Pun Salad

I see that back in 2020, I put this Yuval Levin book on my "things to read" list. After four years, I finally got around to getting a copy, via UNH Interlibrary Loan from Brandeis.

Note the publication date: January 21, 2020. So written pre-COVID. Pre-2020 election. Pre-January 6. Levin's book is about decaying American institutions, and it's difficult to believe that things haven't gotten worse.

My procrastination in reading the book may reflect my previous reports on Yuval Levin books. Snips: "Gosh, I wish I'd liked this book better" (The Fractured Republic) and "Yuval's prose is … not sparkly" (The Great Debate). Sad to report this book continues in that vein.

But let's dig out the good: as a self-identified conservative with minimal libertarian instincts, Levin makes the case that a healthy country requires healthy institutions, and all indications are that American ones are becoming ineffective and mistrusted. Those institutions should be transforming their members into subsuming their quirky individualism into reliable defenders of timeless values and virtue.

He runs through some examples of decay: government, in all its levels and branches; professionals (journalists, doctors, lawyers, …); higher education, naturally; social media, also naturally; family, religion, and our local community organizations.

His recipe for mending is in re-recognizing the values of institutions, returning to their traditional values, even if this means sanding off the individualistic tendencies of the people involved. If he recommended any specific tactics for implementing this rebirth, I missed them.

Levin does not entertain the possibility that what we're seeing isn't irrevocable decay and decline into dreary dystopia, but instead a dynamic evolution, shucking off the old, and bumbling and scraping the pieces into something new and different institutions, perhaps better in some ways. We have a long history of pessimism and doomcrying, it's part of our cultural DNA. And so far we have managed to muddle through.

One example of Levin's prose that furrowed my brow came early on, page 16:

Flourishing happens in the joints of society—and this is where the deepest sort of trouble shows itself.

Joints? So society is like a skeleton, and flourishing happens in the parts that … bend?

Or is in "joints" in the sense of "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine"?

I'm stupid, I guess.

But just about anything would be more believable than Mr. Ramirez's Grim Fairy Tales.

Don't worry, little girl! If Trump wins, when you get older, your tip income will be tax-free!

You may have heard that there's been a pretty big shift in election betting odds over the past week. If you are Donald Trump, it's real, and it's spectacular:

But before you bet a bunch of your crypto cash on Team Orange, you might want to check out this article at the WSJ: A Mystery $30 Million Wave of Pro-Trump Bets Has Moved a Popular Prediction Market

I noticed at least one speculation that those bets originated from Elon Musk, because he's mercurial, and probably could dig $30 million out of his sofa cushions.

I, for one, am keeping my money with those cool-headed algorithmic traders at Fidelity Investments. And trying to ignore stories that imply the markets are just more respectable wagering. Like this in the NYT, wondering Is the Trump Trade Back? (Their answer, I think: maybe yes, maybe no.)

Also of note:

• Warning: Gertrude Stein is quoted. Robert F. Graboyes discusses Kamala Harris’s Oakland Problem.

  There are two curious asymmetries to the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. First (at least among people I encounter) Trump supporters know his behemothic shortcomings well, whereas Harris voters seem barely cognizant of her gaping deficiencies. Second, though this is a coin-toss election, Trump supporters are mostly leaving me alone, whereas Harris supporters—friends, readers, total strangers—are hysterically imploring me to see things their way, insisting that I must, MUST!! scurry to the polls and vote for her. Wondering why Harris can’t get her message across, they emit waves of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression (no acceptance, yet). For these reasons, I offer an essay on Harris, not on Trump.

  Perhaps the most fervent Trump supporter [I know] said a few months back:

  “Oh, I know the guy is a complete asshole. I don’t want to be his friend. I don’t want to go drinking with him. I damned sure don’t want him marrying my sister. But I like what he accomplished as president, and I don’t want Democrats in the White House.”

  Agree or not, that is an intellectually coherent reason to vote for Trump. I could offer the highest respect for a Democrat telling me, similarly:

  “Kamala Harris is the most unaccomplished, inconsequential, uninspiring, irresolute major-party nominee of modern times—and perhaps ever. But Donald Trump is the earthly manifestation of Satan, so I’ll vote for Harris.”

