Getting Things Terribly Wrong

As I wrote in my last post, it's all-of-a-sudden become fashionable among many left-leaning media outlets (that encompasses the vast majority of all major media outlets) to talk openly about the origins of COVID-19. No matter that these hypocrites were the first to label anyone who even suggested that the origins were not the "wet market" or a bat cave in China as a "conspiracy theorist" or "unhinged." No matter that social media literally censored any post that suggested that the Wuhan Virology Lab may have been the source. No matter that the Democrats circled their collective wagons to protect the Chinese Communist Party because Donald Trump has the temerity to question China's actions in the months before the virus turned into a pandemic. Nah, that was all perfectly acceptable, until it wasn't.

The NY Post was one of the conservative outlets that was censored (by Facebook) for suggesting that the origin of COVID-19 was the Wuhan Virology Lab. Sohrab Amani comments:

Is there something in the California water that makes Silicon Valley’s censorious dweebs so damned shameless?

On Wednesday, Facebook ­revised its policy of banning posts suggesting the coronavirus was man-made — because the COVID situation is, er, “evolving,” as a spokesman told Politico.

Gee, thanks. The flip-flop comes more than a year after the social-media giant banned a well-reasoned Post opinion column by China scholar Steven Mosher that speculated about a potential lab leak. Will our columnist receive an apology? Of course not. But it’s the American people who should be holding the Menlo Park ­tyrants to account.

Think about it: If you were Xi Jinping, and you wanted to deploy an information-control operation over the origins of COVID-19, you couldn’t have done better than to just let Facebook, working in conjunction with America’s bottom-feeding “fact-checking” industry, do its thing.

The Chi-Coms, after all, were held in odium in the US eye long before the first COVID cases arrived: How much more effective — and devious — to have a gazillion-dollar US tech firm shut down public inquiry into the ­virus’ origins, and that with the help of well-credentialed “experts” and “fact-checkers.”

The mainstream media are now ruled by one idologically-driven narrative after another. They have become propagandists, not journalists. Any thing, any fact, any person that challenges their narrative is to be attacked, censored, and buried in a blizzard of ridicule and criticism. Any claim—no matter how compelling will not be investigated if it runs counter to their narrative. In fact, the claim will be labelled as "debunked" and dismissed. All of that and more happened during 2020 with the Wuhan Lab story. Now we learn that the media was very, very wrong, but no one will be held to account.

But there's a story inside the story. If the media can call a reasonable claim a "conspiracy theory" or label it as "unhinged," if it can refuse to investigate, censor on a whim, attack legitimate people and hard facts, we're all in trouble. And it can.

The editors at Issue and Insights comment on the ramifications for another story that has been labeled a "conspiracy theory" or "unhinged:"  

... even as the press grudgingly admits that it horribly mishandled the Wuhan lab leak story and in the process needlessly besmirched those who brought it up,  these same outlets are playing the same game with the election fraud story. 

As with the lab leak theory, we have been told repeatedly that there is no evidence to back it up. We’re told that court cases alleging election fraud were dismissed. We’re told, as with the Wuhan lab story, that the experts all agree that there’s no truth to election fraud claims. And we’re told that anyone who suggests fraud took place in the November 2020 elections is a Trump-loving conspiracy nut.

Here’s a typical headline, this one from CNN: “Arizona, Georgia audits move forward as Republicans continue to push election fraud lies.”

And as with the lab leak story, the narrative being peddled by the press just happens to fit into their political bias. The press was happy to dismiss the Wuhan lab story because President Trump was among those suggesting it. They’re happy to dismiss any claims of election fraud for the same reason.

Never mind that, as with the lab leak story, there is reason to doubt the media’s chosen narrative. There’s no question that strange things were happening on election night. There is no doubt that the Democrats’ push for universal mail-in balloting made fraud easier to commit. There are reasons to doubt several of the official election counts.

A credible press would investigate such claims on their own, and even call for their own audits – as they did after the disputed Florida election in 2000 when they sent armies of reporters down to the state to conduct their own ballot recounts.

