Why we increasingly shop online these days

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I decided I wanted one of those kitchen mats that are cushy to stand on. Actually, I wanted two. I use one little rug in front of the sink for when I’m washing dishes, and one in front of my computer because I work standing up due to the effects of my long-ago back and arm injuries. The rugs I have now have seen much, much better days.

So I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to peruse their selections. They’ve got a ton of kitchen stuff; why not a little rug?

But nada. However, one of the women who worked there told me that until recently she’d worked at Home Goods and they had plenty of them. Go there, she said.

So a few days later I made the journey. I couldn’t find anything there, either. But I asked a young man who worked there and he said yes, they had some with the other area rugs, and that they were mostly to be found on the bottom shelf of the section, interspersed with all the other little area rugs.

So I went back to look. The display was chaotic and appeared as though no one had ordered it in a long long time. There were a lot of little rugs, and I had to look through most of them before I found my prize: one of those foamlike “comfort” rugs. In chartreuse. A sort of fake basket-weave chartreuse.

No wonder it was still there. Hideous.

And it immediately occurred to me that this is why brick-and-mortar stores aren’t doing so well these days compared to the internet. And it’s a vicious cycle, because as the stores do worse, they cut back on hiring staff, and therefore they are maintained a lot worse and the staff hardly cares one way or the other.

At least, that was the attitude of the guy who spoke to me. He conveyed the idea that he could barely be bothered to answer my question and point the way, much less go to the rugs and help me find one. And there was no other customer in the store at the time.

Contrast that to what you can find here. I ordinarily like brick-and-mortar stores because I like to see what I’m buying, but in this case I’ll be ordering something online.

Intelligence, heredity, and environment

The New Neo Posted on by

In school I always did very very well on IQ tests. But I also always felt they did not, and could not, measure some completely innate and unchanging thing called “intelligence.” Here is some research support for that perception.

I’m referring to a curious phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. In the huge amount of verbiage on the subject of intelligence (as measured by IQ scores) and heredity vs. environment and race and class, the Flynn effect is well-known in the field of research but far less well-known in non-technical articles for the general population on the subject of IQ. Here’s a brief definition:

In his study of IQ tests scores for different populations over the past sixty years, James R. Flynn discovered that IQ scores increased from one generation to the next for all of the countries for which data existed (Flynn, 1994). This interesting phenomena has been called “the Flynn Effect.” Many of the questions about why this effect occurs have not yet been answered by researchers.

As with many fields of scientific inquiry, there’s no small amount of politics involved in such research, both with those who perform it and those who use it to make various points. In addition, we have all the intrinsic problems and difficulties of psychological research with human subjects.

But given those caveats, nevertheless the Flynn effect seems to be both real and widespread:

In general, countries have seen generational increases between 5 and 25 points. The largest gains appear to occur on tests that measure fluid intelligence (Gf) rather than crystallized intelligence (Gc)….

…[Tests for fluid intelligence] try to emphasize problem solving and minimize a reliance on specific skills or familiarity with words and symbols. These tests on average have shown an increase of about 15 points or one standard deviation per generation…Deary (2001) notes that it is these types of tests (i.e., “culturally reduced”) on which we would not expect to see score increases if the cause of the increases was due to educational factors.

…IQ gains for [tests of crystallized intelligence) have been more moderate, with an average of about 9 points per generation…

Flynn believes that the increase is actually an increase in abstract problem solving rather than intelligence. Flynn…favors environmental explanations for the increase in test scores.

You don’t have to agree about the strength of environmental factors. But those who don’t agree still need to explain the results known as the Flynn effect. Some of the environmental factors studied and cited to explain the effect are years of formal education, which apparently correlates somewhat with the rise in scores, as well as nutrition, which has some correlation as well.

I doubt that any one factor explains it. But I think it’s likely that something is changing that’s environmental and leads to the higher scores, which indicates that IQ tests don’t just measure some wholly innate factor called intelligence, but instead measure something called intelligence that is linked (as are so many things) to some combination of heredity and environment.

The real question is how much of the variation in intelligence found among countries and among groups within a country can be attributed to heredity and how much to environment. I’ve read a great deal on the subject—much much too much to go into in any blog post (it’s a very complex subject)—and my conclusion is that the jury is out on it but that environment is definitely an important factor.

