Go to New York while you still do not need a passport
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A very dear friend died of a heart attack today. Dick Eckburg was not only a true patriot but he and Judy were one of Savannah's most generous couples. Dick was also committed to doing whatever he could for the forces and families stationed at Hunter Air Force Base.
Dick and I developed a relationship through our mutual membership of the Skidaway Island Republican Club and several years ago I was the recipient of The Eckburg Award.
Dick was special, he was a fellow memo reader, constantly sent me a host of interesting articles.
I got chills when I read of his passing. May his soul rest in peace.
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And:
Me and my brilliant liberal grandson - Henry
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FEATURE:
Seattle police clearing out CHOP after Mayor Durkan declares unlawful assembly
This op ed speaks for itself.
US envoy: Military action against Iranian nuclear program ‘always on the table’
Brian Hook, US point man on Iran, says Trump willing to use force to prevent Tehran acquiring nukes; downplays fears annexation could harm Israel’s ties with Arab states
The Trump administration’s envoy for Iran said Tuesday that the White House was willing to take military action against Tehran to prevent the regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Brian Hook, the US Special Representative for Iran, said during a visit to Jerusalem that “the military option is always on the table.”
“We’ve made very clear, the president has, that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon,” Hook said in an interview with Channel 13.
“The Israeli people and the American people and the international community should know that President Trump will never allow them to have a nuclear weapon,” Hook said.
Hook is on a Middle East tour meeting with US allies seeking support for Washington’s demand of extending a 13-year UN weapons embargo on Iran set to expire in October. He visited the United Arab Emirates over the weekend.
In a meeting with Hook on Tuesday in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the US to move forward with its threat to reimpose “snapback” sanctions on Iran.
Netanyahu urged that “in response to repeated Iranian provocations and violations… it is time to implement, now, snapback sanctions. I don’t think we can afford to wait. We should not wait for Iran to start its breakout to a nuclear weapon because when that happens it will be too late for sanctions.”
If the UN Security Council fails to extend the embargo, the US would seek to trigger the broad array of “snapback” sanctions due to Iran’s violations of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
The US abandoned that deal in 2018, triggering a series of Iranian violations in the ensuing years.
Hook told Channel 13 that the US would prefer to extend the arms embargo over sanctions.
“When you play by Iran’s rules, Iran wins, so we are making the national security case for extending the arms embargo that has been in place for 13 years,” Hook said.
Russia and China, which are both members of the UN Security Council, oppose the embargo, however. Their support, or abstention from a vote, would be needed to extend the embargo.
“I’m hopeful because Russia and China also would like to see a peaceful and stable Middle East,” Hook said.
He highlighted ties between Israel and Arab states, which have likely been strengthened by shared concern over threats from Iran, and downplayed fears that Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the West Bank could damage those ties.
“We very much like the steps that have been taken by a number of governments I think to deal with Iranian aggression and we would very much like to see the Palestinians come to the table. With respect to annexation, that is a decision for the Israeli government to make. We are working on building support for the peace vision,” Hook said.
In his meeting with Hook, Netanyahu warned that the Iranian regime “deliberately deceives the international community. It lies all the time. It lies on solemn pledges and commitments that it took before the international community. It continues its secret program to develop nuclear weapons. It continues its secret program to develop the means to deliver nuclear weapons.”
He vowed that Israel would “do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” and told Hook, “I know that’s your position as well.”
“This is a policy, Brian, that we have adopted as well. We are absolutely resolved to prevent Iran from entrenching itself militarily in our immediate vicinity. We take repeated and forceful military action against Iran and its proxies in Syria and elsewhere if necessary,” said Netanyahu.
Iranian officials have suggested they could expel international inspectors monitoring the country’s nuclear program in response to the arms embargo extension, or even withdrawal entirely from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The UN arms embargo so far has stopped Iran from purchasing fighter jets, tanks, warships and other weaponry, but has failed to halt its smuggling of weapons into war zones in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday urged the UN Security Council to extend the embargo, warning that its expiration would risk the stability of the oil-rich region.
“Iran will hold a sword of Damocles over the economic stability of the Middle East, endangering nations like Russia and China that rely on stable energy prices,” Pompeo told the virtual session. Both countries on Tuesday spoke out against extending the embargo.
European allies of the United States have voiced support for the embargo but also oppose new sanctions, saying the bigger issue is Iran’s nuclear program.