But no. The press will allow no one to make such claims without labeling them “conspiracy mongers,” or “ridiculous,” or calling any such claims “fringe theory,” “baseless,” a “myth” or any of the other pejoratives they so assuredly hurled at those mentioning the Wuhan lab. States that are prudently enacting election integrity laws are routinely demonized as trying to “restrict” or “suppress” voting to appease Trump’s warped fantasies.

Of course, the lab origin theory for COVID may in the end not pan out, just election audits might not turn up evidence of massive fraud. But what we are seeing more and more is what happens when the press decides that its job isn’t to report the news but to push a biased and partisan narrative. They get things terribly wrong.

And in the end no one pays a price for getting "things terribly wrong," accept the general public who believe (probably naively) that getting things right is the media's job.

POSTSCRIPT:

"Getting things terribly wrong" might very well be the point for the propaganda media. The best time to investigate any allegation is immediately after the occurrence—not months or years later when evidence dissappears, records can be manipulated or "lost," witnesses "unexpectedly" cannot be found or change their stories, and memory of the event wanes among the public. 

So gaslighting or censoring questions about the event, saying it has been "debunked," refusing to do any legitimate investigation, and otherwise obfuscating the known facts protects a false narrative (pretty much the only narrative promulgated by the propaganda media), even if, after time passes, the illegitimacy of the false narrative becomes apparent.

Given that reality, it's unlikely that we'll ever get to the bottom of either the Wuhan or 2020 election stories. Enough time has now passed, and the fog of uncertainty has rolled in. The ideologues who supported the original narrative have won. The rest of us have lost.

Conspiracy Theory

In her best selling book,  The Smear, Sharyl Attikison, coined the term "controversialize" to describe how the media (following the bidding of Washington smear shops) attempts to dismiss any information that conflicts with their prevailing narrative. That's why they consistently label ideas, arguments and even hard facts as the stuff of "conspiracy theory" when those ideas, arguments and facts conflict with the propaganda they are trying to promote.  In many cases, the truth ultimately comes out, but the damage has already been done.

Way back in April of 2020, I joined many observers who suggested that the Wuhan Virology lab may have been the source of COVID-19. All of us who suggested that possibility were dismissed as "conspiracy theorists." The reason: Donald Trump had also suggested the same thing, and nothing that Trump ever said could be anything but a "lie."

Thirteen months later and our supposed experts (think: Anthony Fauci, MD) along with their media shills seem to be changing their tune. Richard Fernandez comments:

Why are Biden and the media suddenly open to the former “conspiracy theory” of a lab origin of the coronavirus pandemic. First it was never purely a conspiracy theory. From the beginning many reputable experts urged the possibility be investigated. What may be happening is the tide is turning within the bureaucratic scientific establishment. As we learn more about the virus and the so-called missing link continues to be missing it is becoming increasingly difficult to blithely accept the original MSM assurance.

What really terrified the dogs chasing the China car was not the lack of science but what to do if they caught it.

WSJ News Exclusive | Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin  Three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a U.S. intelligence report, fueling debate over Covid-19’s origin.

The virus could have been one of natural origin that was brought back to a laboratory in Wuhan—intentionally or accidentally—and escaped. 

The Biden administration has recommended to the WHO that it lead a fuller investigation into the possibility of a lab leak, backing a call by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has offered to deploy specialists. An investigation should include other laboratories in Wuhan, not just the WIV, and the team conducting it should include laboratory safety experts, according to a U.S. health official. “We should be able to look at biosafety records and interview staff members,” the official said.

Suddenly. 

You'd think that those who controversialize claims made by their opponents might learn from this and back off just a bit. Maybe other claims that run against the prevailing narrative deserve a little investigation to determine whether or not they have merit. 

Nah, it's much easier to dismiss them as "conspiracy theory" — until they aren't.

UPDATE (27 May 2021):

The editors of the Wall Street Journal report on the Biden administration's attempt to get ahead of the Left's now-failed attempt to quash the Wuhan Lab Leak story. They write:

... it was always reasonable to ask if the virus came from a nearby lab that handled dangerous viruses. On Feb. 6, 2020, Botao Xiao of the South China University of Technology posted a paper concluding the virus “probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.” But the Chinese government strictly controls research into Covid-19’s origins, and the molecular biomechanics researcher withdrew his publication.

