Tag: Leftist Coalition

After Thanksgiving Thoughts

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Two days of food!  Oh, the pain, the pain.  But it was worth it.  Camera Girl was pleased with her feast and her guests.  She said it was the best Thanksgiving ever.  And I have to agree.  It was untroubled.  The food was excellent.  The guests were merry and amiable and the activities and conversation were enjoyable.  In all ways it was excellent.  And now we have the holiday season.  From now till Christmas time will fly.

So, while we’re enjoying (or cursing) the orgy of buying and preparation, we can reflect a little on the year that is just about over.  What did 2023 entail?

Maybe the most surprising thing about it was just how lousy it was for Joe Biden.  Regardless of whether the powers-that-be, by hook or by crook, can pull him over the finish line in November, it is pretty obvious that even his “voters” think he is garbage.  His approval rating is somewhere between thirty and forty percent.  And the first thirty percent would vote for Jack the Ripper if he has that “D” before his name.  That’s pretty amazing.

Of course, I think part of this has to do with the Democrat constituency.  The current situation with the Gaza War is a good example.  A good chunk of the Democrat voters is squarely on the side of Hamas and little things like Hamas followers disemboweling pregnant women or beheading infants aren’t going to change that.  So, if Joe Biden is seen to help the Israelis, he loses these folks.  These are what are known as one-issue-voters.  And although Jewish voters by and large vote Democrat, sharing a coalition with the Hamas-lovers surely must give many Jewish Democrats pause.  And that is good.  It’s important for people to confront the compromises that they make in their lives.  Watching videos of middle-easterners in Brooklyn screaming about burning Jews must be clarifying for Jewish New Yorkers who have defended the Moslems in America since 9-11-2001.  It might even lead them to question the validity of their political identity.

I think we all should be as realistic as possible about the choices we make.  I know that I’ve been thinking lately about where the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable positions by “my side.”  Hate for the sake of hate is a pretty ugly thing.  All of the talk about the incompatibility of different ethnic groups and identities gets overblown.  And most of the blame for that is on the Left for sure.  Once you start treating “protected groups” differently and encouraging criminal behavior, a reaction is bound to happen.

But the cure for discrimination isn’t reverse discrimination as has been amply demonstrated by the failures of affirmative action.  It’s scrupulous adherence to just laws and the basic decencies that a Christian society already provides for the less able.  I don’t see any clash between racial harmony and strict compliance with law and order.  In fact, I think it’s only by eliminating criminal behavior in the inner city that you provide the possibility of lessening poverty.  Before 2008 and Obama’s attempts to create race hatred, crime statistics in the urban areas were at a generational low.  The property values in places like Harlem were astronomical.  The only problem is that this could only exist with a Republican mayor and a law-and-order police commissioner.

But I digress.

As I was saying, Joe Biden is not a popular fellow and I think that gives us something to think about going into 2024.  Is the Democrat voting machine so “reinforced for democracy” that it can get even a stink bomb like Biden elected or will something else happen.  Will they replace him?  Can they replace him?  Will he lose?

Something to think about.

Off the Cuff

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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

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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.

Don Lemon and the Babylon Bee

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Beautiful day.  Some sun, high fifties.  Kinda windy, but still.  The mallards have returned to the puddle.  They’re probably raising a family so that’s always a good opportunity for a photo or two.  As I’ve said this incredibly warm winter is a fantastic thing.  Daffodils are out of the ground and spring feels like it’s right around the corner.

Got a good laugh reading about Don Lemon putting his foot in his mouth again.  I always enjoy it when two different cohorts of the leftist coalition get into a slap fight.  And it’s a good one.  A gay black man and two middle aged white women fighting about when a woman is past her prime?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s632y3ffIkw

That’s a win-win if I ever heard one.  Don is so rankled by having to share the stage with women that he’s primed to start hissing and spitting even before anything is said.  I watched the event several times.  It’s wonderful.  These two women hate Don’s guts and the feeling is obviously mutual.

Some people are hoping he gets fired now.  But I hope they’re chained together for as long as possible.  The further adventures of this trio has train wreck written all over it.  Could Don make history by being the first gay man accused of rape by straight women?  I don’t see how but that is the card that these Karens are always hoping to play.  Maybe they could come up with some kind of psychic rape or some such thing.  They should at least try.

Don will probably accuse them of racism and homophobia.  And wouldn’t that be fun.  Think of it.  CNN would have its own white supremacist, gay bashing correspondents right there on their morning show.  They could be denounced by …, well, by everybody!  But just think what Joy Reid could do with this.  She would summon up visions of KKK marchers coming for Don’s head on a pike.  She would literally foam at the mouth.  It would be must see tv.

Then Don could sue CNN for a zillion dollars and call it reparations for his modern-day enslavement there at CNN.  MSNBC could cover it round the clock and eventually CNN would go out of business and everyone except Don Lemon would be glad.  Don unfortunately would be forced to find another gig.  Not such an easy thing for him anymore.

So, imagine a world in the future where both Don Lemon and the two shrews he’s battling with were disqualified from appearing on television because they were just too annoying for the majority of viewers.  Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world?  And the only question we have to ask is how do we get to that world?  Well, it seems clear.  We need to make it possible for people like that to be mocked as both stupid and unentertaining.

And we’ll know we’re there when Saturday Night Live is competing against something really funny like The Babylon Bee.  That’s right, when things that are actually funny are shown on the major media outlets, we’ll know that the woke virus has run its course and burned itself out.  And people can say what they really think without fear of being banished to oblivion by the gatekeepers and scolds.

The first tiny steps are happening.  Twitter has reinstated the Bee.  Hopefully enough people support the Bee by going to their site.  And if you’ve got some spare change become a member.  That will help.

It’s too bad we can’t stop paying for things like MSNBC and CNN that we don’t like.  The cable system doesn’t allow for that, which is a shame.  So, all we can do is throw a few bucks at the things that we do like.

Well, that’s what I thought about today.  Back to work.