Recycling: another idea that isn’t going quite as planned

The New Neo Posted on by

Recycling depended on China, it turns out, and China has stopped doing its bit. So now a lot of towns are burying their trash again:

Should that empty soda bottle go in the recycling bin or the trash can? Increasingly, it doesn’t really matter.

A large portion of America’s plastic and paper waste used to go from our recycling bins to China, where it was refashioned into everything from shoes to bags to new plastic products. But since the end of 2017, China has restricted how much foreign trash—er, recycling—it buys, including cutting off purchases of waste paper products, like all the junk mail that goes directly from your mailbox to the recycling bin.

As a result, The Atlantic reported Tuesday, some American cities and towns are sending all those recyclables directly to the landfill…

Some places are stockpiling their recyclables in the hopes that things will turn around—in other words, in the hopes that China will start buying more American refuse again—but the sudden shift in the market has less to do with China than it does with the American fascination with recycling. Even as municipal recycling programs became almost ubiquitous in America over the past few decades, the underlying infrastructure remained economically and environmentally flawed.

“Recycling has been relentlessly promoted as a goal in and of itself: an unalloyed public good and private virtue that is indoctrinated in students from kindergarten through college. As a result, otherwise well-informed and educated people have no idea of the relative costs and benefits,” wrote John Tierney in a must-read 2015 op-ed for The New York Times that predicted many of the problems facing the municipalities highlighted in The Atlantic’s story—including the slumping demand for recycled goods brought on by lower oil prices and cheaper manufacturing processes.

Please read the whole thing.

Personally, I hate creating so much garbage. For example, packaging (as compared to during my youth)—especially plastic packaging such as those impossible-to-open hard see-through thingees that seem to surround nearly every small gadget one buys these days—has gotten way out of hand. I receive an amazing amount of unsolicited junk mail and it doesn’t seem to be stoppable; that stuff just goes directly into recycling and isn’t even opened. What a waste, and I don’t remember anything even remotely like it even as recently as ten years ago.

I have figured out a way around one problem, though: plastic soda bottles. I drink a lot of club soda, and I use a Sodastream. Great product! It not only does away with the need to recycle bottles, but it has lightened my load on the way home from the grocery store considerably. I’m pretty sure it’s cheaper, too, so it’s win/win/win.

Not to mention the fact that Sodastream is an Israeli company (shhhh—don’t tell Omar).

Pelosi’s defense of Ilhan Omar: poor dear, she just doesn’t know any better

The New Neo Posted on by

Nancy Pelosi is used to making excuses and dancing around issues. In this, she’s no different than most politicians, and as the leader of the House Democrats for years, she’s had a lot more experience at it than most.

The other day, not only did she lose a fight to Ilhan Omar and company, but she had to explain Omar’s use of classic anti-Semitic tropes, and the way Pelosi decided to do that was particularly interesting:

“The incident that happened, I don’t think our colleague is anti-Semitic,” Pelosi said. “I think she has a different experience in the use of words, doesn’t understand that some of them are fraught with meaning that she didn’t realize.”…

“I understand how advocates come in with their enthusiasms.”

“But when you cross that threshold in the Congress, your words weigh much more than when you’re shouting at somebody outside. And I feel confident that her words were not based on any anti-Semitic attitude,” Pelosi continued. “But that she didn’t have a full appreciation of how they landed on other people where these words have a history and a cultural impact that might have been unknown to her.”

So, Pelosi is essentially pleading a combination of cultural relativism and ignorance on Omar’s part. Both are utterly absurd.

First of all, it doesn’t even matter, because much of what Omar said is anti-Semitic on its face. Accusing an entire group of dual loyalty and/or venality isn’t exactly a compliment, and it isn’t a mere policy dispute about Israel. But in addition, look at Omar’s history. She was born in Somalia to what appears to be a relatively comfortable family, left when the civil war there began and she was ten years old, spent about four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, and came here at fourteen:

Omar attended Edison High School, and volunteered there as a student organizer. She graduated from North Dakota State University with a bachelor’s degrees in political science and international studies in 2011.

