In New York, it is “Fleet Week.” As a news account on Wednesday said, “Nearly 2,300 military personnel are expected to participate in the weeklong tradition.” Years ago, a friend of mine said she had gone up to a few of the guys and said, “Thank you for your service.”

There is a bit of controversy about this phrase, this sentence — this act. Is it condescending? Is it sentimentalizing? Too reflexive? Like “Have a nice day”?

Anyway, there’s a controversy, there are points.

In 2017, I did a podcast with Ash Carter. He had worked in military affairs for a long time — from Reagan through Obama. His last stint was as secretary of defense.

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked him about “Thank you for your service.” He answered, “If you mean it, you should say it.” He further said,

I’m so glad that I wasn’t secretary of defense during the Vietnam period, because it would have broken my heart to see our troops treated the way they were, as though they were decisionmakers. I understand a lot of people didn’t want to be in that war — and, by the way, a lot of the troops didn’t want to be in that war — but they had done their duty, and they did not deserve to be disrespected when they came home, and they were.

There are all sorts of people one might thank for their service: teachers, cops, nurses, clergymen, moms, dads. Entrepreneurs. (No one ever thinks of them. But without them, our lives would be so much poorer.)

Thanking — err on the side of too much, I would say.

• Nikki Haley has announced she will be voting for Donald Trump for president. By now, there will have been many columns written on the subject. I could write a long one. But I’ll tell you what her announcement did to me: It made me all the more appreciative of Republicans who say no to Trump — Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, Todd Young (the Indiana senator), et al. (Young refuses to support Trump on grounds of Ukraine and Russia alone.)

They are rare, these Republicans. I admire them. They are not par for the course. They are willing to go their own way, a better way.

• Who won the 2020 presidential election? It is an “absurd question,” says Kevin D. Williamson. It is also “the single most important question in American politics today.” I agree. KDW makes the case in a column, here.

• When I was growing up, the term “un-American” was verboten, to a degree. It had been stigmatized by McCarthyism. Yet some things are un-American, to my mind.

Here is a headline: “Trump Slams Colombia-Born Judge Presiding Over His Trial by Saying, ‘Take a Look at Where He Comes From.’” (Article here.) True, Judge Merchan was born in Colombia. He came with his family to America when he was six. He grew up in Queens, N.Y. (like Donald Trump).

Would you like to hear an interesting twist? Aileen Cannon is a Trump-appointed judge, and a favorite of Trumpers. She is presiding over the “documents case” — which appears frozen. Like Judge Merchan, Judge Cannon was born in Colombia.

You will remember the campaign of 2016, and Trump’s broadsides against the “Mexican” judge. (That judge, Gonzalo Curiel, was born in East Chicago, Ind.)

To my mind, nativism is un-American — but we all seem to have different conceptions of America and American ideals.

• Trump refers to Nikki Haley as “Nimbra.” Haley’s given name is “Nimarata.” She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki.” Trump calls her “Nimbra” because . . . well, you know why. He also calls her “Birdbrain.”

And he will have her vote. I feel like giving advice to the young: Never want to be in the political game so bad that you will suffer any indignity. Never be such a party man that party comes before anything else. Life has so much to offer. There are such riches out there, apart from politics.

• Headline: “Daily marijuana use outpaces daily drinking in the US, a new study says.” (Article here.) USA! USA!

• Yet something I love about our country is its “cultural appropriation,” as dunces and scolds say. Get this: “Piglet yoga inspires newcomers and regulars to the ancient Indian wellness practice.” (Article here.)

Piglet yoga. I’ll be damned. Appropriate away, y’all.

• Above, I used the phrase “to my mind,” twice. To my mind, the ugliest, nastiest word in the English language is the N-word. Let me amend that: the ugliest, nastiest word in the American language. The word is less freighted, less explosive, in other parts of the English-speaking world, I understand.

(The second-worst word, in my opinion, is the C-word.)

“But many black Americans use the N-word regularly!” one might say. Sure. There is such a thing as “owning the insult.” I wrote a piece on this once. (Here, a 2009 essay.) Lots of now-common and -benign terms began as insults: among them “Christian,” “Tory,” and “Impressionist.” But, certainly out of most mouths, there is nothing benign about “n*****.”

