Here are five questions CNN needs to ask Donald Trump:
1. You have said that when you retweeted the tweets of avowed white supremacists, you did so inadvertently. What steps have you taken to make sure this doesn’t happen again?
2. Why do you think your campaign is so popular among groups and web sites that espouse racist anti-Mexican, anti-black and anti-Semitic ideas?
3. The head of the ADL has said your campaign has energized white supremacist groups. Does that concern you? What will you do about it?
4. FBI statistics show that white supremacist and militia groups have killed more Americans on American soil over the past decade than have Islamic-inspired attacks. What will you do in a Trump presidency to combat these groups?
5. You have two Jewish grandchildren. Your campaign was just endorsed by David Duke, who has espoused vicious anti-Semitism for years. Why do you think he’s drawn to your candidacy? What is your message to David Duke?
If I were Donald J. Trump, I’d reply to Rob Eshman:
* What’s a white supremacist? How is that different or worse from black supremacists and Jewish supremacists and Muslim supremacists and Japanese supremacists? Were the founders of the United States of America white supremacists? They only made provision for citizenship for white people of good character.
* Harry Truman wrote: “I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.” He also referred to the Blacks on the White House staff as “an army of coons.” Was President Harry Truman a white supremacist?
* Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of colour in the one [whites], preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race?” Was Jefferson a white supremacist and a hater?
* In Federalist Paper #2, John Jay wrote about America: “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.” Sounds like a white supremacist to me.
* Alexander Hamilton did not want more immigrants, even from Europe: “the influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities.” Sounds like an American supremacist to me.
* White supremacist Abraham Lincoln said: “I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
* Jewish labor leader Samuel Gompers said: “It must be clear to every thinking man and woman that while there is hardly a single reason for the admission of Asiatics, there are hundreds of good and strong reasons for their absolute exclusion.” Sounds like a white supremacist to me.
* President James Garfield wrote: “[I have] a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the negro being made our political equal and I would be glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way.” Sounds like a white supremacist to me.
* Why do you think Democratic politicians receive so much support from communists? Does it not bother you that communists have murdered more people than those espousing any other political ideology? Why do you think so many Jews became communists (about a million Jews in America by the 1950s were either communists or socialists)? Why did many Jews support the rise of communism in Russia and Europe and America?
* Why do you think you are drawn to so many people who want to deny cohesion to whites? Why don’t whites have the same rights and group interests as other groups such as blacks, Jews, Muslims and Mexicans?
Every group, every people in the world thinks it is the best. I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Yet only “white supremacists” get slurred for this quintessentially human emotion. Why don’t black supremacists and Jewish supremacists and Japanese supremacists get regularly attacked by the media?
I don’t expect people to care about those outside of their group. When they do, and it seems like WASPs have done this more than anybody, that’s lovely.
Whenever you read the term “white supremacist,” you know the writer has an agenda and is on an emotional bender, often acting out a tribal addiction. Every group thinks it’s awesome, but only white advocates get tagged with the slur “white supremacist.”
According to Jewish Journal Editor Rob Eshman: “When you say divisive, nasty things, you empower divisive, nasty people.”
Well, what is nasty depends upon the perspective of the viewer. For some people, the Torah is very nasty. Homosexuals, for instance, have reason to think of the Torah as nasty. Other people similarly condemned by Torah have reason to think the Torah is nasty. From the perspective of Judaism, Christianity is idolatry. From the perspective of Christianity, Judaism is a false religion. From the perspective of a secular humanist, both religions are false. Aren’t those judgments nasty?
Onkelos son of Kolonikos … went and raised Titus from the dead by magical arts, and asked him; ‘Who is most in repute in the [other] world? He replied: Israel. What then, he said, about joining them? He said: Their observances are burdensome and you will not be able to carry them out. Go and attack them in that world and you will be at the top as it is written, Her adversaries are become the head etc.; whoever harasses Israel becomes head. He asked him: What is your punishment [in the other world]? He replied: What I decreed for myself. Every day my ashes are collected and sentence is passed on me and I am burnt and my ashes are scattered over the seven seas. He then went and raised Balaam by incantations. He asked him: Who is in repute in the other world? He replied: Israel. What then, he said, about joining them? He replied: Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever. He then asked: What is your punishment? He replied: With boiling hot semen. He then went and raised by incantations Jesus [in Vilna edition: “the sinners of Israel”; “Jesus” appears in Munich 95 and Vatican 140 manuscripts and “he went and brought up Jesus the Nazarene” (Editions or MSs: Vatican 130)]. He asked them: Who is in repute in the other world? They replied: Israel. What about joining them? They replied: Seek their welfare, seek not their harm. Whoever touches them touches the apple of his eye. He said: What is your punishment? They replied: With boiling hot excrement, since a Master has said: Whoever mocks at the words of the Sages is punished with boiling hot excrement. Observe the difference between the sinners of Israel and the prophets of the other nations who worship idols. It has been taught: Note from this incident how serious a thing it is to put a man to shame, for God espoused the cause of Bar Kamza and destroyed His House and burnt His Temple.
— Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56b-57a
So when the Talmud pictures Jesus — the god of the goyim — suffering for eternity in boiling hot excrement, is that hate speech? Asking for a friend.
I’m not arguing that Jews and Judaism are bad or nasty or bigoted. I’m just arguing that it is normal, natural and healthy for all strongly identifying in-groups such as Jews and Muslims and whites and blacks and latinos and asians to have suspicion and negative feelings towards out-groups.
