The WaPo and the AP decide (for the moment, anyway) that maybe Antifa aren’t such freedom fighters after all

The New Neo Posted on by

Take a look at the headlines: “Black-clad antifa attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley,” and “Black-clad anarchists swarm anti-hate rally in California.” The first is from the WaPo and the second the AP; the first is more critical of Antifa than the second, but both seem to represent somewhat of a switch from the coverage Antifa has gotten so far.

This is from the AP article:

Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said officers were told not to actively confront the anarchists. He applauded officers’ restraint, saying it forestalled greater violence. Six people suffered injuries, including two who were hospitalized, and one officer was injured while making an arrest and several others were hit with paint.

There were 13 arrests on various charges including, assault with a deadly weapon.

“The potential use of force became very problematic” given the thousands of peaceful protesters in the park, Greenwood said. Once anarchists arrived, it was clear there would not be dueling protests between left and right so he ordered his officers out of the park and allowed the anarchists to march in.

What’s up with that last sentence? It’s patently absurd as a defense of the police. A large number of anarchists with a violent history crash a previously peaceful demonstration, and it’s then that the police leave? And we’re not supposed to think the police winked at the violence on Antifa’s part that was inevitable at that point?

There’s much much more there, although it’s a bit hard to sort out because the article isn’t very well-written. What I’ve gleaned from it, though, is that there were two planned demonstrations by the right billed as anti-Marxism protests. The first had been originally set for Saturday in San Francisco in Crissy Field, and it was organized by Joey Gibson, leader of a group called Patriot Prayer. It was canceled due to concerns over deficits in the planned security arrangements by police. According to the article, Gibson is Japanese-American:

…[and has] consistently denounced racism. In a video he posted on Patriot Prayer’s Facebook page, Gibson said he is a person of color and so if he was in favor of white nationalism “I’d have to punch myself in the face.”

That information was offered rather late in the article.

A second demonstration had been planned by the right for Sunday in Berkeley, and it was also canceled:

The anti-Marxist rally in Berkeley was organized by Amber Cummings, a transsexual supporter of Trump. Citing the potential for violence, she canceled the event but said she would show up on her own. She was not seen there, though Gibson vowed to come and when he did anarchists set upon him.

They pepper-sprayed him and chased him as he backed away with his hands held in the air. Gibson rushed behind a line of police wearing riot gear, who set off a smoke bomb to drive away the attackers.

It was this second demonstration at which the violence occurred. It wasn’t much of a demonstration on the part of the right, because very few people showed up. But the ones who did were completely peaceful, and Antifa was violent. This wasn’t a case of “both sides were…”. The violence was completely one-sided.

The reporters who were there seem to have been a bit shocked by what they saw, although they shouldn’t have been; Antifa has shown its propensities long ago. Perhaps something about witnessing armed (with sticks and shields) people attacking peaceful demonstrators got the reporters’ attention—or perhaps it was the fact that some reporters were menaced as well.

It remains to be seen whether the MSM will continue this line of coverage in the future. I happen to doubt it, but I could be wrong.

I would think this experience, and the Berkeley police response to it, would be very very empowering for Antifa. Demonstrations on the right canceled: check. Police back down when Antifa arrives: check. Mission accomplished.

[NOTE: Here is some background on how the Saturday San Francisco rally came to be canceled:

Californian leaders, including House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D), have adamantly opposed a rally organized by the Patriot Prayer group on the grounds that it is “alt right” and “white supremacist.” The problem, however, is that of the speakers scheduled to speak, only one was white. Indeed, the group’s leader is neither white nor “alt right.”

Please read the whole thing.]

Amazon takes over Whole Foods and cuts prices

The New Neo Posted on by

I figure that when Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos and he chose the name of the company, he must already have had big plans. You don’t call something “Amazon” and expect to stay small.

