The Bookworm Beat 8/31/17 — another “Leftist insanity” edition
There’s so much Leftist insanity that one Bookworm Beat wasn’t enough to contain it all. It takes two posts to grasp what’s really going on.
The craven FBI refuses to stop Leftist insanity. Although the mainstream media is silent, the conservative media is appropriately outraged that James Comey had already decided in April or May of 2016, in the very early stages of the investigation into Hillary’s national security violations, to clear her of wrongdoing. That is, his decision came about far in advance of the evidence — and nobody in the FBI called him on it.
I’m disgusted but not surprised that the FBI’s employees would do nothing about their head’s manifest violation of his duty to Americans. You see, I already predicted this outcome in early April 2016:
No matter how principled they’d like to think they are, most middle-class people will turn a blind eye to corruption in their midst rather than run the risk of being unable to pay their mortgage or fund all of the other payments necessary to support a middle-class lifestyle. They don’t think of themselves as dishonest or complicit in dishonesty. They think of themselves as cautious people who aren’t going to risk their children’s future for some grand-standing that, rather than resulting in applause, could leave them unemployed and desperate.
This episode from my past makes me doubt very strongly that Hillary Clinton will be indicted. I know that the rumor mill keeps saying that FBI agents, from Comey on down, will quit if Loretta Lynch lets Hillary walk. Some of the FBI agents whispering this to friendly reporters may even believe that they’ll quit.
Mostly, though, this is a bluff. Why? Because the people talking about quitting are middle-class people with mortgages, and school fees, and insurance, and all the other expenses that keep us in the middle-class living up to our own expectations. If Hillary really does walk, 99% of those “I’ll quit if she’s not indicted” agents will manage, very quickly and easily, to convince themselves to stay in their jobs, and get their salaries and pensions.
Was Jim Crow a cruel but necessary reality? David P. Goldman couldn’t writing something boring if he tried. His most recent post riffs off the fact that the North allowed the South the illusion of victory for almost 100 years after the Civil War. According to Goldman, this was an unpleasant necessity required to protect America against foreign threats and analogizes it to the West’s necessary decision to absorb former Nazis to protect against the Communist threat.
I’m not familiar enough with America’s foreign policy in the years between the Civil War and WWI to judge critically what Goldman wrote, but it’s an interesting argument. Certainly America needed its Southern fighters in WWI and WWII. Indeed, we still need them today.
Some Leftist Jews are catching on to the Left’s antisemitism. Lately, I’ve been totally obnoxious on Facebook. Every time my Facebook friends goes off about neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and antisemitism, I’ve stated in bold language that I don’t take them seriously because they’ve completely ignored the fact that, for well over a decade now, I’ve made them aware of the vile, pervasive, normalized antisemitism in the Democrat party and, especially, on American campuses.
Thankfully, a few Leftist Jews are figuring out that their Leftist cohorts are not feeling the love. At Forward, a Leftist Jewish publication, Benyamin Moalem says what I’ve said forever, which is that antisemitism (and racism) on the right consists of a few bottom feeders, while antisemitism on the Left is large, mainstream, and very dangerous. After discussing Roger Waters (who revels in antisemitic imagery the Nazis would have loved) and the aggressive antisemitism on campuses, Moalem has this to say:
But left wing anti-Semitism is even more dangerous than its Nazi counterpart in some respects, for the simple fact that while Nazis are considered beyond the pale of what is accepted by civil society, left wing anti-Semitism is increasingly considered “legitimate” because it can hide behind widely accepted liberal ideas like anti-Zionism, for example.
Exactly. Also, in the Toronto Sun, Lorrie Goldstein comes out with guns blazing to explain why he won’t side with Antifa. Except for the entirely undue respect he gives Ha’aretz, Israel’s hard-Left paper, he’s right on every point. Here’s just a sample:
For anyone who thinks the hard, violent left is a friend of the Jewish people, here’s a fun little assignment.
Next time, let yourself be surrounded by them during one of their riots — anywhere in the world — bring out an Israeli flag and start talking about what a great country Israel is.
Watch what happens.
Spare us the drivel, which the liberal chattering classes spout ad nauseam, and which provides intellectual cover for the hard, violent left, that you can criticize Israel without being a Jew hater.
Of course you can criticize Israel, the occupation and its treatment of the Palestinians and not be a Jew hater.
Jews do it. Israelis do it. The respected Israeli newspaper Haaretz, does it. For gawd’s sake, so do former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, the equivalent of the FBI, just as the foreign security service, the Mossad, is similar to the CIA.