  I’d offer that person a fist-bump, a high-five, and wish of Godspeed. But I haven’t heard a single Harris supporter say anything remotely like that. And, as I argue below, Kamala Harris is the most unaccomplished, inconsequential, uninspiring, irresolute major-party nominee of modern times—and perhaps ever. You may hate Trump, but he has accomplishments, he has long been consequential, he inspires a sizable portion of the American public, and he is self-sure in the extreme.

  Gertrude Stein hailed from Oakland, California and famously said of her hometown, “There’s no there there.” Kamala Harris is also from Oakland, and one could as easily apply Stein’s witticism to Harris.

  Graboyes offers a challenge to his readers: write a paragraph about Kamala describing her praiseworthy characteristics and accomplishments. He tried; he failed.

• Probably not written in response to the Graboyes challenge. Dan McLaughlin writes on Kamala Harris, the Sex Candidate. Yes, she's "vacuous and incapable of basic communication" when speaking off the cuff. But!

  And yet, there’s an exception. When Harris talks about abortion, or same-sex relationships, or a few other culture-war issues — typically those with some connection to sex, although occasionally on matters of race as well — she is much more sure-footed. Not well-informed; her arguments are typically still just a collection of clichés that you’d expect to hear from a college sophomore. But at least she’s clear on where she stands and passionate about the issues. Those are the things that engage her interest. It’s the minute you get into topics like international affairs, the economy, or really anything that involves governing that she gets clearly out of her depth.

  Interesting theory! And a case study in "damning with faint praise."

• Imagine you're giving her a job interview, and you ask… Never mind. Adam B. Coleman answers that question for her: Kamala Harris' greatest weakness is her inauthentic self. He listened to her podcast session with Charlamagne Tha God; he was unimpressed.

  What summed up this interview was how she addressed a concern of a caller who questioned the motives behind sending money abroad in abundance when there are many pressing issues that remain here:

  “We can do it all!” she claimed, unconvincingly.

  If the objective of this interview was to stem the noticeable flow of black voters who are disinterested in the Democratic National Committee’s choice for president, it failed massively.

  When we vote for any given candidate, we want to have faith that what they’re claiming to advocate for won’t go by the wayside once they gain power.

  Far too frequently, black voters have watched Democratic politicians of all colors utilize urban media to say the buzzwords and catchphrases that gain our attention and then disappear for four years without keeping their word.

  Because of this phenomenon, black voters have grown skeptical of who stands before them claiming to have their best interest in mind.

  Harris faces an uphill battle to regain black voters who are at minimum skeptical because she exudes inauthenticity and everything about her appears to be performative.

  Also, as mentioned before: she's a nitwit. (And doesn't the New York Post have editors that know the difference between "disinterested" and "uninterested"?)

• Not exactly reminiscent of Daniel in the lions' den, but … James Taranto summarizes a recent interview: Trump Tangles With the Journal’s Editors.

  “What does The Wall Street Journal know?” Donald Trump sneered on Tuesday at the Economic Club of Chicago. “They’ve been wrong about everything.”

  Two days later, the former president is at the Journal’s New York offices for a meeting with its editorial board. “Well,” he starts, “I’ve had some great support, have great respect for the board, for everybody having to do with The Wall Street Journal. Read it all the time. Don’t get treated well by the editorial board. But I will say on the weaponization of justice, I have been treated very well, and I appreciate it.”

  If this sounds familiar, you probably read the previous Weekend Interview with Mr. Trump, written by my late, great colleague Joseph Rago in November 2015. Then as now, the candidate denounced the Journal publicly a few days before his visit, only to open the meeting by singing our praises. For more than 90 minutes he alternated between bullying bluster and ingratiation. This push-pull wasn’t intimidating at all, but it was curiously disarming. Mr. Trump came across as a human being who craved approval, and that neediness made him—to me at least—more likable than the bombastic celebrity we’d seen on television.