Sure enough:

On July 5, 1994, Bezos incorporated the company as Cadabra, Inc. Bezos changed the name to Amazon.com, Inc. a few months later, after a lawyer misheard its original name as “cadaver”. In September 1994, Bezos purchased the URL Relentless.com and briefly considered naming his online store Relentless, but friends told him the name sounded a bit sinister. The domain is still owned by Bezos and still redirects to the retailer. The company went online as Amazon.com in 1995.

Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary; he settled on “Amazon” because it was a place that was “exotic and different”, just as he had envisioned for his Internet enterprise. The Amazon River, he noted, was the biggest river in the world, and he planned to make his store the biggest in the world.

“Relentless” would have been nicely descriptive as well.

Now Amazon has swallowed Whole Foods whole. And somewhere in the process of digesting the meal Amazon decided to cut prices, at least some prices, in an effort to make Whole Foods more accessible to those people who may not want to walk out of the store with quite as big a hit in their wallets.

I use Amazon a fair amount myself. It’s tremendously convenient. You can find just about anything there, and if you’re a Prime member (I’m not right now, but I have been at times in the past) you can have nearly-instant gratification of every desire in the material world you can afford, and on Amazon the prices are such that you can afford quite a bit. These things drive Amazon’s sales, because most people appreciate comprehensiveness, convenience, speed, and savings.

And yes, I’ve got those Amazon widgets on the blog, too, and so I’m an Amazon promoter as well. I get a small percentage of everything you buy through my blog when you click on one of those widgets or an Amazon link in the body of a post. Small, but it adds up, and every little bit helps.

But I confess to having mixed feelings about the homogenization of the marketplace and the dominance of huge companies over the local ones which can’t compete in terms of prices. Whole Foods was already a huge company, of course. And Whole Foods’ prices used to be so high that that fact was a joke with most people: “Whole Paycheck” and all that. But it seemed to me that Whole Foods knew what they were doing with those prices, which was to appeal to the (mostly liberal) urbanites who didn’t mind paying a premium for a shopping experience that was not only esthetically and gustatorially pleasing but that made them feel vaguely virtuous and “clean.”

That was Whole Foods’ niche, at least as I saw it. Trader Joe’s—which has a smaller selection of products but with good quality and lower prices—has had its foot firmly in the middle-of-the-road everyone-is-welcome door, whereas Walmart (and locally Market Basket, my own favored supermarket) has the reputation of being for the proles among us (I shop at Walmart for quite a few things, although not usually groceries).

Will Whole Foods now attract more people, lured by the lower prices (which are dropped for some items, but my guess is that Whole Foods will remain on the expensive side)? Or will the special appeal of Whole Foods—that je ne sais quoi—be lost?

Back to the Woodstock garden

The New Neo Posted on by

Nope, I wasn’t at Woodstock—one of the only members of my generation who wasn’t, to hear most them tell it.

And I don’t romanticize the 60s and look back on them nostalgically, although many people my age do. I think the 60s were the root of a lot of wrong turnings the aftermath of which we’re dealing with today, although what happened during that era certainly wasn’t all bad and some of it was good (the early civil rights movement, for example).

And the music was pretty great.

Now, I never was a fan of the song “Woodstock,” but it’s certainly familiar to me. I came across “Woodstock” the other day—I forget why, but it had something to do with searching for the Joni Mitchell song “Tin Angel,” which I highly recommend. I love the ability YouTube gives us to compare and contrast, and to track the passage of time and the changes in artists’ interpretations (and their voices) through the passing years.

So here we have the achingly young Joni Mitchell of the high angelic voice, performing her original concept of “Woodstock” (a song she actually wrote, although it was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young who popularized it in a very different version). Mitchell wasn’t at Woodstock either; if you want to skip her story about that and just go straight to the song, start after one minute:

Years later Mitchell finally made it to Woodstock, somewhat the worse for wear. Here’s the same song, with Mitchell older and deeper of voice:

And here she is around 70 years of age, with the voice ever deeper:

Now listen to the much more well-known (and very different) version sung by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. It’s probably the one you already know quite well if you’re Of A Certain Age:

“We” never did get back to that garden, did we? Maybe because a flaming sword bars the way.