There are six things that the Torah commands us to remember. Optimally, these verses should be recited out loud each day and their meanings should be considered…
3. Amalek’s Evil Attack Remember what Amalek did to you on the journey when you left Egypt. They met you on the way and ambushed those who were lagging behind. You were tired and exhausted, but they did not fear God. Therefore, when Hashem your God relieves you from your enemies in the land that He will give you to possess, you must erase the memory of Amalek from beneath heaven. Do not forget. (Devarim 25:17-19) Amalek is different from other nations that attacked Israel in that we are commanded to eradicate them. Why should they be punished more harshly than Egypt, which oppressed the Jews for hundreds of years? One reason is because Amalek “did not fear God.” They dared to make war not just with the Jews, but with God Himself!
I am having a freiliche Purim and a great chuckle over those 75,000 Hamanites who met their doom at the hands of the Jews. Puts me in the mood for Passover, and the termination of all the first born sons of Egypt.
Chaim Amalek: You are sick, sick. I wish you had stayed in porn and left the Yidden to daven and shuckle on their own.
Luke Ford: Should not the Museum of Tolerance have an exhibit or two on the people of Amalek?
Chaim Amalek: More sick, wicked thoughts. There is a world of difference between killing an Amalekite toddler as God in our Holy Torah commands us to do, and killing a rabbi because a wicked man decides to do this. One is a commandment from God – what we Yidden call a mitzvah — and the other is craziness from a goy.
Chaim Amalek: I say no apologies. The Museum of Tolerance should actively embrace all of Torah, including the very clear biblical commandment that the Amalek People be annihilated, branch and root.
Luke Ford: Should Jews become as tolerant of Amalekite babies as the goyim are of Jewish babies? Live and let live perhaps? Asking for a friend.
Alex Trivunovic: It would be hilarious if all this time, Luke was just a catspaw for Jews who want to ask questions they’re afraid to ask their Rabbi.
Luke Ford: While Jews have been celebrating Purim like mad, my poor friend Chaim Amalek has had to spend the day in hiding. #StopTheHate
David: There’s no rational explanation for anti-Amalekitism.
Jewish Journal Editor Rob Eshman finds it “frightening” that Trump gets Tea Party support. Frightening for whom? Not every group of people in America have equal reason to fear Donald Trump. So should Jews be most fearful? Or how about blacks or Muslims or latinos?
Here is a good comment posted after Eshman’s essay: “Blacks had assembled together to support Obama, and it was not considered racist. Jews have assembled together to support Sanders, and it is not considered bigoted. Women have assembled together to support Hillary, and it is not considered sexist.
So why is it that Whites are considered all of those things for supporting a White candidate?”
Responding Comment: “Two wrongs don’t make a right James. Try again? You support a man who feels that anyone who isn’t a European Christian is somehow 3/5th’s a person if that. Whose supporters like Ann Coulter feel that anyone who isn’t a WASP like her should be deported if they don’t do what they want as she said with Nikky Haley. Never mind that she was born in South Carolina. Her parents are Indian Immigrants. You could disagree with her politics but what gives you the right to claim she should be deported unless you are trying to rewrite American history. That the USA is only for European Christians. That is wrong James. That isn’t the USA.”
Rejoinder:
I reread my post several times and failed to see where I said anyone, especially a US Citizen, should be deported. Of Course, Abe Lincoln did support such deportation.
“I have urged the colonization of the “blacks” back to Africa, and I shall continue. My Emancipation Proclamation was linked with this plan. There is no room for two distinct races of White men in America, much less for two distinct races of Whites and Blacks. I can think of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the “black” into our social and political life as our equal. Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the “black” under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood. This he can never do here. We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.”– Abraham Lincoln’s speech during the signing of Emancipation Proclamation of Sept. 1862
(note: due to censorship, it was necessary to change the original word used to “black”).
But now let’s take a gander at our ole’ US Constitution…
*Article 1 Section 2 considered slaves as just 3/5th a person for representation. (Must be where you got that 3/5th thingy, huh?)
*Article 1 Section 9 REQUIRED for the slave trade to continue and the institution of slavery be reinstated in all States until at least 1808; (some 20 years after ratification).
*Article 4 Section 2 REQUIRED for all escaped slaves to be returned to their master.
*Amendment 13 still ALLOWS for slavery providing that it is as punishment issued by the Court.
Well Doggies. Sounds like that is the good ole’ USA after all. But to be fair, we had a civil war over some of these issues, so let’s take a look there…
We’ll begin with a peek at that mean old Confederacy…
*The 1st Black Regiment to ever exist in America was the Confederate 1st Louisiana Native Guard, consisting of 1,135 black infantrymen and 14 Companies.
*The 1st memorial to ever give recognition to any black soldier in the US is the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery. If you look at the images engraved, you will see a Confederate soldier placing his child in the arms of a black woman as he marches off to battle and black soldiers marching in rank with White confederate soldiers.
*Black Confederates received the same pay as their White counterparts, were provided uniforms when provided to White soldiers and carried banners. In Contrast, Union black soldiers were paid nearly just half of their White counterparts, had to purchase their own uniforms and were not allowed to carry the Union banner; only a bare pole.
*No slave was ever brought to the US on a Confederate ship or under the Confederate banner. (The CSA Consttution forbade it).
Gee wilikers. Here I am making them sound rather considerate. Better bring up them there Union folks now before Manassas Creek starts runnin’ red again…
*What does Washington DC, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, New Jersey and Delaware all have in common? They were all Union States, territories and capitol that continued to have slavery during and after the Civil War.
*Slavery ended in the Confederacy in May 1865. Slavery was not abolished in the Union until Dec. 1865; some 7 months after it ended in the South.
*The Union offered to pass a Constitutional Amendment to forever protect the right to own slaves if the Confederacy would peacefully return to the Union.
In his first Inaugural Speech, on March 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln approved of a Constitutional Amendment passed through the Union Congress that would guarantee permanent slavery in the United States. Lincoln stated in his Speech, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. Holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
The Corwin Amendment read, :”No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
BTW: Those “Jim Crowe” laws that extended through the 1960’s? That was done by the US government, not the Confederacy (which ended back in 1865)
Your intentional ignorance pertaining to the unique variances of our respective races due to the phenotypes which define the genetically differentiated human populations indicates to me that you have no interest in developing an anthropological appreciation of the accomplishments and sacrifices made by these specific populations but rather embraces a desire to undermine such advances by subscribing yourself to the popular ideologies of political correctness.
