When I am in my character defects of dishonesty, self-seeking, selfishness, inconsideration and fear, I tighten, compress and narrow. When I am tall and free and easy, I am serene, open and happy.
When I want something so badly that I think of nobody else’s needs, I tighten and compress and my worldview narrows. I’m like a monkey putting his hand in a trap to grab something shiny but then finds he can only get his arm out by releasing the shiny trinket.
When I am dishonest, my stomach feels queasy and my body tenses up because I know there are likely to be consequences I won’t like. When I put satisfaction of my basic instincts above their appropriate place, I tighten as I realize I’m stepping on other people and they’re going to retaliate.
All ideological beliefs are just unnecessary body tension. You can’t believe anything (as opposed to a state of awareness) without tightening and compressing your neck and torso.
When you read Paul in the New Testament, you can tell he could never read Hebrew. No clue. Good to read Alt Right in original context. I feel like there is nobody I can’t understand, can’t empathize with, from Hitler to Caesar to Napoleon to Mao to Stalin.
>Empathize with Hitler? How exactly?
Understand why he felt he had to do hard things to protect his people.
>But both his justifications (“jewish conspiracy”) and methods were appalling. Or are you concerned only with the vague goal of “protecting his people”? And let’s not forget he was the greatest butcher of Germans in history, and >showed no empathy for them at the end.
I’m interested in understanding where people come from. How they see the world. Judging people is an entirely different thing. Both perspectives have their place. All moral judgments depend upon a subjective leap of faith.
>So you don’t believe in objective and universal moral imperatives, such as “don’t willfully kill children”?
Sure, but those imperatives are based upon a subjective leap of faith (which I make as an Orthodox Jew). Everything has its use, even atheism, because that perspective enables one to view the world as different life forms competing for survival and you can let go of the need to categorize some groups as good and others as bad.
There’s a famous Hasidic story about a rebbe who taught that everything has its place in God’s world. “Even atheism?” asked one student. “Even atheism,” said the rebbe, “because when you see a poor person, you should give to him as though there were no God in the universe to help.”
Most Jewish orgs think that if the Alt Right comes to town, you fight them. I say that as long as they desist from criminal behavior, you take them to lunch, you get to know them, you help them with accommodation, you offer to show them around town, you offer them help with medical and dental care, job hunting, etc. You support their right to free speech and to free assembly. You identify with their desire for the white equivalent of Zionism. You read their sacred texts. You learn their language. You speak to them in their language. You try to find common ground. And you don’t seek anything in return.
That’s how the Mennonites roll. They don’t compete with other groups. They only seek to love others and to be of service. As a result, there’s not a lot of anti-Mennonite sentiment.
Posted inAddiction, Personal|Comments Off on What Does It Feel Like To Be Selfish?
I asked a Jewish friend to give me the Palestinian point of view. He responded:
It is very hard to get an accurate perspective without an honest historical perspective. Unfortunately, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are able to be honest about it.
For a recent historical perspective of the relations between the Jews and Arabs from just before WWI up through the end of the British Mandate, Tom Segev’s book: One Palestine Complete is very good. Ari Shavit published a book, My Promised Land, in 2013, which was a compilation of articles he had written over the years. His interviews with Israeli soldiers who participated in forcibly removing Palestinian Arabs from towns during the 1948 war was shocking to the Israelis. He also has some interesting history because members of his family first went to Palestine in the 1890’s. I forgot the name of his book.
The first Western book which really brought the plight of the Palestinians home was called: They are human too, and was a photography book, by Per Anderson, about the Palestinian refugee camps outside of Israel (it came out in 1957 and so many of the refugees were actually living in the West Bank) I bought another book of photographs of Arabs in Palestine (The Palestinians: Photographs of a Land and its People from 1839 to the Present Day by Elias Sanbar) to show what a thriving community they had. One point to remember is that until 1948 there were roughly equal numbers of Christians and Moslems in Lebanon, Syria and the area of Palestine but today in Palestine the number is less than 10% as most have emigrated to America.
When analyzing Israel from the Palestinian perspective, it is important to be aware of the biases of the author. Many are neo Marxists who see the Jews as European colonialists or Imperialists, rather than as invaders who don’t necessarily want to exploit the native population, but rather to supplant it. Some of these are sincere Religious zealots such as Meir Kahane who believed God promised Israel to the Jewish People, others non religious believed that because of anti Semitism Jews deserved a state of their own, even as the ethnic state becomes less and less accepted in our multicultural world.