US sanctions imposed since the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal have created intense financial pressure on Tehran that have led to sporadic anti-government protests, including nationwide demonstrations in November that Amnesty International says saw over 300 people killed. While the Trump administration has maintained it doesn’t seek to overthrow Iran’s government, its pressure campaign has exacerbated public anger against its Shiite theocracy.
Since Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran has broken all the accord’s production limits. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iranian nuclear activity as part of the deal, says Tehran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium continues to grow.
While not at weapons-grade levels, the growing stockpile and increased production shortens the one-year timeline analysts believe Iran would need to have enough material for a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue one. Iran long has denied seeking atomic bombs, though the IAEA previously said Iran had done work in “support of a possible military dimension to its nuclear program” that largely halted in late 2003 following the US invasion of Iraq.
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One of the fundamental underpinnings of any democratic society is the ability to engage in respectful and rational discussions in which multiple topics can be debated and where disagreements evoke rational behaviour.
We have lost this ability.
I believe Obama used controversy as a way to bring about radical change to America. He told us he wanted to transform America and he did so by responding to an episode and taking a stand that was extreme/controversial and which he knew would create discord.
When his education department would not allow accused students to have their evidentiary day in court he deprived them of their constitutional rights. This was blatantly egregious and caused serious reactions on college campuses and stirred antipathy and gender.discord He knew what he was doing.
When he rushed to react to to a racial incident before all the facts were established he colored any subsequent revelations and turned it into a controversial matter. Again he knew what he was doing.
Because Obama was black and articulate anyone, like myself, who thought he was the personification of the "music man" and a dangerous "empty suit" was deemed to be racially motivated. Many who agreed with me were afraid to express their viewpoint because they were intimidated and sought to avoid controversy.
What is going on in America today is the consequence of one hand stirring the pot. There is no balance, there is no response and thus everything gets out of hand and results in one side dominating by eventually taking to the streets, thereby, destroying social tranquility and defying law and order.
To further their ability to have free roam the anarchists seek the elimination of police departments and you know the rest.
Because the op ed below is so very long I am not adding more to this memo.
When the moral imperative trumps the rational evidence, there’s no arguing
When I think of the Waverly Diner on 6th Avenue and
Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, I am moved by
romantic nostalgia. By that I only mean that when I think
of the Waverly I feel, in some way, what it was like to be
young and in the rush of the conversation. The
conversation was everything. It flowed all around us, in
the subways and the streets, in the diners and the high-
rise apartments, and if you could master it, it could take
you anywhere. You could still smoke inside of diners
back then and sometimes we spent whole days around an
ashtray and a plate of disco fries, getting refills on the
coffee. I’m not saying all the arguments were good, but
sometimes it was thrilling.
Perhaps that’s a uniquely New York thing, to place
so much faith in talking. But it once felt very
American, too; the diner-booth yapper animated by
argument, one version of the big city fast talker
who reflected an aspect of the national character
right there alongside the taciturn cowboy, the
trapper frontiersman, and the Puritan.
American because, if you could think it and you could
argue it, then maybe you could be it, too. It was at least
possible. And it was democratic in the best sense. You
could talk to anyone, butt into any stranger’s
conversation, as long as you had something interesting to
say.
I don’t know how to argue in America anymore, or
whether it’s even worth it. For someone like me, that is a
real tragedy and so I would like to understand how this
new reality came about.
There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational
empiricism and religious sermonizing in American
history. But these two modes seem to have become fused
together in a new form of argumentation that is validated
by elite institutions like the universities, The New York
Times, Gracie Mansion, and especially on the new
technology platforms where battles over the discourse are
now waged. The new mode is argument by
commandment: It borrows the form to game the discourse
of rational argumentation in order to issue moral
commandments. No official doctrine yet exists for this
syncretic belief system but its features have been on
display in all of the major debates over political morality
of the past decade. Marrying the technical nomenclature
of rational proof to the soaring eschatology of the sermon,
it releases adherents from the normal bounds of reason.
The arguer-commander is animated by a vision of secular
hell—unremitting racial oppression that never improves
despite myths about progress; society as a ceaseless subject
ion to rape and sexual assault; Trump himself, arriving to
inaugurate a Luciferean reign of torture. Those in
possession of this vision do not offer the possibility of
redemption or transcendence, they come to deliver justice.
In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at
any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim
you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired
from your job and socially shunned.
Practitioners of the new argument bolster their rationalist
veneer with constant appeals to forms of authority that
come in equal parts from biology and elite credentialing.