[NOTE: Speaking of The Garden, I think this is mighty interesting.]

Presidents and lies

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Big Maq” asks a question:

If it were obama or clinton who made such claims [that he had passed more bills in his first seven months than most presidents had in that time] in the same circumstances, would we still be arguing that either is “substantially right”?

I highly, highly doubt so. I’d bet my retirement on it, and I’m not a big gambler.

Well, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to talk about it all that much because that sort of lie (or misstatement, or exaggeration, or puffery) wasn’t my big concern with Obama. I had major concerns about other sorts of lies, as you will see.

I did write about Obama’s bragging in general and his narcissism, just as I have with Trump, in terms of his character and personality. One exploration of these traits of Obama’s—written during the 2008 campaign—can be found here. I’m going to quote from it at some length:

Self-confidence is an internal state that guides behavior. A self-confident person believes that he/she is capable of weighing situations, making good choices, and taking productive actions. Self-confidence can be conveyed by a calm demeanor, an air of knowledge and authority, the ability to make decisions and stick with them but to remain flexible if facts and situations change (not merely for political expediency).

Arrogance is not an internal state. It’s an external manifestation of an internal state that may or may not include authentic self-confidence. While it’s possible to be truly self-confident and yet not have enough sensitivity to the perceptions of others to curb overt and sometimes offputting expressions of arrogance, it’s also very common for the deeply insecure to convey an impression of arrogance to cover up that deficit (even from themselves, or maybe especially from themselves).

In addition, self-confidence can be objectively justified by a person’s behavior and skills, or it can be misplaced…

Certainly Obama is supremely self-confident; no doubt about that. But does his capacity for leadership match his high assessment of his own abilities? He is fortunate in that his demeanor, his voice, and his smooth speaking style have engendered the confidence of others for much of his life, and therefore they feed his own faith in himself. But his actual record of accomplishment””as has been pointed out time and again””is remarkably thin.

Only time will tell whether Obama can actually do the job well in the event of his election to the Presidency. But that’s true of all presidents. At the moment it’s only possible to say that there is good reason to doubt that his self-confidence is justified…

…Obama’s arrogance now is… symbolic and rhetorical and tone deaf. The redesign of the seal. The “rise of the oceans”¦” speech. The premature triumphant World Tour. The dismissing of valid questions as being unworthy of his time and trouble. The inability to admit to having been wrong.

Some of this may sound familiar. And in fact it is the latter quality””inability to admit having been wrong””that opponents of George Bush often cite as one of his major flaws.

Arrogance has most definitely been one of Bush’s drawbacks””never more so, I believe, than in his showboaty landing on the USS Lincoln. That panoply of macho swagger was fun for a moment, but in the end it did him no good at all. Nor did his famous “bring them on!” statement, which to his credit, Bush ended up publicly regretting.

Presidents often skirt the fine line between self-confidence and arrogance. But it’s always a bad idea to cross it, although a transgression can be forgiven now and then if it doesn’t become a habit and things are otherwise going well.

In line with the analysis I offered there, I submit that Trump is both self-confident and arrogant, although with a very different style of arrogance than Obama had. Trump’s arrogance involves a more conventional type of bragging. Not only that, but (unlike Obama) his bragging is a very obvious and open part of his personality, something even most of his admirers concede. In contrast, Obama’s demeanor was that of a judicious, laid-back, professorial guy, and yet he still said things that were astoundingly over-the-top in terms of bragging (those oceans) without even blinking. Trump is a much “hotter” personality, and his braggadocio is overt and obvious and a big part of what we already know about him. It’s been discussed—and acknowledged for the most part by both sides—so much for so long that it isn’t something that I would think needs a whole lot more discussion.

