The Blogs: Ramblings of a Disordered Mind

Famous New York Times headlines:

New York, November 25, 2024–Israeli rabbi who disappeared in Dubai is found dead.

Washington, April 14th, 1865–Lincoln Found Dead After Disappearing From Theater.

And a personal favorite–“Israel Keeps Attacking Journalists. When Will The US Intervene?” Maybe after the US stops pressuring social media outlets to de-platform conservatives?***************************************************************************

Why has no one noticed that Caryn Elaine Johnson has culturally appropriated the name Whoopi Goldberg, thus stealing and capitalizing upon the cultures of both cushions and Jews? I would not be raising this relatively minor transgression, given the enormity and frequency of her customary offenses against good taste and common sense, but this week she has been particularly hateful, condescending, and nasty. She claimed that Kamala Harris lost the election solely because of racism and misogyny, apparently failing to notice that (i) these same racists had elected Barack Obama twice, doubtless because they were even more prejudiced against boring Mormons and military heroes than against people of color, and (ii) 46% of America’s self-hating women voted for . . . that man. She gratuitously attacked the owners of a venerable Staten Island family bakery, wrongfully accusing them of refusing to accept her order because of her politics (actually a 60-year old boiler had broken and they could not commit to a large order). She is a bully and a tyrant, she has no intellectual qualifications for her job, and . . . she is not even the worst person on her show. Goldberg is a venerable and identifiably Jewish name. Ms. Johnson should go back to her roots and leave us in peace.

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Speaking of unqualified one-trick ponies, Peter Beinart wrote that Democrats brought down their party by ignoring Gaza. Yup. No doubt about that. Sign him up for the lecture circuit and guest essays in the New York Times. Also, please disregard inflation; the Afghanistan humiliation; a weak, unpopular candidate who ran a hurried campaign because she, among others, insisted that the addled, compromised, and demented President was brilliant and focused; the desire to “turn the page” accompanied by an inability to describe any policy she would have changed; woke ideologies that alienated a majority of the country, including radical policies on transgender surgery for children and incarcerated aliens; support for racist policies to correct the damages caused by previous racist policies; a failed education system managed by selfish teachers’ unions; support for equality of outcome in place of equality of opportunity; and badmouthing America as founded upon slavery and systemically racist and corrupt.

If only they hadn’t ignored Gaza. No one would have noticed that other stuff.

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While we are on the subject of editorial monomania, and illustrating my genuinely doltish willingness to speak truth to power, even if you never get to read this here, David Horowitz, the brilliant and influential founder and editor of this august publication, has penned the following Editor’s Notes among his other prolific and thought-provoking pieces: “The ultra-divisive Netanyahu and the consequences for an Israel fighting for survival” [spoiler alert: not good]; “A last, desperate, long-shot plea: Prime Minister Netanyahu, stop this madness;” “Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant mid-war is reckless, divisive and dangerous to Israel;” “Netanyahu never went away after October7. But now, courtesy of Saar, he’s truly back;” “Netanyahu: don’t fire Gallant again: The first time was a tragedy, the second could be worse.”

These are just the ones that came to hand. There are many, many others. They say that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. What about a foolish obsession that is shared with a whole group of like-minded intellectuals and elites?

The interesting thing is that David Horowitz’s mind is anything but small. He is smart and perspicacious enough to know, as he states in the first of the opinion pieces cited above, that the people elected and support Netanyahu, that he is Israel’s most successful and popular politician, stunningly articulate in English, the supreme advocate for Israel on the world stage, a giant among rival political nobodies, beloved and revered by many, many Israelis. But then he lists twelve reasons why Netanyahu is to be reviled, some of them quite damning, some of them patently unfair, and a few of them internally inconsistent.

To wit: Netanyahu lacks empathy–well, that certainly explains his consistent popularity and electability. People worry that he might–might, mind you–capitulate to right-wing leaders. Under his watch the plight of the hostages is not a cause of national unanimity but a divisive issue–as if it ever could have been anything else, given the intransigence of Hamas, the wholly and justifiably unambiguous feelings of most of the hostage families, and the competing concerns of others whom we should freely acknowledge also have the best interests of Israel at heart. As for internal inconsistency, on the one hand, Horowitz says that Netanyahu substitutes his judgment for that of the military and . . . on the other hand, he accepted the defense establishment’s “unfathomable” assessment that Hamas was not single-mindedly bent on harming and ultimately destroying Israel–[it seems that the poor guy just can’t get it right, substituting his judgment for theirs sometimes, and other times accepting their unfathomable assessments. Why doesn’t he just require them to label clearly, in red ink, those assessments that are unfathomable? That’s what a true leader would do.]

