The Clinton ’90s, the Trump ’10s, friendless Taiwan, savage Saudi Arabia, and more
In the Clinton ’90s, a lot of us said the following: There was the lawbreaking, yes — the perjury, subornation of perjury, etc. But also the “underlying facts”: The president used an intern for sex in the Oval Office. That was no good. The president was unfit to hold the office.
Today, there are legal questions, as before: campaign-finance violations, for example. But also the underlying facts: a president who pays off porn stars and Playboy bunnies, and lies and lies.
Where is a sense of shame? Where is a sense of honor? In late 1995, Colin Powell gave some remarks, explaining why he wasn’t running for president. In the course of those remarks, he made some points about America — including a certain lack of shame. Shame needed to be brought back to our society, Powell said.
This thrilled a lot of us conservatives, back then.
Did you see this news article from earlier this week? “Four Japanese basketball players on Monday apologized for bringing ‘disgrace’ to their nation after they were kicked out of the Asian Games for paying prostitutes for sex.”
One of the players said, “I deeply apologize for our careless act that has brought disgrace not only on basketball fans but also on all of the Japanese people.” The head of the delegation said, “I just feel a sense of shame.”
We could use some of that over here.
• Trump gave an interview to Reuters. Asked about Kim Jong-un, he said, “Look, I have a good relationship with him. I like him. A lot of people will say, ‘How could you possibly like him?’ I get along with him very well. We have a good chemistry. I have a good chemistry with Putin, too.”
I’m sure of it. Personally, I prefer American presidents who don’t “like” murderous dictators and who have something unlike chemistry with them. America is a great liberal democracy. In the national interest, we have to have relations with some dictators — but we don’t have to like them or have good chemistry with them.
This is something that every Republican and every conservative would have said until very recently.
• If they retake the House, Democrats will be itching to impeach Trump. I think that would be unwise for them, politically. (I’m not in the habit of giving them advice, and they’re not in the habit of taking it from me.) Impeachment would cause many Trump-skeptical Americans — Republicans and independents — to rally ’round the president. Trump voters would consider themselves cheated out of their rightful choice in 2016. If they were smart, the Democrats’ watchword would be: Ballot Box or Bust.
• My favorite headline of the recent period? Oh, man, behold this beauty from the Associated Press: “Mooning case against Virginia softball coach’s wife wanes.” (Article here.)
• A friend of mine lives in that state, Virginia, which has a Senate race this year. My friend is a conservative — old-school, pre-Trump. He is loath to vote for the Republican, a guy who has flirted with white nationalism, and he is loath to vote for the incumbent Democrat. What can he do? Not much.
If someone wants to give us a new party, I propose a slogan for it: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.” I thought of that all by myself, you see. (Do you happen to know the second part of Washington’s statement? “The rest is in the hands of God.”)
• Politico published an article headed “Behind Trump allies’ shifting explanations of 2016 payoffs to women.” In March 2018, the Wall Street Journal asked Michael Cohen for a comment, and he answered with two words: “Fake News.” What the Journal was reporting was not fake news, of course. Cohen has pleaded guilty to what he said was “fake.”
More and more, I think that “fake news” is the most obnoxious phrase in the English language. For many, it does not mean news that is false; it means “news I don’t want to hear.”
• Last Sunday, the president tweeted, “Some members of the media are very Angry at the Fake Story in the New York Times. They actually called to complain and apologize – a big step forward.” Angry with a capital A, mind you.
But more important: Does anyone believe that journalists called to complain and apologize? Whom did they call? Could we have a list of the callers?
• Also on Sunday, the president tweeted, “The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type ‘RAT.’ But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to.”
Earlier, The Drudge Report affixed a label to Cohen: “RAT.”
I have a memory. One of the things that turned me off the New York Post, many years ago, was its habit of using the word “rat” to describe FBI informants, in headlines. The paper was adopting mafia lingo and the mafia mentality. I didn’t like that.
When someone says “rat,” he often means, “He broke the code of omertà and is now telling the truth, which is a betrayal.”
Loyalty is a fine quality, but one fraught with complications, as you know. Loyalty to a lie is especially problematic . . .
• For the past many years, the PRC has been buying off Taiwan’s few remaining allies. El Salvador is the latest to bite the dust. The Salvadoran government is even moving Salvadoran students who are studying in Taiwan to the PRC.
Too bad, on many counts. From what I understand, the kids will learn a lesser Chinese on the mainland — choked with ugly Communist abbreviations and such. (The Soviets debased Russian, too.)
(For an article on the Taiwan-and-El-Salvador matter, go here.)
• I highly recommend this article by Stephen F. Hayes, “Rand Paul, Russian Stooge.” I understand the sympathy that authoritarian-minded people have for Putin’s Kremlin. But Libertarians for Putin? That’s downright weird. Kind of like Vegetarians for Lamb Chops.
Or is Rand Paul authentically libertarian? I’m not even a libertarian and I feel I have to defend the libertarians against the charge that Paul is one of them . . .
• Miloš Zeman is the president of the Czech Republic. This is a big year for that country: the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet invasion, which snuffed out the spring. There are commemorative ceremonies, of course.
