Another in the almost-numberless anti-Trump salvos from the press

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I’m getting jaded, because articles like this one have come to amuse me.

They’re so transparent, and so seemingly unaware of how absurd they sound. I know they don’t sound the least bit absurd to the left, however, and I realize I’m not their intended audience. But I’m a person on the right who was never a Trump fan, and they’re putting me in the position of being a Trump defender.

My own previous anti-Trump bona fides are in order. I was never a Never-Trumper, but I wanted almost anyone else from the GOP to be the nominee instead of Trump. I won’t go into the whole history; readers of this blog are well aware of my point of view. And I still feel very free to criticize him, and there’s much to criticize. But there’s been much to praise, too—considerably more than I expected, and I’m happy to be saying that, rather than sad.

Of course, I didn’t exactly “expect” much of anything, because I didn’t expect Trump to win the presidency in the first place. But win he did, and here we are, and I find myself in the peculiar position of defending him more often than not.

But articles like the one I just linked don’t help their own cause, because they are examples of a press gone off the rails—so swollen with its own sanctimonious self-importance that it can’t see its feet of clay down below. The author is Kyle Pope, and he’s the head of the Columbia Journalism Review. So he’s a journalist addressing fellow-journalists, and here’s his message:

We need to stop.

Stop reporting on every tweet with the volume of a declaration of war; stop letting the president and his staff frame every misstep and scandal as a media story; stop treating Trump’s war with the press as if it’s the most important thing happening in this country. It’s not.

Good start, right? But you know what’s coming next—a litany of the terrible, terrible, terrible things Trump is doing. That’s followed by this:

…[Trump] doesn’t respect the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. The media’s impulse, which is understandable, is to keep the focus on his threats to the press, and not to let them become normalized. But we have reached the point at which the media response has become counterproductive and even beneficial to the president and his lackeys in the White House, who have turned the West Wing into a megaphone for Trump’s faux media war and reporters in the White House briefing room into photo-op foils.

I missed the part where Trump issued orders to stop the press from speaking or writing. I missed the part where he jailed reporters. I missed the part where he doesn’t respect the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech—unless Pope thinks that criticizing the press is muzzling it, and that a president has no right of his own to free speech, only the press.

And Pope’s entire article is “a media war” by the press itself, and there’s nothing “faux” about it, or about Trump fighting back. I especially love the text of this open letter that Pope proudly quotes himself as having issued to Trump on the eve of Trump’s inauguration [emphasis mine]:

What we’re missing”“as I pointed out in an open letter to Trump on the eve of his inauguration”“is that we aren’t obligated to cede the media agenda to this or any other administration. We control the airtime, we decide who gets quoted and how, we set the rules of engagement.

Oh, so it’s just a faux war, eh? That Trump instigated? Note again, that letter was issued before Trump even took office.

Here’s what Pope thinks the media should be doing instead of focusing on the Trump tweets:

Pulling back from our own self-reflection and focusing all of that attention where it properly belongs”“on our childlike, possibly unstable national leader and the wrenching national policy changes he is stumbling to put into place”“could, ironically, also be the thing that convinces the rest of the country to pay attention to the dangers inherent in Trump’s attacks on the media and the First Amendment.

Now, there’s an objective journalist for you, one who’s not looking for a war with Trump. It’s obviously Trump who is the belligerant here, right? And oh, I see the light about the dangers of Trump’s attacks on you, you poor poor powerless media guy, you.

Towards the end, Pope writes:

Every time Trump fires a shot in his war against the media, there’s an opportunity for a more serious, nuanced argument about why everyone benefits from a free and vigorous press: Airing a president and his policies to open discussion and scrutiny results in better government.

That would be true—and I would applaud it—if the press showed the slightest indication it was capable of such a thing and interested in actually performing that service.

The ironic thing—the funny thing, although it’s really far more sad than funny—is that Pope’s article contradicts his own message, with his overwhelming bile and partisanship. Does he even see it anymore? Can he even see it anymore? Does a fish know it swims in water?

Trump’s Warsaw speech: welcome to Western Civ

The New Neo Posted on by

First let’s look at the transcript of the speech (sorry it’s a link to CNN, but they’re the ones providing it right now, so they’re definitely good for something).