Who cares? Obviously, a lot of people do. But to me, individuals are individuals and everyone must be evaluated on the strength of his/her own personality and achievements. Some members of all ethnic groups are brilliant. Some members of all ethnic groups are dumb. Even if most of the variation among groups were to turn out to be hereditary—and I happen to think that is not the case—how would it change anything? It still wouldn’t tell us one single thing about any individual and his or her potential to achieve. And it oughtn’t to ever affect the human rights of anyone, or the concept of equality of opportunity.

But there’s plenty more information on the Flynn effect and attempts to tease out what may be going on regarding environment. For example, see under the heading “environmental factors” in this analysis of the Flynn effect. See also this, this, this, this, and this.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Car question

The New Neo Posted on by

A question for all you car folks out there—

I’m thinking of buying a used car with active safety features, although I rather I like my car—2010 Ford Fusion. Some makes and models of car introduced these features a couple of years ago (I think around 2015) as options. On some models they were even made standard on more recent cars.

I’ve never bought a new car in my life. The used cars I’ve bought have been relatively low mileage—in the 30 thousand-or-less category—and that’s what I’m planning to do now. The prices are so much better that to me it makes more sense to do that than to buy a new car for a whole lot of $$$ and have it depreciate so much immediately.

My question for you is whether you’ve driven a car with some of these active safety features, and if so what you think of the car and the features.

Isn’t this more fun than talking about Trump?

Burning their MAGA hats: right, left, and DREAMERS

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been reported that a great many Trump supporters, angered by his supposed DACA deal, have taken to burning their “Make America Great Again” hats.

No doubt the MSM are happy as clams over this.

I have noticed several types of Trump reportage from the press. The first type is designed to hurt Trump with both the right and the left, and it’s of the “Trump is stupid” or “Trump is crazy” or “the Trump administration is a chaotic mess” variety. The second type reports on something Trump has done or is about to do that favors the right and is designed to drive the left crazy. The third type does the opposite—reports on something the right (and particularly Trump supporters) has wanted and that Trump supposedly is preparing to jettison.

Some of these stories turn out to be true. But some are false. Whichever variety they are, the stories are relentless—-many piled on many more, day after day after day. It’s not easy to sort out the false from the true. But I would caution everyone to not react prematurely to stories that are mere rumors, such as the DACA-deal one.

Of course, if Trump supporters want to send Trump a message about DACA, that’s fine with me. But I don’t know why they’d trust the press on this.

There’s another aspect of the Trump/DACA story that puzzles me. My own recollection is that during Trump’s campaign he promised many things, including many things about DREAMERS (the people affected by DACA). Sometimes he was sympathetic to them and sometimes not so sympathetic. But I don’t recall him ever saying he was going to deport them. Nor have I seen any recent article that goes back and finds a quote from him to that effect. And yet a lot of people keep alluding to the fact that he went back on a promise of that sort.

I say, show me the promise. Maybe it was there and I just missed it. But I haven’t been able to find it so far.

What I have found are old articles in which the MSM said that Trump would be likely to deport DREAMERS. But his own words don’t seem to indicate that. For example, his most major campaign speech on the subject of immigration, given in Sept of 2016 in Phoenix and widely billed as a statement of the more Draconian measures he’d been advocating, didn’t say it. Here are some excerpts from that speech:

We will treat everyone living or residing in our country with dignity. We will be fair, just and compassionate to all. But our greatest compassion must be for American citizens.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton have engaged in gross dereliction of duty by surrendering the safety of the American people to open borders. President Obama and Hillary Clinton support Sanctuary Cities, they support catch-and-release on the border, they support visa overstays, they support the release of dangerous criminals from detention ”“ and they support unconstitutional executive amnesty…

On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the southern border…

Under my Administration, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country…

Trump then talks for quite some time about various ways he plans to crack down on criminal illegal aliens, and touches on the issue of ending sanctuary cities. He then addresses DACA and DREAMERS (although he doesn’t use those terms):

We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties, in which he defied federal law and the constitution to give amnesty to approximately 5 million illegal immigrants…

In a Trump Administration, all immigration laws will be enforced. As with any law enforcement activity, we will set priorities. But, unlike this Administration, no one will be immune or exempt from enforcement ”“ and ICE and Border Patrol officers will be allowed to do their jobs. Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation ”“ that is what it means to have laws and to have a country.