The Communist Party then went on offense, with Beijing’s ambassador to the U.S. declaring that lab-leak theories were “absolutely crazy” and could “fan up racial discrimination, xenophobia.” After Mr. Cotton responded by calling on China to “open up now to competent international scientists,” the media chose denial: “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” (Washington Post) and “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins” ( New York Times ).The public-health clerisy also set boundaries for allowable discussion. On Feb. 19, 2020, the Lancet published a statement by scientists condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” Although some academics quietly dissented, the document was promoted as proof that the lab possibility was “debunked.”

The Lancet statement was organized by Peter Daszak, whose nonprofit has funded research at the WIV. He had a clear interest in dismissing the lab theory, which could put future research dollars at risk ...

The real scandal is almost always the attempted cover-up, and for over a year the Left and its media allies have attempted a cover-up by controversializing the Wuhan lab origins of COVID-19. They claimed that anyone who argued in its favor was a "conspiracy theorist" who promoted a "debunked" story. Odd how that attack vector is no longer used, now that Biden is president.

Ill-Informed Fools

The progressive left and their extension, the Woke, celebrate women of color (WoC). Somehow, they claim, when women of color speak "their truth," it has more relevance, more power, and has more societal impact than the truth spoken by anyone else. That's why Marxists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Talib (members of The Squad) are given such play by the left-leaning media (that would be the vast majority of all media). When these ignorant ideologues speak, the media celebrates their words (except when they're so inflammatory even the propagandists at CNN, MSNBC, the NYT or WaPo look the other way.

Over the past few weeks these WoC have promoted clearly anti-Israel, anti-Semitic tropes. That's nothing new, but taking their lead, a collection of leftist influencers across social media have picked up their narrative with pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rhetoric.

Ayann Hersi Ali comments:

Today, however, anti-Semitism is no longer confined to the fringes of society, but instead has started to leak into the mainstream. Social media has turned it into a contagion, normalising anti-Semitic tropes and attacks. Following the recent outbreak of violence in the Middle East, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found “17,000 tweets which used variations of the phrase, ‘Hitler was right’” in just one week. Likewise, anti-Semitism has ferociously spread across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. This is in large part due to a group of popular “influencers” who — along with their thousands of young, impressionable followers — use their platforms to highlight the Palestinians’ plight. No doubt they think they are fighting a just cause. What they may not realise, however, is that they are inadvertently harming Jews, including those living in the West.

I say “inadvertently” because I believe the majority of users posting infographics and memes about Israel-Palestine are simply under-educated and ill-informed. After all, one cannot explain thousands of years of history between Arabs and Israelis in a few screenshots, let alone 280 characters.

Take supermodel Bella Hadid, who, as Daniella Greenbaum Davis has pointed out, has almost four-times as many Instagram followers as there are Jews in the entire world. In response to the conflict, she joined a pro-Palestinian protest in Brooklyn, chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — an anti-Semitic slogan coined by the Palestine Liberation Organization to call for the elimination of Israel.

Until recently, it was a chant frequently associated with the likes of Hamas, a terrorist organisation whose 1988 charter explicitly called for genocide of the Jewish people. But in today’s hysterical climate, one of the West’s most famous celebrities can use it and expect applause. Indeed, when the Israeli government accused Hadid of advocating for the elimination of the Jewish state, many of her fans attempted a semantic defence, claiming that Hadid was innocently advocating for a free Palestine, without any harm to the Jews.

Ayann Hersi Ali is also a WoC, yet the left demonizes her because she threatens their narrative. Unafraid, Hersi Ali notes that it is the propagandists in the main stream media who promote the anti-Israel rhetoric of The Squad and their godfather, Bernie Sanders (And please, spare me the notion that Sanders is a Jew. His religion is marxism, his alter is a socialist America.)

When AOC has the chutzpa to condemn anti-Semitism (in a recent tweet), I honestly believe she (or those who write her tweets) are too ignorant and self-absorbed to recognize the irony. When a Islamist like Ilhan Omar makes blatantly anti-Semitic statements, she thinks her WoC force field will protect her from criticism (and she's not wrong—Dem leaders remain silent as she spews her bile).