And here’s the way the leftist press (the Guardian, in this case) is covering it [emphasis mine]:

At the start of a four-day trip to Europe, the US president gave a highly nationalist address in Warsaw suggesting that a lack of collective resolve could doom an alliance that had endured through the cold war.

How can a highly nationalist speech emphasize collective resolve? Is that not a contradiction? Isn’t a nationalist speech one that talks about how great a certain nation is, and would preclude “collective” action rather than prescribe it?

But the words “nationalist” and “nationalistic” has to come to be a code word to the left meaning bigoted and racist, jingoistic and backward. I wrote about that idea in this post of mine, where I traced the origins of the idea to post-WWI feeling in Western Europe.

What’s more, what nation is Trump being nationalist about? A casual reader might think it’s the US. But, reading the speech, I can only conclude it’s Poland:

Poland is the geographic heart of Europe, but more importantly, in the Polish people, we see the soul of Europe. Your nation is great because your spirit is great and your spirit is strong.

For two centuries, Poland suffered constant and brutal attacks. But while Poland could be invaded and occupied, and its borders even erased from the map, it could never be erased from history or from your hearts. In those dark days, you have lost your land but you never lost your pride.

So it is with true admiration that I can say today, that from the farms and villages of your countryside to the cathedrals and squares of your great cities, Poland lives, Poland prospers, and Poland prevails.

…You are the proud nation of Copernicus — think of that — Chopin, Saint John Paul II. Poland is a land of great heroes. And you are a people who know the true value of what you defend.

(Chopin, by the way, identified as Polish and considered himself a Polish patriot, but he was actually half-French and spent much of his life in exile from Poland.)

But back to the Guardian:

In a nod to the conservative values [Trump] shares with Poland’s controversial ruling Law and Justice party, Trump also called on the west to defend its traditions…

According to Polish press reports, Trump was enticed to Warsaw by promises of a rapturous reception. The Polish government, which paid for supporters to be bussed in from provincial areas, appeared to have delivered, as the president was greeted by a boisterous, highly partisan, crowd in Krasinski Square, one of Warsaw’s smaller public spaces.

So defending on our traditions in the West—ones we should be justly proud of, such as liberty and democracy—is now controversial and conservative. And the crowd was fake. Got it.

From Trump’s speech:

For America’s part, we have never given up on freedom and independence as the right and destiny of the Polish people, and we never, ever will.

Our two countries share a special bond forged by unique histories and national characters. It’s a fellowship that exists only among people who have fought and bled and died for freedom…

And so I am here today not just to visit an old ally, but to hold it up as an example for others who seek freedom and who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization.

Trump followed this by a stirring recitation of some of the woes Poland faced in the 20th Century and particularly during WWII, and its bravery against two oppressors, the Nazis and the Soviets, as well as its devotion to religion (particularly, the Pope’s visit in 1979, which helped sparked the drive to freedom from the Soviets).

Trump then segues to:

…another oppressive ideology — one that seeks to export terrorism and extremism all around the globe…

During a historic gathering in Saudi Arabia, I called on the leaders of more than 50 Muslim nations to join together to drive out this menace which threatens all of humanity. We must stand united against these shared enemies to strip them of their territory and their funding, and their networks, and any form of ideological support that they may have. While we will always welcome new citizens who share our values and love our people, our borders will always be closed to terrorism and extremism of any kind.

Hard to argue with that. But it can be done, as Vox’s Sarah Wildman demonstrates in a piece entitled “Trump’s speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto.” Here’s what she writes:

…[Trump’s speech]…often resorted torhetorical conceits typically used by the European and American alt-right…

In his address, Trump cast the West, including the United States and Europe, on the side of “civilization.” With an undercurrent of bellicosity, he spoke of protecting borders, casting himself as a defender not just of territory but of Western “values.” And, using the phrase he had avoided on his trip to Saudi Arabia, he insisted that in the fight against “radical Islamic terrorism,” the West “will prevail.”…

That battle, the president seemed to say, is ongoing.

And is Wildman saying that the battle is not ongoing, and that to suggest it is in fact ongoing is tantamount to issuing “an alt-right manifesto”? I guess that’s what it’s come to for the anti-Trump press.