Comment: “ISIS and Black Lives Matter pose a far greater threat to society than the KKK. They aren’t in the news for beheadings or riots. This article is just fanning the flames of racism. Stop it.”
Comment: “Talk about guilt by association!! Trump is admittedly – even thankfully – not always politically correct in his statements. Especially some of his off-the-cuff statements are outright stupid, but to imply that he is a white supremacist like in the headline is totally absurd. The author fails to cite a single “white supremacist” position taken by Trump. All the author has to offer is the standard list of right-wing nutcases. Of course, if someone on the conservative side were to use such cheap tactic to criticize Clinton or Sanders because they have the support of radical Islamist tolerant leftist groups, the author would blow a gasket.”
Comment:
Scrolling through these comments, it’s nice to see the good, honest, incredibly intelligent white people of America waking up to what is really going on, here.
Yeah, that’s right, I said “good, honest white people”, because somehow that message seems to have gotten lost in the SUCCESSFUL attempts of whites to help others empower themselves.
And this is the thanks we get from the Jewish press, huh? Classy, guys. Really, really classy. You know that Americans welcomed European Jews in when they were in trouble, right? Or have you all forgotten so quickly? Don’t answer that, it’s pretty clear to us that you have.
Donald Trump has a white supremacist problem. The only question is whether he will ignore it, deny it or do something about it.
Trump has changed a lot of the rules in the campaign game, but one law he hasn’t broken is this: When you say divisive, nasty things, you empower divisive, nasty people.
Organizations that track hate crimes against Jews and others have been following what we can call the Trump Effect for the past year, and have compelling evidence that it is real.
White nationalist leaders including Jared Taylor and former Klansman David Duke have endorsed Trump. On Vanguard News Network, the largest white supremacist website, Trump is regularly referred to as “Glorious Leader.” Bloggers compare him to Hitler, treating him like the Second Coming of the Third Reich. In January, William Johnson, leader of the white supremacist American Freedom Party, paid for a series of robocalls in Iowa in support of Trump. Johnson convened a 2015 white power political event in Bakersfield at which Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Youth Network gave a speech blaming Jews for destroying the white race.
“Donald Trump’s demonizing statements about Latinos and Muslims have electrified the radical right,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in his group’s 2015 report.
Instead of distancing himself from such supporters, Trump has retweeted their hate posts — then denied knowing he did so. He has used neo-Nazi statistics on black-on-white hate crime as his own, and has cited bogus polls by anti-Muslim hate groups, like ACT for America, claiming that a quarter of American Muslims support violent jihadists.
Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League, put it to me as judiciously as possible.
“It’s very worrisome to see the convergence of that crowd and a mainstream candidate,” he said.
Yes, of course, Trump’s popularity extends far beyond the fringe. He has support among great numbers of fairly mainstream Tea Party types — something that is no less frightening. And there are plenty of people who disagree with his hateful statements but love his non-P.C. approach, or just find him entertaining. They don’t care whether Trump has the answers, they just care that he has the attitude.
All that is scary enough, but understandable in the context of an electorate on both the left and right that is fed up with politics as usual.
But what’s beyond the pale are the truly sick, dangerous forces Trump has unleashed, the poison he has uncorked.
“His platform’s great and just the right mix, this is the will of the majority,” wrote a frequent blogger on Vanguard News Network who goes by the name Joe Smith. “And that’s why ALL the Jews are boycotting him (Univision, Comcast/NBC, Macy’s, all owned by Jews). Jews’ attack dogs are also getting into the fray making their masters happy.”
There have always been right-wing voices that veer toward outright racism and feed the anti-Semitic fantasies of sad, white men. The ’80s brought us Pat Buchanan, for instance.
But two things set Trump far apart from his predecessors: the rise of talk radio and social media, which provide an unlimited echo chamber for hate, and Trump himself, who with his money and marketing genius, has now all but run away with the nomination.
Meanwhile, the revitalized network of white supremacists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis that Trump inspires poses as big if not bigger threa to the average American than ISIS. Over the past two decades, these hate groups have planned and/or perpetrated dozens of attacks, killings and plots against the Jewish community, among others. According to a report in The New York Times, Islam-inspired terror attacks accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 1/2 years. Meanwhile, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, with 254 fatalities. While some sources dispute how these numbers are tallied, a survey of 372 police and sheriff’s departments nationwide found that 74 percent of the law officers view antigovernment violence as the greatest source of violent extremism, while 39 percent listed “Al Qaeda-inspired” violence.
Nearly all media outlets have given Trump a pass for helping to stoke these fires. Not one debate moderator has confronted Trump about it.
So, who will hold Trump accountable?
It won’t be the Republican establishment, which for seven fat years was more than happy to let Trump build his political brand and undermine the Democrats by stoking racist theories about President Barack Obama’s nationality. It won’t be Jewish Republican donors, now moving on from Jeb Bush. Most of those won’t have anything to do with Trump, and in any case, he doesn’t need anyone’s money or advice. And it won’t be the Democrats, whose worries will just be dismissed as partisan.
That leaves only one possible source of hope.
Trump’s grandchildren.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism before marrying real estate scion Jared Kushner in 2009, so she and her two children, Arabella, who is 4, and Joseph, who is 2, are Jewish.
Does Trump understand he is inspiring the very people who want to see his grandchildren dead? Does he remember the 2014 attack on a Jewish Community Center in Kansas that left three people dead, perpetrated by a devoted contributor to the Vanguard News Network, the same network that refers to Trump as its “Glorious Leader”? Why is Trump not publicly rejecting them? Why is he not backtracking on the divisive racial comments he’s made, the ones that bring these lowlifes and rejects firmly into his camp?