But that’s not how the hard, violent left constantly demonizes and delegitimizes the Jewish state of Israel, while turning a blind eye to greater human rights abuses all over the world, including, to compare apples to apples, in The Islamic Republic of Iran and The Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
I’m uninterested in Europe’s take on Charlottesville. A reader thoughtfully sent me an article from NPR explaining how Charlottesville looks to Europeans. The gist of the article is that Europeans, especially German, who surround themselves with memorials to Nazi victims, while making illegal any Nazi insignia, are shocked and bewildered.
I say phooey to what the Europeans think. I’m unimpressed by their condescending shock and bewilderment.
The reality is that the Europeans are importing millions of people whose Jew hatred may even exceed that of the Nazis, and the Europeans are resolutely turning a blind eye to this hatred, thereby giving it the freedom to grow. The Europeans therefore have nothing useful to say about antisemitism or racism. They are rank hypocrites who, having failed to kill off their Jews in the Middle Ages, and having failed again to kill them in the 20th century, are now going in for a third try with imported Jew killers. The only good thing that can be said about this effort is the knowledge that, once the Jew-killers are done with the Jews (those few who won’t or can’t leave), they’ll turn on the Europeans too. I’m only sorry for the small cohort of decent, conservative people still living in Europe who are trapped in the Hell of Leftist insanity.
Little girls marrying big men. Speaking of Muslims…. Well, I don’t know whether I’m actually speaking of Muslims. What I know is that HuffPo (via Yahoo) has an article about the rash of child marriages in America. These are marriages in which, usually with help from the family, grown men marry little girls.
Interestingly, the article is utterly silent about which groups are particularly prone to marry grown men and little girls. Hmmm. Do you think it’s the Episcopalians? The Unitarians? The Reform Jews? The Catholics? You’re right. I don’t think so either.
The Pope goes animist. I don’t like Pope Francis, whom I view as a Leftist in religious clothing. (For more on my feelings about him, you can go here. For a related post, about the Leftist effort to turn America into a Christian theocracy — the Left’s definition of “Christian,” of course — go here.) Despite his Leftism, I’ve still thought of Francis as part of the monotheistic Western tradition. Apparently, though, there’s a strong animist strain running through him, which is a decidedly un- and pre-Christian world view:
Pope Francis, who has a strong belief in the science of climate change, called upon world leaders on Wednesday to “listen to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, who suffer most because of the unbalanced ecology.” [Emphasis mine.]
Whatever is the opposite of the greatest generation is what we’ve got. The Greatest Generation waded into one of the bloodiest clashes in Western history. They stormed beaches and fought inch by bloody inch to conquer treacherous islands. Meanwhile, back in 21st century America:
A Greek Life retreat at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) was promptly cancelled this weekend after a banana peel was found hanging in a tree.
“To be clear, many members of our community were hurt, frightened, and upset by what occurred at IMPACT,” Interim Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Alexa Lee Arndt remarked in an email between Greek leaders, according to The Daily Mississippian. “Because of the underlying reality many students of color endure on a daily basis, the conversation manifested into a larger conversation about race relations today at the University of Mississippi.”
Apparently, student Ryan Swanson admitted to discarding the banana peel in a tree after he was unable to locate a garbage can, and it was later spotted by Alpha Kappa Alpha President Makala McNeil, who leads one of the campuses historically black sororities.
A couple of things. First, it’s mostly blacks who associate themselves with bananas. I doubt few whites do. That dog whistle is on the blacks. Second, even if the banana had been a hostile racial act, shouldn’t those against whom the act was aimed fight back with strength, rather than retreat in weak and tearful disorder?
I don’t even have words to describe this profoundly mentally ill, deeply dysfunctional generation of young people we’ve raised up. It would merely be tragic if it weren’t so dangerous.
Fashion editor takes the “trolling” concept literally. We talk about “trolling” people on line, but we don’t really mean to talk about trolls — you know, that squat, ugly characters of myth. However, over at Vogue, the magazine managed to haul out of a cave a genuine troll, who then took it upon herself to criticize Melania Trump’s fashion sense. (See photo at the top of this post.) Once again, Leftist insanity takes us beyond satire.
Australians take their trivia seriously. At least, they take it seriously on a road that’s so dull the government has posted trivia questions and answers at intervals in an effort to keep drivers alert. I can think of some roads in Nevada that could benefit from this, not to mention I-5 in California.
Those generic millenials. A company called Dissolve went through its stock footage and came up with an incredibly funny generic commercial reaching out to today’s millennials:
(If the video doesn’t play, you can see it here.)
Just weird. Usually, when you put marchers or dancers to the wrong kind of music, it looks funny. This is one of my favorite examples, with a goth rave turning into a silly child’s dance:
However, if you put goose-stepping North Koreans to the BeeGees’ Staying Alive, they still look scary. They just look weird and scary:
For a palette cleanser, enjoy the lovely Rita Hayworth, who floats to the same BeeGees’ song: