RUTHFULLY YOURS

Seventy-six years ago, December 7, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into a World War that had been raging, formally, for over two years, since Germany invaded Poland on September 2, 1939. But Nazi militancy had begun earlier. They had re-armed beyond what they were allowed under the Treaty of Versailles in the early ‘30s. They had reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936 and they had annexed Austria in March 1938. A year later, in March 1939, Czechoslovakia fell. But the Allies did nothing. Eight years earlier, in September 1931, the Kwantung Army of the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria. The world was aflame when Pearl Harbor was attacked. But a giant was stirred, and by war’s end over 60 million people (roughly three percent of the world’s population) were dead – approximately one killed every three seconds!

The most consequential news for the U.S. this past month, and perhaps for all of 2017, was the passage and signing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Its support was narrow and partisan, so has been compared to the Affordable Care Act of 2010. But, there is a significant difference. The ACA was designed to give government more resources, and greater control and power. This Bill gives government fewer resources, and less control and power. Its center piece is the reduction in the stated federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, which is slightly below the world average. The Bill allows businesses to expense capital expenditures (investments) when occurred. As well, companies are incentivized to re-patriate about $2.5 trillion held abroad. Tax rates for individuals were lowered, albeit modestly. The deductibility of state and local income taxes (SALT), which serves to mask aggressive spending on the part of many states, including California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey and my state of Connecticut, will be limited. That will negatively affect high-earners in those states. I would have preferred a simpler bill, and one, for instance, that acknowledges that “carried interest” is income. But this was the first time in a generation major tax reform has been achieved. The Bill should help boost economic growth.

As significant for economic growth has been the rolling back of regulations. For example, an apple farm in upstate New York, according to The New York Times, is subject to 5,000 rules. The repeal of Net Neutrality was a victory for free markets. The Act had nothing to do with neutrality and everything to do with regulation. It re-categorized broadband from Title I to Title II under the 1934 Communications Act, which meant carriers would be regulated as public utilities. Its elimination was a win for competition and the promise of 5G wireless, which may obviate the monopolies and duopolies of cable and fixed-line carriers.

Elsewhere domestically, the Mueller investigation suffered credibility issues, as anti-Trump bias was shown to be prevalent with a number of Mueller’s senior personnel: Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Andrew Weissmann, Jeanie Rhee and Andrew McCabe. Increasingly, it looks like the collusion that should be investigated was that between the Clinton campaign and the FBI, rather than Russia and the Trump campaign. The Santa Barbara County wildfire in California became the State’s largest. Governor Jerry Brown said such fires are the “new normal!” Late in the month, the Northeast and Midwest of the U.S. were subjected to a prolonged arctic freeze. President Trump signed an Executive Order substantially reducing acreage in Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, a tract of land so-named on December 28, 2016 by President Obama. Mr. Trump’s decision caused an uproar about separation of powers. However, National Monuments are created by Presidential edict, while National Parks are established by Congress. Doug Jones beat Ray Moore for the Alabama Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Whether this proves good for the citizens of Alabama remains to be seen, but it was good for the nation and especially for the Republican Party. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court backed the President’s travel ban from six predominantly Muslim nations. ISIS-inspired Akayed Ullah, a U.S. citizen and native of Bangladesh, was badly hurt when his suicide vest detonated prematurely on a Times Square subway platform. There were no other injuries.

It has become impossible to distinguish the LGBTQWTF cause du jour from a 4chan prank these days. First it was the unforgettable new acronym LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP unveiled in Canada that set everyone wondering if we were being pranked (apparently not) and now it’s #MyIdentityIsValid. Signs are floating around Twitter and Instagram showing gender nonspecific people looking dour with demands for the rest of us to use awkward pronouns like “they” and “them” for a single person. If I was the sort of person to entertain such an asinine request, the grammar freak in me simply could not do it under any circumstances. Sorry, dear, but I can only refer to you as the third person pronoun that refers to you in the singular form with the appropriate gender, of which there are two. I will make exceptions for conjoined twins.

Is this real? I honestly can’t tell.

Dear God. Pronoun violence? The reason this feels real is because these lunatics have been spouting that “misgendering” someone is equal to violence for quite some time now. It’s completely out of hand. A thorough search of 4chan and /pol/ for any indication of this being one of their joke campaigns came up empty. (This does not rule it out, but usually it’s easier to find if it is a 4chan operation.)

The “two-spirit” one is particularly hilarious.

I don’t think that costume is SJW approved for cultural sensitivity. Did Native Americans wear gay flag symbols on their buckskin? Seems problematic. While the posters might be faked (and who can tell?) the hashtag #MyIdentityIsValid is apparently being used by some serious people. (Very serious and angry.)

