The Wavelet

Getting old makes everything, if not worse, then definitely harder.  I had the two younger grandsons over and one of them wanted to have a baseball catch.  And that is one of my favorite grandson activities.  But what I didn’t reckon with was the fact that he was now entering high school and had become much stronger.  So that meant we were standing about twice as far apart as we used to and that if he threw the ball a little too far or too far left or right, I would have to break into a full run to catch the ball on the fly.  And at first this was exhilarating and made me feel like a kid again.  But it was 85 degrees out and after about twenty minutes I was sweating and puffing like an old man (which I am!).  But it was great.  I think that was the most fun we ever had together.  And I was so proud to see how athletic he’d become.  His fast ball was a rocket.  It stung my hand through the glove!

But right now, work stinks.  I’ve got all these extra hours and it’s ruining the summer.  I want to hand the job over to someone else but no one else is stupid enough to accept it.  So, it’s me.  End of job rant.

As anyone who’s been paying attention knows the communists are making major inroads against “moderate” Democrats in the urban centers.  This reflects the voting pattern of millennial and zoomer radicals and includes their embrace of the whole Gaza “genocide” claim.  And this is causing a noticeable collision between Jewish Democrat politicians and their constituencies.  We saw this with the New York City congressional races but it’s happening elsewhere and it doesn’t spare Jewish candidates just because they’re “diverse.”

Here’s Scott Weiner, a Jewish San Francisco LGBTQ hero, who is running for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat, being hounded out of a trans-parade because he won’t call Gaza a genocide.

The unhinged behavior of the three gatekeepers chasing him off the parade ground is indicative of the primacy of the Gaza genocide plank of the communist movement.  Regardless of what other causes you can point to on your political grievance bingo card if the Zionist spot isn’t covered you lose and no election win for you!  Now this is going to cause some problems for these people when we get to the general election.  First off, they’re going to have trouble raising money for their campaigns.  A lot of the big donors are Jewish and they’re most probably not loving all of this.  And they’ll be expressing their unhappiness by closing their check books.  And in some cities like San Francisco, the older voting population has a much more nuanced position than Gaza = Israeli genocide.  So, if, for instance, Scott Weiner wins Pelosi’s seat I wonder just how friendly he’s going to be with the Mamdani mafia that will be installed next year.

Now, maybe I’m wrong about how this schism on the Left will affect the 2026 midterms but I’ll be surprised if we see a blue wave.  I think it’ll be a much less impressive wavelet than promised.

Off the Cuff

Writing a daily post is a daunting task.  I’ve been writing this blog for over five years.  Granted these have been very unusual even unique times with strange things happening quite often.  Things like a national pandemic lockdown and nationwide, FBI approved race riots and looting.  Things like these give you a lot to think and write about.  And a politician like Donald Trump and the response of the administrative state to him is pretty unique.  Granted there are similarities to what happened to Richard Nixon but the reaction to Trump is orders of magnitude more violent and nakedly partisan.

All that being said eventually you run out of ways to say the same things differently.

Eventually what you find yourself writing is almost a stream of consciousness of what you are thinking as you experience the world around you.  And the trick is to make what you write relatable enough and interesting enough that other people will find it worthwhile to read.

Well, that’s a tall order.  How many times can you say that Joe Biden is a lying, thieving, senile shell of a hack politician?  Everybody in both parties knows it.  Even the people who vote for him, even the people who work for him don’t mistake him for an honest man or a talented individual.  They know he’s a hack who hung on long enough for the crooked party he works for to punch his ticket one last time.  It’s been said too many times to be interesting.

And likewise for discussions of Congress, the administrative state, the woke corporate world, the fake news media and on and on.  It has all been said.

So, what I’ll do from now on is talk about whatever pops into my head.  Maybe a news story will interest me.  Something about crime or something about reform.  Maybe it’ll be a piece of bad news or good news.  I’ll say what it makes me think or feel.  I’ll just look at the world as if it were the viewfinder of my camera and if I think it’s an interesting composition, I’ll snap the picture.  And just like trying to take a different picture every day is damn difficult so will telling a different story every day.  But every picture is slightly different.  And so, finding a new story is always possible too.

The thing that I was thinking about today was the Anti-Israel demonstrations and the reaction of Jewish Americans.  Bari Weiss had an essay about DEI and the current state of progressive politics.

She was and is a progressive.  But she has seen the radicalization of the Democratic party and this has had an effect on her.  It has frightened her into seeing where all the progressive programs that she formerly supported have led.  And so, she renounces what she thinks of as the overreach of progressivism; wokeism.

“It is time to end DEI for good. No more standing by as people are encouraged to segregate themselves. No more forced declarations that you will prioritize identity over excellence. No more compelled speech. No more going along with little lies for the sake of being polite.”

But the problem is how do you do that if you still keep voting for Joe Biden instead of Donald Trump?  And she (and the people in her comments section) have no answer to this.  Now this is not to say that all Jewish Americans vote Democrat.  I personally have Jewish friends who vote Trump and are conservative in general.  But Jewish progressives and progressives in general who are shocked by the support for Hamas will not be motivated by their shock to vote Republican.  They will look for a Democrat who will rescue them from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.  But they won’t find one.  Just look at the White House’s answer to questions about antisemitic attacks and threats over the last few weeks.  Karine Jean-Pierre’s answer was that the administration was aware of the high numbers of Islamophobic incidents that had occurred recently.  In other words, in the intersectionality calculus Muslim public opinion was more important than Jewish public opinion.  No one would do anything to stop the demonstrations and acts of violence.  Basically, their importance isn’t high enough to protect them from the group with higher intersectional value.  And Weiss addresses this:

“People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. According to them, as James Kirchick concisely put it: “Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews.””

