Mark Twain on donating to neo-neocon

The New Neo Posted on by

I probably won’t keep this donation request up too much longer. I may not bump it up on Election Day, for example—too much else going on. Then after that I’ll probably put it up for just a few more days, and then I’ll quit bugging you for a while.

From Mark Twain:

We are all creatures of impulse. It’s a great mistake to get everybody ready to give money and then not pass the hat. Some years ago in Hartford we all went to the church on a hot, sweltering night, to hear the annual report of Mr. Hawley, a city missionary, who went around finding the people who needed help and didn’t want to ask for it. He told of the life in the cellars where poverty resided, he gave instances of the heroism and devotion of the poor. The poor are always good to each other. When a man with millions gives we make a great deal of noise. It’s noise in the wrong place. For it’s the widow’s mite that counts. Well, Hawley worked me up to a great state. I couldn’t wait for him to get through. I had four hundred dollars in my pocket. I wanted to give that and borrow more to give. You could see greenbacks in every eye. But he didn’t pass the plate, and it grew hotter and we grew sleepier. My enthusiasm went down, down, down – $100 at a time, till finally when the plate came round I stole 10 cents out of it. So you see a neglect like that may lead to crime.
– speech January 20, 1901. Quoted in The New York Times, January 21, 1901

So, I wouldn’t want to fail to meet your expectations and not pass the hat.

But I want to say again how much I appreciate all your contributions, no matter how small. If every reader donated just five or ten dollars, I’d have a nice sum. Of course, hefty amounts are extremely welcome, too. But every single dollar helps me continue to write this blog, and I am grateful.

So thank you in advance. Just use the donate button on the right sidebar, and don’t forget to click through the neo-neocon portal to Amazon when you order your holiday gifts.

It’s the “Hunchback of Notre Dame” election

The New Neo Posted on by

This from Ann Althouse made me chuckle:

“Both campaigns live in fear of one thing: the last seven days of the election being a referendum on why they stink.”

Said Mike Murphy (the Republican strategist) on “Meet the Press”…

And the NPR host Audie Cornish chimed in:

“I think for that last few months, we’ve learned that any time one of them is under the spotlight, they get roughed up in the polls. They don’t look good. There’s never a time they’re in the spotlight and people say, “Gee, I think I like that person after all.”

It made me [Ann Althouse] think of the line from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”: “I frighten you. I am very ugly, am I not? Do not look at me…”

Wow, I had completely forgotten that movie, one of those I watched in my youth many times It was played incessantly on TV back on those non-PC days. Charles Laughton was amazing, fascinating—you just had to look at him, despite his asking you not to. He was like a walking, talking, King Kong (including his love for the beautiful lady, and the towering height of the building involved).

I didn’t understand a bit of it, really, but I loved it. I don’t recall a single thing about the twistings and turnings of the plot, nor any of the non-hunchback scenes. All I remember is Quasimodo himself, and of course Esmeralda the gypsy girl (who didn’t look anywhere near as gypsy-ish as I did). Laughton held nothing back, nothing:

Are we having fun yet?: election and post-election predictions

The New Neo Posted on by

Time keeps chugging along.

And so we’ve arrived here, at the day before the big big day. We’ve run out of time to convince each other of anything.

Who will win the presidency? Who will win the Senate? On that first question, I’ll just get lazy for a change, and let Jonah Goldberg say it for me:

…[I]t looks like Trump might actually win, though I still very much doubt it. I doubt it for all the pundity kinds of reasons that pundits pundify about. So, let’s just leave all that there.

On the other hand, things certainly look better for him than anyone could have imagined prior to Jim Comey’s October surprise and all that’s followed…

Hillary Clinton deserves to lose, and I don’t know a serious political observer who doesn’t think she’d be down double digits in the polls if she were running against a standard Republican.