The year started with a national feminist tantrums and street theater known as The Women’s March on January 21, 2017. Sporting ridiculous pink “pussy hats” and inspired by the avatars of “human rights” such as the racist and mendacious Linda Sarsour, they congregated, they marched under the mantra:”We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.”

The year ended with our magnificent Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (born Nimrata Randhawa, January 20, 1972) clearly evidence of “our diverse and vibrant communities “who combines great intelligence, unbending principles, and toughness and determination in confronting aggressors and defending democratic allies.

rsk

The Russian language boasts a formidable literary tradition. A handful of Russian words have made their way into English agitprop, apparatchik, commissar, gulag, Kalashnikov, nomenklatura, pogrom, samizdat, vodka, and now kompromat. But while the Russian language is expressive, it is mostly a borrower, not a lender, of words. The word intelligentsia made its first English appearance in 1918, shortly after the Russian Revolution. It exploded in usage thereafter. What was missing from the West’s conceptual inventory in 1918 that we had to import a foreign word from Revolutionary Russia?

Intelligentsia, a very Russian concept, is difficult to pin down with precision. Russia has always been a caste society and the intelligentsia was a particular caste, consisting of educated people who did not fit into one of the traditional categories—clergy, nobility, peasants, merchants, or the urban middle class. But the line of demarcation for membership was never clear. When I was a child in the Soviet Union, I thought it meant nice Jewish people who read books, wore spectacles, tucked in their shirts, and didn’t slurp their soup. In my parents’ circle, these were mostly engineers and scientists, with a smattering of musicians and doctors. None had any sort of formal connection to academic social science or the humanities, since in the U.S.S.R. these fields were political minefields, difficult for decent people to negotiate. But most seemed to dabble in poetry or playwriting, and all could recite large chunks of Evgenii Onegin from memory.

The concept of the intelligentsia was easier to define negatively. Anyone connected with the organs of state power—government functionaries, law enforcement, the military—fell way outside the pale. Party membership was disqualifying. A more-than-casual interest in sports, while not in itself disqualifying, was deeply suspect. Ultimately, membership came down to a self-designation, a certain recognizable set of manners, turns of phrase, and habits of mind. It was an aesthetic and an outward pose. “Intelligentnost’”—the quality of belonging to the intelligentsia—stood for whatever was perceived to be the opposite of the backwardness, stupidity, alcoholism, profanity, ignorance, and mud of provincial Russian life. Taken too far, it could become a kind of cult: a pious, atheistic godliness.

As a metaphysical ideal of intelligentnost’, imagine a professor of philology at the University of Vienna around the turn of the last century settling down in his library with a brandy, his pince-nez, and a volume of Proust, after an evening at the Philharmonic, where he watched Gustav Mahler conducting Beethoven. This fantasy of antique Central European gentility stood in contrast with a shabby and stunted Soviet reality. Decades of exposure to constant propaganda inevitably left its mark on all but the strongest of intellects. Cut off from contact with the outside world and normal cultural, intellectual, and artistic influences, the Soviet intelligentsia’s tastes were frozen sometime around 1937. Its members found escape in their book collections, which were always nearly identical, consisting of the same multi-volume editions of the nineteenth-century Russian and European classics, certain twentieth-century modernists and social realists, as well as volumes of foreign exotics like Lion Feuchtwanger, Mark Twain, John Dos Passos, Jack London, O. Henry, Ernest Hemingway, and a few other officially approved Westerners. Anton Chekhov was especially well-loved. A physician by temperament and training (the most intelligent of professions), his plays and short stories had no discernible politics and were characterized more than anything else by their fellow-feeling and concern with human decency.

In 62 B.C., the tribune Clodius Pulcher was caught sneaking into Julius Caesar’s house during a religious ritual forbidden to men. Clodius was allegedly attempting to seduce Caesar’s wife, Pompeia, who was hosting the ceremony and was rumored to welcome Clodius’ advances. Because the scandal happened at Caesar’s house, he divorced her.

At Clodius’ trial for sacrilege, however, Caesar testified that he knew nothing of the matter, despite the evidence and despite widespread rumors about Pompeia and Clodius. When asked by the prosecutor why then he had divorced his wife, Caesar responded with the now proverbial, “I thought my wife ought not to be under suspicion.” But as Plutarch adds, Caesar’s decision was not about upholding standards of religious purity or virtuous behavior. Caesar had made a political calculation: the accused was a tribune of the people and a favorite of the masses, who were threatening the jurors with violence. As a leader of the populares, the people, Caesar couldn’t afford to alienate his volatile supporters by testifying against their champion.

The recent numerous accusations of sexual misconduct, harassment, or assault by politicians and celebrities, some of which date back forty years, have been accompanied by condemnations of the accused redolent of the “Caesar’s Wife” standard: political leaders “ought not to be under suspicion.” In Caesar’s time as in ours, this rigorous standard of behavior reflects politics as much as a commitment to virtue.