Netanyahu is, like all of us, a flawed human being. Like every politician, he seeks power and does what he thinks he must to stay in office, in the face of an enormously hostile press, an antagonistic elite, and an academic corps of condescending intellectuals. But, my God, the man has devoted his life to the State of Israel. Does anyone imagine that this man, accused of being venal for accepting cigars and duplicitous for seeking favorable press, could not have been immensely successful in business or on the lecture circuit? Compare him to Barak and Olmert, the two Ehuds, or hoods, as I call them for short. He has miraculous accomplishments to his credit. And the job is not an easy one. The charedi crisis and the need for some accommodation on judicial reform, not to mention the constant struggle for survival make his one of the more challenging jobs imaginable. Yet he presided over Israel’s transition to leadership in technology, weaponry, cyber-security, and a relatively stable economy. And he, with the benefit of the amazing talent, ingenuity, bravery, and dedication of the IDF, God bless them, is winning the wars, at least the military ones. He continues to hold Iran’s feet to the fire in the face of an inimical and antagonistic Europe and a wishy-washy United States. Can’t we cut him a little slack? (Without, of course, ever stopping to try to impede his policies, impugn his character and his family, and incarcerate him as soon as possible–I don’t want to suggest anything unreasonable.)

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Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, Pam Bondi, Susie Wiles, Tom Homan, Doug Collins, Michael Waltz, Doug Burgum, Sean Duffy, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Matthew Whitaker, Lee Zeldin, Mike Huckabee, John Ratcliffe, Elon Musk.

I choose not to think about the others.

But wouldn’t it be amusing (well, maybe not so amusing, and certainly completely inconceivable) if Governor DeSantis chose Matt Gaetz to fill Marco Rubio’s seat in the Senate? He should appoint Douglas Murray or go bi-partisan and appoint Ritchie Torres. Or maybe Ron Dermer–we have it on good journalistic authority that he’s too American to be effective on the Israeli political scene. And he doesn’t appreciate Yaffa Yarkoni. Or was it Shoshanna Damari?

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For some reason, these days, every time I read about the United Nations my mind wanders to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I listen to the inversions that paint the Palestinians as innocent victims and the Israelis as colonial aggressors, and I think of the gardeners frantically painting the white roses red, to conform reality to the preferred artifice. Humpty Dumpty says “in rather a scornful tone, ‘[a word] means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’” When Alice objects that a question arises as to whether you can make words mean so many different things, Antonio Guterres, I mean Humpty Dumpty, replies, “the question is which is to be master–that’s all.” And so, when Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Kenyan who is the UN’s special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, explained that Israel’s campaign of self-defense does not qualify as genocide, she was dismissed from her position and the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices (yes, there is such a thing in the UN Wonderland) issued a report supporting allegations of genocide by Israel. As the Cheshire Cat says, “I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”

The UN’s reality has become an ugly, horrible, repulsive thing. The concept of an international organization dedicated to maintaining peace has been so corrupted by totalitarian, anti-democratic, antisemitic states that the goals of protecting human rights and upholding international law have been turned on their heads. Blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers maintain brothels and traffic in African teenagers, and turn their heads or actively assist Hezbollah’s ceasefire violations. Oil For Food became one of the most massive frauds in history. The World Health Organization shilled for China during the COVID crisis. And the Human Rights Commission is a sad joke, made up of some of the worst offenders of human rights.

As Alice says, “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” And the Cheshire Cat says, “Only a few find the way, some don’t recognize it when they do–some . . . don’t ever want to.” There is no way to save the United Nations. When the Communist Chinese became the recognized entity from China, when illiberal, anti-democratic countries became the vast majority in the General Assembly, when China insidiously and assiduously took over many of the inner workings of UN agencies, while the US, fat and happy, just financed the operation that made it irrelevant, when the primary focus of the UN became the vilification of Israel, the UN passed the point of no return.

The US and the rapidly diminishing number of like-minded countries need to withdraw their support, a Congressional task force needs to draw up principles for an organization that embodies the original stated ideals of the UN, and we need to move on. Time is short.

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National Review reports that the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab released a study exploring whether themes and materials used in DEI training foster inclusion, as intended, or actually exacerbate conflicts and hostility. One group in the study read a neutral essay about US corn production and one group read materials from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an AntiRacist and Robin D’Angelo’s White Fragility. Presented with a totally race-neutral scenario, the participants who read Kendi and D’Angelo perceived discrimination and micro-aggressions, though there was no reference to race in the scenario and no report of any conversation or action at all. The report concluded that “the DEI materials . . . provoked baseless suspicion and encouraged punitive attitudes.” The study also showed that DEI materials cause respondents to assume unfair treatment of Muslim people, even when no evidence of bias or prejudice is presented. Finally, in the segment dealing with caste, the students exposed to the DEI materials agreed at a far higher level with a series of Hitler quotes about Jews that substituted the word “Brahmin” for Jew, despite the absence of any mention or indication of malign behavior.

The full articles here: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/dei-training-increases-perception-of-non-existent-prejudice-agreement-with-hitler-rhetoric-study-finds/

It may no longer be much of a surprise that DEI materials “engender hostile attitudes and heighten racial suspicion, prejudicial attitudes, authoritarian policing and support for punitive behaviors in the absence of evidence for a transgression deserving punishment.”

What is really interesting, and not surprising at all, is that Bloomberg and The New York Times were prepared to cover and report on the study, but both publications canceled the stories immediately before publication. NCRI said that the stories were “inexplicably pulled.” Inexplicably, my butt. The story would have cast serious doubts on the efficacy of the work of two of the country’s most prominent DEI shills. Can’t have that in the New York Times. All the news that’s fit to conform to the preferred narrative.

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I was reminded this week that back in my day, if we couldn’t convince a younger sibling to do it for us, we had to walk to the tv to change the channel. Imagine!