And that’s an important point. All of the reasons Trump is doing well now have almost nothing to do with him…

…Donald Trump didn’t force Comey to cough up a hairball on the nation’s doorstep eleven days before the election. He certainly didn’t make Hillary Clinton the spectacularly horrible candidate she is, or force her to set up her secret server…

Trump says he has nothing to do with the WikiLeaks disclosures that have eaten away at the thin and spotty veneer of Hillary’s credibility…

Nor did Donald Trump create the problems with Obamacare…

I will say, however, that if Trump wins, even his most ardent Never Trump opponents…must restart the clock and give him some benefit of the doubt…

Behind the scenes, Trump’s Republican backers insist that they will be able to manage and steer Trump toward positive ends…I am profoundly dubious of this…Character is destiny, and given his character we can predict what the destiny of the Trump presidency would be. But we all owe it to the country to give him his shot. I will be delighted to be proven wrong. But given that I actually believe the things I believe in, I don’t have high hopes.

Indeed.

What about the Senate? It’s exceedingly important, and exceedingly close as well. The safer bet is that if Hillary wins the Senate will go Democratic, and if Trump wins it will go Republican, but it seems nothing is the least bit safe this year. In fact, just as I believe Hillary has an edge in the fight for the presidency, I believe Democrats have a slight edge for the Senate, if only because I tend to be a pessimist and because in previous years the Democrats always seem to win the squeakers, by hook or by crook.

These prospects disturb me very greatly, for reasons I’m sure I don’t have to explain.

One prediction I’ll make that I think is a fairly safe one, though, is that whatever happens, the reaction of the more hard-core Trump supporters will be anger. You’d think it would be joy if Trump wins, and of course there will be quite a bit joy. But there will also be a lot of crowing and “I told you so’s,” a lot of retribution and accusations of insufficient cooperation from everyone else, a lot of rage at anyone on the right who dared to stand in Trump’s way. I don’t think this will come directly from Trump himself, necessarily. But I think it will come from many of his most fervent followers (just to be crystal clear, I’m not saying any of this about the group I call the reluctant Trump supporters).

And if Trump loses, there will be even greater anger from his hard-core followers. That is when the stab in the back* [see NOTE below] accusation will be spread far and wide, amplified and magnified.

Either way, I don’t see the war on the right ending. I see it continuing and growing worse, if possible, whoever becomes president.

The only way I see any healing occurring is if the winner—Trump or Hillary—ends up being a much better president for everyone than has been predicted by me, and by all that person’s detractors.

Gird your loins for tomorrow—and not just tomorrow, either.

[* NOTE: Some history of the phrase.]

Hillary’s maid and those classified emails

The New Neo Posted on by

Left and right are having their usual argument, this time about the riskiness of Hillary Clinton’s practice of having her maid print out some of her work-related emails. Here’s a summary of the initial story:

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government emails and documents ”” including ones containing classified information ”” from her house in Washington, D.C., e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.

The left pooh-poohs it, saying that the information it wasn’t classified at the time and only received its classified designation later, so no problem:

Neither of the two classified emails referenced by the New York Post were sent by Clinton, and Clinton did not make any request for Santos to print either email. Both emails were classified years after the fact — one in October 2015, and another in January 2016 — at the lowest level of classification, “confidential.” The sole case the Post cited of Clinton asking for a message to be printed was not classified…

As reported by the Associated Press, information that may become classified later is frequently shared on unclassified State Department systems, a routine occurrence that predated the current administration. Not only was Clinton’s “transmission of now-classified information” over an unclassified system “consistent” with agency practice, according to experts, concerns arise equally whether the retroactively classified information is “carried over the government system or a private server.”

Indeed, there’s plenty of concern to go around.

The quotes from people trying to minimize this are not particularly reassuring as far as I’m concerned. Personally, although I’ve got nothing against Hillary’s maid, who no doubt is a lovely person, she has no business whatsoever having access to a single email of Hillary’s that has anything to do with State business, much less her entire email account, and whether these particular emails were classified or not (and when) is an issue but not the only issue.

For example, I don’t know how Hillary’s printer worked. But if it’s anything like the printers with which I’m familiar, the email has to be open in order for it to be printed, which means that the entire account must be signed into and accessible.

