Haaretz: Why America Has a Trump and Israel Doesn’t

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Luke Ford

David Rosenberg writes:

The Donald appeals to the American underclass that’s been ignored. In Israel, those with grievances are the middle class and they prefer more respectable protest candidates.

Some say Netanyahu is Israel’s Trump. Just like The Donald, Bibi’s been accused of appealing to the voters’ baser instincts, particularly their racist ones. Just like Trump, he is at once part of the establishment and loathed by it.

Trump is promising to build a wall on the Mexican border. Bibi already built one along nearly all of Israel’s borders, although he didn’t get the Arabs to pay for it.

But  even if there are some similarities, Bibi isn’t Israel’s Trump. Israel doesn’t need a Trump.
Israel experienced many of the same economic upheavals America has, but not all of them. Trade liberalization killed off the Israeli textile industry, and unions are much weaker and represent a much smaller part of the workforce than three decades ago.
But that is only half the story. The Mizrahi underclass has made strides over the last decades and is closing the economic gap with the traditional Ashkenazi elite. The monopolies so loathed by the media and policy makers – the banks, Israel Electric Corporation, the ports and so on – have ensured good salaries and job security for a great many blue collar and middle class Israelis. Israel’s banks haven’t been allowed to run wild.
Unlike America, the Israeli economy has made remarkable progress over the last decade generating new jobs. More and more people are entering the labor force, especially people in the lowest income groups, and unemployment is touching record lows. Income inequality has been growing, but interestingly enough, it’s been widening between the middle and upper classes; at the lower end of the spectrum it has been narrowing.
Israel has a big population of poor. But they don’t see themselves as an economic class but as part of their community – ultra-orthodox, Arabs or Orientals. They for parties that represent their communities, not for Trump-like troublemakers.
If there has been anybody suffering in recent years, it’s the Israeli middle class, but it expresses its displeasure in its own, well-mannered way. No bombastic Trumps for them! Israel’s middle class held polite demonstrations in the summer of 2011 to protest the high cost of living and voted for disruptive but respectable politicians like Yair Lapid in 2012 and Moshe Kahlon in 2015. And, unlike the American underclass, Israel’s middle class is slowly getting its way. The cost of living is gradually moderating, and home prices will follow.

I think this is a foolish column. When I think of Israeli politicians, “respectable” is not the first word that comes to mind.

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Israel’s elite know that their allegiance is to the Israeli people. Immigration, foreign policy, economic policy is is determined by the idea of what’s best for Israel. This is true for the Israeli Left and Right. No need for Trump.

* Gee, it must be nice to have a country governed by those who generally look out for their own people. Apparently none of us are allowed to have that though because it will lead to a new Hitler.

* “Well-mannered” and Jews/Israelis in the same sentence!

* So it’s okay to be a nationalist in Israel. Patriotic even. Here you’re just a dangerous home-grown bigot who should be watched for signs of terrorism. Seems really fair considering who leads the charge against American nationalists.

* Israel does not need Trump because their Parliament is 2/3 Trumps. Every politician in the center/right in Israel speaks and acts exactly like Trump. 2/3 of the people of Israel speak exactly like Trump. There was no controversy over Israel building a wall to stop illegal infiltrators for example (a brilliant phrase we should imitate) – except at Haaretz which is a left wing rag, ignored in Israel itself, although always quoted by the foreign press.

* I am sure a lot of people in Israel have noticed that Trump sounds like an Israeli politician.

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Donald Trump’s Feminine Side

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Luke Ford

Much of what Donald Trump has said and done has struck me as bad. I don’t like it that he takes every criticism personally. He says things that make me wince. He’s often gauche. And yet Trump is sailing to the Republican nomination, so what do I know?

Donald Trump is the prole whisperer (a comment I read on Steve Sailer’s blog). He’s the most Australian candidate I remember in America, perhaps the most Israeli candidate too.

Steve Sailer writes: Another feminine aspect to Trump is that he Takes Everything Personally. Trump’s is an extreme version of this trait that’s actually pretty common among Big Men, who, in contrast to Nerds, are very aware of their individual human relationships.

In contrast, Reagan tended to be focused on principles and used individuals in his speeches as examples of general patterns. A competent newspaper columnist, Reagan was fairly abstracted and disengaged from actual individual people around him (as his children regretted), especially for a movie star. Reagan always regretted losing out to Humphrey Bogart the roles of Rick in Casablanca and Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, but Bogart was an all-time great at being in the moment with his costars, while Reagan as an actor was a little bit like Ben Affleck: serviceable, but not fully engaged. Reagan was a fine craftsman of acting, but not a genius at it.