Trump also chided Russia, something the MSM articles I read seem to have had some difficulty fully crediting him for, because it doesn’t fit the press narrative. But this is what he said:

We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, and its support for hostile regimes — including Syria and Iran — and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.

Trump also spoke against government bureaucracy, talked about funding NATO, and the history of the Warsaw Uprising. But it was this part of the speech that may have angered the left the most, because of its unapologetic celebration of Western culture (not nationalism, but culturism, if there is such a word):

There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations.

We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.

We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.

And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.

Western civilization is what he’s talking about. And those things are indeed things to celebrate and to preserve. If we don’t acknowledge them, how can we defend them?

Just a few short decades ago, when I was growing up, it was standard practice for both parties to talk this way. Now this practice has been taken over almost solely by the right, and sites like Vox (which is not even hard-left, but just garden-variety liberal/left) label it as “alt-right” rhetoric rather than mainstream thought.

And they wonder why they’ve been losing elections lately.

Poland plans a YUGE lovefest for Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Poland ♥ Trump (relatively speaking, anyway):

“It’s going to be huge””absolutely huge,” Mr. Tarczynski said of the coming welcome for Mr. Trump. “They just love him, the people in Poland””they just really love him.”

Poland is working to put on a hero’s welcome for Mr. Trump as he prepares to give a major speech to thousands of Poles in a Warsaw square. Behind that effort is a recognition across the continent that Mr. Trump has the potential to change the balance of power in Europe.

President Barack Obama formed a close bond with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and backed her liberal worldview, her acceptance of immigrants, and her support for a deeply integrated European Union. Now it is nationalist governments such as Poland’s that hope Mr. Trump will see them as ideological kindred spirits and back their push to loosen the European Union and rebalance it away from Berlin.

Absolutely fascinating.

It’s been clear for well over a decade that, in the post-Soviet world, to speak of “Europe believes this” or “Europe feels that” is to ignore the enormous divide between Western and Eastern Europe. The West has been protected from the Soviets and other predators by the US, and in reaction it has been free to become increasingly leftist and anti-American. The East has had a very different experience. They felt the heavy Soviet hand up close and personal, and have not yet forgotten what it’s like.

Plus, there are historic difference that long predate the Soviet era. Poland in particular has a history both sorrowful and proud, in which it has been overrun by regime after regime and prides its current freedom highly. And why would they trust Berlin? No reason to do so.

Of course, approval is relative. Most Poles do not have confidence that Trump will do the right thing re foreign affairs, but more do than in Western European countries:

According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this spring, 23% of Poles are confident that Mr. Trump will do the right thing in world affairs, compared with 11% across the border in Germany.

While low compared with his U.S. numbers (which hover between 35% and 40%), Mr. Trump’s ratings in Poland are among the highest in Europe. While Britons and Italians rank Mr. Trump at about the same level, only 7% of Spaniards, 10% of Swedes, and 14% of French have confidence in the U.S. president, according to the survey. Among members of the European Union included in the poll, Hungary gave Mr. Trump his best rating, with 29% expressing confidence–still far lower than the 53% of Russians who see Mr. Trump positively.

It’s not surprising that Russians see Trump positively. They’ve been reading in the MSM that he’s allied with them.

It will be interesting to see if Trump’s speech in Warsaw increases his positive numbers there, if he plays his cards right and gives a good and “presidential” speech. If most people in Poland have seen Trump portrayed in the world and US press as a stupid clown, then if he is able to string two coherent words together (and there is almost no doubt he will do a lot better than that) he has nowhere to go but up.

Meanwhile, North Korea rattles some ICBM sabres and Trump chides China

The New Neo Posted on by

North Korea claims to have launched its first ICBM:

North Korea claimed on Tuesday morning to have launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), according to media reports, the regime’s 11th missile test so far this year.

Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S. all tracked the missile, which could not immediately be confirmed as an ICBM.

North Korea claimed the long-range weapon could “reach anywhere in the world.”

As with so many things North Korean, it’s not easy to confirm exactly what happened and how far it can reach. But something was launched, and that something was subsequently confirmed to have been an ICBM:

The United States asserted Tuesday that North Korea’s latest missile launch was indeed an intercontinental ballistic missile, as the North had boasted and the U.S. and South Korea had feared. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called it a “new escalation of the threat” to the U.S…

The prime danger from the U.S. viewpoint is the prospect of North Korea pairing a nuclear warhead with an ICBM. The latest U.S. intelligence assessment is that the North probably does not yet have that capability – putting a small-enough nuclear warhead atop an ICBM.