Did the maid have her email password? Or did Hillary keep herself signed in at all times? The mind boggles.

My mother’s dresses and Theresa May’s knees

The New Neo Posted on by

First, it was Theresa May’s scandalous kitten heels with the leopard print.

Now, it’s her knees, and a little bit of upper arm/shoulder on this 60-year-old:

mayknees

Actually, I’d love to have that dress. And I’d also love to have some fancy occasion to wear it to.

When I was a child, my mother used to dress up regularly: cocktail parties and even a few formal occasions, for example. But even the theater was a reason to get dressed up, back in those days. Heck, even getting on an airplane meant a dress and little heels, rather than sweats or yoga pants.

So I had every reason, when my mother came into my bedroom to say goodnight—gowned in a pouffy cocktail dress and smelling of perfume—to think that some really pretty dresses to wear would figure in my future, too.

Alas, it’s very rare that I get dressed up, usually limited to weddings. And even then some are quite casual. In contrast, my mother had taken over a whole rack in the back of my closet when I was a child, to contain the overflow. It held party dresses only—maybe about ten of them at a time, in various flowing or satiny fabrics, jewel colors and prints, sheaths and full skirts, cap-sleeves and strapless.

This trip down memory lane has made me want to post a photo of my mother in one of those gowns. I certainly have some, but they’re not on my computer, and it would have taken me a lot of time to find one in a photo album and then scan it in. But here’s a photo I do have access to, one of my mother and me in our backyard, although there’s no gown involved. She and my father had just come back from a trip to Mexico, and she had brought back these matching mother-and-daughter outfits, which went a little bit towards soothing the frayed and anxious nerves I’d experienced during their long absence.

jeanmotherdresses-001

More on “uncouthness” and class conflict

The New Neo Posted on by

After I wrote yesterday’s post criticizing the idea that it is Trump’s “uncouthness” that constitutes the major objection of Trump opponents to electing Trump as president, I got to thinking about why this “they hate him because he’s uncouth” type of meme might be so pervasive. I believe that one reason some Trump supporters keep claiming it is that it serves to reflect and further stir up feelings of sensitivity and resentment about class that have long existed on the right as well as the left.

That’s part of what all this “GOPe” “establishment” “elite” talk has been about, too. The populist flames have been fanned for years against the Republicans, some of it deserved but some of it just demagoguery for ratings—from talk shows, bloggers, and pundits. Some of them absolutely believe what they are saying, and some probably don’t.

I wrote this about the phenomenon back in April:

The attack on the GOP from within (that is, the civil war as opposed to the separate attack from the left) relies on words such as “elites” and “establishment.” But those are classic leftist words””as pejoratives anyway, with “establishment” being a leftist word that I recall being popular in the 60s, along with “the system” (which I don’t hear that much about nowadays, along with “the man”).

It’s all another example of how leftist activist techniques are used by the alt-right (some of whom are actual leftists), as well as by talk show hosts and by other pundits, to stir up the “masses” (another leftist word) against the GOP. Now the GOP has its deep flaws, but it’s been nowhere near as bad as people say, and not even remotely as bad as the Democrats have been.

Even Newt Gingrich, who has been an “elite” for many decades, has gotten into the “elites” act…

For some people, it resonates quite strongly with other parts of their life experience. For some, it’s just an act of cynical manipulation. But in any event, many of these people have chosen Trump as the perfect vehicle for the sentiment. But it wouldn’t have worked if the ground hadn’t been prepared for years. “Country club Republicans” and “Rockefeller Republicans” were earlier manifestations of this class consciousness and class conflict on the right.

Trump himself is, of course, a rich man. A very rich man. What’s more, he’s been rich and powerful all his life. He likes to act like he was a self-made man, but he’s not—although he seems to be an industrious man and a very hard worker. He’s also, however, a rich man who came from a rich family and who got even richer, and he is also good at self-promotion.