After eight women accused U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) of various forms of sexual harassment, more than 30 senators, including 21 women, five of them Republicans, called for him to step down. Most of the accusations comprised unwanted physical contact and clumsy passes; one, a photograph of Franken pretending to grope a sleeping journalist’s breasts, was clearly a juvenile gag. Franken in his resignation announcement did not apologize or admit his guilt. Instead, he claimed that some of the allegations were “simply untrue,” and others he remembered “differently.” He also decried “the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that, in fact, I haven’t done.” At this point, little corroborating evidence has surfaced that definitively proves Franken’s guilt.

As well as exposing a sexual offender, however, and asserting high standards of personal behavior, the reaction to the charges against Franken to many smacked of political expediency. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) was the first Democrat to call for Franken’s resignation, saying that “any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn’t acceptable.” A few weeks earlier, after Gillibrand had criticized former President Bill Clinton for not resigning over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, many questioned why it took nearly 20 years for Gillibrand to acknowledge Bill Clinton’s transgressions.

There is much to admire in England- bravery and resolve and a civilized society- the land of George Eliot, Lord Josiah Wedgwood and the Christian Zionists, Margaret Thatcher, Robert Conquest the great historian, Douglas Murray, Andrew Roberts, marvelous Netflix mysteries and the adorable Kate Middleton.

There is much to despise them and their sordid and duplicitous and murderous history with respect to Palestine. The series of White Papers after the Balfour promises truncated the Jewish state into only 20% of Palestine. Furthermore, their obstinate and venal appeasement of the Arabs shut the gates of Palestine to millions of Jews who might have been saved from the genocide. Their post war turpitude led them to apprehend and fire upon thousands of traumatized survivors of the Holocaust seeking refuge and succor in Palestine….thousands died in the sinking vessels and others were interned in harsh conditions in Cyprus detention centers. See http://www.zionism101.org/ for a full narrative of the struggle for Israel.

At the conclusion of the 1948 Arab war against Israel, Great Britain and Pakistan were the only nations that recognized Jordan’s illegal occupation of the “West Bank” and East Jerusalem.

And their latest vote in favor of a blatantly anti Israel resolution in the U.N. is just a continuation of their bias for when it comes to anti-Semitism there will always be an England.

It is surely possible to be somewhere in the United States in the Christmas season without ready access to a performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” perhaps in the middle of Denali National Park or the Mojave Desert.

The work is ubiquitous and deserves every bit of its popularity. It is a Christian masterpiece known by everyone, a soaring work of genius that never loses its ability to astonish and inspire, whether at a performance of the New York Philharmonic or at a local church singalong.

After hearing it performed on Christmas Day in 1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson described a common reaction, “I walked in the bright paths of sound, and liked it best when the long continuance of a chorus had made the ear insensible to music, made it as if there was none; then I was quite solitary and at ease in the melodious uproar.”

In his new book, Messiah: The Composition and Afterlife of Handel’s Masterpiece, Jonathan Keates traces the history of the work.

A native German who lived in London, G.F. Handel was extraordinarily prolific, composing roughly 40 operas and 30 oratorios. His towering status isn’t in question. Beethoven, born nearly a hundred years later, deemed him “the master of us all.”

Although the “Messiah” is invariably called “Handel’s Messiah,” it was a collaboration. The librettist Charles Jennens, a devout Christian, provided the composer with a “scriptural collection,” the Biblical quotations that make up the text.

Jennens wrote a friend that he hoped Handel “will lay out his whole genius and skill upon it, that the composition may excel all his former compositions, as the subject excels every other subject. The subject is Messiah.”

He needn’t have worried. Handel completed a draft score in three weeks in the summer of 1741. The legend says that while composing the famous “Hallelujah” chorus, he had a vision of “the great God himself.” There is no doubt that artist and subject matter came together in one of the most inspired episodes in the history of Western creativity.

An oratorio shares some characteristics of opera, but there is no acting. Handel was an innovator, writing English-language oratorios and giving the chorus a bigger role. Typically, leading characters anchored a dramatic plot. The drama in “Messiah” was the Christian story itself, the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ told in scripture.

The work premiered in Dublin, at a performance so crowded that the ladies were urged to come without hoops in their skirts. A correspondent rendered a verdict that has stood up: “The Sublime, the Grand and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.”

The US President tapped a body of sentiment that repulses the mainstream political class, and that opportunity also exists here. If you want to shop safe from imported Muslim hell drivers, miss affordable electricity and think little kids should master sums before sodomy, all you lack is the right candidate.

