After disaster: to rebuild or not to rebuild…

The New Neo Posted on by

…whether in Paradise, California, or any other disaster-prone area, that is the question.

Paradise and many other towns in California seem especially vulnerable to fire. But although quite a few fires have raged near Paradise for many decades, it was mostly spared from any major destruction till now.

Beautiful settings call to people. But beautiful settings can be risky, whether the risk be earthquake, fire, or flood (tornadoes are a risk in other areas not necessarily known for special beauty—please forgive me all you midwesterners).

In a place such as Paradise, fire insurance becomes pricier, and a fair number of people there were uninsured for that reason. They will get some FEMA money, but that is very limited and ordinarily not nearly enough to rebuild. We all pay taxes that go to FEMA, and we all might pay increased insurance rates to cover so many payouts to those who are insured. But even though we all have a stake in this, I’m not for limiting people’s ability to live where they want.

You might say that the victims of the fire should sue PG&E, which may or may not be responsible (or at least partially responsible) for the conflagration. But there’s a catch, because no power company can be 100% successful at preventing these events and still provide power to the public. If PG&E had to pay out to all the fire victims, it goes bankrupt or passes the whole thing onto its customers in a huge rate increase. And what would replace it?

This is how California has recently decided to handle it (from this past September, prior to the Paradise fire):

In California, utilities are responsible for fires traced to their equipment whether or not they are complying with regulations. PG&E faces about 200 lawsuits on behalf of 2,700 plaintiffs stemming from last year’s fires.

…This [recently passed bill] would soften that standard by having regulators determine liability based on whether equipment was reasonably maintained and operated. It would also let utilities issue bonds to help pay damages, with a surcharge on ratepayers’ bills helping to cover interest payments.

So, how much is too much risk in a community, and who gets to decide? Does each locality decide for itself whether to limit growth or allow it?

[NOTE: Good news, though—the number of the Paradise missing has fallen to 25.]

The 5 worst things about getting older

The New Neo Posted on by

John Hawkins has a piece at PJ Media entitled “The 5 Worst Things About Getting Older.” It caught my eye for obvious reasons, but as with many such articles I started chuckling right at the start on learning that Hawkins is in his 40s.

Ha! You call that “getting older”? Just you wait, young man, just you wait.

Of course I remember turning 40 and thinking it was a big transition. And it is. And of course it’s getting older—every day we all get older, unless the first name is Peter and the second name is Pan.

But I never really thought of forty as anywhere near getting particularly old. And I suppose that people in their 80s and 90s would think of the age I’ve reached (which will remain specified here, although anyone who follows my blog can kinda figure it out) is not especially old, either. But it’s edging up there even in the objective sense.

My 5 worst things about getting old are somewhat different from Hawkins’, as one might expect. Some are the same, however, and one in particular—loss, which is Hawkins’ #2—looms large. I’ve lost not just parents, but I’ve lost many contemporaries, including some near and dear.

That, I did not expect at this age, and it’s a loss I feel almost constantly. I understand the statistics that dictate this will start to happen and then accelerate until we’ve all shuffled off, not just to Buffalo but off this mortal coil. I get it. But like Edna St. Vincent Millay, I am not resigned, although I know this is the normal way of the universe, as the beautiful poetry of Ecclesiastes reminds me.

Hawkins’ #1 is “physical deterioration.” What do most 40-somethings know of that, compared to several decades later? Well, for me, my forties were actually a very rough time physically, because that was the main decade of my extreme chronic pain from several injuries, and I had great difficulty functioning at all. So now, whatever generalized deterioration I’ve undergone, I’m nevertheless in a lot less pain than I was back then, for which I’m tremendously grateful. But I realize that my particular trajectory was unusual, and I also have no idea what lies ahead for me.

Hawkins #3 is “looking old.” At forty I looked very young, not much different than I had at twenty. I noticed that most people my age looked pretty young, too. I continued to look very young at fifty, and that wasn’t so unusual either. But somewhere along the line—although fortunately how old I look hasn’t caught up with my real age—I started looking considerably older. It may not be so apparent in the carefully-chosen photo for this blog (and that apple comes in handy to hide this and that), but in real life I don’t look twenty anymore. I probably don’t even look fifty anymore. However, I’m not too upset about that aspect of things, for whatever reason, although I completely understand people who are.