Initial U.S. military assessments had been that it was an intermediate-range missile. NORAD, or the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the missile did not pose a threat to North America.

The US and South Korea responded in this fashion:

In a show of force directly responding to North Korea’s provocation, U.S. and South Korean soldiers fired “deep strike” precision missiles into South Korean territorial waters on Tuesday, U.S. military officials in Seoul said. The missile firings demonstrated U.S.-South Korean solidarity, the U.S. Eighth Army said in a statement.

This is disturbing news from North Korea. Disturbing but hardly surprising. North Korea has been on this seemingly inexorable path since the 1990s, and neither Democratic nor Republican administrations or Congresses have so far been able to do much to stop them.

The UN Security Council will be holding a special session today, for what that’s worth. And Trump is trying to pressure China to do more:

His tweet Wednesday moves the dial even further. He doesn’t only reiterate that he’s giving up on China as a partner, but condemns it for its long-established trade relations with the country. He paints China as part of the problem.

With Trump’s increasingly heated rhetoric, sanctions, and the arms sale to Taiwan, the White House’s softer approach to China may be coming to an end, at least for now. The administration wants Beijing to do more, and is signaling a potential willingness to play hardball to get China in the game. Now the question is what ”” if anything ”” China will be willing to do in response.

Such interesting times.

Tonedeaf bully CNN threatens the gif-giver

The New Neo Posted on by

This has become the lead story on memeorandum:

Reddit user “HanA**holeSolo” first shared the GIF last Wednesday of Trump pummeling a wrestler with CNN’s logo imposed on his face. CNN could find no earlier instance of the GIF. The GIF was later edited into a video with sound and tweeted by the President on Sunday.

On Reddit, “HanA**holeSolo” took credit for inspiring the tweet. Soon after, “HanA**holeSolo’s” other posts on Reddit, some of which included racist and anti-Semitic imagery, quickly circulated on social media.

Now the user is apologizing, writing in a lengthy post on Reddit that he does not advocate violence against the press and expressing remorse there and in an interview with CNN for other posts he made that were racist and anti-Semitic.

The apology came after CNN’s KFile identified the man behind “HanA**holeSolo.” Using identifying information that “HanA**holeSolo” posted on Reddit, KFile was able to determine key biographical details, to find the man’s name using a Facebook search and ultimately corroborate details he had made available on Reddit.

It’s good to see that incisive and bold investigative reporting is not dead at CNN.

CNN also maintains it didn’t “threaten” the guy. Yeah, right:

After posting his apology, “HanA**holeSolo” called CNN’s KFile and confirmed his identity. In the interview, “HanA**holeSolo” sounded nervous about his identity being revealed and asked to not be named out of fear for his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family.

CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

No need to threaten him overtly. The message is clear.

So far I haven’t found many people, even those who are rabidly anti-Trump, defending CNN in any but the most lukewarm of fashions. I think this action on the part of CNN has made most people uncomfortable. I called CNN “tonedeaf” in the title of this post because they seem to be very very proud of themselves despite all this.

I suppose it depends what CNN’s goals are. If the goal is good PR, I think they lose on this one. But if the goal is to intimidate other people into refraining from making videos that ridicule CNN (and I think that was the main goal) I think they also lose, because it turns out that a lot of people have reacted by being inspired to follow in HanA’s footsteps:

It was foreseeable that to identify someone on the internet for coming up with a funny meme substituting a CNN logo for Vince McMahon’s head and threaten to doxx him for that meme would generate a reaction not entirely consistent with good public-relations outcomes. Strangely CNN didn’t recognize those foreseeable results in advance; they’re recognizing them now, as smartasses from Maine to Hawaii are now rushing to Photoshop to produce creative ridicule.

If you follow the link I just gave, you can find a compilation of efforts in that vein.

I suppose CNN could throw all its resources into playing whack-a-mole against the proliferation of this mockery, but they wouldn’t have time to do much else. Of course, in CNN’s case that might be a good thing.

And to save them the trouble in my case, I Denounce Myself.