Omar was a Policy Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

Omar is now 37 years old, so she’s been in this country now for 23 years, close to 2/3 of her entire life. And they were very formative years, as well as years in which she was an active member of secular American society and in fact an activist in politics, as well as studying it intensely—all in the heart of this country. She’s been speaking English quite effectively and immersed in American culture. Whether she embraces American culture or not—and she certainly seems to have embraced politics and conflict—no one can say with a straight face that she is unfamiliar with it. Nor can she possibly be the least bit unfamiliar with the current popular anti-Semitic memes and what they mean, as well as how they’re used.

To plead that she’s a neophyte or a newcomer, or gets a pass because of being in some sort of Islamic cultural cloister (mixed metaphor, I know), is absurd.

Martina Navratilova is at a political change crossroads, whether she realizes it or not

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the story:

Navratilova tweeted out before Christmas, “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.” The tweet brought a firestorm and she promised to write more about it when she educated herself on transgender athletes.

She tried to make amends in an op-ed in February by explaining the science she discovered…

It didn’t work. She was dropped from the board of a gay rights advocacy group, and excoriated further on social media. As part of a response to that, Martina wrote [emphasis mine]:

What I really wanted to do was try to open up the debate about equality and fairness in relation to transgender participation in women’s sport. There were too many voices that were silenced and shamed into submission and that is not right. My aim was to encourage a more scientific, rather than emotional, conversation and to search for a solution that would work better than current arrangements…

Well, I certainly stumbled into a hornets’ nest. The support I normally get from ‘my people’, the LGBT community, was replaced by a barrage of quite nasty personal attacks and I was dropped (jettisoned is a better word) as an ambassador for Athlete Ally.

Conversely, some publications and people that I am at odds with on most issues, such as the Washington Examiner (gasp) and James Woods (double gasp), were strongly supportive of my opinions. Those are unwelcome bedfellows. So where did I go wrong? Or did I go wrong?

Most coverage of this story is about the transgender athlete controversy aspects of it. But the portion of Navratilova’s words that I bolded is what caught my attention. What I see here are the glimmerings of at least the possibility of political change on Navratilova’s part, depending on how she answers the questions she posed.

This incident represents an opportunity for her to make a shift, a move that’s incredibly hard to make and that she may reject. You can feel her confusion and hesitation; it’s real and it’s painful. It’s somewhat like what #WalkAway founder Brandon Straka said in the video where he told his change story. At the beginning of Straka’s voicing of a single mild non-PC possibility, he wondered something like why are my friends treating me like that? I thought they were my friends. Why are my enemies treating me nicely? Does that mean I’ve gone over to the Dark Side?

Or maybe it’s not the Dark Side?

Navratilova is experiencing the struggle between emotions and logic. She didn’t think there would be such a disagreement between the two. Her friends are leading with emotion, and she wanted to lead with logic. People like James Woods are defending her out of logic, too, not because they love her. And she is discovering the viciousness of the left towards someone who violates the rules of groupthink.

I wish her well.

Not just a pretty face: Ilhan Omar, the House anti-hate resolution, and the deflection of blame

The New Neo Posted on by

What began as a move to condemn Ilhan Omar’s recent anti-Semitic statements morphed into a much broader statement that didn’t even mention her:

The resolution approved Thursday condemns anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against minorities “as hateful expressions of intolerance.” Omar, a Somali-American, and fellow Muslims Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Andrew Carson of Indiana, issued a statement praising the “historic” vote as the first resolution to condemn “anti-Muslim bigotry.”

The seven-page document details a history of recent attacks not only against Jews in the United States but also Muslims, as it condemns all such discrimination as contradictory to “the values and aspirations” of the people of the United States. The vote was delayed for a time on Thursday to include mention of Latinos to address concerns of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. It was inserted under a section on white supremacists who “weaponize hate for political gain” over a long list of “traditionally persecuted peoples.”