Number four for Hawkins is “Achieving your dreams and NOT achieving your dreams.” Hmmm. That’s a hard one for me. The biggest dreams I achieved are having a child (I had some fertility problems, so it wasn’t all that easy) and becoming a writer. But there are a lot of unfufilled ones that may never be achieved, and I still struggle with that. One of them involves the end of my marriage, which I never wanted to happen but which unfortunately was absolutely necessary. So that 50th wedding anniversary ain’t gonna happen.

Number 5, “dwindling excitement,” I don’t quite see as that big a deal (I can’t get all the excited about it), although I acknowledge it as a general trend. But I can still get pretty darn excited about some random things, such as seeing my son (who lives far away) or going to a favorite play or ballet (something that happens less often these days), or viewing some wonderful sight of nature or art. And I’m pretty sure I’d be mega-excited if I ever became a grandparent.

So maybe my list isn’t all that different from that of the 40-something Hawkins, except for that #5. Instead of “dwindling excitement” I might say something like “the shadow of the valley of the shadow of death,” although I don’t want to be too morbid. But how can one avoid the realization that, although none of us knows how long we have left, the older we are the more we know that the number of remaining days is diminishing?

I mentioned Ecclesiastes here. So I think I’ll close with a passage from it:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem.

And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

The gender wage gap

The New Neo Posted on by

A new study underlines what many of us already knew:

The report was compiled by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and titled “Still A Man’s Labor Market,” because of course. The Atlantic article about the report tries to keep the sexism argument alive, but acknowledges six paragraphs in that the earnings gap is entirely due to women making different choices in their lives than men, and not a “wage” gap from discrimination:

“Comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges, women earn close to what men earn: Women in similar workplaces with similar titles and similar credentials make pretty much what their male peers do, whether they are fast-food employees making close to the minimum wage or corporate executives making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.”

Once upon a time, long long ago, the slogan was “Equal pay for equal work.” Sounds reasonable, is reasonable, and at the time most women thought that was the goal. But activist leftist feminists have never had that goal, just as the left generally has bigger fish to fry than it lets on to the public.

So now it’s something like, “Equal pay for whatever work we happen to be doing.” So if the so-called wage gap is a de facto one based on the fact that some women take more time off for various family and personal reasons, and therefore that lowers the amount they earn, we’re supposed to be all angry about that as though some dreadful injustice has occurred despite the fact that there is no de jure gender-based wage gap at all.

It is very similar to the old “equality of opportunity” (the conservative point of view, although it was once also the liberal point of view) versus “equality of outcome” (the current leftist/liberal point of view, because leftist and liberal have increasingly fused).

The American public has been slowly, and then recently more quickly, moving to the latter goal from the former one: outcome vs. mere opportunity. How did this happen? It helps to have had the message delivered by a combination of the educational system plus the constant pounding of the media and the left, so that more and more people consider the first—equality of opportunity—to be racist and/or sexist and/or whatever “ist” happens to be the target du jour, and therefore unacceptable.

It also helps that most people do not understand research and statistics. That’s not so surprising, because both things are somewhat technical and require a certain amount of logic and mathematical sophistication, although one doesn’t have to understand the finer points of statistics at the graduate level to understand the basics. But since the basics also seem to be beyond the grasp of many people, most people are going to rely on interpreters of research—for example, articles in the MSM—to elucidate matters. And since the MSM has its own agenda, and that agenda is political rather than an objective reporting on the facts, way too many readers are going to assume that the MSM’s summary of the meaning of a research finding is reliable.

In other words, propaganda works, and the less a person knows about the actual subject matter, the more likely the propaganda will work for that person.

RIP, George H. W. Bush

The New Neo Posted on by

The 41st president of the US, George Herbert Walker Bush, has died.

There’s no surprise there. He was 94 years old, had been in failing health for many years, and had lost his wife of 73 years, Barbara, just eight months ago. He’d lived a long, fulfilling, and very full life.

When he was president I wasn’t particularly involved in politics; I was involved in being a mother raising my family. I was also a Democrat and Bush was a Republican. But when I look back now on that time I think of him as a president from another era entirely, one that took place much longer ago than that, and I find that I get more nostalgic about it than I would have thought.

Polite, patrician, and moderate, if he inspired little love from the public he also inspired little hate. But I’m not going to write a summary of the high and low points of his presidency or his life; I’ll leave that to others. I’ll just point out this quote from the NY Times:

Admonished by his mother against self-promotion, Mr. Bush, an inveterate note writer, in his clipped diction avoided the first person singular pronoun.