I have a friend and colleague who dislikes the phrase “N-word.” He also dislikes asterisks. He regards these things as cutesy and prissy. I agree with him. And yet, I shrink from saying or writing the word, flat-out.

Do I contradict myself? Oh, sure.

This brings me to a concert of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The BRSO played in Carnegie Hall earlier this month. On the program was a Zemlinsky work: the Symphonische Gesänge. These “symphonic songs” set poems by Harlem Renaissance figures. At least one of the poems contains the N-word. The lyrics in our program booklet had asterisks.

The singer, Lester Lynch, an American baritone, addressed this general issue in a program note:

Despite ongoing efforts to combat racism and promote inclusivity, use of the so-called “N-word” still evokes strong emotions and sparks heated discussions about race, power, and privilege in America. While some argue that it can be used to challenge stereotypes and critique systemic injustices, others maintain that the word carries too much historical pain and trauma to be reclaimed.

What is my final word, my bottom line? I don’t have one — but I do have a story to tell. A long time ago, someone asked A. M. Rosenthal how he edited the New York Times. (Rosenthal, by the way, was a good friend of Bill Buckley’s.) Rosenthal said, “With my stomach.”

How do you decide about asterisks and all that? With your stomach, I would say — and you hope that your stomach is well tuned.

• There are some stories, some news articles, that are simultaneously sweet and sad. Here’s one by Franklin Briceño, of the Associated Press: “Baseball becomes a shelter for Venezuelan children in soccer-mad Peru.” About 7 million Venezuelans have fled their homeland, which has been made destitute and violent by the chavista regime there. About 1.5 million have gone to Peru.

Peruvians are “soccer-mad,” yes, as the headline says. But baseball is alien to them. And, to the Venezuelans — perhaps especially the children — it is a taste of home.

Again, a story both sweet and sad, I find. See whether you do too.

• A column by Jonah Goldberg reminded me of my experience with cars. Bear with me. Jonah wrote about pricing. His headline is “The Price for Me, but Not for Thee?” I will parachute into the piece and paste a paragraph (too many P’s for you?):

With personalized pricing [whoops, those are two more], the umbrella salesman charges rich people more than poor people [two more — I’ll stop now]. On one level that sounds fine, right? Sticking it to rich people and giving a (relative) bargain to poor people sounds kind of virtuous. This is basically how negotiations work. If you want to buy a Persian rug in some Turkish bazaar, the dealer takes the measure of you and tries to guess how much he can get out of you. If he thinks you’re rich, his “absolute lowest price” is likely to be higher than if he thinks you’re not so well-off. No one’s holding a gun to anyone’s head, and if both get the carpet they want at a price they can live with, so what?

I have never been a bargainer. I wish I were. I admire those who are (and envy them a little bit). I recoil from something like a Turkish bazaar. I want there to be a straightforward price — one straightforward, unambiguous price — for everybody.

Now, I am not trying to decree for the rest of the world. I am a big proponent of markets. I am speaking personally — about personal temperament or inclination or makeup.

I grew up in Car Country, which is to say, Michigan. We live in our cars. (Some people live for cars.) But I have not owned a car since the ’90s, when we moved to a metropolis, where car ownership is very complicated and, for most, cumbersome.

Back when, I owned two cars, only — two cars in succession. Both of them were Saturns. Saturn was a GM subsidiary that existed from 1985 to 2010. I loved both of my Saturns. (The second was a sports car. Sort of.) And one selling point of the Saturn was: one price. The price was the price.

Again, some people don’t want that. They want to bargain. Great. Wish I did. But there was something comforting, to me, about knowing that I was paying the same price as everyone else. I wasn’t pulling off some kind of coup — but I wasn’t being shafted either.

• A lady used the word “disenfranchise” in a creative, charming, and effective way, I thought. The event was to start at 1. I was there early (unusual for me). People trickled in. When it got to be 1, the lady said, “Maybe we’ll wait a few minutes, for stragglers.” At 1:05, she said to the audience, “I think we’ll start now, so as not to disenfranchise those who are on time.”

Very well handled. Sometimes, it’s tricky to know when to begin. You want to wait for latecomers — not only is it kind, it is often practical, too. But you don’t want to feel you’re punishing the on-timers either.

Speaking of time, I’ve kept you long enough. Thanks for joining me, y’all. Have a good weekend. Talk soon.

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