And now for something completely different . . .
Building a Progressive Audience
I want to reach across the great divide and embrace my progressive brothers and sisters, together with all the pronouns they have chosen. I regret all the bad things I said about them, especially the blithering idiots epithet. Our society must be rebuilt on a foundation of harmony, and I would like a broader audience than I now have. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single, very tentative, step. Here it is.
The unity that characterized our fractured society in the aftermath of the October 7 disaster can be accounted for in a number of ways. Perhaps, confronted by previously unimagined losses, hatred, and savagery, we viscerally understood that if we were to survive the onslaught we would need to cooperate. Perhaps the attack concretized our awareness that we, alone and isolated in the world, possess shared characteristics that outweigh our differences. And perhaps we just put aside our antagonism temporarily, because survival depended on suspension of the destructive and divisive nonsense.
In any event, it didn’t last. We are more polarized than ever and the stresses of this seemingly endless war have apparently dissolved all of our residual benign feelings.
Even worse, we seem to have forgotten how to conduct disagreements with civility. We characterize our opponents as not just wrong, but evil. We don’t talk; we shout. And we seem never to listen.
We need a radical reassessment and some substantive behavior modifications to recapture the evanescent solidarity that we enjoyed for a fleeting moment. One way for us to become more tolerant of opposing views is to walk a mile in our adversaries’ shoes. Because then we are a mile away from our obnoxious adversaries, plus we have their shoes. As noted above, I am now taking the first tentative steps of my journey, in progressive shoes that are uncomfortable but trendy.
I have gritted my teeth and read so much drivel with which I disagree. I am confident that readers with opinions other than mine read my writing with equal disdain. But what if I were, just as an exercise in humility and outreach, to adopt their views and articulate them? Would it not serve to broaden my own horizons at the same time that it soothed the savage breasts of the morons on the other side?
See? There I go again. Lashing out when I should be welcoming. Please understand; by expressing opposing opinions, I am not selling out, acquiescing, surrendering, or groveling. Those would be beneath my exalted notion of myself. I am simply going to try to ingratiate myself with people who formerly might have held me and my opinions in contempt. I can see where some might consider that selling out, acquiescing, surrendering, or groveling, but if that is the price of speaking to a broader audience, I am prepared to pay it. There is no great cachet to being right if no one is reading. Might as well be wrong and a crowd-pleaser, like Tom Friedman. In theory, I would rather be right than famous, but not if no one even knows; where’s the glory in that?
So, I have looked inward, done some market analysis, and tried to adjust. The hell with intellectual honesty! Try on those progressive shoes and wear them for a mile. Give them what they seem to want.
So here goes: I hereby acknowledge the error of my former ways. I choose, for the moment at least, to align my work with rightthink, thus broadening my audience and likelihood of success.
I can hate Bibi as much as any deranged journalist or professor. Just watch.
Netanyahu! Smotrich! Ben-Gvir! Degel HaTorah! Settlers! Levin! Judicial Reform! !@#$%^&!@#$%^&. Like all progressive writers, I know that it is impossible to reason with people like that, because they are so dogmatic and set in their ways. And they just don’t get it. They are all so wrong in such a comprehensive manner that just mentioning their names to an enlightened audience is sufficient to evoke the proper negative response. Bad! Bad! They are bad! And racist. (Having said that, as a progressive commentator, I need not consider any of their substantive positions. See how it works?)
Also, everyone who votes for them is bad, except for the few good voters who are merely ignorant, and the religious ones, who should just leave us alone and mind their own business.
I also support the view of progressive influencers that speech that is offensive or disagreeable to them is violence, but that violence, especially if conducted by people who patriotically show up at Kaplan for the issue du jour, must be evaluated in context. Democracy means the will of the people, unless the people are the wrong sort of people, i.e., lacking post-graduate degrees. Then democracy means the opinion of people whose opinions have been properly shaped. When in doubt, ask Aharon Barak or the Attorney General. Or any random professor at TAU (but try not to disturb their Naqba Day ceremony).
Politics aside, writing that appeals to progressives must be socially conscious and iconoclastic, especially if it strikes a blow against traditional practices and hierarchy (preferably male). A case in point is a screed by someone who has made it her mission to oppose circumcision (even though she appears not to have any skin in the game, so to speak). Of course, even a recent adherent of progressivism knows that such matters as circumcision, which forms the basis of a 3,000 years old covenant between Israel and God, should be evaluated by modern standards of equity, formed five minutes ago. The rights of every powerless male child to a foreskin should be protected.
If we want to weasel our way into the progressive stockade, however, we must avoid the slippery slope (or third rail) that might, God forbid, lead to the assertion of rights for powerless fetuses. Fetuses, like fingernails, have no rights. The rights of potential children should be treated the same as the rights of potential chickens. Scrambling is OK. Remember the catchy slogan, “Foreskins yes, fetuses no.” Because you can never predict the potential that might have been achieved by a discarded foreskin.
