StephenKMackSD's Blog

This is like reading David Brooks, in The New York Times before he became a Political Prophet, and Self-Help Guru to divorced over 40 males, in his utterly pretentious ‘The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life‘: the places, personages and the political landscape look familiar, yet they don’t reflect anything but an ideologically determined reading of a political present.

Mr Ganesh has confected, via his Neo-Liberalism, or should I say ,in the thrall to the myth that Obama is the political touchstone, that the New Democrats must contend. Obama’s de facto pardon of Wall Street, Investment House. and Banking thieves is a monument to political opportunism, that gives that opportunism a bad name!

This paragraph of Mr. Ganesh’s essay makes the case for Bloomberg in its dubious sub rosa way, as ‘reluctant but civic minded’. Mr. Patrick is mere what? Rhetorical embellishment, acting as argumentative ballast?  While placing his own opinions, in the political thought, calculation of  ‘…among a certain class of Democrat — rich donors, the media…’ .

This week, a grateful America has been told to anticipate late presidential bids from the reluctant but civic-minded. Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, and Deval Patrick, who once governed the state of Massachusetts, are among them. Each man taps into a vein of doubt among a certain class of Democrat — rich donors, the media — about the current options. These are variously too old (Joe Biden), too young (Pete Buttigieg), too extreme (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders) and too obscure (Amy Klobuchar). The hopefuls have “wilted upon inspection”, writes Andrew Sullivan, a conservative who longs to be rid of President Donald Trump.

Quoting American political hysteric Andrew Sullivan adds nothing in the way of  usable or valuable insight. But is it usable in making the case that the Democrats i.e. the New Democrats don’t actually offer some kind of viable , winning candidate that can defeat Trump? Mr. Ganesh relies on ‘polling data’ to add weight to his arguments yet this from Saturday 5 November 2016 :

Headline:Survey finds Hillary Clinton has ‘more than 99% chance’ of winning election over Donald Trump

Sub-headline: The Princeton Election Consortium found Ms Clinton has a projected 312 electoral votes across the country and only 270 are needed to win

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html

Has Mr. Ganesh missed this ?

Headline:Hillary Clinton Says She Faces ‘Enormous Pressure’ to Run in 2020

Sub-headline:The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said ‘never say never,’ but added that a run is ‘absolutely not in my plans.’

https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2019-11-13/hillary-clinton-says-she-faces-enormous-pressure-to-run-in-202o

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/918c31f8-05f3-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7dd

The reader just might wonder at what exactly a ‘Wealth Editor’ is/does? Its obvious that part of the job is to construct apologetics for billionaires, as in  this essay. As UBS is the ‘source’ for this opinion piece, what will a search of the internet reveal about this financial organization?

Violation Tracker Parent Company Summary

 

https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/ubs

The ‘rap sheet’ of the machinations of this company should give pause to the reader,  of this essay, as the list of infractions and fines is not just extensive, but demonstrates a breath-taking pattern of contempt for the law.

This quote from Joseph Stadler demonstrates his function as some times mealy-mouthed apologist and  for the .001 %. And then as an enemy of a ‘New Aristocracy’: that partakes fully in Populist rhetoric he finds so reprehensible.

“I am not saying billionaires should be heroes,” said Josef Stadler, head of the ultra-high net worth unit at UBS, the world’s largest private wealth manager. “But at least they should be recognised.”

…

Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Stadler said there was “bias in the media” in reporting on billionaires. “In the talk of inequality, the debate that they are too greedy, that they make too much money on the back of poor people.”

He said: “The data tells me that the debate is one-sided and it’s a pity. There is a natural tendency today to be critical when it comes to wealth accumulation. There is sometimes a fear that there is a new aristocracy coming.”

In the Worlds of both The Financial Times and Mr. Stadler , the as if expresses itself in  that Occupy Wall Street and Thomas Piketty and the rhetorical/political triumph of the idea and actuality of ‘inequality’ had never happened. But the political hysteria is cemented in the construct of a New Aristocracy: this notion steeped in the execrable populist rhetoric- that blatant irony lost on both  Mr. Stadler and Mr. Wagstyl’ !