Call me naive, but I still believe in the power of a grandchild to melt a grandparent’s heart. I believe that one day soon, Trump will look into Arabella’s and Joseph’s eyes and see what a dangerous path he’s on. We’re counting on you, kids. Good luck.
Posted inDonald Trump, Jews|Comments Off on Do Goyim Ever Have A Jewish Supremacist Problem?
I think Donald Trump will win a higher percentage of the Jewish vote of any Republican presidential candidate in a century. Jewish Journal of Los Angeles Editor Rob Eshman thinks Republican Jews will dump Donald Trump (whatever that means, vote for Hillary?).
I love seeing how out of touch with reality these media elites are.
Most Orthodox Jews who vote will vote for Trump in November. In the comments section on his essay, Eshman predicts American Jews will vote 90-10 against Trump in November. I predict Trump will get more than 35% of the Jewish vote.
Donald Trump will set the cause of Republican Jews back 75 years.
That’s why the leading voice of Republican Jews seems to have all but abandoned the leading contender for the Republican nomination.
Trump’s bellicose takeover of the GOP has been met with a complete and telling silence from the Republican Jewish Coalition, the largest and most active group of Republican Jews.
Trump is not mentioned on the group’s website. He and his surrogates are not listed on its calendar of events. He is not even pictured on the group’s homepage. You know who is? Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. Chris Christie and Gov. Scott Walker. Two of those three men have already dropped out of the race. The leading contender for the Republican nomination? Nowhere to be found.
RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks did not respond to my interview requests about Trump. Republican pollster and consultant Frank Luntz answered an email about whether Republican Jews will throw their support behind Trump with an uncharacteristically terse, “I have no idea.”
Then, on March 1, Dan Senor, the co-author of the seminal book “Start-up Nation” who served as senior foreign policy adviser to the Mitt Romney campaign, announced he would not support Trump.
“I am not voting for Donald Trump,” Senor told Bloomberg News. “I am not voting for him in the primary, and I am not voting for him in the general.”
Folks, this is big.
Yes, there are assorted Jewish Americans who like Trump and will vote for him, even work for him — and I have received spiteful emails from all three of them.
But for now, it looks like Trump will set a record for garnering the lowest Republican Jewish vote in 75 years. In 1940, Wendell Willkie received just 10 percent of the Jewish vote in his run against Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Trump could do worse.
Of course, he could still win — maybe Hillary or Bernie stumble so badly Trump looks like John F. Kennedy. But history shows that a large Jewish vote, while it doesn’t guarantee a win, inoculates a GOP candidate against loss.
“The last losing GOP candidate to get more than 30 percent of the Jewish vote was Charles Evans Hughes, in 1916,” Jewish Journal Senior Political Editor Shmuel Rosner points out in his book, “The Jewish Vote: Obama vs. Romney, A Jewish Voters Guide.”
“So you see, there’s a good reason … to invest in the Jewish vote … it is almost like getting insurance policy against losing.”
Trump has taken out no such policy. He has reversed whatever progress Republicans have made in winning over more Jewish voters. He has alienated Republican Jews looking for any reason to get behind him.
The first breach occurred last December, when Trump appeared at a high-level RJC event in Washington, D.C .
According to a report by Jewish Insider, Trump told the well-heeled donor crowd, “I know why you are not going to support me. You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money. You want to control your own politicians.”
During the Q-and-A, Trump lifted his other middle finger to the conservative Jewish establishment, saying he wouldn’t commit to the idea of an undivided Jerusalem. The audience booed.
Last month, Trump declared he would be “neutral” about the Israelis and Palestinians, another taboo idea among Republicans, who proclaim unswerving loyalty to the current Israeli government. In response, Trump’s primary opponents condemned the idea of neutrality in the last Republican presidential debate.
And over the past two weeks, Trump has equivocated on whether he would disavow the losers’ row of anti-Semitic groups and individuals who have come out in support of his candidacy. Last week, I wrote that Trump has a white supremacist problem. A week later, the problem has reached Zika proportions.
But Trump has yet to back down. Not on calling the Republican Jewish establishment rich puppet masters. Not on BS-ing his way through Middle East politics, not on quoting Mussolini or retweeting anti-Semites.
In effect, Trump has been saying, “Screw you” to the largest base of organized, loyal Jewish Republicans in American history.
And, as of now, it looks like they are poised to say it right back.
Posted inDonald Trump|Comments Off on Rob Eshman: Will Republican Jews dump Trump?
Recent campus race-related demonstrations are often bizarre. Clearly, there are no rational, cost/benefit explanations for this agitation, especially considering that many student protesters are allocating time better spent on academic pursuits. Do black Cornell University protestors honestly believe, for example, that forcing their school to drop the term “Plantation” from Cornell’s botanical gardens name will help campus blacks? (This demand was part of a seven page compilation of demands.) How about the black law students at Harvard who are currently occupying the school’s student lounge so as to replace Wasserstein Lounge with “Belinda Hall,” the name of a former slave owned by Isaac Royall, a Harvard donor. Will their ongoing occupation somehow sharpen their legal skills? What can possibly explain these time-wasting theatrics?
Let me propose a mental health explanation: these activists are adrenalin junkies who suffer from a medically recognized condition though it has yet to be formally recognized in the official catalogue of psychiatric disorders. That is, when people find themselves in situation of perceived danger and excitement (e.g., extreme sports like sky diving) their adrenal glands release large amounts of adrenaline (also called norepinephrine), a chemical that resembles dopamine that plays a major role in addiction and pleasure. The chemical reaction hardly stops there—perceived threats can also trigger the pituitary gland and hypothalamus to secrete endorphins, a substance that mimics opiates such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamine (speed).