In other words, it’s a given.

But bragging of that sort is not lying. Those who call it “lying” are characterizing it in a way that doesn’t fit, and didn’t even fit for Obama. I don’t think I ever referred to Obama’s self-aggrandizement as “lying.” I don’t think I would have liked it if people had done so, either, although I can’t find a post where I discuss this. I did find this post where I described my annoyance at the political use of “gotcha gaffes” on both sides, cases in which mistakes or slips of the tongue are made much of by the opposition. Sometimes I use humor to deal with those incidents of this nature that I consider not all that important. Note, for example, that I used humor just yesterday to deal with Pelosi’s “wolf in a theater” remark, which I consider a gaffe—and I used the term “faux pas” to refer to it.

If you want an example of the way I looked at Obama’s slips of the tongue and/or ignorance of historical facts, take a look at this post from May of 2008 [emphasis added, and Big Maq, please take note of the parts I’ve bolded]:

…[N]ot all of Obama’s errors are created equal. Some fall into the category of slips of the tongue””after all, even his enemies don’t really think Obama believes there are 57 states.

Obama’s most recent error””which concentration camp his uncle (actually, great-uncle) helped liberate””has been blown way out of proportion. As soon as I heard the story, I was nearly certain it was basically true but that he’d gotten the camp wrong.

This is not a case of “lying,” as some have charged, nor of course did Obama’s uncle serve in the Russian Army, as some tongues-in-cheek have suggested. But still, the mistake is a bit more disturbing than his “Heinz 57 states” error. The latter was a slip of the tongue. The former was a sloppy case of ignorance of a detail of history, Obama relying on his memory rather than fact-checking.

There’s much more after that, but the reason I’m referring to it is that I think it demonstrates how reluctant I am to use the word “lie” to refer to an error that comes from campaign hyperbole or ignorance. If it’s ignorance, I’ll criticize the ignorance, not a “lie” that isn’t really a lie. And I try to do the same for each side.

Lies are different, and I come down much more heavily on them. For example, here’s what I wrote about Obama’s whopper “you can keep your doctor,” because it was a deliberate lie and a material lie about government policy.

Much later in the Obama game—February of 2014—I wrote this post about the sort of presidential lies from Obama that bothered me the very most of all. The title is “All Presidents lie”:

I suppose most of them””or at least many of them””do.

About sex.

About any number of things”“usually minor things, or self-serving face-saving things when caught in error, or about things like smoking marijuana.

They also make errors: Bush on WMDs would be a good example, or Bush I’s promise not to raise taxes.

But I can think of no president who has lied in the way Obama has: about the fundamentals of who he is politically. About his plans for the United States. About the most basic details of a huge program he’s promoting, knowing he’s lying even as he’s promoting it.

That’s why I get so angry when I hear Obama supporters excusing him by saying “all presidents lie.” Not like Obama, they don’t.

About that most fundamental thing—his political points of view, and his plans for the country as president—Trump (at least so far) appears to have been telling the truth. Which is sort of funny, because during the campaign a lot of us suspected he might have been lying and had no intention of trying to do most of the things he said he would try to do. If during his campaign Obama seemed more trustworthy than he actually turned out to be (although I don’t think I was fooled; see this post), than Trump as president so far has been more trustworthy in that respect than he seemed to be during the campaign.

The war on statues…

The New Neo Posted on by

…continues in the most unlikely of places.

I say “unlikely” because one would think a Catholic school to be the last bastion for the defense of its Catholic statues. But then again, this particular Catholic school is in San Anselmo in the heart of Marin.

Amy Skewes-Cox, who heads San Domenico School’s board of trustees, said the relocation and removal of some of the school’s 180 religious icons was “completely in compliance” with San Domenico’s new strategic plan, approved unanimously by the board of trustees and the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael last year. She said at least 18 icons remain, including a statue of St. Dominic at the center of the campus.