The concluding two paragraphs of  Stefan Wagstyl’s essay offers the reader proof that a ‘Wealth Editor’ is the highfalutin term, for a not very sophisticated apologizer for Plutocrats.  Wagstly is  a political/economic Panglossian. 

Coming at a time when capitalism faces heavy criticism in the US and Europe, the report presents a stout defence of the world’s top wealth creators in applying “new technologies and business models to change entire industries”.

The authors argue that, while billionaires enrich themselves, they benefit the rest of society by generating jobs, creating wealth for others, including many employees, and paying tax.

Note that the photograph that accompanies this essay is of billionaire and Jeff Bezos. Who is an unapologetic, even an enthusiastic operative of the American National Security State.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/a897387c-0222-11ea-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47

What reader can forget the Edward Luce’s  essay of Nov. 7, 2019 ?

Headline: America’s religious war will test the limits of democracy

Sub-headline: Liberal dogmatism risks alienating the ‘exhausted majority’

https://www.ft.com/content/0a4ac312-00f3-11ea-be59-e49b2a136b8d

Will Mr. Luce’s doom and gloom be lifted by Mr. Bloomberg’s entry into the maelstrom of the Democratic Party’s primaries? His record might be more in keeping with the closely held views of Evangelicals : an indigenous strain of political reaction to the Modern World, equal to Secularism? Bloomberg’s candidacy might not be a good fit? But an actual Oligarch has potential, as an instance of ‘Our Dear Leader’, in a belief system ruled by ruthless, but benevolent male figures.

Bloomberg’s list of accomplishments

Broken Widows Policing,  Removal, by stealth, of Judge Shira Scheindlin from the Stop & Frisk Case , Police violence against Occupy Wall Street, unstinting support of Charter Schools, and this Harvard Commencement Address warning against ‘political radicals’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhfn2zgFFJ8&t=9s

‘Bloomberg adviser’ Mr. Wolfson offers these observations on what Bloomberg has to offers

…

But Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg adviser, said the former mayor had grown concerned that the Democratic candidates were “not well positioned” to defeat Donald Trump.

…

“If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist,” Mr Wolfson said.

…

Its unfortunate that Mr. Ganesh missed reading Matthew Goodwin’s essay of Sunday November 3, 2019 in which he quotes H.L. Mencken:

…

The American journalist and critic HL Mencken once remarked that “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”.

…

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2019-11-03/comment/general-election-2019-jeremy-corbyns-elite-bashing-is-naked-populism-xmrwnt9fz

The original Cold War was the product of a post-war Republican Party, and their first attempt to brand The New Deal as ‘a generation of treason’ , that evolved into the Nixon/Mundt/McCarren/McCarthy witch hunt, that the ADA  ‘Liberals’ Schlesinger and Niebuhr, acted as enthusiastic, if coerced, callabos. Or so the Liberal self-apologetic is framed.

Mr. Ganesh resorts to political kitsch here -its easy to lose patience with this kind of puerile political commentary:

The Soviet empire was America’s favourite enemy: the one that gave it the securest sense of itself. When the wall fell, so did a certain kind of US nationhood. The partisanship that followed will endure until the next worthy ogre comes along.     

After much unconvincing historical exhumation,in defense of his nostalgia,  Mr. Ganesh closes his essay by celebrating, in true Cold War Triumphalist rhetorical style:

America’s victory in the cold war was a feat of strategy and patience that should be saluted this weekend. It just happens to be a victory from which it has never recovered.

What is interesting is what Mr. Ganesh excises from his radical political nostalgic essay: what is strategically absent from his narrative is that the transitional power of American political/cultural/civilizational paranoia, provided by Samuel P. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, published as an  essay of 1992,  that became a bloated BestSeller: was the transitional replacement for the the very specifically directed Cold War. The ‘Enemy’ ,  presented by Huntington,  was/is everywhere.