[NOTE: By the way, here’s the example I located of HanA’s anti-Semitism. It’s the sort of thing you see every day from literally millions of sites all around the internet, and many are a lot worse. Obviously I don’t approve of it, but I think it’s ludicrous that the person creating this was threatened to be outed by CNN for this sort of thing, only because he made fun of CNN by portraying them as a WWE wrestler being slammed by Trump.

Let me also remind CNN that this type of wrestling ordinarily does not involve real violence and/or intentional injury. The wrestlers are in good physical shape and trained to do this, and although sometimes accidents do happen and someone is injured—because it’s a very physical activity that uses a lot of force—the goal is entertainment and the wrestlers try to protect each other during the process. Only the gullible think the hatred and the intent to hurt is real.]

It’s still the Fourth of July!

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP: scroll down for today’s new posts.]

Actually, today is the real Fourth of July.

The holiday has two names: Independence Day and Fourth of July. The latter designates a specific date for the occasion, which keeps it from moving around the calendar too much as some holidays now do in order to accommodate the maximum number of three-day weekends. But this year we have pretty much a four-day weekend for the Fourth, because the real date falls on a Tuesday. So I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves.

Here in New England we’ve had spectacular weather. Not too hot but just hot enough, and sunny most of the time. That’s unusual; I can’t tell you how many times the weather’s been lousy for these sorts of holidays, but this year is not that year.

I’ve done a few things over this Fourth of July weekend, but none of them have involved the traditional barbecue or party. Parties (except, alas, for political ones) seem to be few and far between in my life these days. How about you?

What I’m going to do today is go out for a walk and see the fireworks in the evening. Pretty low-key. The rest of the day—after I finish with the blog, that is—I plan to spend re-organizing my closets and bureau drawers.

Note the plurals closets and drawers. Now, that’s ambition. If I complete one single closet, I’ll be doing well, because this task always takes more time than I ever imagine it will.

What to keep and what to throw out, that is the question, and it involves a certain amount of trying on and mulling over and suddenly the sun is setting and the pile of discards is all too small. So far today, though, I’ve learned one thing: I have more dresses than I ever wear, since I wear so few. I just found a dress in my closet that I’d completely forgotten I owned, and have only a vague memory of buying—except that I remember it was on a huge huge sale and cost almost nothing. In fact, in recent years I’ve justified all my dress purchases (not an enormous number) by the fact that the store was practically giving the thing away—and that some day I’ll need a dress and don’t want to race out to buy an awful one in desperation.

But still, I’ve got a total of about ten dresses in there, and I might actually wear one a year if I’m lucky.

And then there are the earrings. Don’t get me started on the earrings. But it’s necklaces that are my special weakness. At least I wear them fairly often, because most of mine are casual enough to go with nearly anything. As I’ve gotten older (not old! surely not old!) my clothing needs have gotten so casual that if I don’t watch out I’ll be shuffling out in my bedroom slippers, like someone I know who shall remain nameless.

Actually, that won’t happen to me, because I don’t wear bedroom slippers. Instead, I have some very comfortable sandals dedicated to that task. So if I happen to walk out of my home in my sandal-slippers, no one will ever know the difference.

Happy Fourth to all!

Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s Twitter war with the media and the media’s war with Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

This piece by Victor Davis Hanson is well worth reading. Here are a few excerpts, and a bit of commentary of my own:

Trump’s occasional uncouthness is a symptom, not a catalyst, of the times.

It is absolutely true that Trump’s election was a response to trends that were already happening, and that he reflects them. But (and this is a mild quibble) he’s also a progression of those trends. He takes them one step further, in part because he’s more open and obvious about them.

Hanson points out that Obama did much the same thing in terms of the press:

It was Obama, not Trump, who established the practice of going after journalists by name, both materially and rhetorically, from surveilling Fox’s James Rosen to using puerile hype to attack Sean Hannity (“You know, I’ll put””I’ll put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity. He’ll tear him up.” [emphasis added]). Obama was angry that a few reporters did not join the cult of Obama worship; Trump is peeved almost no one in the press is disinterested. Trump saw Obama’s precedent, and proverbially trumped it…

Hanson is correct that Trump is fighting the many who excoriate him in the press whereas Obama was fighting the few who didn’t toe the Obama line. But there was a difference not just in quantity but in quality: Obama was and is a smoother character with a more sophisticated style, at least on the surface (although I believe that underneath, Trump is not so unsophisticated as he may seem).