If you read anything, read Shavit’s chapter on the forced dispossession of Arabs in 1948. It can only be justified if you are a religious fanatic. The expulsion from towns was purely political. The Arabs of these communities did not pose any threat to the Jews.
Posted inIsrael|Comments Off on What’s The Palestinian Perspective?
I’ve watched the first five episodes of this National Geographic documentary series and it is amazing that the United States is so heavily invested in fighting something as subjective and amorphous as “violent extremism.”
This is an arbitrary moral category. To the extent that “violent extremism” represents something real, it is no more of a threat to America’s interests than non-violent decadence such as feminism.
Many of the regimes that America supports such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt could rightly be called “violent extremism.”
Fighting “violent exremism” is not Jewish. In the Torah, God drowns the whole world in the Flood. Later, God commands Israel to commit genocide against the Canaanites. Jewish prayers command Jews on a daily basis to remember their commitment to exterminate Amalek. The texts of the Jewish tradition are specific when they name Israel’s enemies, and they focus on fighting particular peoples and practices, and not on amorphous things like “violent extremism.”
I know ISIS does bad things, but at least they don’t celebrate same sex marriage, and they don’t allow trannies to use bathrooms not in accord with their DNA.
When America had a real enemy, it didn’t call him “violent extremism.” Instead, it called him England, Mexico, Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union and Al Qaeda.
Fighting “violent extremism” is what you do when you have no threats to your own sovereignty and no threats to your regional hegemony and you think you have no rivals to your world power.
The United States does have a rival to its world power, China, and the Chinese are not wasting their resources and lives fighting “violent extremism.”
So why is the United States fighting violent extremism? Because it’s exciting. It feels great. It provides work and the opportunity for false heroism to people who would be much better off getting a real life. Do you think anyone joins our foreign policy establishment to not intervene in other countries? That’s boring.
On the show, you see a husband and wife, Marines, leave their kids behind in America to go fight in Afghanistan. That’s insane. Afghanistan has no strategic interest to us. The country could go to hell and we would not be affected.
Women do not belong in the armed forces (except in secretarial and nursing roles) and they certainly do not belong in the Marines. What kind of country sends young mother Marines to fight in Helmand Province, Afghanistan? A country that has lost its mind.
With incredible access inside the walls of the Pentagon and to the front lines of the U.S. military’s mission to fight violent extremism around the world, National Geographic’s new eight-part documentary series CHAIN OF COMMAND offers a new perspective on what has been dubbed “the war of this generation.” Filmed over 18 months and narrated by Chris Evans (“Captain America,” “The Avengers”), the global event series paints an intimate portrait of how men and women in the U.S. military handle authority and responsibility, as well as the sacrifices they make in their personal lives.
Chain of Command delivers extraordinary insight into a line of authority and responsibility as never seen before, including a rare on-camera sit-down with Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the 19th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. From the halls of power at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., to the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger and South America, and to the surprising ISIS recruiting ground of Trinidad and Tobago – only 1,600 miles from the coast of Florida – viewers will see firsthand how decisions made at the Pentagon have a direct impact on our service members on the ground, fighting to protect Americans and our allies from radicalized extremists.
“What’s really important is that we have clear communications. And that clear communication runs from the president and the secretary of defense, who make decisions, all the way down to the Marine lance corporal or the Army specialist out there executing the mission,” says Chairman Dunford in the series, adding, “The No. 1 priority for us is to protect the homeland and the American people from an attack and also to protect our allies from an attack against violent extremists. This is a global challenge; we call it a trans-regional challenge, but it literally is in every corner of the globe.”
In a command post sheltered inside a school in Mosul, Iraq, Capt. Quincy Bahler of the 101st Airborne Division works hand in hand with Iraqi Security Forces on a range of issues. Together, they monitor live camera feeds from U.S. combat aerial drones, deciding when to drop missiles on ISIS fighters while also figuring out ways to stop ISIS-flown camera drones from dropping bombs on U.S. and coalition forces. Meanwhile, on the streets in Mosul, Iraqi forces undertake a civilian rescue, getting families out of the combat zone on foot and under enemy sniper fire. In a quieter moment, at the end of his nine-month deployment, Capt. Bahler savors the simple pleasure of a well-brewed espresso as he prepares to hand over the reins to Capt. Mark Zwirgzdas of the 82nd Airborne Division and return to his wife and civilian life.