Mr. Huntington even became the bearer of xenophobia/racism in his Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity published in 2004. The Mestizo hordes are  actively subverting  ‘Anglo-Protestant virtue’!

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/fa0457d2-ffc3-11e9-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47

Headline: The age of democratic deadlock

Sub-headline: Around the world, radicalization is making coalition and consensus much harder

The headline writers at the Financial Times and Mr. Rachman : ‘Welcome to the age of democratic deadlock’ The anti-system parties are now the political  problematic as diagnosed by Rachman, in its almost world context*  . Along with Identity Politics. ( Note that Johnson is mentioned more than once in the essay, yet Corbyn is utterly absent!)

…

It is not just the number of parties that matters; it is also their nature. The process of coalition-building and consensus-forming is made much harder by political radicalisation. The rise of anti-system parties that are deemed to threaten democracy or the survival of the nation, narrows the number of potential governing partners for mainstream parties.

…

Politics is also no longer dominated by economic questions. Instead, issues of identity such as Brexit or Scottish independence are on the rise in Britain too, with the effects seen elsewhere.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/3ec1952c-fee5-11e9-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47

In a British focus on elections, refracted through American political history , Matthew Goodwin in the Times of November 3, 2019:

Headline:General election 2019: Jeremy Corbyn’s elite‑bashing is naked populism

Sub-headline: Labour’s demonising of the rich is divisive, but it resonates with voters

Mr. Goodwin writes this: What followed was a textbook example of the angry, divisive populism that is eroding everything once considered essential to our culture of consensus. But there is more, this is The Times!

This was the argument put forward nearly 60 years ago in a landmark study by the academics Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. Unlike the Germans and Italians, the British nurtured a culture that was pluralistic, consensual, trustful of institutions and, most importantly, deferential to elites. A nation that respects elites, as reflected in our love affair with Downton Abbey, leaves little room for elite-bashing populists.

…

Populists on the left and right are united in their belief in a corrupt, self-serving and neglectful elite that undermines the interests of the “pure” people. Right-wing populists contend this elite is political. The left contends it is economic. Corbyn’s enemies of the people are not remainers and the courts but “billionaires”, “big polluters”, “greedy bankers”, “tax dodgers”, “dodgy landlords”, the “privileged few” and the “bad bosses”.

…

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2019-11-03/comment/general-election-2019-jeremy-corbyns-elite-bashing-is-naked-populism-xmrwnt9fz

Mr. Goodwin’s polemic is much more historically informed than Rachman’s,  yet it relies on the American history of ‘Populism’ rather than British sources, aided by an informative  quotation from H.L. Mencken: on the continuing patency of American political hysteria, that can be traced  back to Cotton Mather’s  use of ‘spectral evidence’ in the Salem Witch Trails.

About the why of both ‘democratic deadlock’, as world wide political pandemic, and ‘our culture of consensus’ under threat of Corbyn’s ‘political radicalism/nihilism’ remain a rhetorical phantom, in both Rachman’s and Goodwin’s essays. The reader is moored in both cases in a-historical territory.

The absent player in all these acts, of a single political melodrama, is the Economic Crisis of 2008. And Neo-Liberalism, as a now spent political/economic force. The Technocrats and Politicians who were its salesman, and codified its ideas into law and practice, have been proven to be, not just unreliable, but profiteers of a system, that robbed people of their futures.

The political condition that has afflicted political actors by this world wide pandemic is not just a  loss of faith , but a sense of electorates betrayed, by the greed of The Managers , Technocrats, who now chatter at them in their Corporatist newspapers, Television and on Internet Platforms on their unworthiness as citizens of a polity- the Soviet writer Zinoviev’s  books ‘The Yawing Heights’ and ‘The Radiant Future’ are instructive satires on a system in a state of collapse.

Old Socialist

*Note the absence of the the failed Neo-Liberal experiment of Macri in Argentina. The Peronists won, in a contest heavenly editorialized upon in both The Economist and The Financial Times. A perfect example of the Populist Menace?