Have you noticed how many people, especially online,
start their statements by telling you their profession or their
identity group: As a privileged white woman; as a doctoral
student in applied linguistics; as a progressive Jewish
BIPOC paleontologist—and so on? These are military
salutes, which are used to establish rank between fellow
“az-uhs” while distinguishing them as a class from the
civilian population. You must always listen to the experts,
the new form of argument insists, and to the science.
Anything else would be invalid; science denialism; not
rational; immoral.
Because of the way it toggles back and forth between
rationalism and religiosity, switching categories by taking
recourse to one when the other is questioned, the new form
of argument-commandment, rather than invalidating itself
or foundering on its own contradictions, becomes,
somehow, rhetorically invincible—through the
demonstration of power relations that the arguer denies
exist, but are plainly manifest in the progress of the
argument.
The group of historians who submitted their letter of
dissent to The New York Times, objecting to the historical
claims in the paper’s flagship 1619 project provided a nice
demonstration of this point. They questioned the project's
scholarship and in response, were accused of being old
white men, as indeed most of them were, and antique
reactionaries. When they pleaded that they were not
abettors of white supremacy but objected to the project’s
historical claims, they were told their history was in error.
In the end the historians, however distinguished their
careers were beforehand, appeared confused and defeated,
complaining solicitously in their allotted column inches in
the paper’s letters section.
The 1619 project, meanwhile, having essentially conceded
the historians’ central point, lost nothing at all. It marches
on unscathed toward becoming the official curriculum in
the nation’s public school system, replacing the products
of the American historical profession as a whole, which
must either adapt or suffer a similar humiliation. The
outcome proved that whether or not the historians were
right about the facts of history, they had made a
fundamental error in judging where power lies. At best,
they are dopes who thought they were smarter, which is to
say more powerful, than they are. At worst, they are
professionally self-destructive, and—who knows—maybe
even racists.
Argument itself requires that certain fundamental questions
are settled and beyond dispute. In order to argue over
whether the sky is blue, we’ll have to agree on what the
sky is. The new argumentation has not only vastly
expanded the number of subjects that are supposed to be
beyond argumentation, it has, by a sleight of hand,
reversed the nature of the matters that cannot be
questioned. Now, it is precisely the most contentious
issues—is biological sex a valid concept? Is racism and
abuse so widespread in American law enforcement that
we should immediately defund the police?—that must be
accepted a priori.
To insist that the conclusion that the arguer wishes to
reach, with its implied corollary commandment, must be
accepted by his or her opponent as a premise before the
argument begins is not the move of a person who has
confidence in their truth. It is the opposite of any form of
reasoned argument. It is coercive. Except the people who
argue this way claim that they cannot possibly be coercive,
because you must accept the premise that they don’t have
power—even if they are editing The New York Times
Magazine, or threatening to get you fired from your job.
You say they can’t have it both ways? They say, why not—
and then accuse you of opposing the powerless, which, it
turns out, is a form of authority that cannot be trumped.
The reason we cannot argue about certain things is because
they have already been proven true and the truth they have
established is such a significant moral advance—like
ending child sacrifice—that to question the rational basis
on which the truth rests is to risk eroding a foundation of
the moral progress that separates us from encroaching
barbarism. If you want to argue about those things, then
you are a barbarian—which means that argument with you
is impossible, because the only argument that barbarians
understand is being put to the sword or sent off to a labor
camp.
Do you need me to give you an example of this kind of
argument? Not really, because such arguments have
become the norm. But here are a few recent examples:
If women were being victimized at such appalling rates
and their assailants routinely going unpunished, it followed
that they required protections greater than those which our
current notions of legal and judicial fairness provided. In
fact, one could see how it was precisely our prevailing
notions of fairness, like due process or the rights of the
accused to face their accuser, that were integral to an
institutionalized “rape culture” responsible for the heinous
epidemic of sexual assault against women.The moral
injunction is: “Believe women”—and you believe women,
don’t you? The argument underlying the slogan is that
sexual violence is rampant in America and goes
unaddressed and unpunished because of the endemic
misogyny in our society. There are rational assertions
contained within this argument: The claim that American
women are the victims of rampant sexual violence enabled
by ingrained cultural and legal biases was advanced
initially as matter of social science—that is, as a matter of
science—based on empirical evidence such as a famous
study that found 1 in 5 women on American college
campuses had been sexually assaulted.
Here are the two parts of the argument by commandment.