Our enforcement priorities will include removing criminals, gang members, security threats, visa overstays, public charges ”“ that is, those relying on public welfare or straining the safety net, along with millions of recent illegal arrivals and overstays who’ve come here under the current Administration.

Now, maybe somewhere else Trump said something different from that. But as I read that—and remember, this was a speech widely regarded as a statement of his most forceful and complete anti-immigrant policy—he is saying that he will cancel Obama’s DACA order because it was unconstitutional, and everyone else will be treated case by case, with criminals and gang members the top priorities for deportation.

There’s more in the speech, but none of it is especially relevant to DACA. Nor does he mention what Congress might be doing about DREAMERS.

Recently Trump did exactly what he said he would do—rescind Obama’s DACA order because it was unconstitutional. Saying that every illegal immigrant is now subject to deportation does not even come close to saying every illegal immigrant will be deported or should be deported, and his priorities for deportation (criminals) have long been very very clear. In addition, Trump’s saying he will terminate Obama’s unconstitutional DACA order (and doing it) is not the same as saying that he will never ask Congress to help some of the DREAMERS, or that he would block Congress if they were to do so.

In fact, on other occasions Trump has expressed a fair amount of sympathy for DREAMERS. During the campaign, I certainly got the distinct impression that Trump would be at least somewhat conciliatory towards DREAMERS if he ever became president, although a lot of people on both sides acted as though they believed he would be very harsh towards them.

I find myself once again in the odd (to me) position of defending Trump, or sort of defending him. I don’t have any interest in either defending or attacking him, though; my interest is in trying to get at the truth. It’s not easy and I certainly don’t always achieve it, but that’s my goal. And the truth as I see it is that Trump never was planning (and never said he was planning) to be as hard on the DREAMERS as his supporters on the right thought and hoped he was (or as the MSM said he was). And Trump never was planning to be as hard on the DREAMERS as his enemies on the left feared he was.

Trump, DACA, the wall, and the press

The New Neo Posted on by

In the Trump era it’s gotten even more difficult to write about the news, for the simple reason that for the most part I distrust all prognostications and rumors, both of which have come to take up a larger and larger part of reporting ever since Trump was inaugurated.

Take these headlines at today’s page at memeorandum as an example. Here are the titles of the lead stories, in order:

Fox & Friends: Maybe Trump Wall Was ”˜Symbolic’

Trump Caves on DACA, Wants ”˜Quick’ Amnesty for 800K Illegal Aliens

Trump: “The wall will come later”

Trump’s diehard supporters are fuming after an apparent about-face on ”˜dreamers’

Trump 2.0: They’re Sending Their Best!

Trump: If There’s Not a Wall, We’re Doing Nothing

White House: ”˜There will be no amnesty’ under Trump

Trump, top Democrats agree to work on deal to save ”˜dreamers’ from deportation

Now granted, much of the confusion (a wall or no wall? DACA deal or no DACA deal?) is due to Trump’s contradictory messages on the subject. But that’s par for the course. You know what I’d like to see—although I have no illusions that I will see it? Newspapers that report on what actually has happened once it has happened, rather than predicting what they think is happening or what is supposedly happening behind closed doors.

For example, how about a piece that says “Trump has been issuing contradictory and confusing statements on DACA, and we don’t really know what’s happening or what’s going to happen.” Yeah, I know; it wouldn’t make much of a story, would it?

To read every one of those articles and to try to sort out what really might be happening would take all day and then some. I’m not going to do it. But from what I’ve read, my impression is that some sort of compromise is being worked out that will preserve the DACA rights of some people while getting some sort of concession on the wall or the border.

Works for me—perhaps.

Till then, the best summary and the best guess I can find so far is by Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

Late last night, in an update to a post about DACA, I noted that President Trump reportedly had just made a deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi regarding DACA-style legislation. The alleged deal would protect the roughly 690,000 people covered by the current DACA program (but not, I take it, other “dreamers”) and would include a package of border security measures, excluding the wall, that’s “acceptable to both sides.”…

The White House, though, is denying that it struck such a deal. Sort of.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted:

“While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to.”