She noted that it was unfortunate the removal of the statues occurred at about the same time as the unrest in Charlottesville over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and that the issues are “totally different” and have “absolutely no connection other than it is change, and people have a hard time with change.”…

“San Domenico is both a Catholic school and an independent school,” said Head of School Cecily Stock, “but what we were finding after doing some research is that in the broader community we are known as being a Catholic school and are not necessarily known as an independent school. We want to make sure that prospective families are aware that we are an independent school.”

In other words, they need more students and are looking to the non-Catholic community to supply them, and getting rid of a few statues seems a small price to pay. But at this point it seems that San Domenico is on its way to losing any identity at all and becoming neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring.

Amy Skewes-Cox may not see the connection to what happened in Charlottesville, and I’m pretty sure the statue removals at San Domenico’s had been planned before Charlottesville ever happened. But I think there is a broad connection nevertheless. It consists of the emphasis on symbols, the desire to not offend anyone with those symbols, and the decline of a tradition. Pulling down statues is something I don’t remember from my youth, except in the Soviet Union and/or in the aftermath of a revolution (often against Communism). As far as I can recall, quiet peacetime removal of a statue that used to be considered totally acceptable just wasn’t done in this country, even during the turbulent 60s.

[NOTE: See this from Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club.]

Is Trump lying, just bragging, or telling the truth?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today commenter “Bill” asked some questions:

Trump just tweeted this out, just now

“Few, if any, Administrations have done more in just 7 months than the Trump A. Bills passed, regulations killed, border, military, ISIS, SC!” ”“ 25 Aug 2017 5:44am

Why? Other than to propagandize those not paying attention, why does he do this?

Trump supporters ”“ is this statement true or false? I realize it’s somewhat in the realm of opinion. But it also can be objectively measured ”“ number of bills passed. Number of regs killed. Border security changes. Supreme Court appts. Etc.

I’m not saying he hasn’t made progress on some of those fronts. But he just claimed to be in the top echelon in these areas in Presidential history. Do you believe that?

Bill doesn’t seem to have researched the question, although he has access to the same tools I do, and the same tools Trump supporters or opponents have. When I read his comment, I found it intriguing because it is fairly typical of the sort of dispute I read every day about politics and politicians (and Trump in particular, for now), and highlights the difficulty of discussing such things.

For me, it immediately generated reactions such as these:

How do we define “few”? Because whether Trump is telling the truth or not depends in part on that fairly ambiguous word.

Trump gives a list, and if we wanted to research the question, do we look at each thing in the list separately or the whole? In other words, must Trump be more productive than most presidents on every single metric (bills passed, regulations killed…etc.?) in order to rate his tweet “true,” or does it just need to be true in the aggregate, the totality of all the subjects in the list?

You can see the difficulty in coming to any kind of conclusion at all on the “objective measures” Bill says he’s looking for.

But I decided to tackle at least a little bit of it. So the very first thing I did was to Google “trump number of bills passed compared to other administrations,” and the very first thing that came up in response was this Politifact article.

Now, the crew at Politifact can be criticized in various ways, but one thing they are not is Trumpophilic. And yet when they researched a statement by Sean Spicer back in April that “Trump has been more productive in his first 100 days than any president since Harry Truman”—which is not exactly the same as what Trump recently tweeted (for one thing, it’s no longer April) but is in the same vein—Politifact rated it as Mostly True. Hmmm.

Here’s a much more recent article listing every bill Trump has signed (53 was the total at the time). The article doesn’t compare the number to previous administrations, however, but it will give you an idea of what’s been going on in the bill-passing department, much of which might have eluded your radar screen.

Of course, none of this indicates how important the bills are that Trump has signed, compared to previous administrations (or how good). But that’s not what Trump was tweeting about.