Trump was not born a blue-collar, working class guy. However, his family—he grew up in Queens rather than Manhattan, for example, although it was an expensive part of Queens—had a slight “wrong side of the tracks” vibe. Although Donald was born into wealth and always had every privilege, his father was the self-made man. And it was his father who made sure his son Donald knew about the working man’s side of things, by making him learn about many aspects of the building trades by working them for a while in connection with his buildings (I can’t find the source for that at the moment, but I’m pretty sure I read it in a Trump biography).

I don’t hold Trump’s being born into wealth against him. He has worked hard at real estate development and at self-promotion, and now he’s bearing the fruit. But why was Romney excoriated as a patrician and Trump not? The difference was actually more about style and perception than reality, about appealing to a different base in the GOP and elsewhere. Trump is a populist—an unlikely populist, but a populist nevertheless. Romney was many things, but populist he was not.

And to circle back to the beginning, I believe that populism is the source of these simplifications of the objections of Trump’s opponents, the desire to brand them as elitist snobs who look down their noses and sneer at the base.

Rolling Stone found guilty of defamation…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in the matter of the Sabrina Erdely story about bogus gang rape at UVA, the one that portrayed “Jackie” as victim extraordinaire. The verdict involved a finding of actual malice on the part of the periodical and Erdely:

In a lawsuit filed last year, then-UVA associate dean of students Nicole Eramo alleged that the article and interviews Ms. Erdely gave about her reporting cast the administrator as the callous villain of its tale and falsely asserted that she discouraged a student identified only as “Jackie” from taking her rape allegations to the police.

Key to the verdict against Rolling Stone itself was its delayed decision to retract the story, according to the jury’s verdict form.

This is the tale of a periodical and a reporter who loved their story so much they couldn’t let go of it when they should have, and who had no interest in using due diligence in researching it.

Here’s a statement from Rolling Stone after the verdict:

We deeply regret these missteps and sincerely apologize to anyone hurt by them, including Ms. Eramo. It is our deep hope that our failings do not deflect from the pervasive issues discussed in the piece, and that reporting on sexual assault cases ultimately results in campus policies that better protect our students.

Well, Rolling Stone, I have a suggestion to make. If you would like your reporting to result in campus policies that better protect students, it would help to report the facts rather than lies.

Erdely herself has made a sort of cottage industry from writing sensational articles about rape, and several of her previous pieces have been subsequently looked at with a more skeptical eye than before, in light of the UVA brouhaha. But these articles of Erdely’s were not merely about rape; her recurrent leitmotif was that the victims’ reports of rape were ignored or minimized by the relevant institutions in attempts at coverup. Erdely’s “Jackie” story fit the pattern, with its allegations against UVA administrator Eramo:

Sabrina Rubin Erdely is trying to build a narrative. The narrative, really, is not as much about rape qua rape. The narrative is that rape is widely ignored and/or condoned by people in authority within institutions that she dislikes (frats, the military, churches). Reporting that a rape has occurred is upsetting but not surprising to people ”“ so what makes these stories actual news stories is that they in each instance make the sensational claim that the rape was reported to people in positions of authority who either ignored the accusation or who actually punished the victim for reporting it.

Here’s an article about one of Erdely’s previous stories for Rolling Stone, one that involved sexual abuse by priests in Philadelphia. The following excerpt was written five years ago, long before Erdely’s UVA story came out:

The author of “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files,” Sabrina Rubin Erdely, is not a religion reporter; she writes mostly about health issues. But she knows how to smear, and knows how to exploit stereotypes. As we will see, she is also dishonest…

I suggest you read the whole thing, but even more important to read would be this article about what happened later in the case (written in the fall of 2015). If you are familiar with the UVA/Jackie story, it should come as no surprise:

Daniel Gallagher is a slender 27-year-old with a wispy beard who is better known as “Billy Doe.” Under that pseudonym, he made national headlines in 2011 when he claimed to have been serially raped as a fifth- and sixth-grader at St. Jerome’s parish by two priests and a Catholic schoolteacher.