Trump tweeted:

“No deal was made last night on DACA. Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent. Would be subject to vote.”

Trump’s tweet has a non-denial denial quality to it. Obviously, the details of any deal would have to be worked out and the final deal would be subject to a vote. But this doesn’t mean Trump didn’t reach the framework for an agreement.

Note too that this statement doesn’t mention the wall ”” only “massive border security,” whatever that means.

Then today, Trump reiterated the importance of the wall itself:

“Very important is the wall. We have to be sure the wall isn’t obstructed because without the wall I wouldn’t do anything… It doesn’t have to be here but they can’t obstruct the wall if its in a budget or anything else.”…

“We’ll only do it if we get extreme security, not only surveillance but everything that goes with surveillance. If there’s not a wall, we’re doing nothing.”

Got that?

I will repeat something I’ve said many times before, something that should be obvious to anyone who’s been following Trump from the start of his candidacy two (count ’em, two!) long years ago: he goes back and forth on things. He sends out mixed signals, or at the very least ambiguous, hard-to-read signals.

His admirers say it’s because he’s cagey. His detractors say it’s because he’s an idiot and/or a liar. I say he’s no idiot, and he’s sometimes very cagey, sometimes flat-out lying, and sometimes changes his mind. On DACA he’s been very waffley from the start. On the wall not so waffley, although he always talked about that great big beautiful door, too.

We’ll see.

My leaping tooth

The New Neo Posted on by

About a month ago I was eating brunch at a restaurant with a bunch of relatives and bit my fork.

You’ve probably done something similar at least a couple of times in your life. It’s hard to know why it happens, but every now and then the automatic coordination of hand and chewing muscles goes awry for a split second and ouch! You feel stupid, but you bit down way too hard on that shiny metal object that was in the way.

The masseter (one of the muscles powering the jaw) is one of the most powerful muscles in the human body, depending on how you define “most powerful”:

The strongest muscle based on its weight is the masseter. With all muscles of the jaw working together it can close the teeth with a force as great as 55 pounds (25 kilograms) on the incisors or 200 pounds (90.7 kilograms) on the molars.

In that restaurant a month ago, I immediately knew I’d bitten on that fork really, really hard, harder than I’d ever bitten on a fork (or a spoon, for that matter, but isn’t it usually a fork?) before. I was with a group of people and I didn’t even cry out (too embarrassed), but I figured it would get better in a day or two.

Or three or four or five. It didn’t. The affected tooth (lower incisor on the left) continued to hurt, although I couldn’t see any chip or crack in it. I was away from home—on the west coast—for a few weeks, so I would have had to have found a dentist in a strange place in order to have it looked at, and fortunately after a week or so it started getting better. A month later, it was about 85% healed.

That was last Friday. I was having dinner at another restaurant (maybe I should stay away from restaurants??) with a friend. I wasn’t thinking about that tooth at all, which by that time only ached a bit when I brushed it or when I bit hard into something like an apple. What was I eating for dinner? Ramen. Soup with noodles, soft soft noodles.

And yet all of a sudden, apropos of nothing, while I was chewing on those soft soft noodles I felt my lower incisor on the left grind alarmingly on its lifelong companion and previous friend, my upper left incisor. What on earth?

I figured it was a fluke and started to eat my next spoonful of noodle soup. But it happened again. And again and again and again, which managed to not only be tremendously annoying, but to stir up the pain in the lower tooth.

It being Friday night (naturally!), I couldn’t race off to the dentist right then and there. I figured the grinding would go away soon, of course. But it didn’t. For approximately the next two days, every time I ate, those two teeth ground on each other terribly every third chew or so. It didn’t matter how careful I was or how slowly and mindfully I tried to chew; it happened over and over.

Until suddenly—almost as suddenly as it had begun—it stopped. I made an appointment with the dentist anyway, and went there this afternoon to find out what might be happening. After x-raying it, he told me that I’d traumatized the tooth (I already knew that, of course) so hard that the ligament that held it place showed up on the x-ray, a sign that it was still inflamed.