But the president won’t be appearing at them. Why? He is a big Putin man, and he would not want Putin to be offended. (To read an article on the subject, go here.)
There are many things to say, one of which is this: We are constantly told — and rightly — that there’s a big difference between the Soviet Union and Russia, even under Putin. Fine. So . . . why would Putin be offended by a ceremony commemorating the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion?
Maybe Putin & Co. are more Soviet than one would like to think . . .
Some of my friends on the right are pro-Zeman because they are anti-EU, and they hope that Zeman will lead the Czech Republic out of the EU, which would hasten the demise of the union, which these friends devoutly wish for. I am anti-Zeman because I am anti-Putin, anti-dictatorship, anti-illiberalism — and Zeman is a Putin man, for sure.
• There are also Putin women in power — and I don’t mean in Russia. Take Karin Kneissl (please). She is the Austrian foreign minister, recently married. Putin attended her wedding and danced with her. She curtsied fondly. Kneissl was nominated for her post by the (sickeningly named) Freedom party, founded by SS men. Needless to say, this party has a friendship-and-cooperation agreement with Putin, back in the homeland. Salvini’s party in Italy — the League — has the same agreement.
Watch your back, Europe.
• The word “evil” is the “strongest of all epithets,” as Norman Podhoretz once wrote, and it certainly applies to the Chinese dictatorship. This piece tells how the dictatorship induces Uyghurs abroad to spy on their own. (If they refuse to spy, the dictatorship will do bad things to their families, stuck at home.)
The piece is by Megha Rajagopalan, an American who is one of the best reporters in all of China. Actually, she had some news the other day: “In May, China’s Foreign Ministry declined to issue me a new journalist visa. They say this is a process thing, we are not totally clear why.”
Let me put it this way: If I were a dictatorship, I wouldn’t want Megha around either. She is invaluable. And she will keep up her work, from elsewhere.
• For decades, Canadians have liked to vacation in Cuba — which is why I particularly appreciated this article by Aedan O’Connor, saying: Don’t.
• A headline, stomach-turning: “Saudi Arabia seeks its first death penalty against a female human rights activist.” (Article here.) The United States and other Saudi allies are not without leverage. They/we should use it.
• Did you see this one from President Trump, last Saturday? “All of the fools that are so focused on looking only at Russia should start also looking in another direction, China. But in the end, if we are smart, tough and well prepared, we will get along with everyone!” The point is not to get along — the point is to defend and promote the American interest, period.
Sometimes — wouldn’t ya know? — the interests of anti-American dictators clash with the interests of America . . .
• Another one from Trump, issued Sunday: “Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!” Uh-oh. Trump dissing Tailgunner Joe? This could cause a rupture in The Base . . .
• Two years ago, I wrote a piece called “Killing Aida.” It was about the clash — the fatal clash — between identity politics and art. Daniel Hannan has written a brilliant piece on essentially the same topic. Here is a nugget from it:
“Sierra Boggess, who was to have starred as Maria in the BBC Proms production of West Side Story, withdrew from the role after critics complained that the part should be reserved for a singer of Latin American background.”
Oh, gimme a break (and I’m being as polite as I can). Leonard Bernstein cast Kiri the Kiwi — Dame Kiri Te Kanawa — in the part. And he wrote the [expletive deleted] thing.
• Trending on Twitter in recent days has been “Make a Disney song sexy” — that is, an invitation to do it. This made me see red. Isn’t the world sexed up enough? Is there a blade of grass, or a speck of dust, that has not yet been sexualized?
I think of something Bill Buckley once said of Norman Mailer: If only he’d lift his gaze above the world’s groin.
• An obituary from the New York Times— of Rita Borsellino, whose brother, a prosecutor, was murdered by the mafia. This made her an anti-mafia crusader. What is so valuable as a person who stands up to bullies? Especially murderous ones.
I admire her no end.
• Here is an obit of David McReynolds, a Socialist activist, who died at 88. I thought these paragraphs were fascinating:
Mr. McReynolds resigned from the Socialist Party in 2015 after he was censured for two comments he had made on social media. In one, he expressed concern over Islamist extremism following a terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper in Paris. In the other, he used the word “thuggish” in reference to Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
“The failure of the Socialist Party, its tendency to substitute a kind of left rhetoric for serious analysis, is to be regretted because if ever we needed a democratic socialist movement it is today,” Mr. McReynolds wrote after his resignation.
No one — not even the venerably Left — can escape censure by PC cops.
• This is a painful, painful obit of Isamu Shibayama. I had never known about the Peruvian side of Japanese internment, so to speak. A tragic, maddening story.
• My old friend from The Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last, tweeted, “. . . this is one of the most gracious displays of intellectual honesty you’ll ever see.” He was linking to this article: “Rod Was Right and I Was Wrong.”
I was working with Rod Dreher here at National Review during the period in question. Rod was determined to find the truth, and tell it. A lot of people didn’t like this very much. He was lion-like, unbullyable. You want that kind of person in journalism, and in life.
Thank you, dearhearts — this was a long one, wasn’t it? (the next one will be shorter) — and I’ll catch you soon.
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