Gallagher subsequently became the Philadelphia district attorney’s star witness at two historic criminal trials. His graphic testimony helped convict three alleged assailants, as well as Monsignor William Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s former secretary for clergy, who was found guilty of endangering the welfare of a child. The monsignor became the first Catholic administrator in the country to go to jail for failing to adequately supervise a sexually abusive priest…

The Billy Doe rape story was so sensational it attracted the attention of crusading Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely. She described Billy Doe in a 2011 story, “The Catholic Church’s Secret Sex-Crime Files,” as a “sweet, gentle kid with boyish good looks” who had been callously “passed around” from predator to predator..

Judging from [court-appointed forensic psychiatrist] Mechanick’s report, Billy Doe has as much credibility as Jackie.

There’s much more that’s occurred subsequently on some of those Philadelphia cases, and the legal machinations are ongoing. Some of the more recent developments can be found here.

I can’t believe…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s now so close to Election Day. The nation is tied to the tracks and we can hear the train whistle getting louder and louder.

It’s terrifying, even though I really want this to be over.

Michelle Obama takes my advice, sort of

The New Neo Posted on by

And gets into trouble for it.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I gave some fashion advice to the new First Lady, Michelle Obama. I thought she’d look good in a dress on the order of a particular garment of Jackie Kennedy’s:

Not to belabor the point (oh, maybe just a little), but this is what Michelle Obama should have worn to the Inaugural Ball. Although a different color might have been in order, the cut and drape would have been just perfect.

The dress has the added attraction of being historical: designed by Oleg Cassini, it was worn by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962 at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize Laureates of the Western Hemisphere.

Which did not yet include Bob Dylan, although he was already starting his literary career.

Here’s Jackie’s elegant and classically-inspired dress:

jackiedress

Well, I’ve waited and I’ve waited, through thick and thin and the entire stressful Obama administration, as well as the frustrating and depressing 2016 campaign season. And now, finally, we have this:

michelledress2

It’s in the ballpark, anyway. And it is in a different color (and material). Although I don’t think I’d have chosen gold, I rather like it. It’s never too late to take neo-neocon’s advice.

And yes, I know this is maximally trivial and you don’t want to hear about it. But I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between the two dresses. If you think that Michelle’s isn’t quite as nice as Jackie’s, I’d agree with you. But I think that in general, clothing is nowhere near as well-made as it used to be, and this probably goes for designer clothing as well (Michelle’s dress was by Versace).

Victor Davis Hanson and the non-Trumpers

The New Neo Posted on by

Like many Trump-boosters, Victor Davis Hanson misses the point in this description of the motivations of people on the right who won’t vote for Trump. It’s an error I’ve seen over and over again from Trump supporters, including even relatively reluctant Trump supporters such as Hanson, who is ordinarily an intelligent and perceptive writer [emphasis mine]:

…Trump’s uncouthness has turned off his rivals and their supporters, who still in large part insist that they will not support him despite the transparency of the primaries and the long-ago oath of fealty of the Republican candidates to the eventual nominee.

Hanson commits many errors there, all in that single sentence. One is that Trump’s “rivals and their supporters still in large part insist they will not support him.” That is, quite simply, factually untrue. Carson and Christie and Perry boarded the Trump train in an early and vocal manner, and Huckabee wasn’t far behind. Kasich and Jeb Bush never did, but Cruz and Rubio both did, although reluctantly and to great criticism. Jindal did as well, as did Scott Walker. So did (to my surprise, because I had missed it when it happened in September) Carly Fiorina.

You can find out all of this quite easily by Googling it. As for “their supporters,” there is no question that although Trump won the primaries with less than half of the GOP vote, the vast majority of GOP voters are planning to vote for him. So in fact Trump’s “rivals and their supporters” in very large part are supporting Trump, despite his manifold flaws (and “flaws” is a kind word compared to some I could use).

So, why does Hanson—a man whose writing I have respected and praised for a long, long time—write what he wrote there? My theory is that anger and/or frustration is getting in the way of facts this year more than ever, even in people who ordinarily would be more careful. Trump versus Hillary is an enormously emotional experience, among other things, and emotion can cloud reason even in the best of us.

