* Chabad were always czarist supporters. In fact the “Alter Rebbe” -literally the old rabbi, Shneur Zalman of Liadi who was the founder of Chabad strongly supported the Czar against Napoleon. This despite having been imprisoned by the Czarist government not long before the French invasion. There are even Chabad legends that the Alter Rebbe had a spy in Napolean’s camp and would pass on his reports to the Czarist authorities. Chabad was also very skeptical of Communism and supported the Czarist and later the White government against the Bolsheviki. The 6th Rabbi of Chabad (Rabbi Y.Y. Shneerson) was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and sentenced to death for counter revolutionary activities. His sentence was reduced after a international campaign.
* Chabad-Lubavitch is one of the most remarkable examples of the tendency of some Ultra-Orthodox Jewish organizations to turn from anti-Zionist to de facto pro-Zionist (sometimes fanatically so) without ever actually officially amending their ideology.
* My family attended a chabad-run synagogue for a year or two. They definitely were a very welcoming group. It was a much nicer experience than the reform and conservative ones I had been to. To be honest, all the stereotypical American Jewish traits were on full display at those places, especially extremely conspicuous donations to the synagogue. In contrast, Chabad felt like a much more genuine community.
* The Chabad Rabbis were mainly interested in having a joyous worship service, whereas the Reform and Conservative Rabbis were obsessed with the Holocaust and defending Israel.
* I have heard that the Chabad people run boarding houses for Jewish backpackers/hippies in many places around the world, and that these places are known for their good food and inexpensive lodgings.
* I’m no expert on the alignment-of-forces of judaists here, but it halfway looks like Chabad maintains its office here to harvest dollars from religious kids who come for the 1-2 year study-in-Israel schtick.
Let’s be clear about something: the Chabad is NOT Old Line Modern Orthodox, like Lookstein who did Ivanka’s conversion.
The religious establishment here made an exploratory press release about not recognizing Ivanka because her papers came from Lookstein; but Netanyahu read them the riot act; they folded RIGHT QUICK.
NEtanyahu, like all his predecessors, has always been able to call the religious parties bluff (to withdraw their support during a Knesset vote-of-confidence) by threatening to turn off the tap of State funding. NEtanyahu knows that because they’re’s so MANY rabbis competing for votes, he can successfully divide-&-conquer, merely by putting an individual one into “redpill dread” that his camp followers would jump to another rabbi’s campfires relatively quickly, once the first rabbi can no longer pay salaries, supply apartments,underwrite matchmakings, etc etc etc.
* I disagree with the poster who said that the Chabad Worldwide Empire is completely independent of 770 Empire Parkway, It’s like the Pope. He can take a bishop down if the bishop causes too much bad press. But most of the time, he choses his battles very carefully.
Chabad has like 2-3 houses in Philippines, who (on paper) shouldn’t be so accepting of these retired 70 year old Israeli and American Jewish guys who are shacked up & making babies with 21-year-old Filipina Catholics. But these guys are the the only target audience the local rebbe has in his “territory”. The rebbe does what he has to do. “Go along to get along” is how the rebbe is gonna get promoted up the hierarchy.
In Thailand, it’s less of a “red loine”. The Thai chicks are Bhuddists, who (from the outside world’s point of view) are not pagans. Christianity is straight up pagan.
But, ya know…. King Solomon himself was willing to tolerate pagan temples when they came attached to shiksa hotties, so I guess chabad rebbo’nim can ALSO learn to hold their nose and wait for a promotion back to the Big Leagues.
* Trump is an American phenomenon. Even the change of the name from Drumpf to Trump is very American. Only in America, for good and ill.
Alt Right is pissed with the recent ‘betrayal’, but then Trump would be nothing without betrayal. He’s been about Deals, not Ideals. He’s played all sides and then some. He’s been all over the map his entire life. He has said everything, meant everything, meant nothing.
He’s a phony but he can sometimes get excited enough to believe in whatever he is excited about… until the thrill runs out, and then he’s onto other stuff. Just look at his history with women.
The ONLY way he could in 2016 was by connecting with the Deplorables, and their votes were indeed gold to him. But in office, they can’t do him any good anymore. The power is with Congress, Deep State, Wall Street, Pentagon, and etc, and they have no use for his nationalism-than-globalism.