I’ve always wondered why the key moment in the 1980 presidential debate was Reagan joshing Carter with “There you go again.” I never understood what was so awesome about it, but I think now that it was the moment when Reagan came down to the man0-a-mano level and exerted interpersonal dominance by dissing the President to his face. But then I’m not a Big Man, so I only understand these things at an abstract/empirical level, while Trump has an extraordinarily intuitive sales talent.

* Yeah, the further up the chain you go, the more petty people become. It’s why all those jokes about losing to the boss at whatever you’re playing with him rings true: bosses aren’t interested in winning fair and square, they’re interested in being the boss. Napoleon used to cheat his own officers at cards, and openly, too, because his ego was so vast that even with all of Europe cowering at his feet, he still needed to win the game in front of him. Or read What Makes Sammy Run? and marvel that the main character, even after becoming a Hollywood producer, still makes his childhood bully work for him as his servant, just for the mental satisfaction of watching his former childhood tormenter wriggle under his thumb.

And not only are powerful people petty, they keep lists about who was wronged them just to get back at them. Nixon was famous for his Enemies List, but all big politicians have them; Obama has been revealed to have one, although the press of course didn’t call it an Enemies List. Sociopathy is what’s needed to get ahead in bureaucratic situations, especially corrupt ones. Or at least extreme narcissism.

Women are better at backbiting politicking, so historically when a civilization gets to a point where it has a top-heavy bureaucracy and a regular army, you see more women gaining positions of power.

* I wrote a post about Trump last summer where I described him as the leverage candidate. He is the most self-aware candidate we have seen since Nixon. Trump thinks about how others hear and see him, even while he is giving one of his off-the-cuff speeches. It’s what make him a great salesman and a great real estate tycoon. He’s always away of the group dynamics and how others are responding to him.

He leverages his assets like no other candidate. As soon as he gets a positive response from the audience. he immediately starts to build on it. He’ll hammer home that idea and own it in your mind, then he starts looking for the next good deal in your head. It’s fun to watch, even for someone like me, who is not a big fan of Trump.

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Better Call Saul S2E5

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Luke Ford

There’s a surly black clerk in the latest episode who reminds me of some of the blacks who staff the Los Angeles Superior Court system. Lawyers tell me that they treat other blacks better. For non-black lawyers, however, the service is usually awful. Most of the black judges are pretty bad too. They have a chip on their shoulder against whitey.

Most of the clerk positions at the District Attorney’s office are held by black women who almost all have iPads so they can watch movies all day long and they get annoyed when interrupted and asked to do any work.

If you’ve ever gone to the Post Office or the DMV, you know what I’m talking about. About 20% of federal government jobs are held by blacks and many don’t seem to be dedicated to providing good service.

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Dennis Prager Vs Rush Limbaugh

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Luke Ford

I think I first heard Rush Limbaugh on KPFK in the fall of 1985 (I was 19). He was fine. He was like a disc jockey of conservative talk radio. He was entertaining and he shared most of my political leanings. On those rare times I was driving around when he was on the radio, I turned him on for a few minutes.

Rush Limbaugh was never going to change my life. He was a DJ. He was an entertainer. He was like a lot of other DJs I knew. I worked at KAHI/KHYL radio in the Sacramento area for two years in high school (1982-1983) and from 1985-1987, reporting the news and anchoring on the weekend.

I encountered Dennis Prager when I moved to UCLA in the fall of 1988 and from about the first time I listened to him, I knew that Dennis Prager was going to change my life (and I knew that I was choosing him to be an instrument in changing my life back towards God and the Bible). He was like the ultimate father figure I had long sought. He had perspectives on God and religion and morality that excited me. Here at last was a rational sounding road to God that I could embrace. So I converted to Judaism.

Up until about 2012, I’d tell anyone who would listen that Dennis Prager was the greatest Jewish thinker since Maimonides.

Yeah, I’m nuts.

In that August of 1988, when I was hanging out at UCLA for a month before the dorms opened and classes started, I found Rush Limbaugh was now nationally syndicated and a big success. He sounded much sharper and more compelling than his Sacramento days. I liked listening to him even more now, but I never carved out time to do so. By contrast, I carved out time to listen to Dennis Prager on the weekends.

