Does Israel Need American Aid?

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* In the past some commenters have suggested that Israel doesn’t need our aid since they have such a prosperous hi-tech economy. Now comes word that not only are they holding onto our aid, they are demanding a sharp increase as well.

So does Israel really need our aid after all? If it were to be cut off, would it threaten them?

* Without US fiscal “aid,” Israel would have collapsed long ago. They don’t have enough significant exports to create a viable economy. We pay them to serve as a “Fort Apache” in the Ottoman Empire, and to keep the most active Israeli’s over there, and not over here, or elsewhere.
Think about it. Would you really want a lot of Jews floating about in the world, who love to clan up, with no particular place to go, and nothing to do?
Israel exists for the same reason we still occupy Japan and Germany, and don’t even allow those two to have a significant military force to this day.
It’s America saying for eternity, “I guess we just have to separate you little shits–and keep your hands folded! Russia!! Behave, or you’re next!”
We pay Israel money to exist, to centralize them, thus ironically diluting their political voice, thus avoiding WWIII, and I’m fine with that. It’s not fair, but it beats being nuked, anytime.

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Clockboy Returns

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comment: Full-page story in today’s WashingtonPost documents the courageous return of clock-boy to the U.S.A.

He and his family have returned to seek $15 million in damages from the school district that suspended him.

They are bristling at the notion that they framed the entire affair seeking attention.

This full -page spread in a national newspaper is clear evidence that they just wish to be left alone.

Apparently the boy is in “high demand” to speak at U.S. tech company functions. How this family manages to endure the crushing onslaught of islamaphobia is beyond me.

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When you’re young, you fear death. When you’re old, you fear life.

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

When I was young, I feared death. I knew many people who had died, including a friend my age. The outside world seemed like a frightening place. I knew I had some reckless tendencies and they scared me.

As I moved through my 30s and 40s, I increasingly retreated from life. I went out less. I went to fewer parties. I dated less.

Underearning is a disease of hiding and biting.

A great thing about getting older is that I rarely feel dread. My life is more calm than it has ever been because I try to avoid things that to disturb my tranquility. I rarely think about death. I concentrate my blogging on inoffensive topics. I read improving literature. I develop my recovery and I meditate and I Alexander Technique. I look forward to football season.

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The Dark Night, Luke Ford and Human Goodness: Marc Gafni

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

Marc Gafni writes: Saw The Dark Knight a couple of weeks ago. Luke Ford and myself had agreed to dialogue on the movie.

There are some huge things that Luke and I disagree on about how to live in the world.
In some regards that might be an understatement.

The movie highlighted some of those and that is what made it a good topic to talk about.

Feel free to listen to the dialogue here.

For now however I want to just touch on two or three basic points that emerged from my viewing and from our conversation.

First;

The Joker. I told Luke that there was a part of him that reminded me of the joker.
Or at least the Joker archetype.

Some of these ideas were expressed by Luke in the first half of a long conversation we had on July 3rd 2008.

For the Joker, all of reality is a joke. The joker is in some sense a mystical master who seeks to strip away the veneer of civilization. The Joker exposes bourgeois morality; he reveals and mockingly revels in the false piety of spiritual leaders and religious establishments, indeed of all establishments and all leaders.

The joker is the jester in the court of King Lear or the “Badran” in the Chassidic court.

But unlike these two jester figures who seek to prick egos in order to provoke human grown and evolution, the joker seeks to destroy both the court and all the people in it.

For the Joker, as for Luke, “people are all creeps with clay feet” and their job is to expose them, for the sake of anarchy, clarity and truth.

Now truth be told, that is only one side of Luke. One of the things I have learned of late is that Luke really is not like the Joker at all. Indeed when you hear his story it is dramatically different then the impression one might get of him were one to reconstruct the web sources that comment on him.

It is more like Luke has a joker strain in his personality that sometimes – in the past – in my humble view – got the better of him.