Far from being something that will give Omar and her allies pause, it was something she and her supporters managed to turn into a tool they can use to promote one of their favorite causes of all: their own supposed victimhood.

Touché, Ms. Omar! Well done.

This resolution is just a variation on a much older theme. If Omar is accused of saying or doing something bigoted, just turn it into: “No, we are the victims. It’s the backlash of Islamophobia we must be protected against.” And a great many people—particularly those on the left—will bend over backwards to show their tolerance, and to get out of having to condemn Omar for the original offense. In the process, the actual words and deeds of the perpetrator get lost, and the perpetrator can wrap him or herself in the warm cloak of victimhood.

Pallywood, a Palestinian propaganda machine which has been going on for a long long time with marked success (see this), is a prime example of the process. With Pallywood, the incidents of victimhood are actually staged and recorded, and this turns the sympathy of the world to the Palestinians, and the left (particularly in Europe) plays right along to show how noble they are.

Ilhan Omar and her buddies triumphed yesterday. And they know it. Nancy Pelosi may not have known what hit her.

As for Omar, she’s not wasting a bit of time, and in her newfound sense of invulnerability, look to her to up the ante. Already she’s been joining in mockery of Meghan McCain for “faux outrage” over Omar’s remarks:

McCain had become emotional during the ABC talk show, discussing Omar’s recent criticisms of Israel and its supporters. She said Omar’s remarks were hurtful to many of her Jewish friends.

“It is very dangerous, very dangerous,” McCain added, “and I think we collectively as Americans on both sides, what Ilhan Omar is saying is very scary to me. It’s very scary to a lot of people and I don’t think you have to be Jewish to recognize that.”…

But instead of responding directly to McCain, Omar retweeted a post that criticized McCain for “faux outrage” and referred to past statements attributed to McCain’s late father, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who died last August at age 81.

“Meghan’s late father literally sang ‘bomb bomb bomb Iran’ and insisted on referring to his Vietnamese captors as ‘g–ks’,” read the post by Medhi Hasan, an “Intercept” columnist and Al Jazeera host. “He also, lest we forget, gave the world Sarah Palin. So a little less faux outrage over a former-refugee-turned-freshman-representative pls.”

Omar’s retweet was praised by many of her followers as a sign that the freshman congresswoman was “standing up to the establishment.”

Note the reference to Omar as a “former refugee”—gotta play that victim card, as though that allows her to say whatever she wants. And also, of course, there’s the quote from McCain’s father John McCain, who is not only irrelevant to whatever his daughter said, but who might be forgiven for referring to his torturers in pejorative terms. Not that Omar cares, but just to set the record straight:

“I was referring to my prison guards,” McCain said, “and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends.”

McCain made it clear that his anger extends only toward his captors. As a senator, he was one of the leaders of the postwar effort to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam.

And here’s what McCain’s song was about.

None of this has any relevance to Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks, which were most definitely not made about people who had tortured her, nor were they some sort of tasteless joke. And they certainly have no relevance to Meghan McCain and her upset over those remarks of Omar’s. But Omar knows her audience, and it’s those followers who praised her retweet of the “faux outrage” change, and for “standing up to the establishment.”

And that’s not all that Omar has been saying, now that she’s drunk with her own power in the Party. She’s also been dissing that old has-been, President Obama:

“We can’t be only upset with Trump,” the freshman firebrand told Politico Magazine.

“His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar said.

“And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”

Those last two sentences could be an excellent description of Ilhan Omar herself. Like AOC, she’s a very attractive youngish woman. This is, IMHO, part of the reason for her political success so far. And although she may not seem “polished” in the same way that Obama was, she is indeed polished in the techniques she’s been absorbing for many many years, techniques she did not originate but at which she is quite skilled. Already, she’s also gotten away with murder, not in the literal but in the political and metaphorical sense.