But that’s not all Hanson gets wrong. He also commits the very common error of Trump supporters by mischaracterizing the motives of the Trump non-supporters as their perception that Trump is “uncouth.” I’ve written about the problems with this approach many times before, which is that it trivializes and minimizes the objections of most non-Trumpers, objections which are ordinarily far more profound than that, and which have been fully aired many many times.

So there’s no excuse for this sort of error. Why does Hanson make it, and why do some many other Trump-supporting pundits make it, as well? With some it’s not an error, of course; it’s a purposeful distortion, although I do not think that’s true of Hanson at all. My best guess with someone like Hanson, an honorable person, is that the compromises one must make in order to support Trump mean that the supporter needs to quiet those voices of more profound objection in him/herself, to damp down his/her own awareness of the more seriously troubling aspects not just of Trump’s personality, but—much more importantly—of his character, his understanding of the issues (particularly international ones), his questionable alt-right allies, his lies, and even some of his policy statements (not to mention their shifting nature). It’s easier to tell oneself that those who object to Trump are merely snobs who can’t take a little populist mouthing-off. But although I suppose there are a few people who fit that description and whose main objection to Trump is his rough style, it very obviously isn’t what’s operating with the vast majority of thoughtful people who cannot bring themselves to vote for Trump even though they detest and fear Hillary.

But that’s not all I have to say about that sentence of Hanson’s that I quoted. The “transparency of the primaries and the long-ago oath of fealty of the Republican candidates to the eventual nominee” have little relevance under the circumstances People like Jeb Bush didn’t sign a pact in blood, and conscience might actually cause a person to change his or her mind, particularly with a candidate (Trump, in this case) who has done reprehensible things that were unknown to the person at the time he/she made that promise. And furthermore, what possible difference would these promises of Trump’s rivals make to their previous supporters, the ordinary voters? Why would those voters care about these broken promises of the other candidates at this point, when they themselves never took the pledge and are free to make their own voting decisions? They are not vassals, bound by the oaths of their lords.

I wrote that last sentence before I decided to look up the word “fealty,” which Hanson had used and which struck me as archaic. When I looked it up just now, I found this definition:

1.History/Historical.

(a) fidelity to a lord.
(b) the obligation or the engagement to be faithful to a lord, usually sworn to by a vassal.

2. fidelity; faithfulness.

Bingo! The word “vassal” turns out to have been remarkably faithful to what Hanson is saying, but completely inappropriate to the situation. Hanson is a classics professor and military historian, who also specializes in ancient agrarian history. As such, he knows what a word such as “fealty” means, and he knows that neither the other GOP candidates nor their supporters owe the nominee any sort of “fealty” whatsoever. Perhaps he wishes they did; then neither he nor Trump would have to try to convince them of anything.

In sum, why does it seem to be so difficult for so many Trump supporters to acknowledge the actual arguments and reasoning behind the decisions of non-Trump supporters, and try to counter those arguments instead of creating a much more simplistic strawman? Is it really necessary to insult them by trivializing what they think?

Neo speaks

The New Neo Posted on by

Many years ago I used to do weekly podcasts for PJ Media with three other bloggers (“The Sanity Squad”), and most of my readers were familiar with the sound of my voice. Although at first doing the podcasts made me very nervous, I soon became accustomed to that sort of format and to trying to sound coherent while speaking extemporaneously and without preparation. But it’s been so long since then that probably most people here have never heard my speaking voice.

I was reminded of this by a discussion here yesterday about, of all people, Michael Savage, which caused me to point out to “The Other Chuck” that about three and a half years ago I was a guest on the Savage show, and that you can still listen to the audio here.

Chuck” responded by pointing out that he was surprised at my lack of a New York accent. Which in turn reminded me that most of you probably have never read this old essay of mine on how it is that I don’t tawk like a New Yawkah.

Which in turn reminds me of one of the many oddities of this 2016 election, which is that this is the all-NY election—which would be strange in and of itself, even without all this election’s many other, far more important, strangenesses.