But that was then and this is now.

In his heart Luke loves to be of service. Ethical integrity is enormously important as a value to Luke and ask him what he is most proud of and he will tell of the lives he saved
when he broke a story about the aids virus in the pornography industry. Luke is a person of integrity; there is a code he follows. He will not break his word in the context of his code – even when it is to his advantage.

What Levi and I have huge disagreements about is the content of some central parts of his code. What he thinks of –as a post modern blogger – as fair, ethical and in Integrity, many of us- but me for sure – think of in much different ways.

Second:

What I love about Batman is that the Joker is fooled. The joke was on him. The Joke is on the Joker. Sacred divine laughter affirming human goodness overcomes the shrill and empty laughter of narcissistic nihilism.

When the Joker rigs two boats with explosives and offers each boat survival if they will but blow up the other boat- in the end both boats refuse – both the boat of convicts and the boat of ordinary people.

Paradoxically in that moment the people do not need a Christ like hero to save them.

They are their own superheroes, their own Christ. The joker thesis that people are

basically creeps is exposed as a lie.

Now for Luke this is the weakest part of the movie as his view of human nature is as he writes and says fundamentally cynical.
My view of human nature is certainly not all sweetness and light.
That would not be a noble view of human nature; it would be simply stupid.
Rather I embrace what I understand to be the kabbalistic view of human nature.

There is in this understanding, what I might refer to as three levels of human nature.

Level One is civil and decent and good. {J.S. Mill. Jeremy Bentham}
Level two; right beneath level one is dark and creepy. For Luke this is the essence of the human being. {Frued is in some passages clearly with Luke on this}
Level Three is gorgeous, beautiful, decent and good. {The Kabbalist and all other great mystical traditions}

For Luke the essential person is located at level two.
For me the essential person is located at level three.

Not that I have not met more then my fair share of level two behaviors. Ultimately however I have great hope and love for almost all people, for I know in my deepest heart realization that level two is but a temporary if terrible aberration, clouding a clearer manifestation of man’s more true and higher nature.

LUKE FORD:

I’m not into comic books, even when they’re called "graphic novels."

I’m not into super-heroes and movies based on them.

I went to see "The Dark Knight" last week because Marc Gafni wanted to do a dialogue with me on the movie.

The film tries to make a variety of philosophical points, all of which I thought were dead wrong.

"Knight" is both more optimistic and more pessimistic than I am about human nature.

A key plot points revolves around two barges rigged with bombs and each barge has the chance to survive if they blow up the other barge.

Only a fool can believe that human nature is fundamentally good (tens of millions of innocent people were murdered in the 20th Century) and only a fool can be thrilled by art that portrays people as basically fine.

On the other hand, the movie says people can’t handle the truth. They need role models without flaw.

That’s ludicrous. People make better decisions when they have better information.

I say the average person is able to see that people can be heroic in one aspect of their life (say Martin Luther King’s leadership role in the struggle for civil rights) and be a loser in another (King plagiarized his PhD thesis).

Heroes are not super-human. Heroes don’t have to be lied about publicly to keep their heroic status. Heroes are all around us.

Every person is a role model. Whether we like it or not, we all influence other people. Every choice we make affects other people.

The movie says society needs human sacrifice and that salvation comes from above.

These notions are repugnant. We don’t need to commit cannibalism, we don’t need to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the god, to be saved. Nor are we helpless to our sinful inclinations. Through our deeds (guided by God’s law), we can create a good world.

We don’t need to live in delusion. We don’t need to demonize good people and hold them responsible for our own sins. We don’t need to be saved by irrational faith. We are not helpless. We can handle the truth. We can handle the task God has given us.

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To fight Trump, journalists have dispensed with objectivity

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Luke Ford

Justin Raimondo writes in the Los Angeles Times:

Are the rules of journalism being rewritten this election year?