One of my American conservative heroes, William F. Buckley, attempted over the decades to deliver the great right wing project, “fusionism”. This was the building of a right of centre coalition of the willing. Libertarians and conservatives together. His early political project was Barry Goldwater. His later project was Ronald Reagan. Bill was indefatigable, and lieutenants, such as Frank Meyer, set out to herd the cats of the right into something of a competitive political and philosophical force that would stand athwart history and yell “stop”. They would attain power and deliver broad conservative policy outcomes. And they would build this on the back of a philosophical synthesis.

Listening to Mark Steyn speaking recently at the Restoration Weekend organised by the great and courageous David Horowitz – that rare lefty who realised before it was too late he had been an idiot – and hearing the repeated boos at Mark’s every mention of Bill “Never Trump” Kristol, one was shaken to realise that the American right is now hopelessly fractured. The fracture is the result of Trump’s ascendancy and the growing, sullen realisation by his critics that he can actually run a productive, can-do government that is delivering real benefits to great swathes of the American people.

You won’t read that in the Guardian, the mentally enfeebled Fairfax Press or that endless spigot for inner-city received opinion, the ABC, but the fact that such agents of New Establishment orthodoxy all share that view demonstrates its truth. Is there one issue – wind turbines, the benefits of industry-killing electricity costs, the literary worth of all who get invitations to their mates’ writers festivals – on which the Left gets it right? Trump hatred is but more of the same.

The Clinton kleptocracy and its fellow travellers predictably are aghast at what they see in Trump. But this Clintonian regret is driven by self-interest, essentially. The Clintons are toast now; no longer useful, as Hillary will never be president, they have no influence to peddle and must now slouch towards their grim, shared sunset. The left-of-centre political class which they exemplify is being consumed by its own corruption, and, as we have seen recently, its lust.

T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND ALL THROUGH THE NATION,
THERE IS HOPE AND OPTIMISM BUT GROWING FRUSTRATION.
I TOSSED AND TURNED WITH INTERRUPTED SLEEP
THINKING ABOUT A PRESIDENT WITH PROMISES TO KEEP.
WHEN OUT ON THE LAWN THERE AROSE SUCH A CLATTER
I SPRANG FROM MY BED TO SEE WHAT WAS THE MATTER.
T’WAS GLORIA ALLRED ON A BROOM WITH MUCH ADO
TOWING A GAGGLE OF DAMSELS WEEPING #ME TOO!
PUSSY HATS STOWED AND WHIPS DEPLOYED TO TRASH REPUTATIONS
NO DUE PROCESS OR BURDEN OF PROOF OR STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.
SOME MAY DESERVE IT BUT WHERE IS PROBABLE CAUSE?
HAVE WE BECOME A NATION OF SELECTIVE LAWS?
AT THE FBI ALL THE LIGHTS BURNED LATE
AS MUELLER AND COHORTS STOKED PARTISAN HATE.
WHILE THE INTERNET BURNS WITH CLINTON TRANSGRESSIONS
THERE IS NOT A PEEP FROM RECUSED AG SESSIONS.
STATUES WERE TOPPLED IN THE LATEST RAGES
AND IGNORANT TANTRUMS OF THE MILLENIAL AGES.
AND PRONOUNS ARE NOW THE EDUCATIONAL WHIM
NO MORE HE OR SHE, NOW IT IS “HIR”-“ZEY” OR “SHIM.”
THESE ARE CAVILS BUT THERE ARE REASONS FOR ELATION.
EMBASSY MOVE, TAX REFORM, NO GRATUITOUS REGULATION.
A PRESIDENTIAL CALL FOR SECURITY AND GROWTH IN OUR LAND,
IN FOREIGN POLICY A POWERFUL AND PRINCIPLED STAND.
FAKE NEWS, CLIMATE FRAUD AND JUNK SCIENCE TOOK A DIVE
AND THE SPIRIT OF 1776 IS STILL VERY MUCH ALIVE
SO WITH RENEWED OPTIMISM AND CHEER
I WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! RSK

Of all the words in the barrage of reporting on Israel or terrorism, “moderate” is a great example of euphemism. Thus, PalArabs who invoke murder and faith driven jihad against Israeli civilians; who praise the memory of Hitler; who reward terrorists financially and honor them by naming streets and schools for them; who indoctrinate their acolytes with blatant anti-Semitism in school books, lectures and sermons; …..in Arabic are called “moderates” because in silky English they speak of a two state (dis)solution of Israel.

George Orwell phrased it well and he is quoted by By Howard Husock in an article:

Orwell Is Alive at HHS On politics and euphemism https://www.city-journal.org/html/orwell-alive-hhs-15615.html

It all comes down to the importance of euphemism as a way to minimize opposition. Orwell saw it clearly in 1946:

“Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.”