I once saw the flawlessly groomed Mr. Evans, on a side street in Beverly Hills: in the early 1970’s , black cashmere turtleneck sweater, black slacks and black Gucci loafers. And his signature over sized sunglasses. A bit of a shock to see him on foot and seemingly alone. He looked like a figurine, that belonged in a glass case, for display in a collection dolls, such was his aura preciousness, if that is the right word.
Don’t waste you time reading Brooks Barnes’ pallid’ obituary.
Read the ‘The Kid Stays in the Picture‘ to get acquainted with Mr. Evans as refracted through many re-writes . Arrogance and charm in equal measure, and almost, but not quite, endearing. A Hollywood huckster! Mr. Evans did the talking book that created conversations , or is the word ‘buzz’ more descriptive, but not quite contemporaneous?

Yours,

Myra Breckenridge

From his  eyrie at The Hoover Institution, where 1929 went to live, Niall Ferguson shares not his thoughts, but throws a rhetorical temper tantrum, about those ‘overeducated rebels’ that  seem to be shaking up the whole world, in this political moment. The ‘gilets jaunes’ are in their 50th Week of Anti-Macron demonstrations across France,unreported in Corporate Newspapers like the Times, and The Financial Times, and a host of others. The centers of rebellion:

Hong Kong,  Barcelona, Beirut , Quito, Santiago, Cairo, London,

Ferguson offer his life experience as a teacher twenty years ago at Oxford

When I taught history at Oxford 20 years ago, one of my favourite articles about the 1848 revolutions was “The Problem of an Excess of Educated Men in Western Europe, 1800-1850” by Lenore O’Boyle. O’Boyle’s argument was that European cities had been swept by revolution in 1848 because “too many men were educated for a small number of important and prestigious jobs, so that some men had to be content either with underemployment or with positions they considered below their capacities”.

Ferguson offers Norman  Stone’s comments on  the sixties in his book The Atlantic and Its Enemies.

Something similar happened in the 1960s, as the late lamented historian Norman Stone described in his magnificently mordant book The Atlantic and Its Enemies. “In all countries, new universities . . . were crammed with students; taught by men and women appointed all of a sudden in great numbers, without regard for quality. The expansion with relatively new subjects, such as economics, sociology and psychology, meant that there were young men and women aplenty who imagined that they had the answer to everything. It was a terrible cocktail.”

Ferguson produces World Bank statistics of tertiary education, as instructive of a discontent born of resentment about unfulfilled ambitions, as argued by Lenore O’Boyle. While Stone argues that education was unconcerned with the quality of the teaches and students? In the Conservative world view resentment and envy are key players in politics. Ferguson ends his screed with these two paragraphs:

These, then, are the baby sharks: the excess of educated young people currently taking to the streets in cities around the world. It does not help that so many professors fill their students’ heads with incoherent notions of “social justice”. But I suspect the real issue is the mismatch between the unparalleled glut of graduates and the demand for them.

At some point it will sink in that creating economic mayhem is the opposite of creating jobs. Until then, expect more traffic chaos. At least you now know what to sing when the baby sharks surround you.

The Elites, educated in universities steeped in bought and paid for exclusivity,  think of themselves as the ultimate arbiters of what education is, and how it is to be defined.We have heard these voices before: Allen Bloom, Roger Kimball, Dinesh D’Souza are just three of those voices, whose themes are not an exact fit, but share commonalities based on demonstrable class bias. Ferguson and his afore mentioned allies look upon the contemporary iteration of ‘education’ as the enemy of their collective class privilege.

Old Socialist

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/baby-sharks-are-feeding-a-global-protest-frenzy-wz66fq2hj

Like so many others, I waited, almost impatiently, for Andy Divine’s latest encyclical! Brexit by way of Trump/Boris is placed under his critical gaze, with the help of David Frum’s intervention. Proving that ‘Conservatism’ has reached, not just a point of collapse, but that its ideologists seek solace in nihilistic self-congratulation. Just read Andy’s evocative first paragraph:

So much has happened in the time since I last wrote in this space. And yet so very little. Things are proceeding very, very quickly in these fetid times. And yet, beneath the surface, they are also going very, very slowly.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/andrew-sullivan-the-difference-between-boris-and-trump.html

A faint echo of: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…?  In Andy’s first  paragraph antitheses take the rhetorical lead. ( Trump/Boris)! As the lead player in his essays, Andy’s self-conception as political prophet determines all else.