I would wager that FDR almost certainly exceeded whatever pace Trump has set. But it seems to me—as a non-Trumpophile—that Trump is basically correct in that his total is probably higher than most, and certainly my impression is that the aggregate of what he’s done in those first months is higher than most. His statement is probably true enough to be considered “mostly true” in general. That’s probably better on the truthfulness scale than what most presidents achieve when they brag about themselves and what they’ve accomplished (which they certainly do). Of all of Trump’s lies (and he sometimes has lied) to single out, this one doesn’t seem like all that much of a lie to me.

I didn’t want to spend hours and hours of time researching this. But just a quick couple of searches revealed the following:

This article from New York Magazine (most definitely not Trump-friendly) in July is entitled, “What President Trump Actually Accomplished in His First 6 Months.” It’s very critical, but it certainly lists a lot of things he’s done. Then there’s this from the Atlantic (another non-Trump-friendly venue) in early August:

Trump Has Quietly Accomplished More Than It Appears

…The chaos, legislative fumbling, and legal jeopardy should not obscure the ways that the administration is remaking federal policy in consequential ways.

With the Trump administration’s chaos sucking up all the attention, it’s been able to move forward on a range of its priorities, which tend to be more focused on regulatory matters anyway. It is remaking the justice system, rewriting environmental rules, overhauling public-lands administration, and greenlighting major infrastructure projects. It is appointing figures who will guarantee the triumph of its ideological vision for decades to come…

One of the two biggest victories has come on border security, which was one of Trump’s top campaign priorities. Border crossings have already plummeted, suggesting that rhetoric making it clear to immigrants that they are not welcome is effective in its own right. Customs and Border Protections report that apprehensions of unauthorized people are down nearly 20 percent from the same time in 2016. (Trump continues to radically exaggerate these figures, though.) This decline has occurred despite Trump being foiled on his actual policy proposals at the border. Construction hasn’t begun on his border wall yet, and federal courts have repeatedly smacked down his Muslim travel ban.

That said, he did get one good result in courts””and that points to a second area of success. The Supreme Court allowed parts of the travel ban to go forward, in a victory that would not have happened without Neil Gorsuch on the court…

So, is Trump’s statement true? Is it substantially true? Is it true-ish? Is it simply a case of slight hyperbole of the Trumpian kind, and does it matter? Do we need or expect complete accuracy and utter veracity from our presidents?

I would answer that it’s true-ish or maybe even substantially true, and that although I would love to have accuracy from our presidents, it’s never going to happen and to expect it is completely unrealistic. It’s also the case that Trump has a style of exaggeration and bragging that is particularly characteristic and rubs a lot of people the wrong way. It’s not my cup of tea, I would prefer otherwise, but I don’t really deeply care.

Does it hurt him or help him? I can’t answer that question, except to say that there are people who love it and people who hate it, and I don’t know which group is more numerous.

Bill added the following question at the end of his comment:

[Trump’s] previous tweet right before this one was a complaint about not being able to pass bills because of the filibuster rule ”“ which is it?

Why is it either/or? It might be true that many bills were passed under Trump, even more than under most presidents, and it also might be true that the filibuster has prevented even more (and more important) bills from being passed. I see no contradiction.

I find it strange to almost continually be in the position of defending Trump. It’s not where I expected to be. I try to be honest and fair, and to me it seems that he’s accomplished quite a bit more so far than I expected, and been a better president so far than I expected. Granted, I expected very very little, and most of it bad. So it’s been a pleasant surprise for me. Perhaps “pleasant” is the wrong word—there’s been plenty of stress and nastiness and failures—but it’s been better than I would have predicted, and that’s a kind of relief.

The ancient history of math: Plimpton 322

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is one of those days I look at the news and sigh.

I don’t want to see lists of the most recent statements by people who think Trump is unstable.

I don’t want to hear how the president is so very wrong to attack the MSM who are just doing their best at journalism and not out to get him at all.

I don’t want to read the latest spin on the actions of extreme leftists.

I’ve heard it all before. Sometimes I just want to take a break.