Have you noticed that the media reports anti-Semitic incidents, but rarely attributes them to a specific group or ideology. That's becuase in the year 2021, anti-Semitism is coming from the Left, not the Right. It's being incited by the likes of The Squad and those that idolize them. It's being promoted by hard-left extremists like BLM and antifa, and it's being spoken by ill-informed fools like Bella Hadid.

Feet

I had a recent conversation with a friend from New York City who is a lifelong Democrat, blue to the core. We talked about the ongoing "escape from New York"—a phenomenon, post-Covid, that has seen New Yorkers permanently flee their city and state for places like Florida or the Carolinas. He rejected my argument that unecessary and ineffective pandemic lockdowns, closed schools, stratospheric taxes, and the ongoing anti-police policies with a resultant increase in violent crime had anything to do with the exodus.

"Look," he argued, "your weather a a major draw, particularly after we've suffered through hard winters."

"Then why," I wondered, "is the same exodus happening in California, another deep blue state." 

He said I was exaggerating.

David Keltz reports:

In 2020, 135,600 more people left the state of California than moved there, the third-largest population loss ever recorded in the Golden State and only the 12th time since 1900 that California has had a net migration loss. From July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2020, California added just 21,200 people, increasing the state’s population by 0.05 percent ...

Although the data is clear that children are not effective spreaders of the virus, [Gov. Gavin] Newsom waited until this April to push for schools to reopen for in-person learning. And though epidemiologists have concluded that outdoor transmission of the virus is likely under 1 percent or even lower, Newsom, based on no available data, decided to close all of California’s more than 420 public beaches and 280 state parks at various points in the past year. Disneyland also remained shuttered beginning in mid-March of last year and only recently reopened at the end of April. Newsom’s actions have resulted in a projected $72 billion in lost revenue for the state. Meanwhile, California continues to have the highest income tax rate in the country at 13.3 percent, which means that the taxpayers are paying the state to shut down their businesses and lock themselves in their homes.

For similar reasons, people are also fleeing New York in large numbers. Between January 1, 2020, and December 7, 2020, 3.57 million people left New York City, resulting in nearly $34 billion in lost tax revenue from residents. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has kept Broadway’s theaters shut down since March 12 of last year, and he did not allow indoor dining in restaurants until February of this year — and even then at a greatly reduced capacity. Professional sports teams, including the New York Yankees, only recently allowed fans to watch games in person, again at reduced capacity. These actions resulted in $60 billion in lost tourism revenue for New York City in 2020.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bill de Blasio kept the city’s schools closed for most of the past year, while allowing crime in the Big Apple to increase dramatically. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) reported that murders in the city rose to 462 in 2020, a 45 percent increase from 2019. The city also recorded 1,531 shootings in 2020, a 97 percent increase from 2019.

Exaggerating? Yeah ... right.

The one vote that the Democrats and their many media allies can't influence is the inalienable right to vote with your feet. Looks like that's happening in blue states like CA, NY, IL, CT, NJ and others.

Get Woke, Go Broke

For those who are not engaged in e-commerce, Shopify might sound like just another smart phone app. In reality, Shopify is one of the worlds largest e-commerce platforms, supportings millions of small and medium size businesses.

Brad Palumbo reports on a recent letter sent to its employees by Shopify CEO, Tobi Lütke. It brings a dose of reality and common sense to at business environment that has recently succumbed to the ideological dictates of woke executives, often to the detriment of the business itself. Palumbo writes:

In an age when woke politics are increasingly infecting corporate America, [Tobi Lütke] wanted to “remind everyone that we are a business,” and, “more importantly, a hugely ambitious one.”  

“We are trying to create a world class product that gives superpowers to the merchants that we are obsessed over,” Lütke wrote. “Everything Shopify does is to accomplish this, and everyone at Shopify should be able to describe how their job, through a series of direct or indirect steps, furthers this mission.”

“Shopify, like any other for-profit company, is not a family,” he continued. “The very idea is preposterous. You are born into a family. You never choose it, and they can’t un-family you. The dangers of ‘family thinking’ are that it becomes incredibly hard to let poor performers go. Shopify is a team, not a family.”