Also, Trump is a promoter, a showman, a circus master. He gets bored easily when he has to do nitty gritty stuff. He needs splash, pizzazz, once in a while, so why not lob some bombs at Syria? Fireworks. A bit of Kilgore in him that will blow up a village to go surfing. He has to sow his wild oates, which he has in endless supply.
Howard Roarks, the men of unshakable conviction, exist in fantasy. Even if they did exist in reality, they win only in fantasy. In real life, they never win. Or, their victory comes with huge price. During the Soviet Era, the Soviet government was filled with men of power and privilege. They had the connections, dachas, and caviar. Who knows or cares about any of them now? They are all forgotten. Who, from the Soviet era, looms as a giant? Solzhenitsyn, who stuck to his truth. But what price did he have to pay. Gulag, persecution, exile. In the end, he won, but most people are not willing to pay that kind of price, not least because for every Solzhenitsyn who finally triumphed, 1000 others died in silence and in vain.
NO ONE wants to pay that kind of price. Only in the Ayn-Randian universe does a man of iron principle like Roark defy, triumph, and realize his dream easy succession. The real world belongs to Gail Wynands, Tooeys, and Keatings. Those are the three basic types in the world of wealth and power.
Some people compared Trump to Howard Roark, but he was more like Wynand. When push comes to shove, Trump folds and goes along, just like Wynand who realizes he hasn’t the will go all the way. All said and done, Wynand is all about wealth and connections. Without those, he is nothing. In contrast, Roark has the power of vision that his solid gold in his mind regardless of his condition in life. Trump is all about wealth, connections, and making deals. If he can’t do that, he has nowhere to go. And besides, democratic politics is about compromise with the Power. It’s not about dictatorial will, no matter noble it may be.
Depressingly however, political compromise in the US means shilling out for the globalists. It’s one thing to compromise for the good of the people but quite another when the compromise mainly serves the GLOB elites. When FDR came up with New Deal, he made compromises with labor, not with the capitalist elites. But labor isn’t powerful enough to exert the kind of pressure necessary to tear Trump away from the GLOB.
As for military guys, some of them just want ANY excuse to play ball. They see it as a sports. Any reason to play the game and fight the ‘enemy’. Always a need for one.
Or maybe, Trump is thinking of the WWII option. It’s been said that WWII, more than the New Deal, ended the Great Depression. FDR’s economic theory came down to creating the military-industrial complex. As the US mainland is free from attack, what does it matter if the US war machine goes into high gear and creates jobs and makes bombs to destroy other nations? Under FDR, guns were butter.
Trump is a phenom, and he reveled in the campaign. That was his element. Entertainer, showman, comedian, provocateur, clown, big personality, salesman, demagogue, and etc. He’s been promoting fights and running a TV Show. But when it comes to running something like government, he’s at a loss. Trump is used to running his own businesses. Also, anything in business can be solved with money and settlements. Profits are the only thing that matters in business. In government, there are Other Interests, and some of these are tribal, ideological, and personal, and Trump cannot solve this problem by greasing hands.
Also, Deep State are different from politicians. Trump once said politicians came to him for handouts, and that’s all that most politicians or prostitucians are interested in. For them DC is Hollywood for ‘ugly people’. It’s their ticket to the Good Life and Respectability. But Deep State operatives, globo-tribalists, and entrenched ideologues are different. Some of them care about the power, not the money. Some of them are ideologues and grand visions. And others got more money than Trump and can’t be bought.
So, Trump must be flustered dealing with these types. They are unlike any other people he’d worked with before. They have their own agendas and try to bend Trump to their will. Money cannot solve his problems with them. And on most things, they are more informed than Trump even if they twist the facts to push the agenda, as with Syria.
This Trump phenom is symptomatic of America as a spectacular but silly country. The US reinvents everything into a fantasy, a circus, a new religion. Mormonism is almost proto-Hollywood in its cheesy and Pirates-of-Penzance-like reinvention of the Bible. Mormonism’s combination of opportunism & materialism AND puritanism & moralism is part of the kitschy delusion. Hollywood reinvented Christianity with ET with an outerspace messiah who befriends lonely children, dies, is resurrected, and returns to heaven. All the western mythology(and then some) was reinvented as STAR WARS. And the themes of revolution and radicalism of the 20th century was reinvented into a Calvin Klein fantasy of MATRIX.