That one sentence tells us how much the times have changed since then. The last two presidents have certainly not “avoided the first person singular pronoun”—au contraire. And I’m going to assume that will be true of presidents from now into the foreseeable future.

RIP, George H. W. Bush.

Earthquake in Alaska

The New Neo Posted on by

A large earthquake has been reported somewhat to the north of Anchorage, occurring at 8:30 AM local time (that’s 12:30 PM Eastern). Highways and buildings have sustained damage, but the extent is not yet clear.

This is a developing story. The reported magnitude keeps changing, but right now it’s said to have been 7.0.

If war is not the answer, what is?

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed on yesterday’s Merkel thread that commenter “huxley” mentioned the old pacifist saying “War never solved anything,” adding that, “What leftie-pacifists really mean is ‘War doesn’t solve everything.’”

Indeed.

Which reminded me that I’d written a post on the subject back in 2007, and I thought it might be time to revisit it. So here it is again, very slightly edited.

You’ve all seen those posters and bumper stickers: “War is not the answer.”

You’ve also seen discussions of why those sporting them are incorrect; war has solved some things and provided answers to certain questions—such as whether, for example, there would be a 1000-year Reich.

I’ve spent some time puzzling over the use of the “war is not the answer” mantra. For some people—the less thoughtful—I think it’s merely a kneejerk catch phrase, a method to decorate a car in a way that says, “I’m a good person, not a bloodthirsty sonofabitch like those who advocate war.” This group (and I have no idea what percentage of the whole it might represent) has no particular understanding of history, especially the history of warfare, and no real thought about the limitations of the perfectibility of human nature.

And then there are those who really don’t have much interest in pacifism, but have an ultra-Leftist political agenda that an alliance with pacifists serves. These people see pacifists as a subset of the category “useful idiots” that they’ve found so very helpful over time.

That leaves us with the third category, the one that interests me most, the committed and relatively thoughtful and well-meaning people who sustain a hope that, although war will sometimes happen, they can promote a set of programs that will lead to a world in which war will be resorted to less and less. I will summarize their position by saying that, although they understand that war sometimes has provided short-term answers to certain questions (such as the one posited above about the Third Reich), it has never provided a long-term answer to the problem of human intra-species aggression on a large scale, and each war has introduced new problems in its wake that lead to further war.

In other words, when members of this third group say “War is not the answer” their accent is on the word “the.” War isn’t the final answer to the problems of human conflict, and although it may appear to solve some things, other problems are bound to arise that will lead to future wars.

Well, excuse me but: duh. Or to put it more politely: there are no solutions to the problem of human conflict that will eliminate the need for force at times, just as there are virtually no large-scale societies that can do away with police or prisons.

The advent of the atomic age gave pacifists—and their hopes for a way to end war—a boost, and understandably so. As dreadful as war has been in the first half of the twentieth century, with the invention of nuclear weapons it became far worse to contemplate. Early on in the atomic age the hope was that nations would be sane enough that the prospect of mutually assured destruction would be a powerful deterrent to any war, and that therefore—paradoxically—the very power of the weapons would be the reason they were unlikely to be used in the future.

Amazingly enough, so far that hope has been borne out; Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still both the first and the last times nuclear weapons have actually been detonated on a populace.

But that does not mean war has ended; sub-atomic conflicts have regularly sprung up around the world, and many of those are presently of the asymmetrical variety, involving terrorism and/or guerilla warfare and insurgencies. Another common type of war in recent times has been the internecine inter-tribal, inter-ethnic, and/or inter-religious conflicts of the third world, particularly Africa.

As for nuclear weapons, unfortunately they have recently become tools that seem more likely to be used. We now have an enemy who is less obviously interested in life than in death, and motivated at least in part by apocalyptic religious thinking (example: Iran). We also have another and related enemy that is not a state and therefore has no nation of people to protect, would be difficult to trace a bomb back to, and is driven by the same aforementioned religious motivation and otherwordly emphasis, (examples: al Qaeda and its spawn).

All of this fuels the depth of the desire to find an alternative to war—an alternative that provides not only “an” answer, but “the” answer, in a way that war never can. If you go to websites that promote pacifism, such as this one run by a Quaker lobby, you’ll find attempts to explain what that alternative solution should be [NOTE: unfortunately that link is now dead].

What you find there, of course, is not “the” answer, either. This is no surprise, because if you hold the more tragic (and, I believe, more realistic) view of human nature that I happen to hold, then you’re not looking for “the” answer, because you believe there never can be one.