As the years went by, friends of mine who were every bit as smart as me, and better educated and more successful and more sane than me, said that they enjoyed listening to Rush Limbaugh more than Dennis Prager. He wasn’t as repetitive. He was more fun. He had better guests. He was more interesting. Some argued that Rush was a genuine conservative, while Dennis was only “conservative” in the current lingo. They found that Limbaugh had more insight into the political system than Prager, and that Rush was not as obsessed about Judeo-Christian values and Israel. Prager struck many of my intellectual friends as “pretentious on many levels, politically, intellectually, historically and religiously. He may be a nice guy, but I can’t take listening to him for long.” Limbaugh was also hard to take for my intellectuals, but he went down easier than Prager because Rush didn’t pretend to be an intellectual. Prager came to conservative politics late, as a byproduct of his support for Israel and his affinity for the neo-conservatives and evangelical Christians (and as a result of the Democratic party turning left). A friend noted, “Limbaugh grew up in a Republican milieu, suburban Missouri which is the crossroads between the south and the Midwest, and he paid his dues toiling as a disc jockey before becoming a political talk radio host in Sacramento. He is much more of a Republican insider, yet he is willing to criticize them as well.”

As 2015 rolled through, Limbaugh was much more attuned to the Donald Trump phenomenon than Prager.

From 1988 to 2012, I considered Prager to be on a completely different level from other talk show hosts such as Limbaugh. I thought of Prager as a genuine intellectual who could read and speak many languages, had a graduate education from Columbia, and was the author of four respected books that were much deeper than Rush’s pulp. I thought Prager was smarter, finer, kinder, more religious, and just generally superior to Limbaugh, though Rush was usually more fun to listen to.

As I had more and more therapy, however, I realized I was a narcissist, an emotional addict on many levels, and that I needed to get some serious recovery and wean myself off some of the hero worship that served me during my dark years of 1988 to 1993 but could now be left behind so that I could become my own man. While I have retained some respect, affection and admiration for Prager, by 2014, I was done believing he was a great thinker and I quit my Pragertopia subscription. Over the past two years, I’ve heard no more than a total of four hours of his show. I think his approach to Judaism and to politics and to much of life just doesn’t work. He doesn’t realize it, but much of what he’s doing is a con, just like so many other rabbis I’ve met. Over the past 25 years, almost every charismatic Jewish religious leader I’ve wanted to follow has turned out to be running a con.

I have a weakness for cults and for charismatic leaders. I have a weakness for anyone who makes me feel whole and offers to adopt me.

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The Life Cycle Of The Blogger

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Luke Ford

Bloggers start out with exuberance. The hits come in, and the attention and the emails, and the growing circle of acquaintances.

At first you get many detractors, but if your work blazes new ground, if you make a contribution, you eventually get your recognition, even fame. You might make just enough money to get by. You develop thick skin. You get good at the conversational style and you can pump out a dozen blog posts a day.

And then as the years roll by, you don’t build up any financial assets. You barely scrape by. You get old. Your peers pass you by. All of your peers pass you by. In your 20s, you were right there with them, and now they’re out of sight and you can’t afford to socialize with them much, if they even want to go downmarket to hang out with you. You still aren’t married. No children. You burn bridges. You leave people feeling betrayed. There are favorite haunts you can no longer frequent. The thrill of blogging is gone. Back trouble begins. Resentment builds. “When am I going to get mine?” you think. You have contempt for sell-outs aka those who are more successful than you. You hate your friends who are succeeding in their careers. You call them careerists because it seems like they will sacrifice all of their free speech just to get ahead. You by contrast aspire to a higher nobler calling. You have a mission to tell the world the truth.

You get old. You get isolated. You get weird. You make mistakes. You feel shame. You have nightmares about the innocent people you hurt. You develop a fear that you are not on a good path. You tire of the abuse and the anger. You read some of your old blog posts and you are appalled. Sometimes at 2 a.m., you wonder, where did I go wrong? Surely there is more to life than this.

Some offers to sell out come your way. At first you reject them, but eventually, fatigue and isolation and poverty overcome your scruples. You take the money and you move on with your life. You either wind down the most controversial parts of your blog or you walk away entirely.

You miss the attention. You miss the feeling that you are changing the world. You miss your delusions and that sense that you are at the very center of things. You miss the groupies. You feel empty. You feel stripped of your distractions. You face yourself and others. Your walls come down. You talk to people without a gun in your holster.

When other bloggers confide that they are thinking of selling out, you tell them that it might be a good idea. There’s more to life than pissing people off with blog posts.

So, now we may perhaps begin. Yes?

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