Everyone on this series tells us the same story — that they’re blowing up “violent extremism” in countries that have no strategic interest to America and this will make us safer. Then they bring women into the Pentagon to lecture on human rights.
Everybody becomes violently extremely when their interests are extremely threatened. “Violent extremism” is simply a severe reaction to a severe conflict of interest. “Violent extremism” is not an enemy, it’s a visceral reaction. This series shows America at war with a basic and necessary human emotion.
Every form of life has a strong visceral reaction to that which “f***s with my s***.” We all know when when our lives are threatened and we all react extremely to extreme threats.
It’s pointless for America to try to prop up the ruling powers in Afghanistan and Iraq. ISIS and Al Qaeda are, in all likelihood, far more authentic to who these people are. Counter-insurgency never works, as the Netflix movie War Machine showed, because people don’t side with their invaders.
The only person in Barack Obama’s foreign policy team in his first term who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq was Barack Obama. He couldn’t find anyone else because all of our foreign policy elites love intervening overseas and there’s no meaningful difference between liberal internationalists (Democrats) and conservative internationalists (Republicans). People join the foreign service to intervene, not to leave well enough alone.
Many people in the Alt Right will say this is the Jews’ fault. I grant that organized Jewry has long favored an internationalist American foreign policy to protect Jewish interests, just as the East India Trading Company needed the British Navy bomb the hell out of people who got in the way of their flourishing heroin trade to the Far East (run by the Sassoon family, yes the biggest drug kingpins in history were Orthodox Jews, and the biggest legal drug racketeers in history have been the Sackler family who gave us the opioid epidemic). But American Jews were substantially less supportive of the 2003 invasion of Iraq than American gentiles (by about ten points in polls). I don’t primarily blame the Jews for America’s unnecessarily interventionist foreign policy. I blame the goys (though I don’t think it would have happened without AIPAC lining up behind the war, I remember even this left-wing Modern Orthodox rabbi in LA supporting the war publicly because he thought it would be good for Israel).
Oh c’mon!!!!!!!!!!
Why do you think Saddam went down? Mubarek? Kaddafi? Why do you think the entire ME has been WRECKED? Do you think that white people wrote “Clean Break.”
Did white people run PNAC?
Do you think that white people want Assad out?
Do you think that white people want war with Iran?
C’mon.
It wasn’t Jews who had the power to decide whether or not to invade Iraq in 2003. The most important people making that decision were gentiles (George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, etc). It was Hillary Clinton who was the prime mover behind America’s intervention to get rid of Khaddafy. And she’s not Jewish.
No Luke, it isn’t absurd to say the system is run by Jews.
A simple analysis of political donations proves that Andrew is right.
In fact, this is the ONLY way to understand ANYTHING that is happening……the only way to understand open borders in every white nation……the only way to understand wars in the middle east.
C’mon, some people have studied this issue.
The white shabbos goy are frontmen like Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, etc.
Does Congress give Netanyahu 40 standing ovations because he’s such a great guy?
No.
They do it because of the (((donors)))
Jews make up 1.7% of America’s population. They don’t have the numbers to run the country against the will of gentiles.
Dennis Prager offers this impressive analogy that just as your neighborhood needs a policeman, the world needs a policeman, and that role has fallen to America.
My response is that no country, including America, can effectively act as the world’s policeman, and to the extent it tries, it will end up doing at least as much harm as good for the world and will inevitably sap its own strength. It was in America’s interest to intervene late in both world wars to ensure an outcome that suited our interests. I am not for withdrawing from the world. I just see this Chain of Command documentary series and I have no faith that the lives and treasure we are expending in fighting “violent extremism” is doing us and the world any good. Did our intervention in Vietnam make America safer? The world safer? All the major realists opposed the intervention in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq and they have been proven right.
Is the Middle East better off because of American intervention? I can’t see any evidence for that.
I am not arguing that Jews are 100% innocent in America’s foreign policy blunders. No group is 100% innocent. Due to their energy, high IQs, and focus, Jews have played a disproportionate role in America’s successes and failures, at home and abroad.
I think it is a massive mistake for America to subsidize Israel (there never would have been a 9/11 attack on the USA without it). I think both countries would be better off going their separate ways. They would both have more room to operate in their own interests.
The foreign policy realists I admire include John J. Mearsheimer, Steve Sailer, Carl von Clausewitz, George Kennan, Brent Scowcroft, Hans Morgenthau, Martin van Creveld, Michael Scheur, and Carl Schmitt.
"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)
