If you haven’t heard, the midterm elections are coming—and they are important (all too). This distresses me. I think midterm elections ought to be yawneroos.
The older I get, or the more I experience, the more I like “boring.” I don’t think elections ought to be death struggles—not in a constitutional republic such as ours.
Does politics played “between the 40-yard lines” sound boring to you? It sounds optimal to me: where left-of-center Americans and right-of-center Americans agree on our basic constitutional order.
Two cheers—no, a full three—for “boring.”
***
I was thinking of an expression the other day—an expression that many of us conservatives used, way back: “social engineering.” (We were against it.)
Let me link to a news article, headed “Trump Officials Draft Plan to Pay At-Home Parents, Using Funds for Working Ones.”
I have read a fair amount of commentary about this, and I have one dominant thought:
I never liked social engineering from the left; I don’t much like it from the right. There is no end of people who are loath to let others live their own lives in an atmosphere of ordered liberty.
This is an ongoing problem, a pebble in our national shoe.
***
Alexander Dugin is a leading Putinist ideologue in Russia, admired by many in the Free West, I’m afraid. (Of course, Putin is too.) Here is a statement from last Tuesday:
Kate Bohuslavska, a Ukrainian blogger, had the following reply: “ ‘Why doesn’t Ukraine just negotiate peace?’ they said.”
Yes. And they are still saying it. The recognition that Putin and his allies desire the erasure of Ukraine is the beginning of realism.
***
Did you see this, by chance?
I think of an expression I grew up with: “Famous last words.”
***
“Elections have consequences”—there’s another expression. The election last April in Hungary was hugely consequential. Under its new government, Hungary has departed from Putin and rejoined the West.
A story from last week begins,
A new government in Hungary formed after the election defeat of the country’s Russia-friendly former prime minister, Viktor Orbán, ordered the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats on Tuesday, signaling a sharp turn away from previously cozy relations with Moscow.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orbán, said without elaborating that the diplomats had been told to leave because they had “engaged in activities in Hungary that are unacceptable for diplomats under the Vienna Convention.”
Uh-huh.
Yes, Hungary’s new foreign minister is named “Orbán.” When she was introduced to Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, he said, with understanding, “My name is Donald.”
A neat response.
(By the way, Anita Orbán’s predecessor, Péter Szijjártó, who served Viktor Orbán for twelve years, is now working for a Chinese military company, as I discussed in an article earlier this month: here.)
***
Elections have consequences, indeed—and Germans are electing members of the AfD, the populist-Right party (to characterize that party as politely and generously as possible).
Peter R. Neumann, a German academic who teaches at King’s College London, makes an interesting point: “If you think the AfD is a ‘normal’ party, look at who’s just been elected.” You’ve got neo-Nazis, porn producers, Putinists, “a former full-time Stasi officer”—quite an assemblage.
This leads me to an old point of mine: The terms “Left” and “Right” make little sense these days. We have many proud right-wingers who admire the KGB colonel in the Kremlin.
What we are seeing, I think, is simply the age-old conflict between freedom and unfreedom.
***
“Wow!” said our president. I will quote him in full:
“Make Germany Great Again!!!”? Hmmm. We’d better talk about the meaning of “great” …
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Back to Dugin—who last year said,
Swell.
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On Friday, I received the below text. Did you get one?
Unfortunately, I was a few minutes late …
***
Daniel Hannan, the sterling British Conservative, had a perturbed and forlorn comment:
For better or worse—and I say, often worse—language belongs to the people. But if our nat-pops—our nationalist-populists—are conservative, then I’m Tiger Woods.
***
I’m sometimes accused of being a “zombie Reaganite.” Well, when I saw this story, I thought back to the Reagan administration.
The story? “In Major Leak Hunt, Pentagon Gives Polygraph Tests to Joint Staff Members.” The subheading of the article reads, “About 50 people were tested, an unparalleled inquiry that comes in the wake of news reports about the war with Iran and the U.S. military’s diminished stocks of munitions.”
I realize that a polygraph test can be a useful, justifiable tool. I also know that such tests can indict the honest and exonerate the lying.
Bill Casey—William J. Casey, the director of the CIA—used to amuse guests by tricking the polygraph.