That is a match with Frum’s latest political evolution as  Wise Republican Elder. In the watershed of the Tea Party, that inaugurated the Age of Trump, Frum represents a Neo-Conservatism whose mendacity has been outdone by a Game Show Host! As usual with Andy’s proclamations, my patience is easily exhausted.

Political Cynic

P.S. Andy puts his political cards on the table, in this paragraph:

Look: I supported Remain in the Brexit referendum. I even remember as a kid wearing a “Britain in Europe” button to school during the original 1975 referendum campaign. I backed the liberal, pro-E.U. Toryism of David Cameron and George Osborne, and didn’t support a referendum on E.U. membership. I think Britain’s departure from the E.U. will lead to a tangible if manageable loss of future economic growth, hurt industry, stress-test the U.K. as a single entity, and hit the financial sector. I don’t want the U.K. to crash out of the E.U. without a deal, and would do what I could, if I were in Parliament, to prevent it. I can see the arguments for the Remain cause, as they have operated until now. Many Remainers are my friends and in my family. If a referendum were to be held for the first time tomorrow, I’d still vote to Remain.

Headline:Public cynicism is destroying American politics

Sub-headline: Rather than defend Trump, his supporters argue Democrats are corrupt too

Mr. Ganesh , like his idolized Tom Wolfe,  is in thrall  to the vicissitudes of Pop Culture. Its no surprise that he uses a minuscule quote from Hollywood kitchmeister Steven Spielberg’s ‘Lincoln’ , as the opening to his hectoring essay on the menace of ‘public cynicism’. Ganesh calls Spielberg’s cinematic meditation on Lincoln an ‘inert biopic’ in the casual snobbery of the cineaste? Or is it just an example of a boulevardier’s coffee house wit?

Mr. Ganesh never ask the most pressing questions of the ‘why’ of the  question of ‘public cynicism’. The most glaring contemporary example of cynicism is that the New Democrats, who claim the moral/political high ground, as defenders against the predations of Trump, are knee deep in their own corruption.Which Ganesh tries to render null, but fails to engage in any semblance of an holistic approach.

Mr. Ganesh ignorance of American political history is always dependable: You are forced to reach for the Iraq war as the only explanation for this mistrust. No! Begin with the secret CIA testing of LSD on unsuspecting Americans, the assassination of Kennedy, and Arlen Spector’s preposterous  ‘single bullet theory’ presented as ‘political fact’ , the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, The Church Committee’s finding that there was more that one assassin in Dallas,  the founding of the FISA Court, that rehabilitates The Bill of Attainder, Lettre de cachet and invents The National Security Letter. Add to this the FBI Crime Lab scandal and the Clinton/Brennan/Clapper alliance that gave birth to the Mueller Report, and the death of the lie of Russian Interference, as a cover for Clinton’s loss in 2016. Given the accumulated evidence, of not just misdeeds, but lies, cover up of National Security State’s crimes against its citizens. And its democratic institutions renders the use of Prof.  Hofstadter’s  ‘paranoid style’ not just anachronistic, but contrary to the empirical evidence.

The Spoils System is alive and well! The reader need only look at Hunter Biden, Paul Pelosi Jr and Chris Heinz involvement in Ukrainian business ventures. As proof that this ‘public cynicism’ is the product of the machinations, not to speak of utter dishonesty, displayed by the claimants to the ‘moral/political high ground’ 

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/cf8d0622-f56c-11e9-b018-3ef8794b17c6

The utter desperation of Mr. Luce , as apologist for an utterly exhausted bourgeois American politics, presents ‘Spoiler candidacies‘ as a clear and present danger .  I recall reading a Joe Conason column in the New York Observer in 2000, that called Nader a ‘spoiler’ or at least alluded to it.  It escapes Mr. Luce’s attention that Gabbard is an active candidate in the Democratic Party, a ‘race’ that predates any of the primaries-consider Luce’s hectoring essay a preemptive strike against a political phantom?