My local newspaper, the Sonoma County Press-Democrat, is so clearly in the tank for Hillary Clinton that I no longer take pleasure in my morning read. Trump’s acceptance speech, for example, was covered on the front page with two stories: on the left a straight, albeit somewhat judgmental, account of the speech, and on the right a “fact check” that disputed every point made by the GOP nominee. Clinton’s speech was covered with three front page stories, with headlines describing her nomination as “historic,” “inspiring” and “trailblazing.” A relatively mild fact-checking piece was relegated to the back pages.

This transparent bias is a national phenomenon, infecting both print and television media to such an extent that it has become almost impossible to separate coverage of the Trump campaign from attempts to tear it down. The media has long been accused of having a liberal slant, but in this cycle journalists seem to have cast themselves as defenders of the republic against what they see as a major threat, and in playing this role they’ve lost the ability to assess events rationally.

To take a recent example: Trump said at a news conference that he hoped the Russians — who are accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers — would release the 30,000 emails previously erased by Clinton’s staff. The DNC went ballistic, claiming that Trump had asked the Russians to commit “espionage” against the United States. Aside from the fact that Trump was obviously joking, Clinton claims those emails, which were on her unauthorized server during her tenure as secretary of State, were about her yoga lessons and personal notes to her husband — so how would revealing them endanger “national security”? Yet the media reported this accusation uncritically. A New York Times piece by Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker, ostensibly reporting Trump’s contention that he spoke in jest, nonetheless averred that “the Republican nominee basically urged Russia, an adversary, to conduct cyber-espionage against a former secretary of state.” Would it be a stretch to conclude from this description that the New York Times is a Trump adversary?

The DNC emails, published by Wikileaks, reveal a stunning level of collaboration between important media outlets and the Democrats. Former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz sought to silence NBC’s Mika Brzezinski, who had found fault with the DNC’s role in the primaries. The emails have headings like “This must stop.” Incredibly, NBC’s Chuck Todd agreed to act as a go-between, even arranging a call between Wasserman Schultz and Brzezinski. Which raises the question: Why was a major media figure taking his marching orders from the Democratic party chair — and how did this affect his network’s coverage of the Trump campaign?

The DNC emails also show that Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel sent his copy for a story on Clinton’s fundraising operation to the DNC’s national press secretary, Mark Paustenbach, prior to publication. Politico has since apologized, but Vogel has his defenders. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple said Vogel’s “prepublication generosity” was meant to give “the people you’re writing about … the opportunity to rebut all relevant claims in a story.” One wonders if the Washington Post does this for the Trump campaign. Somehow I doubt it.

Since last summer, Politico has been vehemently anti-Trump, and it’s only getting more extreme. It’s run several stories linking Trump to Vladimir Putin: “Why Russia is Rejoicing Over Trump,” “GOP Gobsmacked by Trump’s Warm Embrace of Putin,” “Donald Trump Heaps More Praise on Vladimir Putin” — and dozens of similar articles. The gist of these pieces is that Trump’s stated desire to “get along with Putin,” and his comments on the costs imposed by our membership in NATO, mean that Trump is essentially an agent of a foreign power. A recent article by Katie Glueck on Trump’s hacking joke said that Trump “appeared to align himself with Russia over his Democratic opponent” — as if he were a kind of Manchurian candidate.

Of course, Politico is not alone in what was once called red-baiting. The Atlantic also weighed in with Jeffrey Goldberg’s “It’s Official: Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin,” and a Franklin Foer story in Slate was headlined “The Real Winner of the RNC: Vladimir Putin.” This coverage smacks of the sort of McCarthyism that we haven’t seen in this country since the most frigid years of the Cold War.

Any objective observer of the news media’s treatment of Trump can certainly conclude that reporters are taking a side in this election — and they don’t have to be wearing a button that says “I’m with her” for this to be readily apparent. The irony is that the media’s Trump bashing may wind up having the exact opposite of its intended effect.

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