But why had it suddenly moved on Friday, and why did it just as suddenly go back again? Apparently, injuries to teeth can cause them to extrude, or move upwards out of the socket. Sometimes the extrusion is pretty obvious and immediate, and requires intervention. In my case it was a delayed and very slight and temporary reaction, just enough to cause the grinding but not enough to last long or need any treatment.

In other words, my tooth decided to leap up a bit in my jaw and then it got beaten down again.

[NOTE: Here’s an article that appeared in 1911 in Scientific American on the power of the human jaw. It contains this interesting piece of information:

…[C]andies that are quite hard offer much less danger to the teeth than gum drops, which ordinarily are mashed out of shape at from twenty to thirty pounds. If part of the gum drop became wedged between the cusps of the teeth, it was found that frequently it could not be completely crushed with a pressure of less than 250 pounds. Sticks of licorice proved particularly dangerous in this way. But the most remarkable discovery was that even bread might cause the breaking of a cusp. To quote Dr. Black, “With my personal observation, more teeth that seem sufficiently strong have been broken with bread crusts, and not very hard crusts either, than with any other one thing.”

Food for thought.]

Some Democrats decide the time is ripe for single-payer

The New Neo Posted on by

We’ve been predicting it for a long long time. Obamacare was the stalking horse, and when it failed (or failed to come close to fulfilling its promises) single-payer would be trotted out, polished up, and presented to the public as the solution.

So now we have… (drum roll, please):

On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a new version of his long-standing proposal to provide “Medicare for All,” creating single-payer health insurance system that ends the private insurance industry as we know it.

Unlike the last time Sanders introduced similar legislation, he will have a co-sponsor. And not just one. Several potential candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination””and therefore, potential rivals to Sanders””have signed on, including Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren. (Senator Chris Murphy may as well, even though he’s shopping his own plan for letting people buy in to Medicare as a step toward Medicare for All.) Meanwhile, over in the House, single-payer legislation has, for the first time, a majority of the House Democratic Caucus on board.

The Democratic Party now is, for all intents and purposes, the party of single-payer health insurance.

It’s a sign of what we already know—how far to the left the Democratic Party has moved.

The author of the piece I linked to doesn’t think it’s a good idea for Democrats to push this right now, even though polls indicate that 57% of Americans respond favorably when asked if they’d support something called “Medicare for All.” Well, I’d like for that, too, if I could wave a magic wand and get it for free. But unfortunately, I can’t and we can’t and the Democratic Party certainly can’t:

Kaiser’s poll analysts concluded: “The public’s attitudes on single-payer are quite malleable, and some people could be convinced to change their position after hearing typical pro and con arguments.”

For example, upon hearing the startling news that single-payer might “give the government too much control over health care,” support plummets to 40 percent. The revelation that the plan would “require many Americans to pay more in taxes” did the same.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this bill isn’t going anywhere—this time.

I’d also love to ask Bernie Sanders how well single-payer worked in Vermont.

DOJ: There will be no federal charges in the death of Freddie Gray

The New Neo Posted on by

The Department of Justice has issued a report explaining why there will be no federal charges in the death of Freddie Gray. The summary version is that there’s virtually no evidence to convincingly support such charges. You may also recall that the outcome in the state prosecutions was a complete failure to convict those charged.

And yet I submit that despite this the prosecutions may have worked for some of the purposes prosecutors had in mind. They got a great deal of initial publicity for the case and I would bet—although I haven’t read any polls on the subject—that the majority of Americans still think the police officers did something wrong to Freddie Gray. Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is still in office, “currently the youngest chief prosecutor of any major American city.” And the city of Baltimore stopped its rioting, which was another goal of scapegoating the police officers.

Some civil lawsuits against Mosby by the erstwhile Freddie Gray defendants are pending, however, although five of those Freddie Gray defendants still will be facing public hearings in October on whether they should be terminated from the department or further disciplined, or not. In addition, there has been some question about whether the civil lawsuits brought by the officers against Mosby would be allowed to proceed, or whether she had immunity because of her position. But at the moment the suits seem to be going forward:

The officers are suing State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby for malicious prosecution, defamation and invasion of privacy. Three of the officers were acquitted, and Mosby dropped the remaining cases.

