens’ case, the name of the Michael Cohen figure was Bill Allen, who (unlike Cohen) at least was not Stevens’ lawyer. A little tiny memory refresher here [emphasis mine]:

On July 29, 2008, Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts of failing to properly report gifts, a felony, and found guilty at trial three months later (October 27, 2008). The charges relate to renovations to his home and alleged gifts from VECO Corporation, claimed to be worth more than $250,000. The indictment followed a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for possible corruption by Alaskan politicians and was based in part on Stevens’s extensive relationship with Bill Allen. Allen owned racehorses, including a partnership in the stud horse So Long Birdie, which included Stevens and eight others, and which was managed by Bob Persons. The FBI not only had calls between Allen and Stevens, made after Allen became a cooperating witness, but they had thousands of wiretapped conversations involving the phones of both Allen and VECO Vice President Rick Smith. They had also videotaped meetings between Allen and state legislators at VECO’s hotel suite in Juneau, the state capitol. Allen had testified in court that he bribed Ted’s son Ben, the former Alaska Senate president. A former VECO employee said he did campaign fundraising work for Stevens while on VECO’s payroll, a violation of federal law. Allen , then an oil service company executive, had earlier pleaded guilty—with sentencing suspended pending his cooperation in gathering evidence and giving testimony in other trials—to bribing several Alaskan state legislators. Stevens declared, “I’m innocent,” and pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal district court on July 31, 2008. Stevens asserted his right to a speedy trial so that he could have the opportunity to clear his name promptly and requested that the trial be held before the 2008 election.

Stevens was found guilty, and just about everyone in both parties pressured him to resign from the Senate. That was the true goal of the prosecution, I believe—not to necessarily put him in prison, but to create a climate that would ruin him politically. But he lost his election instead.

What happened next was the discovery (initially through a whistleblower) of an enormous degree of prosecutorial misconduct, including the following:

the discovery of a previously undocumented interview with Bill Allen, the prosecution’s star witness, that raised the possibility prosecutors had knowingly allowed Allen to perjure himself on the stand. Allen stated that the fair market value of the repairs to Stevens’s house was around $80,000—far less than the $250,000 he said it cost at trial. More seriously, Allen said in the interview that he didn’t recall talking to Bob Persons, a friend of Stevens, regarding the repair bill for Stevens’s house. This directly contradicted Allen’s testimony at trial, in which he claimed Stevens asked him to give Persons a note Stevens sent him asking for a bill on the repair work. At trial, Allen said Persons had told him the note shouldn’t be taken seriously because “Ted’s just covering his ass.” Even without the notes, Stevens’s attorneys claimed that they thought Allen was lying about the conversation…

Stevens’s attorney, Brendan Sullivan, said that Holder’s decision was forced by “extraordinary evidence of government corruption.” He also claimed that prosecutors not only withheld evidence but “created false testimony that they gave us and actually presented false testimony in the courtroom”—two incidents that would have made it very likely that the convictions would have been overturned on appeal.

On April 7, 2009, federal judge Sullivan formally accepted Holder’s motion to set aside the verdict and throw out the indictment, declaring “There was never a judgment of conviction in this case. The jury’s verdict is being set aside and has no legal effect,” and calling it the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he’d ever seen.

Disgusting. But these revelations came too late for Stevens, who had been narrowly defeated in his re-election bid. So the forces desirous of bringing Stevens down were fully successful, even though their duplicity was later discovered. The full report didn’t come out till 2012, two years after Stevens’ death in an airplane accident. But at least he lived to see some vindication.

I’ve gone into so much detail about the Stevens case because although it’s not a perfect analogy, it’s relevant, and it should anger every single person who reads about it, no matter what political side that person might be on.

The goal with Stevens was to force him to lose his election, resign, or face expulsion from the Senate. The goal with Trump is to get him impeached and even convicted, if possible. I happen to think the first option is very possible if the Democrats win the House, but I doubt conviction would occur in the Senate unless a great many GOP moderates went along, and I don’t quite see that happening.