“We cannot solve every societal problem here,” Lütke warns. “Shopify’s worldview is well documented—we believe in liberal values and equality of opportunity. Sometimes we see opportunities to help nudge these causes forward. We do this because this directly helps our business and our merchants and not because of some moralistic overreach.”

The CEO reiterated his commitment to a meritocracy-based employment system, driven by efficiency, not politics.

“We will always have compassion for team members in truly difficult situations… [but] we need to remind everyone that like any other competitive (sports) team, it matters how you show up every day and contribute to the team’s success,” he wrote. “Beyond straight performance output, everyone that engages in endless Slack trolling, victimhood thinking, us-vs-them divisiveness, and zero sum thinking must be seen for the threat they are: they break teams.”

“We want to build one of the best companies in the world,” Lütke concluded. “We want everyone to have a shot at bettering their lot through entrepreneurship… when we succeed in our mission, millions of merchants do better. Millions of people find employment. We have the opportunity to make that tens and even hundreds of millions in the future.”

Shopify and every other private sector company make positive contributions to society. Each company provides jobs, not only within their walls, but by becoming a node on an economic network of suppliers and service providers. The taxes that the private sector pays fuel government services, providing benefit to those who are in need. Those same taxes pay the salaries of millions of government workers, some who do provide direct benefit to society—e.g., first responders, public health professionals, the military. Those same taxes also fuel a vast bureaucracy that has grown far too large, providing far too little direct or even indirect benefit, and ironically, often gets in the way of private sector businesses through unnecessary and burdensome regulations.

Business is capitalist. It should declare that proudly. Experience has indicated that on average, Glen Reynolds' comment about woke businesses holds true, "Get Woke, Go Broke."

 

Consequences

It's really interesting, but hardly surprising, that the Democrats' trained hamsters in the media are ignoring a big question now that violence between the palestinians and Israel has broken out in earnest. Roger Simon sets the stage:

... life in the region had been improving so dramatically for all—Arabs and Jews—while the dreaded orange-haired man was in office, and almost the moment Joe Biden replaced him, things went immediately South, like everything else. (Was Hamas waiting for this? Probably.)

Exactly why did this happen? Was it simply an unfortunate coincidence? Or did Hamas recognize that its 'big brother'—the American Left—was again in charge in Washington, DC? 

Or maybe Hamas studied the way in which Antifa rioters attacked cities across the United States (think: Seattle, or Portland, or Minneapolis). After all, the Democrats, now in charge, avoided any discussion of Antifa, and on more than a few occasions, came very close to endorsing their riotous violence. It's worth noting that relatively few Dems have aggressively criticized the launching of almost 3,000 rockets into Israel.

Or maybe it was Biden's Iran Appeasement 2.0? After all, Hamas is an Iranian proxy. Hamas recognizes that Joe (or maybe president Ron Klain) really doesn't want to piss off the Mullahs?

Or maybe it's Democrats like AOC or Ilhan Omar or other "Squad" members calling Israel an "apartheid state" and seeing no prominent Democrat disavow and condemn their ignorant and despicable statements? Where are Nancy Pelosi or Chucky Schumer on all of this? For that matter, where is Joe Biden?

Or maybe its the simple reality that Hamas and the palestinians know they have the international media on their side, reporting false palestinian claims and other manufactured fake news, all with a distinct anti-Israel tinge?

So ... yeah. It NOT a coincidence. Elections have consequences.

After providing a bit or history and a large dose of reality, Simon comes to a conclusion that many of us reached years ago. 

... there is something that can be done about Hamas.

Israel, and those of us who support her—even some liberal Jews, if they can be shaken from their morally narcissistic lethargy—can ignore public opinion for once, it’s not going to get better anyway, forget this “light unto the nations” business that no one could live up to in the first place, and go full bore on the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

No mercy, this time. Full Dresden—or enough Dresden for them to know for once you’re very serious, desperately wave the white flag and disarm the way Germany and Japan did.

If you don’t win a war, I mean really win it, as both the United States and Israel have seen to their detriments, you are going to fight it again and again and again.

To do this, Israel must ignore the empty threats of Hamas' "big brother" on the left. In the end, I doubt that will happen—and that's too bad.