Mosby says the lower court should have found her to be immune from being sued because she’s a prosecutor.

But the officers said in a brief filed Thursday with Virginia’s 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Mosby isn’t entitled to immunity because she was acting as an investigator, not a prosecutor.

Mosby wore several hats, and that may come back to bite her someday.

The Founders on property and liberty

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Montage” wrote on the recent de Blasio thread:

I read the [de Blasio] interview for a more complete picture and context is important. The key is when he says: “hundreds of years of history that have ELEVATED property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.”

I capitalized the word elevated because he is not saying he dislikes the idea of property rights. He is saying that it has become elevated to the point that is ”˜calls the tune on a lot of development.’

But property rights have not been elevated. They are basic and always have been. Take a look at this to see what’s going on here:

Only one who ignores the history of the founding period could deny that the men of that era held the right to private property in high esteem. Indeed, it could be said that the central question of principle that animated the movements that led to independence and the framing of the Constitution concerned property rights; for it was a threat to property rights, in the form of taxation without representation, that initiated the crisis that led eventually to independence. Moreover, it was largely the undermining of property rights by state legislatures under the Articles of Confederation that prompted the framing of a new national constitution that would protect the individual right to property against infringement by national and state government power. (The state abuses of power during the 1780s included the cancellation of private debts either directly or indirectly, especially through deliberately inflationary policies and the emission of worthless paper money as legal tender.)

So insofar as the Founders made any distinction between property rights and other individual rights, they insisted that property rights were at least as important as personal rights. In Federalist 54, James Madison stated tersely: “Government is instituted no less for the protection of the property than of the persons of individuals.”

As Madison later elaborated, property rights are as important as personal rights because the two are intimately connected. The right to labor and acquire property is itself an important personal right and entitled to government protection; and the property acquired through the exercise of this personal right is entitled, by derivation, to an equal protection.

Also see these quotes offered by commenter Geoffrey Britain:

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.” John Adams

“Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?” Samuel Adams

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” ”“ Daniel Webster

“A man’s admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.” Alexis de Tocqueville

I don’t think there’s any question about the primacy and extreme importance of property rights to our entire system of government and of human rights. And I think that Daniel Webster quote is especially apropos when applied to the de Blasios of the world.

Why was the movie “Chappaquiddick” made now?

The New Neo Posted on by

It would seem an odd choice, wouldn’t it? A movie about one of the worst scandals in the life of liberal icon and the last Kennedy man of his generation standing, Ted Kennedy? Even now that Ted is gone, why would the liberals of Hollywood want to bring attention to his failings?

I’m assuming that the directors and producers and writers of the movie are mostly liberals, just because that’s a good bet. But I don’t know for sure, and a quick search didn’t turn up any information one way or the other. A recent interview with the director can be found here, and in it he says:

…“Chappaquiddick” director John Curran doesn’t promise his new film supplies any new resolutions to the accident. For it, Kennedy received a two months’ suspended sentence after pleading guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident causing bodily injury.

“We never set out to blow the lid off and find the truth,” Curran said of the incident which harmed Kennedy’s presidential ambitions, if not his political career. “It was more presenting the evolving story as it was developed by Ted and people around him. It is a controversy whether or not he drowned or whether he suffocated.”

“We don’t know and there’s no evidence because there’s no autopsy to prove one way or the other and they didn’t exhume the body because the parents [of Mary Jo Kopechne] didn’t want to…if you talk to the diver, he has an opinion. If you read the medical exams, there’s a different opinion there.”

Curran added, “We had the facts that we have. The film probably offers more questions than it does answers, I guess.”

That appears to be true, from the review I’ve read of the movie. And if you refresh your memory on the story of Chappaquiddick, there’s a frustrating lack of facts—for instance, because Kennedy didn’t speak to authorities till the next day (something that’s caused no end of speculation), we don’t know how much he’d been drinking the night before.

