drnormalvision: Stephen Miller

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Introducing the "Natasha"

Where have all the Karens gone? For a while you couldn’t visit a news website without reading of another unmasking of a Karen—that is, a white woman (usually) who went bananas over something that another person (usually a minority) did to offend her.

Today I wish to advise you of another type of being: the Natasha. I actually did introduce the prototype Natasha to you in an earlier post: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2025/06/two-families.html

A character in Anton Chekhov”s “The Three Sisters,” she is a jumped-up descendent of peasants, married into a gentle household, who maneuvers herself into a position of power. She is disdainful of the servants, at one point complaining that long-time servant, eighty-year-old Anfisa sits in her presence.

I have two prominent present-day Natashas to point to today. The first is Stephen Miller, who serves as White House Deputy Chief of Staff. Miller grew up in Santa Monica, California, where, as a teenager,

[r]unning for student government in high school, he campaigned on the platform that the school’s janitors weren’t doing enough work. (“Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?” he asked in his campaign speech.)*

Here is displayed the essence of Natashaism: he is angered by having to pickup his own litter; surely an underling can clear up the mess Miller makes. Personal responsibility is replaced by the travail of another. “I am above it all.”

The second Natasha I bring to you today is Miller’s boss, the mustard Mussolini. It was revealed that on his latest trip to Scotland (how much did it cost the US taxpayer?) when he went golfing, Trump violated one of the rules of the sport’s etiquette. After holing out a putt, he didn’t pick up the ball himself, but left it for his caddie (or other flunky) to do so. Here are some readers’ comments:

"Is he too good...to pick up his own ball," one person asked.
"Doesn’t even get his own ball," a second person wrote on X.
"Arrogant dude just walks away. Go pickup your ball," a social media user commented.
"Go get your ball Trump," another social media user wrote. "Why are you so lazy?"
"Having someone else pick up his ball. Bad golf etiquette," a fifth person said.**

Now that you have a name (Natasha) for this type of person and a description of their type of behavior—they are too grand to bend, while others are too lowly to sit—don’t be reluctant to call them out.

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*https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/opinion/stephen-miller.html?searchResultPosition=1

**https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/lazy-president-trump-taking-heat-175312248.html

Friday, June 29, 2018

Spirits of St. Louis

In the year 1927 the two most illustrious figures in the United States were almost certainly Babe Ruth, who hit 60 home runs during the baseball season—a record that would stand until 1961—and Charles Lindbergh, “Lucky Lindy,” the pilot of Spirit of St. Louis, who was the first person to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean.

Ruth’s fame continues to this day. Lindbergh’s flame blew out in December 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered the Second World War.

Before the sneak attack, Lindbergh had become the face and major mouthpiece of the America First Committee, “the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.”(1)

In one notorious speech, Lindbergh singled out the “British and the Jewish races” as the major forces who “wish to involve us in the war.” And it was “for reasons which are not American.”

We can accept that the British “race,” as a sovereign nation, would pursue its own national interest, which might not always coincide with that of the United States. But the Jewish “race”? By asserting that the Jews—as a “race”— pursue their own interests, driven by “reasons which are not American,” Lindbergh openly demonstrated a vicious strain of anti-semitism. What Lindbergh was proclaiming, Susan Dunn points out, was that “[t]he nation's enemy was an internal one, a Jewish one.”

[T]hroughout the [presidential] campaign, Trump also promised to put America first, a pledge renewed – twice – in his inaugural address. It was a disturbing phrase; think pieces on the slogan’s history began to sprout up, explaining that it stretches back to efforts to keep the US out of the second world war.
In fact, “America first” has a much longer and darker history than that, one deeply entangled with the country’s brutal legacy of slavery and white nationalism, its conflicted relationship to immigration, nativism and xenophobia. Gradually, the complex and often terrible tale this slogan represents was lost to mainstream history – but kept alive by underground fascist movements. “America first” is, to put it plainly, a dog whistle.(2)

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Nearly ever present by the President's side, perhaps no one is more responsible for the Trump agenda than Stephen Miller.(3)

Miller, the Trump whisperer, has been a major—perhaps the major architect of the President’s malignant immigration policy. Although Miller is only 32 years old, his xenophobic nastiness goes back to his teen-age years. One is not surprised, therefore, that with that history Miller would shed few tears over the forced separation of parents and children.

What did surprise me—indeed, shock me—the other day was to learn that young Mr. Miller was Jewish.(4) Perhaps naively, I have always believed that all Jews would be cognizant of their own history of persecution, exclusion, and expulsion and, therefore, would be foremost in the defense of the oppressed and downtrodden.

Apparently, young Mr. Miller has never heard the story of the SS St. Louis, which in 1939 left Germany with 900 Jews aboard.

They were anticipating an escape from the Nazis to a new home and freedom from oppression:

They hoped to reach Cuba and then travel to the US - but were turned away in Havana and forced to return to Europe, where more than 250 were killed by the Nazis.(5)

I wonder who Miller would empathize with: the 1939 equivalents of ICE agents, barring the door to safety, or his fellow Jews, refugees in deadly danger of extermination?

This past Tuesday brought news of a happier sort. The Hockey Hall of Fame selected its class of 2018 inductees. Among the chosen was Martin St. Louis, a French Canadian, who was born in Laval, Quebec. A somewhat undersized forward, St. Louis did not have a smooth journey to on-ice greatness. But eventually through determination and hard work he became a star in the league. He won numerous major trophies and scoring titles—and in 2004 the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning, the team that gave him his chance to excel.