  It's a pretty good article, recommended if you're interested in exploring the components of the mixed bag that is Trump. And if you're worried about his geezerhood:

  Lately Mr. Trump’s detractors have been speculating about his “mental decline.” There’s no sign of such slippage in our Thursday meeting. The 2024 Trump seems more confident and is certainly more knowledgeable about policy than he was in 2015. His discursive style of talking can confuse listeners, but that was equally true nine years ago, and he never appears lost in his thoughts the way President Biden repeatedly did in their June debate.

• Let's not go soft on Trump, though. Kevin D. Williamson observes Trump’s Failing ‘Memory’.

  It had to be “Memory.”

  Donald Trump’s most recent Joe-Biden-on-LSD performance was at a town hall meeting—it was supposed to be a town hall meeting, anyway—in Pennsylvania. He took a few questions and, this being a Trump event, a few fans had to be carried out after fainting. And Trump just stopped talking. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” he asked of nobody in particular.

  And then, the weird scene took a turn for the weirder.

  For the next 40 minutes, Trump swayed on stage, bobbing and dancing a bit, with the crowd glumly filing out while the DJ worked his way through Trump’s by-now-familiar personal playlist: “YMCA” for all those totally normal heterosexual alpha males out there fainting in the audience, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “An American Trilogy,” etc.

  And, of course, “Memory.”

  “Memory” is a song sung by Grizabella, an old, worn-out cat at the end of her life, who had once been beautiful and glamorous before sinking into a life of destitution and (as Eliot alludes to obliquely) prostitution. It would have been the perfect song for Hillary Rodham Clinton—who once had the kind of glamor politicians have before fading. But you also can see the allure to such a man as Donald Trump. Even though he had always been the “short-fingered vulgarian” of Graydon Carter’s biting estimate, he had been a genuine celebrity, too, and a glamorous cat, in his way. Today, he is a felon, back to hawking Bibles and crypto and other low-rent scams, and—even though he very well may be elected president again—he is one of the most despised men in America and in the world.

  His base of support is a personality cult composed of rubes and marks of precisely the kind he always has held in plain contempt, while the sort of people he always has aspired to associate himself with—think of Taylor Swift—are disgusted by him. (I think of William F. Buckley Jr.’s bitter observation that it seemed like half of National Review’s subscribers lived in Arkansas.) Trump remains a kind of pathetic figure with his nose pressed up against the window, looking in on a scene from which he remains excluded, standing there like a sad clown in his $10,000 Brioni suit.

  Ouch!

• Good news, I guess. In a way. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. looks at the recent campaign verbiage and concludes: The Silly Rhetoric Cancels Out. After looking at the latest allegations of Trump's "fascism" and his "collusion" with Putin…

  The lying propensities of Mr. Trump are now weighed against the lying propensities of the entire establishment. What an election. I have confidence at least in the federal establishment under Jill Biden to contain any MAGA revolt if Mr. Trump loses. But what if Democrats lose? If riots ensue, will James Carville return to MSNBC and eat his recent words claiming, among other things, that a Trump speech planned for Madison Square Garden is a sequel to a pro-Hitler German American Bund rally in 1939 (rather than, say, 150 Billy Joel concerts or the 1992 Democratic convention)?

  We can anticipate Mr. Carville’s likely rejoinder: Professional partisans are entitled to say over-the-top things in the final days of a close election. (An irony of democracy: If a race isn’t close, both sides pay more attention to their dignity.)

  Then there’s this year’s most important issue. Still missing is any cogent argument (apart from attempts to revive the collusion canard) that Kamala Harris would be any more successful at facing down the free world’s global enemies than Mr. Trump would be.

  Ms. Harris has insisted on being a cipher for purposes of the present campaign because she sees no positives in the Trump phenomenon and figures voters don’t either. (She’s wrong about this.) Call it one more maddening aspect of a race whose many maddening aspects can be laid at the feet of Joe Biden for his selfish prioritizing of a second term.

  The "silly rhetoric" might cancel out, but (I confess) it's what keeps me amused.