I’ve not written about the Chappaquiddick incident on this blog before. There is too much that’s unknown, and anyway people tend to fill in the blanks as they wish depending on their previous opinion of Ted Kennedy. Liberals often minimize the incident; those on the right often call him a cold-blooded murderer. Personally, I think he was at the very least negligent and a sleazebag, and the evidence of the latter rests on a lot more than his behavior at Chappaquiddick. Ted Kennedy has long seemed to me to have been a youngest son in a large family marked by tragedy, who took on the family business—liberal politics—after the deaths (eldest son) and assassinations (next two) of his older brothers left the space vacant. He was also a well-known philanderer, and early on in life proved untrustworthy:

In his sophomore year at Harvard, Kennedy was expelled for cheating. In danger of failing a Spanish class, Kennedy paid a friend to take an exam for him. The student was recognized ”“ and both were expelled. After a stint in the Army, Kennedy returned to Harvard, where he eventually received a degree.

That’s not just a panicky spur-of-the-moment glancing at the paper of someone next to you. That’s pre-planned, and involves the transfer of money. It’s also interesting that Harvard allowed him back. I wonder whether that would have happened if his name hadn’t been “Kennedy.”

In that article I linked earlier, the one with the interview with the movie’s director, there was also a statement by the actor who plays Ted in the movie. Unlike the director, he addresses politics (sort of, anyway):

Jason Clarke said he was drawn to the movie partly because of the enduring political legacy of the Kennedy political dynasty. “The further you went down the rabbit hole of the Kennedys, the further you went down the rabbit hole of 20th century and world history,” he said. “It was just endless. The profound effects of this to where we are now ”” Chappaquiddick, Watergate, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump if you want to say it.”

Jason Clarke (who’s Australian, by the way) is an actor, not a historian. But how on earth does he connect Watergate with Chappaquiddick as one of its “profound effects”? I don’t think Chappaquiddick had any “profound effects” except perhaps an increase in cynicism on the part of the American public.

The scandal of Chappaquiddick was not primarily one of sexual misbehavior (although there’s certainly been a ton of speculation on that aspect of it), it had to do with Kennedy’s degree of responsibility for Kopechne’s death. Bill Clinton was a philanderer like Kennedy, but Clinton wasn’t responsible for any deaths (unless you subscribe to what I consider to be absurdly far-fetched assertions about the death of Vince Foster).

As for Donald Trump—who slept around, and was crass about it—and the fact that he was able to become president despite his history of infidelity and general sleeping around, I see no connection at all, except for the principle that if a person is popular enough supporters will wink at things that wouldn’t be tolerated otherwise. It’s also true that the public’s tolerance for unfaithful sexual behavior in politicians (especially Democratic ones) has grown in the years since Chappaquiddick, but that’s been a general societal progression and IMHO has little or nothing to do with Ted Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy’s own road to the White House was ended by Chappaquiddick, although the people of Massachusetts continued to think him worthy of being elected their senator over and over and over.

This need to bring Donald Trump into the conversation seems to be a sort of compulsion among many Trump opponents, however, so Clarke’s statement about a link between Kennedy and Trump should come as no surprise. Also, the author of that Variety review of the movie that I linked earlier can’t seem to resist, either:

I don’t say any of this as a right-wing troll. But those are the facts, and they are facts that liberals, too often, have been willing to shove under the carpet. And they have paid the price. Ted Kennedy became known as “the Lion of the Senate,” and did a lot of good, but when you try to build a governing philosophy on top of lies, one way or another those lies will come back to haunt you. (Hello, Donald Trump! He’s an incompetent bully, but his middle name might be “Liberal Karma.”)

First the author feels obliged to let us know that he’s not one of those awful right-wingers. If I’m understanding the main point of the rest of that quote, once he’s gotten that all-important disclaimer out of the way he seems to be saying that the election of the incompetent bully Trump (although not so incompetent that he lost the election) is karmic repayment for the sins of Ted Kennedy.

Maybe that’s why the movie was made—to expiate those liberal sins and cancel the debt. It seems pretty preposterous to me.

But in another way, Trump actually might be payback for one particular thing Ted Kennedy did that had nothing whatsoever to do with Chappaquiddick or other aspects of his private life. I’m speaking of Kennedy’s championing of the 1965 act that revamped our immigration system and set the stage for everything that has followed in that arena.

Agree with the act or disagree with it, its passage changed our immigration policy greatly, and in that respect it probably did end up leading on a long and winding road to the election of Donald Trump.