But while nearly everybody’s adrenalin level returns to normal once the danger has passed, some acclimated to this heightened level and have become addicted.
High on one’s own adrenalin can be wonderful—lots of energy, a heighted sense of competition, an upbeat mood, and a sharpened sense of humor. The addicted wake up rearing to go and, indeed, will often accomplish more. CEO’s of large firms and soldiers in elite units can virtually live on adrenalin highs.
In the case of campus activists, just compare standing on a platform, strutting about and fulminating into a hand-held megaphone, surrounded by a cheering boisterous crowed all demanding the cowering school President immediately resign with everything being covered on TV versus the lonely drudgery (and feelings of low self-esteem) of pulling an all-nighter for tomorrow’s dreaded Calculus final.
Particularly vulnerable to this chemically-induced rush as are those driven by hate and anger since increased levels of adrenaline and endorphins can soothe angst. Tellingly, as is true with many other drugs, it may require ever greater levels of dangerous excitement to “get high.” For sports junkies, sky-diving will give way to the more hazardous BASE jumping with wing suits. And, as curing drug-related addiction, recovering can be difficult, often requiring months of professional assistance. Withdrawal is also associated with depression, anger, feeling confused and low energy levels.
Treating black outrage as a chemical/medical condition offers an entirely new perspective on campus unrest. Clearly, any university administrator effort to cool tempers and negotiate reasonable compromises will be resisted for the simple reason that a rational settlement deprives activists of their adrenalin high. Quite likely, what might begin as a school administrator’s logical effort to find some middle ground will soon deteriorate to name-calling and threats of violence so as to keep glands pumping out dopamine.
Moreover, there will be a vicious cycle as activists increasingly fill their days with agitating while neglecting academic work. Hard to imagine those occupying the school President’s office taking a break to catch up on Calculus 101, so as the possibility of flunking out rises, their anxiety will correspondingly increase and thus necessitating even more soothing endorphins. It is no wonder, then, that these encounters will have black students shouting the most bizarre accusations at white administrators (“blacks built America”) while concocting even longer lists of demands.
Drug induced behavior understood, it is no wonder that appeasement strategies usually fail, especially since the menu of potential demands is almost infinite. A detailed administrative response regarding strained budgets, the illegal nature of a demand or their uncertain—if not negative—impact cannot cool the biologically-driven need to sustain the adrenalin euphoria. Concessions cannot be given fast enough so even the most hare-brained proposal is quickly put on the ever-expanding “non-negotiable” list. Who could ever predicted college students calling for written apologies for their school accepted money from long- deceased slave owners? Such behavior gives biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you a whole new meaning. That black students at one school monitor the actions of colleagues elsewhere means that any crackpot idea at some obscure college may instantly become the rage everywhere.
That university administrators are oblivious to this adrenalin-driven behavior can only exacerbate the strife. Being reasonable signifies weakness and like a dog sniffing the odor of fear, activists up the pressure and thus feel even better. Picture an alternative universe where elite schools were run by the Mafia. Students arriving with the catalogue list of frivolous non-negotiable demands would be met by “This is a nice campus. It would be a shame if you had an accident and were unable to walk to class. Do you get my message?” Under these circumstances, all the excreted dopamine would immediately inspire an adrenalin rush Plan B —run like hell, hide and never again bother Dean Gotti.
Unfortunately, the short-term prognosis, even with artful administrative deceit, is gloomy given that the root of this addiction is hard-to-reverse low academic achievement (the equivalent for marginal white students is the beer blast). On the bright side, however, the long-term diagnosis is a bit better. As with hardcore drug addicts, campus protestors hooked on attention will find it impossible to complete their academic work—so many alluring causes, so little time–and will drop out of school. Perhaps these drop-outs will join Black Lives Matter demonstrations dodging evening rush-hour traffic on Interstate highways. In any case, the results, hopefully, will be fewer of these trouble-makers on campus and, eventually, less pressure to recruit those marginal students who require endorphin highs to dull the pain of mastering Organic Chemistry. All and all, mindless student activism is just one more of today’s drug related plagues.
Posted inAcademia, Blacks|Comments Off on Protesters As Adrenalin Junkies
* Bernie is basically splitting the white vote with Hillary, while losing the black vote 85-15. Meaning that, in effect, he is now the republican in the democratic primary. A liberal pundit said Bernie will have to cut that black disparity to beat the shrew, and I thought to myself, well…it’s not the *only* way for him to win. He could increase his share of white democrats.
How would a sailer strategy work in a democratic primary? My suggestion would be to stress Medicare and social security, as bernie is weak with seniors. Also, while hammering Wall Street, Bernie might want to tack to Hillary’s right a bit on immigration and crime. He needs to stop pandering to “black lives matter” thugs and start talking to those whites who are repelled by them.
Will Bernie try this? Doubtful. He’s in this to make a point, not to win. But if he did try this, he could win the whole thing.
P.S. I also think some Bernie supporters are gettable for Trump. Many Berniebros are in denial of the fact that white men have no home in the modern democrat party. But some will get, at a gut level, that Hillary despises them. They won’t say they’ll vote trump, but…
* Leftists love their ideologies more than they like their people. A dyed-in-the-wool socialist like Bernie would blanch at the thought of … gasp!…appealing to white voters. He doesn’t even know very much about them. For example, none of them are poor, and none of them live in fear of being assaulted.
Right, Comrade Bernie?
* If Bernie wanted to win, he’d be hammering on the emails. The man has never run anything bigger than a senate office. He’d be terrified in the oval office and he knows it.
* Trump said in an aside at one of his rallies that Bernie lost the nomination the minute he said that he didn’t want to talk about Hillary’s email. He had a chance to hammer Clinton on trustworthiness and electability, but he chose to take the high road. Meanwhile, the Clinton camp is labeling Bernie Bros as racist and sexist.