There’s really nothing so terribly wrong with the “solutions” offered there (except for reliance on the corrupt and/or incompetent UN), at least as far as they go, which isn’t all that far. But let’s not fool ourselves. Pope John Paul II negotiating a deal between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Channel, or a social service society soothing the seething shantytowns of Ahmedabad in India through street plays and festivals—laudable though such things may be—aren’t about to give us “the answer.”

Prevention is wonderful, and I’m all for it. It’s good to exercise aerobically, to eat healthfully, try to avoid carcinogens, and to get your vaccinations. The disease model dictates, however, that although an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, human beings rarely follow all the rules, and even those who do can end up with the shock of cancer or some other dread disease. When that happens, cure is worth many ounces of prevention, because prevention is no longer possible. And treatment must occur quickly.

Does that mean that someone who is diagnosed with cancer should give up practicing good health habits? Of course not; the two—prevention and treatment—work in tandem, and healthful practices can make treatment more effective. That’s why the “treatment” known as war does not preclude peace efforts such as those described on the Quaker website, as well.

War as a treatment? Yes—an exceptionally drastic one that should only be resorted to when there are no good alternatives, or when time has run out on the ones that might have worked in the past (the problem, of course, is deciding when that has happened). And like all drastic treatments it has many side effects, and can backfire and cause worse problems than those it attempts to address.

With war, every now and then there’s a cure, of course—World War II as a “cure” for Nazism, for example (although of course small pockets of that particular disease remain). But although World War II “cured” Nazism on a worldwide basis, the side effects were profound and devastating, and its aftermath fostered the growth of another already-existing disease: Communism.

Yes, indeed, war is not the answer to the problems that bring about armed conflict, and war is probably the least benign “treatment” on earth. But when prevention (and our very incomplete knowledge of how to accomplish it) has failed, sometimes it’s the only answer.

The rise of the loud restaurant

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an Atlantic article that discusses the rise and current ubiquity of something I’ve hated for a long time—the loud restaurant.

So loud you really can’t have conversation successfully—and to me conversation is a big part of the enjoyment of eating out.

It’s an interesting article, and author Kate Wagner goes into many aspects of how the phenomenon happened and why it happened. I’m in a hurry today and only had time to skim the piece, but in my brief look at it I didn’t see her raise a point I always thought was the main reason (besides the modern preference for clean unfussy lines) for loud restaurants: a widespread belief that noisy restaurants make people feel like they’re in a festive, trendy, lively, fun place.

I’ve long thought that most restaurant owners and designers nowadays purposely choose to have their restaurants be very noisy, the better to promote that perception of liveliness and trendiness. In addition, if a restaurant’s acoustics make it too loud to hear what a companion is saying, people have a good excuse for not saying much and still feeling they’re in a place that’s full of life and conversation.

Dershowitz says a Mueller firing would not be an impeachable offense

The New Neo Posted on by

Alan Dershowitz keeps walking a lonely road as one of the few true liberals out there, trying to apply basic principles to cases no matter who might be involved and whether he, Dershowitz, happens to like that person or not. But Dershowitz stands more and more alone in the party he keeps insisting he belongs to, the Democrats.

Dershowitz has been reiterating what he’s said before:

“First of all, firing the special counsel would not be an impeachable offense because it wouldn’t be a crime,” Dershowitz said. “The president would have authority to do it. It would be politically very damaging to do it.”

The entire video at the link is worth listening to; Dershowitz makes several other points that all boil down to fairness and the pursuit of truth.

Regarding Dershowitz’s opinion on impeachment, it strikes me (and not for the first time) that the legal points he’s making are irrelevant to today’s current Democratic Party, which is all about power. They can impeach a president for anything they want, if they have the votes, because the bottom line is that impeachment is a political act although it has a legal framework. It is much more political than an ordinary legal proceeding, because the rules are much more vague, and the body making the decision is the US Congress (House for impeachment by simple majority, and Senate for conviction by super-majority). If Dershowitz thinks the politicians involved are interested in such niceties as whether a certain act is a crime or not, I’d say he’s got another think coming.

And of course, if deemed necessary, there is no problem whatsoever in getting an entire phalanx of legal scholars on the left to say that firing Mueller (or just about anything else Trump might do) would be an impeachable crime.

The “migrants” and nationalism: Angela Merkel speaks

The New Neo Posted on by

Angela Merkel gave an uncharacteristically impassioned speech about a subject dear to her heart: “migration” policy. Merkel was defending Germany’s support of the UN-backed Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which has been rejected by the United States, Hungary, Austria, Israel, Australia and Poland, and which certain political factions in Germany are questioning, as well.