And so today I turn to math’s ancient history:

A 3,700-year-old clay tablet has proven that the Babylonians developed trigonometry 1,500 years before the Greeks and were using a sophisticated method of mathematics which could change how we calculate today.

The tablet, known as Plimpton 332 [sic], was discovered in the early 1900s in Southern Iraq by the American archaeologist and diplomat Edgar Banks, who was the inspiration for Indiana Jones.

The true meaning of the tablet has eluded experts until now but new research by the University of New South Wales, Australia, has shown it is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, which was probably used by ancient architects to construct temples, palaces and canals.

However unlike today’s trigonometry, Babylonian mathematics used a base 60, or sexagesimal system, rather than the 10 which is used today. Because 60 is far easier to divide by three, experts studying the tablet, found that the calculations are far more accurate…

“This means it has great relevance for our modern world. Babylonian mathematics may have been out of fashion for more than 3000 years, but it has possible practical applications in surveying, computer graphics and education.

“This is a rare example of the ancient world teaching us something new.”

That’s pretty stunning. However, I’m not sure it’s true that this is the final verdict on the subject. Apparently, the argument about Plimpton 322 and whether it’s a trig table or something else has been going on (who knew?) for decades. Perhaps the current researchers think they’ve solved it once and for all, however.

I can’t tell. What I remember most about Babylon was something I first encountered in Art History 101, the Ishtar Gate that marked the entrance to the ancient city. Here’s a reconstruction in a museum in Berlin:

Impressive in any era.

The following wasn’t Babylonian (it was Assyrian; same general area a while later), but it was the ancient work of art that impressed me the most when I first saw it in that same course so long ago. The Wounded Lioness bas-relief:

The acute observational powers and the carving skills of the artist are all on clear display, along with the pathos of a wounded animal.

I’m going to whine about something

The New Neo Posted on by

And it’s the overuse of the word “whine.”

I’ve noticed that whine is employed a great deal in political discourse, both on this blog and elsewhere. It’s ordinarily used to describe—and trivialize—a complaint by people with whom you don’t agree. Whether the complaint is justified or not doesn’t seem to matter. The actual tone of voice (which, after all, is the origin of the term “whine”) of the person doing the complaining doesn’t matter and ordinarily is not even heard, because most of the time we only have written words without speech.

Children whine a lot. They whine in particular when they don’t get their way. That’s why accusing someone of whining is also accusing that person (more subtly) of being juvenile and demanding. Another implication is that the person’s concern is fairly trivial and that the person’s complaint is unfocused and inarticulate, just one big and grating wail.

Here’s the way dogs do it (the video can’t be embedded, so you have to click on it). Careful; that sound might just drive you nuts, because in addition to all the rest, whining tends to be annoying.

Sometimes “whining” really is the correct word for a complaint, though. I’ve used it myself on occasion. If the whiner is being overly sensitive and is complaining about something trivial, something that objectively speaking isn’t that big a deal or something that wouldn’t bother the average person, or not being at all specific about the complaints, then it just might be that “whine” fits the bill.

But mere complaining or critiquing is not whining. And of course, I, neo, never whine, except when I announce that I’m doing it, as here.

[NOTE: By the way, while researching this post I discovered that “whining” also refers to a form of sexy dancing (click on the link to see short videos):

Whine is defined by a Caribbean dance expert as the thrusting or rotating of the pelvic girdle in a rhythmic pattern.
”¦
In the context of Caribbean culture, whine is a genuine regional dance form…

Take whining as a graceful or aggressive gyration of the buttocks. Unlike twerking, whining relies more on the waist giving off a fluid movement.

When I was young there were several popular dances that primarily used pelvic movements. The Twist comes to mind, of course, as well as the Jerk. But although they clearly were sexy dances, particularly compared to what preceded them, they were not as overtly sexual as today’s twerk and whine.