* It’s always dismaying to be reminded that so much about American life comes down to the Negro Question. It’s slightly puzzling (to this foreigner) that a huge influx of Hispanics doesn’t seem to have changed that.
* Former Apple CEO John Scully had an interesting theory of how Trump will win in November, assuming the oligarchy cannot stop him. He suggests he will do to Hillary what he did to Jeb Bush.
Let’s face it the Rodhamster has had it easy on the campaign trail with Bernie Sanders. Scully suggests Trump will portray the Rodhamster as an entitled low energy candidate who is out of touch with America and is nothing but a tool of Wall St plutocrats. He will ridicule her and cause the Rodhamster to lose her cool and reveal her inner shrew.
* The campesinos bum-rushing our border have a long history of flying under the radar of their corrupt governments and the violent gangs endemic to their home countries. Blacks, on the other hand, have a long history of acting out, no matter the situation.
That and the fact that our media identifies them as Hispanic in positive stories and white, a la George Zimmerman, when they commit crimes.
The 3 most violent cities in my state are 63%, 51% and 43% Hispanic, but nobody is paying any attention to it, never mind talking about it.
* The historical figure that popped into my head as I read this was Huey Long. I have read that Huey Long was the one figure FDR truly feared. A Huey Long figure could unite Trump and Sanders supporters; I think that this was sort of what George Wallace had in mind in 1972. This figure, whoever he is, will not be a creature of Washington. But if demographic changes continue as they are now trending, even this unified demographic force may not be enough past the mid-2020s.
* Poor Bernie is stuck with the unclean votes of White people. Maybe he can swing a live chicken over the ballot boxes to ritually cleanse them?
* If Booker acquires a black wife he’s serious about the national ticket.
* The USA has had the Black Question in one form or another since 1619.
After the War of Northern Aggression, the Black Question intensified with
the hilarities of reconstruction.
The great migrations brought the Black Question out of the south and into
the urban north.
The second world war put the blacks and the women to work in the factories and
created a short period of time during and after that war where all the peoples were improving.
White politicians could not accept this and in 1964 they gave us the war on the black middle class and in 1965 continued that war with the Immigration and Nationality act to minimize the black minority with a new minority.
* It is indeed interesting that 12% of the US demographic has such importance, just as it is odd that another 2% figures so prominently.
White Guilt. It takes a long time for a people to get over embarassing things some of their predecessors did, especially when they are taught from birth an incomplete version of the history.
Witness Germany, and much of Europe, prostrating itself and allowing an invasion of non-Europeans a lifetime after Hitler.
* The problem with ‘what white democrats want’ is that what they want are government jobs and we live in a time of lowering expectations and funding for that sort of thing.
Lets face it that’s Bernie’s constituency: underemployed college grads and people already working in government, largely schools, who are seeing a decrease in funding.
There’s no more room in Federal or state budgets for government workers though. More and more of the budget is going to be used to pay for retiring baby boomers pensions, health and social security costs. Any extra will, from the Dem perspective, have to be used to buy off their minority clients, not white people.
Forget about higher taxes, our country does not have the level of solidarity among citizens to tolerate high taxes – this is a product of our increasing diversity and also general self-focus. And taxing hedge fund guys – not likely as the state pension funds have plenty of $$ in hedge funds hoping to meet their delusional growth goals.
Diminished expectations, low growth, little opportunity: that’s the new norm (not looming apocalyptic collapse). And the reason for this is the demographic collapse that stems from the freedom of the sexual revolution. Time to pay the piper.
* Maybe Booker should marry Caitlyn Jenner!
* By the way googling “Cory Booker beard” brings up 269,000 results.
Top of the list is perhaps the least convincing headline of all time.
* Let’s drop Hillary and Bernie off at night, alone, in a vibrant African neighborhood, and see how their “loyalty to the African-’American’ community” is repaid. They’ll be screaming “But MY life matters!”
This is literally what they deserve, given that their immigration and “gun control” policies put the rest of us mere plebeians and our families in physical danger and economic difficulty.
* …as with most religious groups, ordinary Jews are much less in favor of unrestricted immigration than their leaders (self-appointed or otherwise). Jewish public intellectuals harboring secret paranoia about gentile Americans someday electing Hitler 2.0 are fervently pro-immigration; regular middle-class Jews with real jobs are not, or at least not much more so than other Americans with the same regional and class affiliations.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Can An Appeal To Whites Win The Democratic Nomination?
Max Ehrenfreund writes for the Washington Post: “Trump has repeatedly said he disavows Duke and the Klan. The problem is, that is the only thing Trump has said. He hasn’t explained why the Klan’s white nationalism was wrong, and his disavowals are starting to sound somewhat perfunctory.”
What is wrong with white nationalism? What about Jewish nationalism? Black nationalism? Japanese nationalism? Why is only white nationalism wrong?
Does Max Ehrenfreund have a dog in this race? Jews traditionally fear gentile nationalisms (which usually exclude Jews), but white nationalism most of all (because it evokes Nazis and the Holocaust).
“New polling data from the American National Election Studies suggests a few reasons that Duke might see sympathy for his cause among Trump’s supporters. Some of them appear to be worried about their status and identity as white Americans, a concern that has allowed him to build a broad electoral coalition that crosses the usual demographic and ideological boundaries within the Republican Party.”
My God, that is horrible? Not exactly sure why, but I am sure I will be told that this is horrible. Unlike all other peoples, whites are not allowed to have group interests. They are supposed to be thrilled to turn over their ancestral homelands to other peoples. Israel is not expected to be thrilled to turn over its country to non-Jews. Why should white Protestants feel differently about the nations they created (US, Canada, Australia, England, New Zealand, Holland, etc).
