Impromptus

Club Putin, &c.

By
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi (since deceased) during a meeting in Tehran, July 19, 2022. (Sputnik / Sergei Savostyanov / Pool via Reuters)
On Russia’s allies, Venezuelan refugees, Donald Trump, Tony Blair, Michael Lerner, Steph Curry, and more

Vladimir Putin has quite a coalition, or axis — call it what you like. “U.S. Tells Allies Iran Has Sent Ballistic Missiles to Russia.” (That is a story from the Wall Street Journal, here.) The Kremlin does not even bother to deny it (as RFE/RL reports). Another headline reads, “China announces joint naval, air drills with Russia.” (For that Associated Press report, go here.)

They are all lined up: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Hamas, Hezbollah . . . There is a lot of sympathy for Putin in the Free West. If you buy him, you buy the package. How will the West in general respond to the package? Boldly and intelligently? Or quaveringly and stupidly?

Tense times, ours. The temptation to withdraw from the world is powerful, and completely understandable. The problem is, the world tends not to let you.

• “Venezuelan opposition candidate González flees country for political asylum in Spain.” (For that AP story, go here.) Mr. González is Edmundo González, the retired diplomat, age 75, who won the Venezuelan presidential election last July. It did not matter — certainly to the chavista dictatorship, led by Nicolás Maduro.


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I think of Antonio Ledezma, who was the mayor of Caracas. I interviewed him in 2018. (For my piece, go here.) Amazing man, amazing story. He, too, fled to Spain, finding asylum there.

Someday, Venezuelans will have their country back. I hope it comes before another decade ticks off.

• About the below, I could say a great deal — eloquent words (and all the worse for being eloquent). Instead, I will say something fast and simple: Hamas must die, so that innocent people may live.

• After October 7, Donald Trump started to refer to the January 6 defendants and convicts as “hostages.” To me, this is obscene beyond belief.

How do you contrast the old Republican Party with the new? How do you do it neatly and succinctly? I have long offered this: J. D. Vance replaced Rob Portman as a U.S. senator from Ohio. Portman was the co-chairman of the Senate Ukraine Caucus; Vance is — in the opposite corner.

There is an equally handy way of contrasting the old with the new: Elise Stefanik replaced Liz Cheney in the House GOP leadership. Cheney regards the January 6 rioters as unpatriotic criminals; Stefanik, following Trump, calls them “hostages.”

• Mitchell Cohen is a leading intellectual of the Left. For years, he and Michael Walzer were co-editors of Dissent. In his spare time, Cohen is encyclopedic about opera. In 2017, he published The Politics of Opera (which I reviewed here).

Cohen has given an interview to Fathom, which is a journal of BICOM, which stands for “Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre.” The interview is highly interesting; find it here.

Professor Cohen says, “Anti-Zionism is part of a larger intellectual crack-up on the left with distant roots.” He later says, “The blindness towards Stalin, a crippling moment in the history of the Left, and the refusal of parts of the Left to see Hamas for what it is — and what it says openly it is — have a lot in common. The Left today faces its own Moscow Trial.”

• An exchange between Tony Blair and Sophy Ridge, of Sky News, is worth reflecting on. (Quick diversion: I have seen “Sophia,” “Sofia,” and “Sophie.” I had never seen “Sophy.”)

Two points: I have long noticed, but especially recently, that leaders tend not to lead; they tend to follow. And whom do they follow? Their “base,” largely.

Second point: People speak of “the people” — which should perhaps be rendered “The People.” “The People have spoken.” “I listen to The People.” “I speak for The People.” Great. Which people?

Only rarely are people of one mind; usually, they disagree. Think of the polarization of America.

When a politician — or anybody else — talks glibly or smugly about “The People,” look sharp. He is apt to mean people who agree with him, to the exclusion of all others.

(I wrote an essay about this a couple of years ago, which you may find of interest: here.)

• Ron Johnson is a senator from Wisconsin, a Republican. A few days ago, he was talking about the Great Depression. It was “pretty well planned,” he said. “The Joseph Kennedys of the world, the J. P. Morgans of the world” — they made it happen.

“I know it really sounds like a conspiracy theory,” said Senator Johnson. “I don’t completely understand it, but it sure seems — it’s just in my bones, I just feel there’s a great deal of corruption and control there that the vast majority of people do not understand. And again, when you’re the few people who do understand and you’ve got the levers of power, bad things can happen.”

That is almost a perfect illustration of populism. It is very hard to argue with populists. Facts and evidence take a backseat; “it’s just in my bones.” Shadowy elites do down the people — The People — in ways that The People, in their innocence, can’t understand.

Such a mentality is very hard to reason with. It is also a winner, politically.

• Michael Lerner has died at 81. For an obit in the New York Times, go here. Younger readers will perhaps wonder who he was. I will quote the Times:

Rabbi Lerner’s primary focus in his magazine, Tikkun, was Judaism, Jewish thought, Zionism and Israel. But he also made the news in 1993 when his influence reached the White House: His ideas on what he called the “politics of meaning” (his goal, he said, was “to build a society based on love and connection”) were briefly embraced by Hillary Clinton, the newly installed first lady.

Mrs. Clinton gave a speech in which she said this:

We need a new politics of meaning. We need a new ethos of individual responsibility and caring. We need a new definition of civil society which answers the unanswerable questions posed by both the market forces and the governmental ones, as to how we can have a society that fills us up again and makes us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

Is that so different — is it different at all — from what the more thoughtful representatives of “the New Right” say?

• In recent weeks, I have been retailing a quote: “What do you get when you cross religion and politics? Politics.” I would like to paste something that Patrick Chovanec tweeted — I agree with it entirely:

• Steph Curry is one of the greatest basketball players in history, of course, and the best shooter ever (by consensus). I have come to think, however, that he is also a national treasure. Pardon the cliché — “national treasure” — but he is (and I say this as someone who has often rooted against the Golden State Warriors, his team).

Check out this interview of Curry by Stephen Colbert. I love Curry’s imitation of the baritonal LeBron James. And what he says about the Bible. I love the whole bitsy.

(Did you ever hear that? It’s an expression I grew up with.)

• Overheard at the golf range (from a distinguished teaching pro): “ ‘Golf ’ — because all the other four-letters words were taken.”

• This thing was a lot bigger, a lot taller, than it looks in my poor photo. (Forgive that fancy technical language: “thing.”) Truly impressive. We are looking at a cozy street in New York.

As I passed the crew — the construction crew, the workmen — I noticed that one of the men had a kippah and two long, single curls. I was surprised, and I laughed a little at my own surprise: What, you think he should be home reading?

Thank you for joining me today, my friends.

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