No Naïveté, Please

On the Kimmel affair; Taiwan and Ukraine; a Russian story; a World War II hero; and more

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Wikimedia Commons)

Do you mind a little political rough-and-tumble with your Football Saturday? Well, I won’t be long. (At least, that’s the plan ...)

Two days ago, I wrote,

Too many people—too many Americans—are fearing our government. I want Putin, Xi, Kim, et al. to fear our government. I do not want newspapers, law firms, and comedians to fear our government.

That was here at Onward and Upward. I expressed the same sentiment on social media. And got a fair amount of criticism. Before turning to that, let me link to this column, by Robert Corn-Revere. He is the chief counsel at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). He also worked for the FCC (Federal Communications Commission).

His column bears the following heading and subheading: “The irony of Jimmy Kimmel’s ouster: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s brazen threats to broadcasters have no place in a free society.”

Online, people said to me, “What, Nordlinger, you don’t favor a free market? You don’t think companies should have the right to make their own decisions? You don’t think the public should have a voice either?”

Uh-huh. What did the government say? What did it say in the person of the FCC chairman? It said, Mafia-style, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Let us not be naïve. Emerson said, “There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.” Meanness, okay. Fact, for sure. But naïveté?

Exult in Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation if you want, but don’t try to tell me that ABC was simply making an independent choice in a free market. Sell it to the gullible, but not to the rest of us.

(At least Republicans are back to talking up a free market, whatever their motivation.)

***

Mike Pence said this:

State ownership of business is very common in China. Is very common in Russia. Taking a percentage of the sales of Nvidia, taking a percentage of stock in Intel, is inconsistent with free-market principles, and I think it’s taken our country to a very perilous place and I think we need to resist that very strongly.

Watch the former vice president here.

He went on to say,

I really do believe that what’s happening with tariffs, what’s happening with the state ownership of business, represents a departure from the free-market principles that have been at the heart of the Republican Party, and for the sake of our long-term prosperity, we need to get back to those principles.

How many Republicans are of the same mind? Enough to fill a few tables at Denny’s? (A Grand Slam breakfast sounds pretty good about now.)

***

A story from the Washington Post:

President Donald Trump declined to approve more than $400 million in military aid to Taiwan this summer, as he tries to negotiate a trade deal and potential summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping ...

Uh-huh.

“We can’t support Ukraine because we have to save the money for Taiwan!” they said. Yeah, sure. That’s why.

(The question to ask them was, “If our government were running a massive budget surplus, would you favor aid to Ukraine?” It was never about money—ever.)

***

At The Next Move, Garry Kasparov began a column,

Last night, apropos of nothing at all, I was thinking about how in Russia, you can’t go on television and make fun of the president or his favorites.

I thought of a story told by Vladimir Kara-Murza. He got it from Boris Nemtsov, his friend and mentor (assassinated in 2015 within sight of the Kremlin). I related this in a 2017 piece about Kara-Murza.

Nemtsov was deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin. One day, Nemtsov went to see Yeltsin in the Kremlin. The TV was on, and a program was cutting up the president, as usual. “Boris, hand me the remote control,” said Yeltsin. “I can’t take it anymore.” He switched off the television.

That seems such a long time ago.

***

David Ignatius, the veteran Washington Post columnist, wrote a column headed “The chilling reason the military is silent now.” That reason, he says, is that

the Trump team has gutted the JAGs—judge advocate generals—who are supposed to advise commanders on the rule of law, including whether presidential orders are legal. Without these independent military lawyers backing them up, commanders have no recourse other than to comply or resign.

(The plural of “judge advocate general” is “judge advocates general,” but I’m not doing a language item at the moment.)

What I most want to quote is this:

The U.S. military has always emphasized obeying the laws of war, for all the difficulties that might cause. George Washington appointed the first judge advocate only a few weeks after taking command of the Continental Army; he wrote that “an Army without Order, Regularity & Discipline, is no better than a Commission’d Mob.”

He was a helluva man, Washington. Not perfect, of course—but my goodness ...

***

“John H. Luckadoo, Last Pilot From a Storied Bomber Group, Dies at 103.” That is the heading of an obit in the New York Times, written by Clay Risen. I would like to quote a couple of paragraphs, without commenting. What can one say?

After more than a year of training, he flew his first mission in June 1943. By then his unit, a part of the Eighth Air Force, had earned the nickname “the Bloody 100th” because, even in a campaign that saw extensive losses of planes and crews, it stood out for its deadly turnover: During its 306 missions, the unit lost 757 men and 229 planes.

“Prior to being sent over, our commander called us together and he said, ‘Now I want you to look to your right and you look to your left and look ahead and look behind you, and only one of you is gonna come home,’” he recalled ...

***

Here at Onward and Upward, I paid tribute to Rodion Shchedrin, the Russian composer, who died a few weeks ago at 92. I wrote a personal appreciation, quoting from some of our correspondence. Well, I have now incorporated this appreciation into a music podcast, the latest episode of my Music for a While. It contains musical examples.

That’s an advantage of a podcast (over a written piece): musical examples! For this episode of mine, go here.

***

Let me close with a scene in Manhattan yesterday. A new phone was “dropping”—was being sold.

And now I will drop out, on this Football Saturday. Have a good one, my friends.