Max concludes:
Trump has created a new kind of Republican primary coalition. Many of those who support him are white voters who are uncomfortable with the way America is changing demographically, and they believe that the status of people who look like them in society is in decline.
In the past, analysts have typically divided Republican primary voters into several groups: evangelical, moderate, secular and conservative, moderately conservative, and so on. In Trump’s coalition, these divisions are secondary. For certain GOP voters, racial consciousness is more fundamental than their other commitments.
As Trump’s success has shown, the faction that votes based on white racial identity — while not a majority of the party — can be the dominant one when there are several candidates competing for the nomination.
Posted inDavid Duke, Donald Trump|Comments Off on WP: What Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand about the KKK
For all the talk of the Republican establishment trying to stop Donald Trump, it’s the media establishment that is cranking up the volume to deafening levels.
What’s remarkable about this sustained assault is that it comes with equal force from the right and the left, united in their passion to stop the man who is winning the most Republican primary votes.
I’m offering excerpts here to highlight how these pundits are depicting Trump as not just a bad candidate but a threat to civilization.
Slate Editor-in-Chief Jacob Weisberg says that Trump, “as a reality TV star and cyberbully on his third wife…is himself a good illustration of the breakdown of any moral order possibly remaining.” He says “Trump represents what autocratic attitudes look like in a modern American context. He is unfriendly toward the free market, the free press, and the free exercise of religion while paying lip service to these values. He is xenophobic, conspiratorial in his worldview, admiring of violence and torture, contemptuous of the weak, and unwilling to tolerate criticism or peaceful dissent—but all in the name of correcting excesses of tolerance.”
The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus says that since she last wrote about him, “Trump has proved himself to be even less knowledgeable and even more unhinged. His election would constitute a grave threat to American values and, potentially, American democracy…
“Trump is Nixon with all of the megalomaniacal willingness to abuse power and none of the crafty realpolitik.”
David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, poses this question: “How has Donald Trump, the coddled scion of a New York real-estate baron, emerged as a populist hero? How does the beneficiary of a draft deferment due to bone spurs on his feet get away with questioning the military record of John McCain, who endured five years as a prisoner of war? Trump believes that his appeal is based largely on what he calls his heroic lack of ‘political correctness’ but which is more accurately described as a breezy penchant for race-baiting, war crimes, and content-free policy pronouncements.
Salon says that after watching Trump “spewing hate, stoking xenophobia and attacking the Washington establishment – this thought keeps coming to mind: Is Donald Trump just David Duke in a better suit?”
New York Times columnist David Brooks writes that “now finally — at long last — major Republicans are raising their heads and highlighting Trump’s actual vulnerability: his inability to think for an extended time about anybody but himself.
“He seduces people with his confidence and his promises. People invest time, love and money in him. But in the end he cares only about himself. He betrays those who trust him and leaves them high and dry.”
National Review’s Ian Tuttle challenges his credibility: “Trump believes in nothing except the force of his own personality. Often, it’s not quite correct to say he’s lying, because he never believed anything in the first place. Donald Trump is post-truth.”
Another Times, columnist, Nick Kristof, views Trump as a bad dream: “Is there any scarier nightmare than President Donald J. Trump in a tense international crisis, indignant and impatient, with his sweaty finger on the nuclear trigger?” He adds: “I’ve never met a national politician so ill informed, so evasive, so bombastic and, frankly, so puerile.”
And it’s not just the print people. CNN commentator Sally Kohn said the other day that the media are giving Trump too much attention, and “when he institutes internment camps and suspends habeas [corpus], we’ll all look back and feel pretty bad.”
Posted inDonald Trump|Comments Off on Howard Kurtz: Media warnings against Donald Trump shift from aggressive to apocalyptic
Tweet: “When Jews get bitten by the vile monsters they pet and feed, sympathy can be strained.”
In normal leftist thought, ethnic and religious differences are accorded no importance. It is therefore normal, natural and healthy for self-respecting consistent leftists to be opposed to ethno-states such as Israel. A Jewish leftist who is fine with a Jewish Israel is more Jewish than leftist. A Jewish leftist who is not OK with Israel as a Jewish state is more leftist than Jewish. There’s nothing more diabolical than that going. What we have here is a clash of values. You can call that clash of values all sorts of nasty names like “anti-Semitism” or “bigotry” but we are dealing here with fundamental worldviews and clashes of interest.
If Israel is the Jewish state, then Jews all around the world will suffer or benefit according to the actions of Israel. If Israel is the Jewish state, then Jews are more likely to become targets of those who hate that Jewish state than if Israel was not the Jewish state.
Roger Cohen writes: LONDON — Last month, a co-chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, quit in protest at what he described as rampant anti-Semitism among members. A “large proportion” of the club “and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews,” he said in a statement.
Chalmers referred to members of the executive committee “throwing around the term ‘Zio’” — an insult used by the Ku Klux Klan; high-level expressions of “solidarity with Hamas” and explicit defense of “their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians”; and the dismissal of any concern about anti-Semitism as “just the Zionists crying wolf.”
Oberlin Leaders Denounce Professor’s Remarks as ‘Anti-Semitic’MARCH 7, 2016
The zeitgeist on campuses these days, on both sides of the Atlantic, is one of identity and liberation politics. Jews, of course, are a minority, but through a fashionable cultural prism they are seen as the minority that isn’t — that is to say white, privileged and identified with an “imperialist-colonialist” state, Israel. They are the anti-victims in a prevalent culture of victimhood; Jews, it seems, are the sole historical victim whose claim is dubious.
A recent Oberlin alumna, Isabel Storch Sherrell, wrote in a Facebook post of the students she’d heard dismissing the Holocaust as mere “white on white crime.” As reported by David Bernstein in The Washington Post, she wrote of Jewish students, “Our struggle does not intersect with other forms of racism.”