The Founding Fathers were lately reinvented as a bunch of rappers.
So, Trump’s nationalism is another fantasy, a show, a musical. It’s not the real thing but a reinvention worthy for Las Vegas extravaganza. Trump has real power, but he cannot be taken seriously or soberly. He has to be approached as a Cecil B. DeMille production. He’s the santa or the fake santa of nationalism, but then, is there such a thing as a real santa? Hoping for a true nationalist in Trump is like wishing that a store santa is the real thing. Given the system that allowed his rise, real nationalism is hard to come by.
Trump pulled off a fun opening act as the would-be-Moses of the Deplorables, but the whole idea now seems rather silly. Trump as the deliverer? The man most famous for saying ‘you’re fired’ is going to create an America where everyone is hired. LOL.
But even if there is some sincerity in Trump as leader of long-forgotten Deplorables, the question is how far is he willing to go even if he succeeds on the economic front? After all, there were two Moses in the movie. There was Moses I, the Egyptian who served the empire. And Moses II, the one who regained his identity and led his people to the Promised Land.
Trump’s vision doesn’t go beyond Moses I. In other words, he remains the servant of the Empire, the Glob. And his nationalism is really a means to serve the GLOB even better.
Moses I defies the System and pushes ‘reforms’ that lead to better treatment for slaves, better food, and more human conditions. He sees it as a kind of triumph of justice, and it is. He has improved the lot of the Jewish slaves, but the fact is they remain slaves, and he is still serving the Pharaoh. If anything, one could say he has empowered the empire even more by making the slaves more productive, more hardworking, and improved in morale. So, paradoxically, his justice for the slaves has made the tyranny over them even more powerful. After all, an empire needs hard workers. (Communism failed in part because work ethic crumbled.)
Thus the moral victory of Moses I was delusional. He did bring some measure of justice to the slaves, but turning them into better and more willing workers, he has also empowered the Egyptian Empire that will conquer and enslave more peoples. The slaves were part of something bigger. They were just cogs in the system.
For Moses to truly free the slaves, he must become Moses II, the man who awakens to his true identity and embarks on the exodus to lead his people from bondage. As long as the empire exists, Jews will just be slaves and servants to it no matter how much their lot is improved with better working conditions and better food. (Likewise, Hitler fattened Germany up in the 30s to embark on empire. Had he improved the lives of Germans for the sake of German nation itself, he would have been a decent leader. But his mind was infected with dream of empire, and that meant the Germans, once made strong and healthy again, would be used as cannon fodder to expand the empire. But if Hitler pursued his own mad dreams, Trump is beholden to the Imperial Vision of the Anglo-Zionists who are intoxicate with power and hegemony like college coaches with winning the Rose Bowl.) Trump isn’t up to playing Moses II, and he knows it, and we know it. And even if he wanted to, it’s not possible under the current system.
So, we really need to think about the ultimate meaning and worth of Trumpian nationalism. If it’s not true nationalism, what is it? Is it just a means to improve the morale, productivity, and patriotism of Americans so that they can be harnessed to serve the Empire better? After all, there has been an erosion of patriotism under Bush and Obama. Bush’s wars even made Conservatives feel sorry they supported him. Obama’s homo-worshiping supporters do not make red blooded patriots who will not only chant USA USA USA but fight and die for the empire. Most people in the US military didn’t want to die for Obama.
Without the gungho support of Red State America, the empire seems ever wobbly, all head and no body, as the body feels disconnected to the head that is all about homos and trannies in the military.
So, Trump is useful for recharging patriotism and national pride among white Americans. But is it about national independence from globalism/empire(like how the US was founded in the first place) OR is it about national servitude to the empire? “Trump fattened you real good and returned you back to health. USA USA USA. Now, go out and win one for the globber.”
Trump defies the globalist Pharaoh only to serve him better. He brings back American pride and optimism… but he doesn’t break the chains that holds the US in bondage to the GLOB. US may be the lone superpower, but there is a power bigger than the US. The GLOB is a made up of networks from US to Canada to EU to Australia to Japan to China to Latin America, and etc. It is the world of super-globalist-elites, the superpower over the superpower. The GLOB plays the entire world. It’s like one horse among those pulling a carriage maybe the biggest and strongest. The super-power horse. So, it is the biggest power? No, there is a power above it: the combined energies of all the horses harnessed by the rider who hold the reins. America is the biggest and strongest horse of the GLOB but one of many horses harnessed together to stampede around the world.
