Scott Adams on Trump's tactics in peace deals

 Episode 1296 Scott Adams: Democrats Fall for Massive Disinformation Campaign From Their Own Side (streamed live on Feb 25, 2021) (13:35)

[...] so when the Khashoggi thing first came out, and it was obvious Trump was sort of underplaying it, I said that's probably the smartest thing he's ever done, because that gives the USA tremendous leverage over Saudi Arabia, [...] because we would have a club over public opinion. Trump decided not to use that club.

What did he get in return? You don't know, do you? I don't know! Do you think that Trump, just think of his personality, think of his deal-making, and think of the fact he would've been completely aware that he had now leverage over Saudi Arabia? Do you think he didn't know that? I said it every day on live stream while it was happening? Yeah, of course he knew it. [...] Do you think [...] Saudi Arabia didn't know that? Do you think he got something in return? 

[...] we do know the peace deals between Israel and other countries started coming together, and that never happened before. What would it take for those other countries to feel safe in joining with Israel on some kind of a peace deal? Well, probably they needed to know that Saudi Arabia wasn't going to be a problem. And they weren't.

Acrostics in Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night's Dream,  III, i:

TITANIA

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

Comedy of Errors, I, i:

DUKE SOLINUS

Hapless AEgeon, whom the fates have mark'd
To bear the extremity of dire mishap!
Now, trust me, were it not against our laws,
Against my crown, my oath, my dignity,
Which princes, would they, may not disannul,
My soul would sue as advocate for thee.
But, though thou art adjudged to the death
And passed sentence may not be recall'd
But to our honour's great disparagement,
Yet I will favour thee in what I can.

These are probably coincidences, like the "Bible Code". For more information see "Shakespearean line-by-line acrostics" by A. Ross Eckler, Word Ways, Feb. 2007. (Free Library)   

Thomas Sowell on intellectuals and crises

Interview, The American Enterprise Online, August 2004

There's something Eric Hoffer said: "Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature." There always has to be a crisis—some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn't matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power. Many intellectuals' preoccupation with the poor is very much the same thing. The thing that gives it all away is that after they say, "We must have this program because the poor can't afford medicine, or can't afford housing," they will splutter if you say, "OK, let's have a means test so it really goes to the poor." If they were really concerned primarily about the poor, they would agree to it. But they are bitterly opposed to that, because the poor are a lever to reach other, political, goals.

Walter Williams figured out some years ago that the amount of money needed to move the poor out of poverty would be trivial compared to the amount of money that's spent on these damn programs that are supposed to help the poor but usually don't. But the poor are being used as human shields in the political battle. You put the poor up in front of you as you march across the battlefield and enemy troops won't fire, so you can expand your power, and raise taxes, and so forth.

Intelligence vs. reversed stupidity

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Someone* once said, “Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” If you cannot place yourself in a state of mind where this statement, true or false, seems completely irrelevant as a critique of conservatism, you are not ready to think rationally about politics. 

* John Stuart Mill (in a Parliamentary debate with the Conservative MP, John Pakington, May 31, 1866):

What I stated was, that the Conservative party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.

The gullibility of the educated

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, ch. 5, section 1 (Miss Hardcastle speaking to Mark Studdock)

C. S. Lewis on the state of colleges

CSL, letter to his father, 3 Nov. 1928, after being elected Tutor and Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1924:

Two or three of us who are agreed as to what a College ought to be, have been endeavouring to stimulate the undergraduates into forming some sort of literary society. In any other Colleges the idea that undergraduates should require, or endure, stimulus in that direction from the dons, would be laughable. But this is a very curious place. All [Magdalen] College societies whatever were forbidden early in the reign of the late President—an act which was then necessitated by the savagely exclusive clubs of rich dipsomaniacs which really dominated the whole life of the place. […] When I came I found that any Magdalen undergraduate who had interests beyond rowing, drinking, motoring and fornication, sought his friends outside the College, and indeed kept out of the place as much as he could. 

[…] I am quite sure that this College will never be anything more than a country club for the idlest 'bloods' of Eton and Charterhouse as long as undergraduates retain the schoolboy's idea that it would be bad form to discuss among themselves the sort of subjects on which they write essays for their tutors. Ours at present are all absolute babies and terrific men of the world—the two characters I think nearly always go together. Old hearts and young heads, as Henry James says: the cynicism of forty and the mental crudeness and confusion of fourteen. 