Noa Lessof-Gendler, a student at Cambridge University, complained last month in Varsity, a campus newspaper, that anti-Semitism was felt “in the word ‘Zio’” flung around in left-wing groups.” She wrote, “I’m Jewish, but that doesn’t mean I have Palestinian blood on my hands,” or should feel nervous “about conversations in Hall when an Israeli speaker visits.”
The rise of the leftist Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of Britain’s opposition Labour Party appears to have empowered a far left for whom support of the Palestinians is uncritical and for whom, in the words of Alan Johnson, a British political theorist, “that which the demonological Jew once was, demonological Israel now is.”
Corbyn is no anti-Semite. But he has called Hamas and Hezbollah agents of “long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region,” and once invited to Parliament a Palestinian Islamist, Raed Salah, who has suggested Jews were absent from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Corbyn called him an “honored citizen.” The “Corbynistas” on British campuses extol their fight against the “racist colonization of Palestine,” as one Oxford student, James Elliott, put it. Elliott was narrowly defeated last month in a bid to become youth representative on Labour’s national executive committee.
Posted inAnti-Semitism|Comments Off on NYT: An Anti-Semitism of the Left
Western notions of democracy, or, frankly, any notions of democracy, are not important parts of Judaism.
Democracy is not that important. Wouldn’t you rather have a dictator who was on your side?
I don’t expect any group to care about outsiders. It doesn’t bother me that many Jews chant, “Death to the Arabs” and that many Arabs and Muslims chant, “Death to the Jews.” Different groups have different interests that often conflict. Life is a conflict for scarce resources such as land and water.
Washington Post: When U.S. leaders and commentators warn that the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make it impossible for Israel to be both a Jewish and democratic state, they generally mean that a Jewish democracy requires a Jewish majority; if Israel encompasses the West Bank and Gaza, Arabs will become a majority. What they may not have realized is that, in the meantime, half of Israeli Jews have come to seek not only a Jewish majority but even Jewish exclusivity…
This major study was conducted from October 14, 2014, to May 21, 2015, among 5,601 Israeli adults ages 18 and older. (Disclosure: I served as an adviser to the project). It found that 48 percent of all Israeli Jews agree with the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel,” while 46 percent disagreed. Even more troubling, the majority of every non-secular Jewish group, including 71 percent of Datim (modern orthodox Jews) agreed with the statement.
…This view has consequences for citizen rights. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of all Jewish Israelis (98 percent) feel that Jews around the world have a birthright to make aliya (immigration to Israel with automatic Israeli citizenship). But what is striking is that 79 percent of all Jews, including 69 percent of Hilonim (secular Jews) say that Jews deserve “preferential treatment” in Israel — so much for the notion of democracy with full equal rights for all citizens.
These attitudes spell trouble for Arab citizens of Israel who constitute 20 percent of Israel’s citizens. It’s true that attitudes are dynamic; they are partly a function of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel itself, but also outside, especially within the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Like their Jewish counterparts, Arab citizens of Israel (mostly Muslim, but also including Christians and Druze), identify themselves with their ethnicity (Palestinian or Arab) or religion above their Israeli citizenship. And these ethnic/religious identities intensify when conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza intensifies. There is no way to fully divorce the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict from Arab-Jewish relations within Israel.
In recent years, this latter linkage has become central for two reasons: loss of hope for a two-state solution, and the rise of social media that has displayed extremist attitudes that used to be limited to private space. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, Arab and Jewish citizens post attitudes that deeply offend the other: An Arab expresses joy at death of Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians, while a Jew posts a sign reading “death to Arabs.” Hardly the stuff of co-existence. Leave it to opportunist politicians, extremists and incitement to do the rest.
First, there is something wrong with positing the possibility of Arabs as constituting a demographic problem for Israel. It legitimizes the privileging of Jewishness over democracy. It also distorts the reason why Israel is obligated to end occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; it has nothing to do with the character of Israel as such, but with international law and United Nations resolutions.
Second, while states can define themselves as they wish (and are accepted by the international community accordingly), the American embrace of the “Jewishness” of Israel, cannot be decoupled from the Palestinian-Israeli context, or from the overarching American demand that all states must be for all their citizens equally.
In part, this is based on the notion that the UN General Assembly (Resolution 181) recommended in 1947 dividing mandatory Palestine into an “Arab” and a “Jewish” State. In part, it’s based on the notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a political conflict that can be resolved through two states, one manifesting the self-determination of Jews as a people, and one manifesting the right of self-determination of Palestinians as a people. The two were bound together. An embrace of a Jewish state that excludes a Palestinian state defeats the principle.
If two states become impossible, America chooses democracy over Jewishness. In fact, this has been consistently reflected in American public attitudes across the political spectrum, most recently in this November 2015 poll; in the absence of a two-state solution, 72 percent of Americans would want a democratic Israel, even if it meant that Israel ceases to be a Jewish state with a Jewish majority.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on WP: How Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy
Somebody, through carelessness, let me down in a minor way last week and I immediately got a high from the feeling of victimhood, that people will always screw me over, poor ol me, people just trample all over me… It’s scary how powerful and intoxicating that victimhood emotion was for me. It’s shaped my life. I paused for a couple of minutes and allowed the person to rectify his mistake and I ended up without any victimization, but with a great deal of humility by realizing how much I enjoyed feeling victimized and hopeless. It’s an addiction. I started thinking back across my life how often I’ve climbed up on the cross to suffer for the sins of the world. When somebody does me wrong, I get the victimhood rush, and I am terribly reluctant to lose it, even if it means immense suffering and inconvenience. Throughout my life, I have often not allowed people to make up to me the inadvertent ways they’ve let me down. I’ve been too proud and too sure of my victimhood. It’s hard to let go of these childhood patterns.
I guess in early childhood, I got a sense of power from taking on the victim role. It was a way I could get back at those who were more powerful than me.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on The Victimhood Addiction
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