As for the future, the sky’s the limit. It really all just depends on whether the American public decides to reject or to embrace her methods and “the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”

Case in point: Saira Rao vs. Nancy Pelosi

The New Neo Posted on by

Another illustration of some of the points I was making just a moment ago:

That’s your intersectionality, hard at work.

I don’t feel the least bit sorry for Pelosi. But I don’t rejoice either, because this is a very alarming general trend. Please don’t underestimate the repetitive power of these sorts of accusations taking hold as a mainstream tactic against just about anyone. The younger generation has been steeped in this sort of thing, and it won’t necessarily cause any alarm in a lot of people.

And if you’re wondering who Saira Rao is, take a look:

Ahead of what is expected to be a pivotal midterm election, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, the longest-serving and only female member of Colorado’s congressional delegation, is facing a primary challenge by a political newcomer who represents anti-establishment angst within the Democratic Party.

“Blue isn’t working. We’ve got to go true blue,” that challenger, Saira Rao, a 43-year-old Indian-American mother of two, said Monday at a campaign event in Denver.

Rao, who has never held elected office, says the Democratic Party nationwide has failed to represent people of color. Here in Colorado, central to Rao’s campaign is being the state’s first woman of color elected to Congress.

Rao, a former Wall Street lawyer who owns a children’s and young adult’s book packaging company that focuses on diversity, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But in December 2017, she penned a viral op-ed in which she said she is “breaking up with the party,” by which she says she means the corporate establishment side of the party. Afterward, she said readers told her to run for office. In January, she jumped into the race to unseat DeGette…

…During her fundraiser at the Punch Bowl Social on Broadway in Denver, she described what it’s like to be a woman of color. When she was nine years old, she said she tried to scrub the brown skin off her body with a stone after a boy broke up with her for being “black.” And last year, she said her 7-year-old son, Dar, covered himself in sunscreen and told her that he was finally white.

She says the party is not doing enough to end a “national epidemic” of police brutality against African Americans and disproportionate incarceration rates of people of color. She also wants to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and to defund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Rao lost. This time.

It should come as no surprise that—like AOC—Saura Rao was backed in the 2018 election by the Justice Democrats. I wrote about the Justice Democrats here. They are not inconsequential; in fact, they appear to be the shapers and in some cases the choosers and groomers of many of these radical candidates. They seem to go for a “type” (at least, that’s true of the people affiliated with them who are in the limelight): young, female, very radical, verbally aggressive, and preferably (although not always) attractive.

Democrat infighting: the inevitable clash of the identity groups

The New Neo Posted on by

When a party devolves into a bunch of entitled ethnic groups, and judges a person’s worth by his or her place on the hierarchy of victimhood, clashes are inevitable among those groups. You’ll see some unite against others in a power move, and the party will stick with the ones it thinks will bring them more advantage, and the ones who frighten them the most in terms of possible retaliation. Thus we have the current state of affairs in the Democratic Party.

The Democrats need (or certainly think they need) what has become their base, the far left (otherwise known by the self-designated euphemism “progressives”). It most definitely needs black voters, because without them as a near-unanimous bloc the Democratic Party would be moribund. It also needs Hispanics—although they don’t seem to be particularly embroiled in the current struggle.

The Jews are far more expendable if the other groups decide they have to be tossed under the bus. First of all, they are not very numerous. Granted, despite their tiny numbers, they have a few influential members in Congress—notably, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But note that word: “minority”—because, unlike the House, Democrats do not control the Senate at the moment.

So Schumer has little to say about the radical new members of the more obstreperous House (actually, one wonders at this point if even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has all that much to say). Schumer is also what’s known these days as an old white guy, so he doesn’t count in the intersectional hierarchy, because he’s at the very bottom. Note that the Democrats long ago got rid of that even-more-paleo dinosaur otherwise known as “who dis?” Joe Lieberman.

As for the money provided by Jewish donors in the past, I believe the calculation is that it will keep coming, because those donors are generally secular leftists who hold no particular love for Israel and who see no problem with the growing but still mostly-subtle anti-Semitism exhibited by some of its newer members.