Of course, we should not allow ourselves to be handicapped by the hobgoblins of a foolish consistency. Children should not be circumcised without their consent, because… they are children. Children may be vaccinated against their will, because… they are children. Gender-affirming care, including surgery and puberty-blockers, must be administered to children on demand, even against the will of their parents, because… they are children.
[I am now going to digress as though this were a conversation rather than an essay, because otherwise some of you may never know the interesting bit of history I am going to reveal. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a French biologist who erroneously believed that evolution occurred through the transmission of acquired characteristics. An organism adapted in response to a changed environment and transmitted the change to its progeny. Communists liked the idea that society could change itself and transmit the changes to future generations, so they adopted his views. This was, of course, before we knew about DNA. The rejection of his theory was driven by a German biologist named August Weisman, who disproved the theory by cutting off the tails of generation after generation of white mice, breeding the de-tailed mice, and producing generation after generation of mice with tails, thus proving that acquired characteristics were not transmitted. Why did this occur to me and why do I think it might interest you? Because August Weisman was Jewish, and he could have made life nicer for a few hundred mice by just disrobing and standing in front of a mirror next to his father and his son. None of them was born with a foreskin. OK. Back to pretending to be woke.]
Another sure-fire winner on my trail to woke acclaim: Judges should not have to enforce laws with which they disagree. Judges should not have to work with other judges whose views might differ from their own. (For obvious reasons of efficiency, we want them to all favor the same ideology, so there will be no dispute as to which laws they may disregard.) A simple, fair solution to assure continuity and consistency is to have the judges appoint their successors and enjoy veto rights over unacceptable nominees. And just for good measure, they should be able to approve and disapprove nominees to head the Shin Bet. Some decisions are too important to be left to elected officials.
Proclaim liberty throughout the land. Democracy must prevail, even if the majority must be disregarded.
In some areas, I acknowledge that I may still require guidance because progressives change approved doctrine so suddenly. Remember when only white supremacists questioned Joe Biden’s mental acuity? And Jake Tapper said that all the fake charges were attributable to his childhood stutter? And I was clearly wrong about the two ‘Huds, Barak and Olmert. If we had stayed with them and their policies, there would be no hostages. Also, no Israel, but why quibble? And if grifting for favorable press coverage is bribery, what is a $400 million plane?
Pointers for others who seek access to the progressive camp: Anyone claiming not to be a racist is a racist. Discrimination on the basis of race to address previous discrimination on the basis of race is not discrimination on the basis of race or is acceptable discrimination on the basis of race. The only way to address prior discrimination is present discrimination. The notion that environmental policies may have had something to do with the California fires has been debunked. The notion that DEI policies have resulted in lower test scores? Debunked. Get over it.
Admissions (and other) standards should be adjusted in favor of the disadvantaged. This is not unfair to privileged groups that are thus excluded from admission, hiring, retention, or promotion, because privilege is not susceptible to unfairness. Hiring or promoting on the basis of merit is injustice, because it is… racist. One law for the Lion and the Ox is Oppression, wrote William Blake. Of course, he was quite unbalanced, if extremely talented. He would have been very happy here.
And remember–if anyone questions your progressive bona fides, always circle back to Bibi and Trump. How can you have a Prime Minister with a wife like that? Trump is an unpredictable, rudderless, crass accumulation of contradictions, impressed by majesty, marble, and money. He is addicted to deals and self-aggrandizement. He is mercurial, unpredictable, and occasionally unhinged. Why can’t Bibi manage him more efficiently?
Why doesn’t Netanyahu just go ahead and release the hostages? What is wrong with him? Why doesn’t Netanyahu stop the Houthis from firing rockets? What is wrong with him? Why doesn’t Netanyahu just do the right thing with respect to drafting charedim, even if it means that someone less competent will lead the next government after this one crashes and burns? What’s wrong with him? Why did Netanyahu wait so long before paging Hezbollah to death? Why didn’t he get more of them? What’s wrong with him?
And why doesn’t he just come right out and admit what we all know? It’s his fault. The whole thing. Everything. The faulty planning. The execrable rapid response. The lack of preparedness. Thank God everyone else performed so admirably.
Everything is bad–except we have pretty much wiped out Hamas and Hezbollah, weakened Iran, transformed Syria, and got second place at Eurovision–how long will we be able to survive under the current regime?
Meet me and a bunch of self-righteous professors on Kaplan Street. 9:00 pm. Protest subject to be announced. Democracy now and forever. Down with racism and sexism. Boo, Bibi! And congratulations to Tel Aviv University for granting an honorary degree to Tom Friedman. Doesn’t that just say it all? See how far one can go by selling out his principles, his people, and his credibility? I want to be like Tom.
But does hypocrisy give anyone else stomach aches?