The ‘Political Apostates’ need to be identified and publicly shamed. We’ve been reading this dreck since Ross Perot. Should the reader look to Theodore Roosevelt, Socialist Eugene Debs ran 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920, or more contemporaneously George Wallace, Benjamin Spock and Ralph Nader, it is an inescapable American Tradition: that expresses popular discontent with both Parties. Not a comfortable concept for Mr. Luce to even contemplate. The only possible consideration worth entertaining is Luce’s positing of Left political nihilism:

As the Green party candidate in 2000, Ralph Nader took more votes in Florida than the infamously contested gap between Al Gore and George W Bush. But for Mr Nader, the Iraq war may never have happened. In 2016, the Green party’s Jill Stein took more votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania than Mrs Clinton’s margin of defeat. But for Ms Stein, Mr Trump might still be trying to make a comeback in reality TV. A Gabbard candidacy could accomplish the same for Mr Trump next year. Little wonder that conservative influencers, such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, have been welcoming the Hawaiian congresswoman on to their show.

Mr. Luce then dons the musty, threadbare cloak of the Inquisitor, in a near hysterical defense of American Exceptionalism,  by way of his collection of villains: Gabbard, Jeremy Corbyn, Bashar al-Assad, Muammer Gaddafi, Marxists, Susan Sarandon. With this cast of characters this essay realizes all of the dramatic weight of the Telenovela.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/337d4732-f644-11e9-9ef3-eca8fc8f2d65

@drjbgmail

Thank you for your comment.  On your first point: here is a list of members of Congress who voted against the Iraq War or changed their minds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Congressional_opponents_of_the_Iraq_War

Here are the yes votes on the War from the Senate:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/senaterollcall_iraq101002.htm

Yes: 29 Democrats, 48 Republicans

No:  1 Republican, 21 Democrats, 1 Independent

The House vote on the war:

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/international/roll-call-vote-in-house-on-iraq-resolution.html

From the above NYT link:

The 296-133 roll call Thursday by which the House voted for a resolution to authorize President Bush to use military force in Iraq.

A “yes” vote is a vote to approve the resolution.

Voting yes were 81 Democrats and 215 Republicans.

Voting no were 126 Democrats, six Republicans and one independent.

The votes for are not surprising, as majority of New Democrats were supportive of the war. Recall that Feinstein(D) delayed the vote for one day? Bush and his Neo-Cons whipped up war fever, with lies, and the UN testimony of Colin Powell!  A large majority of politicians and pundits cowered from the charge of lack of patriotism. Now the New Democrats are just as bellicose as the Republicans, they were ‘re-educated’ by their defeat at the hands of a noxious Game Show Host.

On your second point:

There is a very real, fundamental issue / danger of a third-party candidate resulting in Trump’s re-election. This should be utterly obvious. Somehow dismissing this as “…the utter desperation of Mr. Luce , as apologist for an utterly exhausted bourgeois American politics..” is pure demagoguery.

As I wrote in my comment, Third Party candidates are an American political tradition, that escapes the notice of those defending the American Political Center: that can be defined as the toxic alliance between the New Democrats and the Neo-Conservatives. That claim the moral/political high ground ,represented by Obama and Clinton, with the aid of fellow travelers, like R2P Neo-Colonialist Samantha Powers, various well funded Think Tanks and a ‘Liberal Press’: New York Times, Washington Post , not to forget America’s favorite political gossip sheet Politico.

As to the charge of ‘pure demagoguery’ : as I write polemic, an honored literary tradition, at least since the Greeks, let me attempt a pastiche of aphorism: ‘One man’s  demagoguery is another man’s polemic’ . Not likely to end up in Bartlett’s !

Regards,

StephenKMackSD