From the article:

…[There is] widespread anxiety in the caucus over how to handle the latest bout of remarks from Omar — one of the first Muslim women to serve in Congress — after she suggested that pro-Israel advocates had “allegiance” to Israel. The remarks offended multiple top Democrats, who said it alluded to painful, decades-old stereotypes that Jews had “dual loyalties.”

Multiple Jewish lawmakers, including Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) stood up in the caucus meeting to explain why Omar’s latest remarks were so offensive and potentially dangerous. But other Democrats — including a Jewish lawmaker — stood up to defend Omar and say they didn’t see the remarks as deeply offensive…

Omar did not speak in the meeting, multiple sources said, although she was spotted chatting with some Democrats one-on-one and received hugs from others.

Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, are attempting to soothe relations within the caucus after abruptly halting plans to vote on a measure condemning anti-Semitism, which some lawmakers complained would had gone too far in targeting Omar.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is now rushing to rewrite that resolution to condemn hate speech more broadly to win over a group of lawmakers — including progressives and lawmakers of color — who have rushed to Omar’s defense.

They are falling all over themselves to show how tolerant they are of Omar. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar has moved the Overton window for anti-Semitic statements from members of Congress, just as planned. Will most of the general public even notice?

[ADDENDUM: And this news probably warrants an entire post of its own, but I’m taking a little break at the moment. So please read it.]

Canada tells father what pronouns he must call his own child

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an example of how far the left—and some courts—are willing to go in the fight to offer physical (hormonal) treatments to children who identify as transgender, despite parental objections to the hormones at such a young age:

Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court of British Columbia (B.C.) ruled that a 14-year-old girl may undergo transgender hormone “treatments” to support her transgender identity as a boy — without her father’s consent. The court went so far as to threaten to penalize the father’s speech. If he calls his daughter a girl, that would constitute “family violence,” which would be punishable by law.

The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the girl (referred to as A.B.) “is exclusively entitled to consent to medical treatment for gender dysphoria and to take any necessary legal proceedings in relation to such medical treatment,” and that “attempting to persuade A.B. to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria; addressing A.B. by his birth name; referring to A.B. as a girl or with female pronouns whether to him directly or to third parties; shall be considered to be family violence under s. 38 of the Family Law Act.”

According to the Family Law Act, “family violence” includes “psychological or emotional abuse of a family member, including intimidation, harassment, coercion or threats, including threats respecting other persons, pets or property, unreasonable restrictions on, or prevention of, a family member’s financial or personal autonomy.” Such an action is considered “family violence” along with “physical abuse of a family member” and “sexual abuse of a family member.”

Indeed, the court may even have considered the father’s attempts to convince his daughter to reconsider her transgender identity to be “physical abuse,” since that includes “deprivation of the necessities of life.”…

News outlets have referred to the girl as Maxine (not her real name) and her father as Clark (also a pseudonym). Maxine was encouraged by her school counselor to identify as a boy while in seventh grade. Dr. Brenden Hursh at B.C. Children’s Hospital decided that Maxine should take testosterone. Clark disagreed, filing an injunction to stop the hormone “treatments.”

You think it’s just Canada? Not in the least:

In a blow to advocates of parental authority, last week a visiting judge in a juvenile court in Hamilton County, Ohio stripped parents of custody of their teenage girl, who wants to identify as male, because they would not allow the 17-year-old to begin hormone replacement therapy.

The judge awarded custody to the teen’s grandparents who were, in the court’s eyes, more accepting of the teen’s wishes and who will now be allowed to make medical decisions for the teen. This case, which might be the first of its kind in juvenile court, should be disturbing to any advocate of parental rights and freedom of religious expression…

In 2016, the teen’s parents — the judge will not release the names of the family members — took her to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for psychiatric treatment for anxiety and depression, where she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The teen wanted to continue with hormone replacement therapy, to help her appear male, but according to court testimony, her parents objected…

Based on their unwillingness to allow their child to go through with the treatments, which was based at least in part on their Christian beliefs, Judge Sylvia Hendon ruled to give the teen’s grandparents full custody, including the ability to make medical decisions and provide insurance (they’re accepting of her desire to identify as a male).