Except for classics (and that only at Winchester, and only a few boys even there) I really don't know what gifts the public schools [not the same as USA public schools] bestow on their nurslings, beyond the surface of good manners: unless contempt of the things of the intellect, extravagance, insolence, self-sufficiency, and sexual perversion are to be called gifts.

Cloward–Piven strategy

Wikipedia:

The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty." 

Chaucer's color vision

Chaucer didn't have words for the colors like orange, but he could see them.

Canterbury Tales

Knight's Tale, 1273-4

The cercles of his eyen in his heed,
They glowéden bitwyxen yelow and reed

Nun's Priest's Tale, 136-7

His colour was bitwixe yelow and reed,
And tipped was his tayl and bothe hise eeris;

Men and women

I can tell you why men and women can never get together, Doc. Each wants something completely different. A man wants a woman, a woman wants a man! Impossible!

Arthur, in Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1953), act II. By Edward Chodorov.

Nancy Pelosi's unintended humor

From October 2006:

Though she is probably the second most lampooned woman in U.S. politics -- after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) -- Pelosi is far from a household name. "I don't think most people know who I am," she says. 

That could change in one historic moment if Pelosi is pulled from the trenches and plopped into the spotlight. 

She sees it as an opportunity to change the culture of Washington. 

"I think the fact that I am a woman will raise expectations in terms of more hope in government, and I will not disappoint," she says. 

"The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children. I don't mean to imply my male colleagues will have any less integrity.... But I don't know that a man can say that as easily as a woman can."

Rick Rescorla, 9/11, and the 1993 WTC bombing

Rick Rescorla was chief of security for Morgan Stanley in the World Trade Center. He and his friend Dan Hill predicted the 1993 WTC bombing and 9/11.

After the bombing, Hill (who spoke Arabic and was a convert to Islam) visited many mosques in the New York area and across the Hudson in New Jersey. At the Turkish mosque in Patterson, everyone was friendly and pro-American and hoped the bombers weren't Muslims. From Heart of a Soldier by James B. Stewart (Simon and Schuster, 2002) (Google Books link):

But at every other mosque, Hill was struck by the intense anti-American hostility he encountered. Though these were not his own views, he barely had to mention that he thought American policy toward Israel and the Middle East was misguided, or that Jews wielded too much political power, to unleash a torrent of anti-American, anti-Semitic rhetoric. Many applauded the bombing of the WTC, lamenting that it hadn't done more damage. “Those are the towers of Jews”, he was told at several stops. Then his hosts quoted from the Koran [Sura 4:78]: “Wherever you are, death will overtake you, though you are in lofty towers in the sky.”

On 9/11/2001, Rescorla and his two lieutenants, Jorge Velasquez and Godwin Forde, were last seen in the South Tower on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before it collapsed at 9:59 A.M.

Gandhi's last words

हे राम

(Roughly pronounced, "hey raam") Google Translate

Rama (Ram) was the seventh avatar of Vishnu, the sustainer.

Jane Austen on unintelligibility

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, vol. 2, ch. 1:

I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.

Rhetorical devices

Chiasmus - reversal of words with related meaning.  By day the frolic, and the dance by night. — Samuel Johnson

Antimetabole - a subtype of chiasmus. Reversal of same words. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Ciceronian irony - blame by praise and praise by blame.

Apophasis - the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up.

In the 1984 U.S. presidential campaign debates, Ronald Reagan used a humorous apophasis to deflect scrutiny of his own fitness at age 73 by replying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

In Cicero's "Pro Caelio" speech, he says to a prosecutor, "Obliviscor iam iniurias tuas, Clodia, depono memoriam doloris mei" ("I now forget your wrongs, Clodia, I set aside the memory of my pain [that you caused].")

When apophasis is taken to its extreme, the speaker provides full details, stating or drawing attention to something in the very act of pretending to pass it over: "I will not stoop to mentioning the occasion last winter when our esteemed opponent was found asleep in an alleyway with an empty bottle of vodka still pressed to his lips."

Maureen Dowd's "evolving" view of how feminism was affected by Bill Clinton's sexual escapades

2003/10/05 - NY Times - Win One for the Groper

Certainly, the bodybuilder-turned-phenom has had moments of being, to use David Letterman's word, a lunkhead. But I find the selective outrage of feminists just as offensive.

Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, ''Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.''

Surely what's good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator. 

2016/02/14 - NY Times - "When Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism"

The interesting thing about the spectacle of older women trying to shame younger ones on behalf of Hillary is that Hillary and Bill killed the integrity of institutional feminism back in the ’90s — with the help of Albright and Steinem. 

2016/10/03 - Daily Caller - "Feminism died a little bit when the feminists had to help Bill Clinton" (video, interviewed by Katie Couric)

“I do think that feminism died a little bit when the feminists had to help Bill Clinton when Monica was actually telling the truth,” Dowd continued. “They had to support Bill Clinton just because they wanted his progressive policies on women.”

Feminism: an exchange of yokes?

Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, chapter 8, "Cults, Communes, and Clicks", p. 195: 

As the us-versus-them opposition is replicated within the original grouping, policing actions get under way. This is a form of behavior that, in addition to allowing some people to be censorious and aggressive toward others, reflects a presumption of rights and wrongs: We are right. You are wrong.

Many feminists have trouble swallowing this. As a political science professor from Texas (who has a bumper sticker on her pickup truck saying FEMINIST REDNECK wrote to us: "I have not thrown off the yoke of one master to have it replaced by another, even if its name is feminism." 

"Imbecile bourgeoisie"

From The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, chapter 2. Verloc is an inept anarchist agent and Vladimir is his superior. It's interesting that, in the present day, the left wants to do what Vladimir accuses the ruling classes of that day of wanting.

Mr Vladimir bore the look of heavy inquiry with perfect serenity.

"What we want is to administer a tonic to the Conference in Milan," he said airily. "Its deliberations upon international action for the suppression of political crime don't seem to get anywhere. England lags. This country is absurd with its sentimental regard for individual liberty. It's intolerable to think that all your friends have got only to come over to - "

"In that way I have them all under my eye," Mr Verloc interrupted huskily.

"It would be much more to the point to have them all under lock and key. England must be brought into line. The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their preservation. I suppose you agree that the middle classes are stupid?"

Mr Verloc agreed hoarsely.

"They are."

"They have no imagination. They are blinded by an idiotic vanity. What they want just now is a jolly good scare. This is the psychological moment to set your friends to work. I have had you called here to develop to you my idea."

"Since there is no god, it is our job to do His work."

Howard Bloom:

I realized I was an atheist at thirteen years old and it wasn't a choice, it just happened. But no benevolent God would be so cruel. No benevolent God would create a cosmos with such pain. Any God so vicious would be one that we, as humans, would be obliged to oppose with every muscle and every cell.

And, in fact, whether there is a god or not it is our obligation to oppose the outrages and pains of this planet. Here's something I wrote a while back.

Since there is no god, it is our job to do His work. God is not a being, he is an aspiration, a gift, a vision, a goal to seek. Ours is the responsibility of making a cruel universe turn just, of turning pains to understandings and new insights into joy, of creating ways to soar the skies for generations yet to come, of fashioning wings with which our children's children shall overcome, of making worlds of fantasy materialize as reality, of mining and transforming our greatest gifts--our passions, our imaginings, our pains, our insecurities, and our lusts.

This is the work of deity, and deity is a power that resides in us.

A blogger's view on reporters

Blogger Marco Arment:

Almost every time I’ve talked to a reporter has gone this way: they had already decided the narrative beforehand. I’m never being asked for information — I’m being used for quotes to back up their predetermined story, regardless of whether it’s true. (Consider this when you read the news.) Misquotes usually aren’t mistakes — they’re edited, consciously or not, to say what the reporter needs them to say.

Talking to reporters is like talking to the police: ideally, don’t. You have little to gain and a lot to lose, their incentives often conflict with yours, and they have all of the power.

https://marco.org/2014/11/16/why-podcasts-are-suddenly-back

How Nazis viewed the USA

We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an impudent manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons, whether out of innocence or a complete lack of genuine culture and learning. We can forgive the mistakes of youth, but this degree of arrogance gets on one’s nerves.

Joseph Goebbels, 9 August 1942 “Aus Gottes eigenem Land” ("God's Country"), Das eherne Herz (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1943), pp. 421-427.