There is the empirical assertion—let’s call it X. And there
is the moral claim suggested by, or perhaps even mandated
by the evidence of X—let’s call that Y. Empirical evidence
shows that there is an epidemic of sexual assault against
women, that epidemic requires a drastic corrective, and
that corrective enshrines a moral claim and a
commandment—American women are sexually
victimized, egregiously and without the protections of a
justice system that systemically discriminates against them.
Therefore it is virtuous to “believe women” and to encode
that belief formally in new procedures of law and justice.
Only it turns out the rational argument was wrong. The
evidence did not actually show that 1 in 5 women would be
sexually assaulted on a college campus, a statistic repeated
by President Barack Obama himself to justify “sweeping
It turns out that the author of the study himself
acknowledged that it was based on surveying only two
campuses and the numbers could not be extrapolated to a
national trend as the White House itself had done. Other
studies widely cited at the time to justify the construction
of a punitive new Title IX sex bureaucracy were also
marred by significant methodological shortcomings.
But if you were clueless enough to point out the flaws in
rational claim X, even if just to wonder over matters of
degree, then wham!—you were whacked in the face with
moral claim Y. Evidence X isn’t evidence; it’s window
dressing. And if you’re too stupid to understand that, then
you’re probably an even worse person than the arguer
supposed.
Because—think about it—who else but a fervent, drooling
misogynist, or a rape apologist, or a real live rapist,
namely someone both ideologically and emotionally
invested in actively disbelieving women, would be so
interested in picking apart the evidence that supported such
an obviously virtuous and necessary claim—especially
now, at a moment when people are literally dying? What
basis would anyone have to question X aside from the
desire to violate the moral value of Y?
It’s no surprise that the entire #MeToo movement grew
out of the revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey
Weinstein—a loathsome man who was, by all accounts, a
bullying asshole, a lecher, a tyrant, a sweaty groping pig.
But in the end, justice finally caught up to him and
Weinstein became the evil pig who launched a whole
movement. And that was where most of us stopped
thinking about it.
But there were a few more twists in the story. First, there
was Asia Argento, one of the first actresses to come
forward with her story of sexual abuse at the hands of
Weinstein and one of the leaders and public faces of the
#MeToo movement—who turned out to be an accused
sexual predator herself. No one should have to be a
“perfect victim” or a moral exemplar to be given sympathy
and believed, but Argento was pushing it.
Then there was the evidence that came out in Weinstein’s
trial. One of his key accusers was a young aspiring actress
with whom he had a yearslong relationship—just the kind
of vulnerable victim that Weinstein was said to have
sought out. But the private correspondence kept by this
woman, which included both letters to Weinstein and
letters to her boyfriend about the Hollywood producer,
suggested something far more complicated than a predator
-victim relationship of the kind that is criminally
prosecutable. Especially revealing was the woman’s claim
that Weinstein’s sexual organ was defunct, a detail that, if
true, would present all sorts of complications for an alleged
serial predator like Weinstein. Or should have.
Do we believe in the rightness of #MeToo because of what
the Weinstein case revealed or in spite of it? It seems
perfectly clear that Weinstein is guilty of some of the
crimes against women of which he has been accused, but
equally obvious that it is not supposed to matter on which
specific charges he is guilty and on which he is innocent by
the standards of the law. Weinstein’s guilt must be
totalizing so that it can serve as a stand-in for an empirical
case justifying a set of new rules and commandments. The
entire discourse has been warped to fit a Hollywood
narrative—wherein drama and action (and whatever good
they might accomplish) are never mustered for regular
people but only for the wealthiest members of the
American cultural elite. It is rather difficult to point this
out without appearing to excuse the actions of someone
like Weinstein, but perhaps a movement truly concerned
with ending gender discrimination in the workplace and
protecting the victims of sexual assault would have
focused on the retail industry or the healthcare field,
rather than on Hollywood.
Black Lives Matter is a movement that makes its core
doctrinal claim a value that no decent person can object to.
It asserts that, not merely formal legal acknowledgement,
but full human dignity and consideration has been uniquely
robbed from black Americans throughout the country’s
history. No one with a basic knowledge of American
history can deny that this claim is true. But the statement
Black Lives Matter makes also has a more pointed political
meaning, which is that black lives are systematically
devalued in the present, and under assault from racist
police violence and an overarching regime of white
supremacy that animates every aspect of modern American
life. That life, therefore, is in urgent need of reparative
justice—like defunding the police, and establishing formal
and informal systems of preferences that this time prefer
blacks over whites, that statues of white men must be
pulled down, that corporations must fire their current
employees and hire new employees based on their skin
color, and that a massive program of public reeducation
must be set in motion across American society, and
especially in public schools.