This is a case about parental rights to determine the medical treatment of a minor in an arena in which the answers are not the least bit obvious, and in which there is currently a war going on among “experts.” It’s also about religious freedom.

I’m not planning to make this post a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of treating young people—if you’re interested in that, do some Googling. Suffice to say that it’s an area of tremendous controversy and even greater political agendas (this article—caveat: I’ve only read the first 200 words or so—looks as though it might be a pretty thorough and evenhanded treatment of some of the issues involved).

I’ve spent a goodly time on YouTube watching at least a few minutes of a number of videos from transitioning young people who identify as transgender. I’ve also watched at least the same number of videos of young people who have undergone what’s called “detransition.” They are young people who previously identified as transgender (sometimes they were over eighteen when they began treatment and sometimes they were younger than that). The detransitioners I’ve watched are most often people who were born female, and then transitioned to male and back to female. The speakers are often quite impressive in many ways—articulate, and often marked (at least those among them who had been female-to-male transgenders) by some irreversible sequelae of their experiences in taking male hormones and even at times having had surgery of various kinds: for example, some have permanently lowered voices.

Rather than continue to explain, I’ll just post two videos so you’ll see examples of what I’m talking about (there are plenty of others). All the people featured in these videos were born female, transitioned to male, and then detransitioned back to female:

Cloward-Piven at work on the border

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a new record being set:

Illegal immigration continues to break records on the southwestern border — and they’re not good ones.

The number of families snared trying to sneak into the U.S. soared by 50 percent in one month alone, setting an all-time record with more than 36,000 family members apprehended, Homeland Security officials announced Tuesday.

The government has also encountered some 70 groups of at least 100 migrants during the first five months of the fiscal year, shattering records and placing new challenges on Border Patrol agents.

The mini-caravans are being funneled to some of the remotest parts of the border, where there is little in the way of medical help and it takes hours to process and transport the groups. That takes agents off the line, and drug smugglers use the distraction to send across their shipments, top border officials said.

Indeed, the formation of mini-caravans is a tactic used by smugglers, officials said Tuesday. The same cartels control drugs and human smuggling, and they use migrants as a distraction by sending a large group of people to occupy agents’ attention and then try to slip drugs into the U.S. in another location.

The idea is to overwhelm the system and make it easier to get through. But paradoxically, the situation also helps to bolster Trump’s argument that what’s going on at the border constitutes an emergency.

Obama paved the way for anti-white rhetoric

The New Neo Posted on by

You think I exaggerate? I do not.

As soon as I read Woman’s March activist Linda Sarsour’s comment about Nancy Pelosi, I thought, “Obama and his grandma!” In case you haven’t seen Sarsour’s statement yet, it goes like this:

Nancy is a typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men. God forbid the men are upset – no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.

I discussed the statement in today’s previous post, but now I want to say something different about it. The phrase “typical white” as a form of criticism by people in public life (particularly on Twitter) has been normed and is quite common. And it goes without saying that if the roles were reversed, and a prominent white person (other than an ostracized neo-Nazi) derisively called someone a “typical” anything else (black, Muslim, whatever protected victim identity one can think of), the sky would fall on the person issuing the statement. But “typical white person” is rather typical these days, and merits hardly a squeak of protest—except, of course, from “typical white people.”

And it was none other than Barack Obama who began this trend. I well remember the moment he began to describe his white grandmother as a racist—it made me gasp when he said it. Obama was trying to do damage control when the nature of his mentor Rev. Wright was being publicized during the 2008 campaign:

I can no more disown [pastor Wright] than I can my white grandmother—a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

That was followed by a radio interview in which Obama called that same grandmother a “typical white person”:

He was asked about his grandmother’s reaction to his potentially being president.