Hanson writes:

Sputtering journalists (Jim Rutenberg, Carl Bernstein, Jorge Ramos, Christiane Amanpour.) are exasperated to the point of openly confessing that their craft should give up empirical reporting to deal with Trump, without shame any longer over the partisan propaganda their organizations and colleagues peddle. Those declarations are not a change of course, but a confession of what the media have been doing from the election of Barack Obama. The logical media progression from eerie Obama worship was to creepy Trump hatred.

All too true.

However, it’s also true that both presidents had and have very special characteristics that helped to accentuate that progression. Obama was the first black presidential nominee of a major party and became the first black president, and as such he was a milestone representing something that felt very important and that transcended any personal characteristics he may have had. Had he been the same person presenting with the very same qualities, but a white man instead of a black or mixed-race one, I can’t imagine that the “eerie Obama worship” would have approached the level it actually did, although of course the MSM still would have loved him because he was a liberal. But I don’t think there was anything truly “eerie” about the MSM’s love for Obama; it was actually overdetermined rather than inexplicable.

And Trump represents a phenomenon that is also unique (so far, anyway) in the annals of American history: a reality TV star turned politician and elected to the highest office of the land with absolutely no political experience whatsoever, and with a personal style more reminiscent of WWE wrestling than anything else. You either like it or you hate it, but let’s not pretend it’s business as usual.

The main topic of Hanson’s essay is Trump’s tweeting. He concludes this way:

There is a limit to Trump’s crude personal tweets, but apparently no observer has yet calibrated where it is””given the country’s disdain for the media, the progressive hypocritical agenda, and the scatological and obscene rhetoric of Trump’s opposition.

I would urge the president to stop tweeting about nothings and to keep his powder dry for bigger game to come than Joe and Mika. But considering that I have been urging just such pruning of tweets as a matter of strategy for Trump for a long time and that I have been mostly wrong about the downsides of his twitter invective for just as long, perhaps the president knows something I don’t.

Likewise, I can’t stand Trump’s “crude personal tweets…about nothings.” But is there a downside in the political sense? I’ve mulled that question over for some time, and I don’t have an answer. I suspect that some small number of people would give Trump more grudging approval than they do now if he only could desist from picking the seemingly stupid and petty fights he sometimes does, or responding to the more trivial of insults. Then again, I suspect that he has adopted a policy of zero tolerance—of always striking back when insulted publicly, even if the insult seems relatively unimportant.

It’s sort of like a “broken-windows” policy for insults. After all, this is the man who said way back in April of 2016, long before his election:

Van Susteren asked him to expound on being “presidential.”

Trump responded, “It means maybe not be so aggressive, maybe not get so personal. But when people get personal with me, they say, oh, they don’t like my hair, okay? If I ever said I don’t like their hair it would be a headline. They’re allowed to say whatever they want to about me. My hair is not that bad is it? And it is my hair. But you know what happens? What happens is they hit me and I hit them back harder and, usually in all cases, they do it first. But they hit me and I hit them back harder and they disappear. That’s what we want to lead the country.”

It’s a maxim he’s lived by his entire life, and it’s not going to change. He has no fear of ruining his reputation by this behavior, because he has no reputation to ruin—except for being a low down and dirty fighter, and it’s certainly not going to damage that. But I think that, if he really thought they would “disappear” as a result of his fighting back (and I have my doubts as to whether he actually thought that), he’s wrong. I don’t think they will ever give up.

To liberty: Happy Fourth of July weekend!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. It was written in the springtime quite few years ago, during a visit to New York.]

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:

brookheights2.jpg

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced in time than gardens where I live, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in the Sixties, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on subsequent visits. So what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it frequently when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

Kids got talent

The New Neo Posted on by

I am often amazed at the singing skills demonstrated by youngsters on those talent reality shows. They seem to be genuinely nice kids, too, full of energy and drive. After all, think how much work it takes—and how much confidence—to sing like this at these ages, and to perform with such elan:

You may think I’m overdoing it here, but I think that their focused and possibly obsessive pursuit of excellence demonstrates something great about the human spirit.

And I love the proud and tearful parents, too.