There may be no more totemically powerful moral claim
in all of American life than those three words: “black lives
matter.” As a meme it is invincible. But the moral claim,
with its demand for immediate radical changes to policing
and other institutions of American life, is not just a moral
claim, it is also supposedly a reflection of observed and
analyzed material conditions. For instance, that there is an
epidemic of racist, or, more correctly anti-black, police
violence in America.
epidemic of racist, or, more correctly anti-black, police
violence in America.
It seems appallingly obvious that systematic police
violence targeting black Americans is real. The evidence
is everywhere: in the state-sanctioned snuff films that
circulate on YouTube and throughout social media
maintaining a sense of terror and siege. It does little good
to point out that the majority of police violence in 2020
America is directed toward white people, or that a total of
14 unarmed black men were in fact shot in America last
year, while a greater number of unarmed light-skinned
men were shot by the police, or that a majority of police
officers protect their communities in a lawful manner
under often difficult conditions. And since it doesn’t matter
if you concede that there is evidence of racial bias in
policing, just not at anything like the catastrophic level that
justifies calls to defund the police, and it doesn’t matter
whether you acknowledge a significant need for police
reform to make it less prone to escalating violence and
more accountable—since that hardly seems to matter in
the context of a discussion that now centers on police
abolition, why would anyone go to the trouble.
The paradigmatic case of police violence in the modern
era was the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri. It was Brown’s death, shortly after Trayvon
Martin was killed in Florida, that consolidated the
movement’s power in national politics. The motto born of
the killing that gave birth to the modern era of race
relations was “hands up, don’t shoot.” Only we know now
that this phrase, a shorthand for the evidence that indicts
the society and justifies its rejection and refounding, did
not describe the reality of Brown’s death. A lengthy
investigation of the killing by the Obama Justice
Department found that Brown did not have his hands up
and may have been charging at Wilson when he was killed.
Of course, the Obama Justice Department report also found evidence of racial bias in the Ferguson police force but it did not support the central
claim about the killing of Michael Brown. And so while
the DOJ findings were dutifully reported in the press, it
was, at the same time, often kept at safe distance from
discussion of Black Lives Matter, the movement, the
moral claim, the commandment.
The police execution of Michael Brown, who was shot
with his hands up, proved the rational basis for the moral
claim that “black lives matter” with its implied set of
commandments. The moral position further legitimated the
idea that progress is illusory and reform is not possible
because American society is currently organized, as the
Brown case proved, to devalue black lives and thus
requires radical overhaul. And so the new argument
proceeds, burying contrary evidence in unmarked graves
while erecting new religious monuments and shrines at
which the growing number of the faithful pay obeisance.
The organs of reason and expertise have one by one,
pledged their cultish loyalty to this new faith. A group of
doctors wrote an article in Scientific American explaining
why the mentioning or reading of the results of George
Floyd’s autopsy was a racist act. Public health officials
across the country, who had in May condemned public
demonstrations in the strongest terms, now fully endorse
the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. In a
petition signed by some 1,200 health officials, they declare
that it is incumbent on others in the profession to offer
“unwavering support” to the current protesters as a matter
of both moral and medical hygiene. They all together elide
the difference between empirical claim and moral
commandment by declaring that, “White supremacy is a
lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to
COVID-19.” And so, the merger of pseudorationalist
discourse with the new American religion of anti-racism is
completed.
America’s elite institutions now routinely make statement and use language that empirically is false. Indeed, they have taken the making, propagation,
and enforcement of such language as their central mission.
Because these statements are false, they make solutions to
the real problems that are being gestured at impossible—
while turning people who may want to actually address
those problems into evil rape apologists and racists.
What we are witnessing, in the rapidly transforming norms
around race, sex, and gender, is not an argument at all but
a revolution in moral sentiment. In all revolutions, the new
thing struggling to be born makes use of the old system in
order to overthrow it. At present, institutions like the
university, the press, and the medical profession preserve
the appearance of reason, empiricism, and argument while
altering, through edict and coercion, the meaning of
essential terms in the moral lexicon, like fairness, equality,
friendship, and love. That the effort wins so much support
speaks to the deep contradictions and corruption of
American meritocratic institutions, and of the liberal
individualist moral regime it seeks to replace.
Moral revolutions cannot tolerate ambiguity, but there is
so much that I’m not sure of. How does one argue with this
new form of truth? Not in the old way. Not by taking the
bait.
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