“She’s extremely proud,” he said. “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she’s a typical white person who — if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know — there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away, and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling a little less like that.”

Sounds so very gentle compared to Sarsour, doesn’t it? But it is a demonization of white people as typically being racists, which opened the door to what is now a far more extremely-stated version of that sort of “white people bad” sentiment.

It could have gone differently. Obama didn’t have to do this. But he chose to do this. It wasn’t just about defending himself regarding Wright, either. There were numerous other occasions during the 2008 campaign on which he played the race card, as I described here.

Anti-Semitism: it’s all the rage

The New Neo Posted on by

Mark Steyn has a catchy phrase about it: “Jew-hate junction”:

As Laura Rosen Cohen likes to say, everyone meets at Jew-Hate Junction: excitable young Mohammedans, secular polytechnic Euro-lefties, anti-globalist conspiracy theorists… It’s getting pretty crowded over there.

The list is not an exhaustive one, but right now the left is leading the way in the US. Anti-Semitism has a long and protean history; if you think it’s about one thing, then you’ve got another think coming. That’s why it attracts so many adherents, even those who might be at odds on other issues. And it keeps morphing through space and time.

It’s been on the ascendance in Europe for several decades, and the roads that lead to Jew-hate junction there consists of generous portions of the left, of Islamic new-arrivals, of old-guard European anti-Semites—a sentiment that didn’t die but just went into postwar hibernation for a while—and a new strain of anti-Semites who don’t like being made to feel guilty about the Holocaust perpetrated/abetted by their grandparents and are heartily sick of hearing about it.

In this country, those first two elements (the left and a portion of some of the newer Muslim arrivals) are the main protagonists. And in people such as Louis Farrakhan, for whom anti-Semitism never went out of style, we have a different form of Islam combining with a strain of anti-Semitism that I first noticed after the civil rights movement had morphed into the black power movement.

The present-day US type has entered Congress as what you might call anti-Semitism with a young and pretty (and female) face. It’s main practitioner is Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a telegenic Muslim woman, and to a lesser extent Rashida Tlaib of Michigan (a Muslim of Palestinian background who has made the “dual loyalties” accusation against Jewish lawmakers), and to an even lesser extent AOC (who has defended Omar) of New York.

House Democrats considered responding by passing an anti-anti-Semitism resolution, but couldn’t quite muster the votes and it is currently postponed, although the vote had been scheduled for today.

I don’t think Democrats much care if they lose the Jewish vote, because the number of Jews in the US is small and highly concentrated in places that are and will remain Democratic enclaves even without the Jewish vote. Plus, many Jews today are secular and have replaced any allegiance to Judaism with an allegiance to leftism, so perhaps this won’t even alienate them. I also believe that most of the Jewish donors to the Democratic Party are probably more of that latter frame of mind, and therefore perhaps the calculation is that the party can afford that, too—although I would imagine some of the leaders of the party (Pelosi and Schumer) are none too happy about the possibility of the loss of support.

Anti-Israel sentiment is not the same as anti-Semitism (and yes, “Semites” includes more than Jews, but “anti-Semitism” is a phrase whose meaning is always “anti-Jew”). But anti-Israel sentiment based on having completely different rules for Jews than for other people is most definitely anti-Semitism, as is anti-Irael sentiment that trades in and promulgates lies about Israel and Jews, as well as the ancient “dual-loyalty” accusation.

But among Democrats in general these days, there’s no great love lost for Israel:

According to a Pew survey, in the dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians, only 27 percent of Democrats side with the Jewish state. Almost equal numbers of Democrats side with the Palestinians, and the subset of left-wing Democrats are pro-Palestinian by almost two to one. So it is not at all controversial for Omar to trash the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for its pro-Israel advocacy, especially among progressives.

The now trendy Democratic Socialists of America have even called for Israel to be eliminated.

Linda Sarsour is not an office-holder but she’s an activist and leader of the Woman’s March and another outspoken Muslim (with Palestinian parents) as well as a Farrakhan supporter. There’s no love lost between her and Nancy Pelosi:

“Nancy is a typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men. God forbid the men are upset – no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos,” she wrote.

The lessons of identity politics and intersectionality have been well-learned by Sarsour. See how it all comes together there? Nancy Pelosi may be a woman and a feminist (victim points there) but she’s a “typical white feminist” supporting the “dirty work” of “powerful white men.” That’s all Nancy Pelosi really is, according to Sarsour. Despite Pelosi’s bona fides as a woman and a feminist, she’s just a white man enabler, the worst of the worst. Sarsour outdoes her in every way that counts: woman, feminist, Muslim (which somehow de-whites her—but Sarsour is every bit as white as I am, I can assure you), and white-man-hater, as well as Jew-hater. A veritable cornucopia of intersectional points on Sarsour’s end.

You think I’m being facetious? I am not. The only question here in the Democratic Party is (in the immortal words of Humpty Dumpty, about something a bit different) who is to be master—that’s all—the new radicals or the old guard? The Jews are, as usual, just the canaries in the mine.

Marrying your soulmate

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve already confessed that I watch the TV show “The Bachelor.”

Some of you—all of you?—may ridicule me for this, but for me the show has a great combination of factors. It entertainingly takes my mind off heavier things. It’s got beautiful travel locations, and the people aren’t exactly hard on the eyes, either. The directors and/or producers and/or editors are very skilled at quick cutting (sometimes even witty quick cutting), and also at creating a certain amount of tension and suspense. The show has its traditions and conventions—including, for some reason, a near-complete confusion about the use of “I” and “me” when employed in phrases such as “him and me” or “she and I”—phrases almost universally rendered on the show as some hybrid form such as “him and I” or “she and me.”

And the show has drama. You may think it’s false drama, but it’s not all false. Plenty of marriages have emerged from the show, which is surprising considering the incredible artificiality of its setup situation, and the obvious opportunities for jealousy that arise when the show airs and the chosen mate-to-be watches all that footage of his or her significant other passionately kissing a host of different people.

But I digress.

This week The Bachelor featured The Most Dramatic Episode Ever (fans of the show will get what I mean). So, why am I bringing it up, considering that I assume that most of you don’t watch it and probably actively disdain it, if you think about it at all? Because an issue that arose amidst last night’s drama—the issue that sparked the drama, actually—is one that I’ve often wondered about: do marriages that are built on the idea that the couple are soulmates who fell in love at first sight (or almost first sight), and who never had any doubt that they were made for each other, do better than marriages that result from relationships that began more slowly and perhaps even hesitantly? Is that kind of strong and immediate knowledge of the other person’s rightness necessary for a good and lasting marriage? Does it correlate generally with a better marriage than a situation in which love grows slowly, or does the difference not matter, or is the latter situation actually better long-term than the former?

In last night’s episode, Bachelor fans (and the Bachelor himself) were faced with a contestant who sent herself home because, although she was starting to “fall in love” with the Bachelor, she wasn’t “in love” with him, and she wanted a love like her parents had—in which they fell in love instantaneously and never have had a moment’s doubt since.

I contend that if that what she’s holding out for, she risks being alone for the rest of her life. Not because such a relationship isn’t extremely desirable, and not because it’s impossible that it can happen just that way. I think it is both desirable and possible. The question is: how likely is it? Do you give up something rather good in order to wait for it? Is the perfect the enemy of the good?

Just now I did some Googling to find out whether people who begin marriage with that situation of soulmate-certainty end up with happier and more stable marriages over time, and also just how common that initial state of affairs is. So far I haven’t found research on the topic, which surprises me. I haven’t looked all that long, so perhaps you can locate something.

And of course, feel free to opine on the topic in general.

[NOTE: For what it’s worth, I fell in love at first sight many and many a moon ago, and I married that person although I already knew there would be problems. The bond was just that powerful. And we stayed together for many many years because of the strength of that bond, and yet ended up divorced.]