Here’s the mid-60s Jerk:

And the early 60s Twist:

Or maybe it was just that the times in which they were embedded were more innocent than today.]

Observations

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently I was at several gatherings of relatives and friends, and listening to some of the conversation I get two impressions.

The first is that some liberals are still very much obsessed with Trump. One in particular could hardly let a thought go by without including a dig at Trump, even if there didn’t seem to be even a remote connection.

The second is that a lot of liberals think they’ve got Trump on the ropes and that he won’t last another year in office. I happen to disagree.

Free speech for Nazis: policies in the US and Europe compared

The New Neo Posted on by

A NY Times op-ed by K-Sue Park that I critiqued recently called for the ACLU to “rethink” its free-speech defense of Nazi rallies, and to loosen its traditional even-handed defense of freedom of speech as a principle of liberty and adopt a leftist power/class/racial/hierarchical approach, defending only those groups the left thinks are entitled to free speech.

This not only violates our American tradition of defense of free speech even when offensive (which neo-Nazis most certainly are), but it also tends to be more in line with the European point of view regarding free speech. For example, not all countries in Europe ban Nazi symbols such as flags, but many either ban or restrict them in various ways, although they are allowed as free speech here. The restrictions on such symbols are particularly strict in Germany and Austria, for reasons that are obvious.

However, even Germany allows neo-Nazi parties to exist, despite many attempts to get them banned. A recent court ruling (January of 2017) went this way:

Yes, Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD) is “related to National Socialism”, the country’s supreme court in Karlsruhe said on January 17th. And yes, its aims are to undermine Germany’s constitution and ultimately to establish an ethnically pure German Volk. And yet, the red-robed judges opined, there is no sign that the NPD could come close to fulfilling its goals. The party, it ruled, will therefore not be banned.

This landmark verdict ends a decades-long saga of failed efforts to declare Germany’s neo-Nazi party illeg…

…the standard of proof for banning political parties, mandated by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, is high. In societies that value free speech and association, it is not enough to prove even the worst motivation; a party must also have a “real potential” to make good on evil designs.

And in Germany, neo-Nazis are even allowed to demonstrate, as long as they meet certain very stringent rules:

Germany has long enforced a strict ban on Nazi symbols or anything to do with glorification of the Third Reich.

For the neo-Nazi march, one flag per 50 people was allowed, images of Rudolf Hess [the man whose death was being commemorated] were forbidden, as were drums and military music. Police individually searched each marcher in a specially set-up tent before allowing them into the penned-off march area. The neo-Nazis had to cover up tattoos and they weren’t even allowed to chant slogans. In a country where guns are banned, nothing more dangerous than a mobile phone was allowed on them.

The German authorities are trying to walk a fine line here; they probably don’t want to make free-speech martyrs out of the relatively powerless neo-Nazis. The Germans may even be aware of the history of what happened in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s regarding the restriction of Nazi speech:

…[In the 1920s and 30s, Nazis did go to jail for anti-Semitic expression, and when they were released, they were celebrated as martyrs. When Bavarian authorities banned speeches by Hitler in 1925, for example, the Nazis exploited it. As former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier explains in his book Defending My Enemy, the Nazi party protested the ban by distributing a picture of Hitler gagged with the caption, “One alone of 2,000 million people of the world is forbidden to speak in Germany.” The ban backfired and became a publicity coup. It was soon lifted.

There is nothing easy or pleasant about deciding how to deal with groups such as neo-Nazis. But free speech in this country demands that they be allowed their say and even their marches and their symbols, or we compromise the liberty we hold so dear.

Or do we hold it so dear? According to this poll (taken in 2015), Millenials are considerably more likely than previous generations to advocate bans “to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups.” The figure for Millenials supporting such a ban is 40%, which is not a majority. But it’s a troublingly large minority, particularly compared to the range for other generations: 27% among Gen Xers, 24% for Boomers, and 12% among Silents.

The trend over time is clear, and it’s against free speech.