And the impact of this hierarchy has been on display with anger over these inequalities in several groups in the leftist coalition.  Women and even lesbians are angry over the privileges “trans-women” receive in being considered actual women.  They get to compete in women’s sports where they have unbeatable physical advantages over actual girls and women.  And they demand that lesbians accept them as sexual partners regardless of the fact that they possess male genitalia.  Inner city black and Hispanic poor are outraged that illegal aliens are provided with housing and benefits that take away resources from them.  Asians are being discriminated against in education on account of their academic discipline and aptitude.  And finally white women are finding themselves treated almost as badly as white men because of their “whiteness.”

So, all of these groups are suddenly waking up to the unfairness of the woke agenda.  But guess what?  They won’t be voting for Donald Trump.  It will take tremendous dislocation and pain brought about by the Democratic agenda to finally get any of these people to vote out the Democrats.

They hate Donald Trump viscerally.  He “irks” them.  Just seeing his face makes them angry.  When they get into the voting booth their programming will kick in and Joe Biden will get their vote.  Because of that we are all going to have to suffer a whole bunch more before any of this will end.  Strap in.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Clarity at Long Last

This essay is from Ilan Benjamin, whose cousin Daniel Pearl was a journalist that was beheaded by islamist terrorists in Pakistan during the “War on Terror” in 2003.  He narrates how Pearl’s murder did not destroy the family’s idealism and devotion to peace and the whole progressive agenda:

“In 2012, I returned to the States to study film at University of Southern California, and published a book about my military service that criticized the Israeli government. This didn’t win me many friends, but I continued to advocate for nuance regardless. I proudly supported Black Lives Matter, LGBTQIA+, and feminist causes. I called myself a progressive Jew.”

But over time he couldn’t fail to notice that this didn’t buy him any points with the Left with respect to Israel:

“I assumed—if I cared enough, if I mourned for the Palestinian dead, if I put nuance above all else—our neighbors and their allies would give us the same decency.

How wrong I was. This past week, as over 1,300 Jews were slaughtered, the most murderous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, I saw the true face of Palestinians and their allies. All around the world, they celebrate. They gloat. They mock our tears. They do not protest against Hamas. They embrace pure evil.”

And now he has learned a lesson:

“To non-Jewish friends who have reached out, thank you. It is simply the human thing to do. To friends who dare justify what has happened, you are not friends. You are nothing but Nazi supporters dressed up in leftist intellectual language.

Unlike our enemy, I feel no joy at the prospect of going to war. But if our people’s existence is at stake, I will do what I must. I will be the world’s favorite villain: the Jew who has the audacity to defend his people.”

Mr. Benjamin has learned that the Left has a hierarchy and regardless of what he would wish he is near the bottom of that hierarchy because he belongs to a branch of western civilization.  He is a straight Jewish western man.  The only thing below that on the hierarchy is a straight Christian western man.  And of course a Palestinian is much, much higher up in that hierarchy.

But the true revelation is not where he stands in the hierarchy but what actions this organization; the Left, will condone by those it favors.

Literally anything.

Their favored partisans can rape women next to the bodies of their slaughtered friends.  They can saw the heads off of infants.  They can film these atrocities.  And the Left will still proudly trumpet a full-throated harangue that these psychotic murderers are the real victims.

Mr. Benjamin at long last has had his eyes opened to the truth about his progressive friends.  Basically, they are either evil or insane or both.  Possibly going forward he should examine the people who are the enemies of these “friends.”  He might find additional clarity and maybe some more reliable friends.

Virtue Signaled – Employment Canceled

Negotiating the intersectional landscape of the Left must be very tricky.  Since right and wrong have no relevance you might find yourself backing the beheaders of infants in a statement that will be read by future employers.  And so Ryna Workman, non-binary of color, President of NYU’s Student Bar Association finds itself out of a job.  And so Ryna will discover that employment is a binary condition.  Either you are or you aren’t.

“NYU Law School Student Bar Association president Ryna Workman, who reportedly identifies as nonbinary and uses “they/them pronouns,” issued a statement disseminated to the group’s student newsletter declaring “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination.” Afterward, Winston & Strawn LLP announced Tuesday that it learned a former summer associate “published certain inflammatory comments regarding Hamas’ recent terrorist attack on Israel and distributed it to the NYU Student Bar Association.” “These comments are profoundly in conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm. Accordingly, the Firm has rescinded the law student’s offer of employment,” the law firm said.”

But the bad news continues for the not so lovable non-gender-conforming scamp:

New York University’s Law Student Bar Association on Wednesday moved to oust its president, who had penned a controversial pro-Hamas column in the school’s newsletter, as school brass issued yet another statement condemning the comments.

https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/nyu-law-sba-moves-to-remove-president-who-championed-hamas-attack/

So maybe the takeaway for Ryna is if you truly are an idiot don’t advertise it.