And George Shultz, the secretary of state? He felt strongly. Let me call on a news article from December 20, 1985:
Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that he had ‘”grave reservations” about polygraph tests and would resign “the minute in this Government I am told that I’m not trusted.”
His open dissent from a directive signed by President Reagan requiring polygraph, or lie-detector, tests by officials with access to highly sensitive information touched off an unusual public debate in the Administration.
A “senior White House official” was quoted as saying, “Shultz has strong feelings. This is one thing that sends him through the roof. It touches a nerve.”
These issues perdure.
And I think that the Trump administration should concentrate on winning the war—the war against Iran—and making sure our defenses are adequate, rather than playing these games.
***
Some sports news—actually, more like social-policy news:
Aryna Sabalenka finally found something that could stop her at the U.S. Open: the smell of marijuana.
The two-time defending champion complained to the chair umpire that it was bothering her early in her third-round victory over Kamilla Rakhimova on Friday. Sabalenka said she had never smelled the odor so strong as she did while serving early in the match.
Those are the opening paragraphs of a report from the Associated Press. And Ms. Sabalenka is singing my song—a song I sing almost every day, although I am not on a tennis court but out on the streets.
To be continued (the issue, that is) …
***
Care for a language item? It comes courtesy of another tennis player, and I will again quote an AP report:
Naomi Osaka may not have gone out of the U.S. Open with much of a bang. But she surely went out with a burst—of color, and a bit of swag. …
… she arrived on court Monday in a coat of many colors: a fur-trimmed cloak designed by Brooklyn-based label KidSuper.
“I felt really swaggy when I put it on,” Osaka said after the match.
That’s a new one on me—“swaggy,” meaning, I gather, confidently stylish, or stylishly confident.
***
More language? Have a look at the below, and then let me scold:
No, no, no. There is no such thing as “caffé.” “Café,” yes, “caffè,” yes. But “caffé,” no.
And let’s not even get into the second word …
***
This got my goat even worse:
In the 1990s, President Clinton and others started talking about “growing the economy.” It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.
While you’re growing soybeans, you can make the economy grow, but …
“Grow Your Mind”? Oh, grow up!
***
A Longhorn friend of mine—an alumna of the University of Texas—said, “Jay, we have a player with a name you’ll love.” She meant a player on the UT football team.
She was, of course, right. Hollywood Smothers.
(The Smothers Brothers, Tom and Dick, were entertainment stars for years.) (A nice rhyme, right? “Smothers Brothers.”) (Then there was Dr. Joyce Brothers, but that was something else.)
***
A speck of music? Slightly more than a speck? Here is my “New York chronicle” in the September New Criterion. Various composers, performers, and issues are under discussion.
***
So, I’m at the golf range. In the stall immediately to the right of mine is a kid, a lefty. Therefore, we’re facing each other as we swat away. Turns out he is ten years old and that his name is Calvin.
We talk for a minute or two about lefty-righty issues. A short while later, he calls out, “You want to play Bay vs. Bay?” “Huh?” I say. Well, as Calvin explains, there is a computer system at the range that allows people in different stalls, or bays, to play a little competitive match: “Bay vs. Bay.”
“Sure,” say I. And as we part, I say to Calvin, “Look forward to seeing you on the Tour.”
To be asked by a spirited ten-year-old, “You want to play Bay vs. Bay?”—that is really a day-maker.
And I hope you have a good one—day, that is. Thanks for reading, subscribing, and “keeping it real,” to use some old slang, which is the only slang I have, except for, now, “swaggy.”
My current language bugaboo is "impact" in the place of "affect." It drives me bonkers. All I can think of is an asteroid.
Jay, I am going to buckle up and read your Sunday magnum opus very shortly.
But I had to share one absurdity with you before it drives me insane.
I will cut and paste a paragraph from Canadian journalist Peter Menzies’s excellent work, as he expresses the thought so much better than can I.
“Running out of space, but Canadian Press, which serves close to 500 organizations across the country may have hit rock bottom by choosing to mark the 25th anniversary of the largest terrorist attack in history - 9/11 - by writing about the nation’s failure to fight Islamophobia.”
I am not sure one can be ashamed of a news organization, but the heavily government subsidized Canadian journalism industry is doing its best to find out.