Trump is the man to demand better treatment for the big horse. Better food and new horse-shoes. But he’s not the one to cut the horse loose and ride it to freedom like in ELECTRIC HORSEMAN. In the end, it must remain a WAR HORSE.
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, which came out one yr after TEN COMMANDMENTS, tell more or less the same moral tale. British soldiers are held captive, and the commander Nicholson(Guinness) is an honorable and courageous man. He has a deep sense of responsibility for all his men, and he expects humane treatment for all of them.
Japanese want to use them for slave labor to build a bridge. And the Saito promises good treatment for Nicholson and officers IF they collaborate with Japanese in working prisoners like slaves. Nicholson refuses and pays a heavy price, and his men appreciate his defiance and sabotage the work until Saito relents and promises humane treatment to all the men. So, like Moses I, Nicholson triumphs and earns a measure of justice for his men.
The irony is that, with improve productivity and morale, the men are serving the Japanese Empire, the evil enemy, even better than they might have otherwise. But Nicholson so savors his moral victory over Saito and the improved lot of his men that he becomes blind to the larger context of what’s happening. No matter what his men do — work as slaves treated inhumanly or prison-laborers treated well — , they are serving the Japanese war machine to expand, kill more innocents, and kill more British soldiers. (But then, Nicholson, despite his concern for his men, is first and foremost, a man of hierarchy and blinded by class distinctions and all their vanities, which makes one wonder if he was motivated more by personal pride or morality.)
In the end, Nicholson does come to his senses and blows up the bridge that was built by his men with great effort. However magnificent it is, it was built to serve the Japanese Empire.
Blowing up the bridge is the only way he can free himself and his men from the Japanese empire.
And in the TEN COMMANDMENTS, Moses is truly the deliverer of his people ONLY WHEN the split-sea-bridge is closed between his people and the Egyptians.
You can’t be part of an empire and still be free. The chains must be broken. Bridge must blow, the sea must close.
In the case of the US, breaking the chains of empire is tricky. When Vietnam and Algeria threw out the French(and when Indians kicked out the Brits), it was nations yearning to be free and cutting the chains of imperialism. Those under imperial power can do this by sending the imperialists home.
But US is the main imperial power in the world. Why would the US empire want to cut off the chains when it is the master over vassal states? America owns the chains.
The reasons are threefold. (1) Empire is morally dubious, for both master power and servant nations. (2) Empire is costly and often bloody, and sometimes risks something like WWI (3) The current empire is less about American domination than the Glob domination over the US. The GLOB is a worldwide network. US is its main asset but the US is only of the its assets. So, the American Empire is really part of a bigger empire. Soros and his ilk play the whole world. Trans-national corporations have no loyalty to any nation. It’s all about those at the top, and the elites of the world now attend same schools — Harvard and Yale — and plot the helot-ization of all peoples. GLOB has zero interest at heart when it comes to most Americans. If anything, the GLOB sees all nationals as replaceables.
Anyway, for there be true freedom, we need someone to blow up the bridge or close the sea.
There can no half-measures, like the guy finds out in PRINCE OF THE CITY. The poison has to be purged completely, and globalism is this vile evil force in the world. It is not good ole internationalism, a good thing that’s about various nations trading and respecting one another’s sovereign autonomy. Globalism is about the erasure of all borders, all identities, all sovereignties. It is about mass amnesia, homomania as world religion, endless Wars for Israel, Pentagon’s insatiable hunt for new crises, demographic imperialism, and degradation of all native rooted identities and cultures(with the exception of Israel). Globalism is evil and must go. Trump is not the one to blow up the bridge. He will play showbiz version of Moses I but not Moses II who came to realize that the only way Jews can be free is to make a clean break with the Egyptians.
Trump is fun and made a big splash and ruffled feathers, but I think the most he can offer is the hope of Deplorables being turned into good workers again so as to become better minions of the Empire. One thing for sure, Trump is not a serious man, nor should he be approached as such. He has to be seen for what he is. The hustler who plays everyone. To be upset with Trump is to be upset that one’s playboy father is cheating on the mother.
The true nationalist? He will come up with a way to blow up the bridge.