The agreement would be non-binding, so it’s hard to know in what way it would really be enforced. It seems to me mostly a declaration of intent, but an important one to Merkel, which is no surprise given her influential legacy in terms of immigration policy not just for Germany but for the EU as a whole.

Here’s one of the most quoted statements from her speech:

…Merkel trained her sights on “those who believe they can solve all problems on their own and only have to think of themselves — that’s nationalism in its purest form, not patriotism.”

That’s a strawman, of course. I cannot think of a single country that believes it can “solve all problems” on its own, a country that is so isolated that it doesn’t have multiple treaties, trade agreements, and all sorts of relations with other countries.

What’s more, there are some problems that countries must solve on their own. One happens to be setting the rules about who it lets in and who it bans, for what purposes and for how long, and how to go about defending its own borders. After all, what makes a nation a nation in the first place? Each nation decides on a form of government, of course, as well as how to pass laws and finance that government, but one of the clearest and most important tasks of any nation is defending its boundaries by making decisions about entry, immigration, and citizenship.

A nation without defined and defended boundaries is not a nation. Instead, it’s an undefined geographic area that is at the mercy of other nations to define it. If a nation surrenders its right to make the rules about its own boundaries and who will live within them as citizen or as temporary visitor, than the nation is no longer a nation because other people and other nations will decide on its makeup and population.

But protecting its own borders and its own definition of citizenry and how to achieve it is not the sort of problem-solving Merkel has in mind. I think the following is very telling:

…Merkel warned against thinking that migration is an issue “that one country can solve on its own.”

But of course migration is not an issue any one nation can solve on its own. Migration occurs all over the globe for a wide variety of reasons by a wide variety of people. But most countries are not trying to solve the general problem of migration. They are trying to solve a rather different problem: who to let into their own country.

The leaders around the world who object to the UN agreement are quite clear about what they see as the threat of agreeing to it: the surrender of their sovereign right to make such decisions as a nation. They consider that right to be a feature, whereas Merkel and those who agree with her consider it a bug.

For example, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had this to say:

“The global compact on migration would compromise Australia’s interest,” Morrison told 2GB Radio. “It doesn’t distinguish between those who illegally enter Australia and those who come the right way.”

And Israel’s Netanyahu said:

“I have instructed the Foreign Ministry to announce that Israel will not accede to, and will not sign, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” the prime minister said. “We are committed to guarding our borders against illegal migrants. This is what we have done, and this is what we will continue to do.”

Trump has already spoken on the subject:

“We recognize the right of every nation in this room to set its own immigration policy in accordance with its national interests, just as we ask other countries to respect our own right to do the same – which we are doing,” he said. “That is one reason the United States will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration. Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens. Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries. Make their countries great again.”

This seems completely obvious, and not too long ago would have had the support of the vast majority of people not just in the US but all over the world. No more.

[NOTE: Please see this previous post of mine for more about nationalism and some of the background to the post-WWII movement against it in Europe. For example, compare Merkel’s speech to this excerpt from author Thomas Mann’s 1947 introduction to Herman Hesse’s (both Germans) novel Demian:

If today, when national individualism lies dying, when no single problem can any longer be solved from a purely national point of view, when everything connected with the “fatherland” has become stifling provincialism and no spirit that does not represent the European tradition as a whole any longer merits consideration…

Sounds like Merkel, doesn’t it, just expressed a bit more elegantly?]

Old wall, new wall

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently the stretch of wall near San Diego that’s been built to new specifications was an area the caravaners did not successfully scale:

When it’s finished, the new section of border wall near San Diego will replace about 14 miles of an 8- to 10-foot-high scrap metal wall with an 18- to 30-foot bollard-style wall topped off with an “anti-climbing plate,” CBP announced earlier this year.

I assume there’s a way to climb or tunnel under any wall. But that’s no reason not to make it more difficult to do.

Meanwhile, protestors send the message “Let them all in.” That’s part of the open-borders movement—recall that the caravan was funded and promoted by a leftist group whose name translates as People Without Borders.

And a showdown in Congress is on the horizon:

“We need Democrat votes to have a wall,” the president stated, according to the WaPo. “Now, if we don’t get it, will I get it done another way? I might get it done another way. There are other potential ways that I can do it. You saw what we did with the military, just coming in with the barbed wire and the fencing, and various other things.”

What will the Democrats do? For that matter, what will the Republicans do?