UPDATE:

The editors of The Wall Street Journal discuss Iran's geopolitical goals and how the current administration is making the same mistakes that a feckless Obama administration made:

One of Iran’s obvious goals in encouraging Hamas’s rocket offensive is to blow up last year’s Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states. The accords were the best opening for Jewish-Arab peace in decades, and they created a potential united front against Iran’s designs for regional dominance.

They also removed the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the center of Middle Eastern politics and as the main obstacle to larger regional cooperation. The Palestinians were forced to consider a new reality that might cause them to rethink their refusal to accept a reasonable two-state solution. But with the Trump Administration that midwifed the Abraham Accords gone, Hamas and Iran see a chance to return to the trend of the Obama years when U.S.-Israel relations frayed and Iran was on the march.

It appears that Biden (or his left-wing puppet masters) is willing to empower Iran, destroy the best attempt at ME peace in a generation, and sell Israel down the river, just so they can make nicey-nice with the Mullahs. Their naivete and stupidity are breathtaking.

Gaza, Poor Gaza

Hamas (and its supporters in Gaza) is like a weak and stupid school yard bully wannabe who has a strong and powerful big brother to protect it when it lashes out. At first blush, you'd think that the 'big brother' is Iran, as Islamist state that provides Hamas (and Hezballah in Lebabon) with the missiles they use to randomly target Israeli population centers. But you'd be wrong.

In actuality, the 'big brother' is the collection of leftists in the West who leap to the defense of the bully wannabe, and when necessary (i.e., when Israel has had enough and is about to destroy Hamas), step in to stop the Jews, allowing Hamas to terrorize another day. Hamas knows this and can therefore rest assured that Joe Biden (maybe its actually President Ron Klain) will provide ever more aid and rebuild the destruction that the Gazans brought upon themselves.

But 'big brother' does more than impede Israel's actions, they also propagandize against the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. "Poor Gaza," the leftist media (meaning almost all media) wail, "children are dying!!" They never seem to mention that Hamas launches rockets right next door to where Gazan children live, putting their own kids directly in harm's way, nor do they mention that the Israelis warn people living in targeted buildings (that are used to hide armaments) one hour before an attack, but ... nevermind. 

The following anonymous rant, currently circulating online and attributed to an Israeli citizen, provides just a little reality to the fantasy propaganda that streams out of the Western media whenever Hamas decides to throw a tantrum. It's worth a read (progressives will be triggered but frankly, who cares?):

Gaza, poor, poor Gaza, which claimed Israel kept the vaccine from their population, that Israel starved and killed children, that Israel is a colonizer, apartheid nation....said do not send in police to Jerusalem, do not try to maintain order, or we will bomb your cities. We will bomb the whole country. Bomb a country over a legal dispute about unpaid rent from property bought (by Jews) in 1875? What?? [The Hamas rocket attacks began as a consequence of a property dispute that is currently being adjudicated in Israeli courts.]

Also, we [Israelis] pay our bills to the Israel Electric corp every month. But in poor Gaza, they don't pay theirs. Israeli citizens subsidize their power. So they can make bombs, and tunnels, to terrorize Israeli citizens. Think about that for a second. We subsidize the terror they rain down upon us.

Poor Gaza. With no food, no fuel, no power, no vaccines.

Poor Gaza, except with enough money to buy and launch 700 missiles with thousands more stockpiled for tomorrow, or the next day. (Each one is $45,000 USD so today's war cost....$31,500,000USD)

But poor Gaza, with no schools, and no new hospitals, but with resources to build advanced tunnels terror attack tunnel systems stretching miles deep into Israel. (Estimated cost: 150 million USD)

Poor Gaza, kept from developing, from air travel, from running their own country as they wish.

Well poor Gaza today sent 700 missiles at Israeli civilians, burned thousands of acres of crops and food with terror balloons filled with explosives, and launched multiple cyber attacks around the world. Oh, and targeted a civilian airport, which is now closed. Israel has one airport. We are now all stuck here together. Poor Gaza fired at an AIRPORT filled with civilian flights. On purpose.

Poor Gaza, who won't feed their children with the trucks of aid paid for and delivered by the State of Israel and her citizens, that arrive every freaking day, while claiming to the world she is starving. Instead, HAMAS leaders are billionaires and Biden just promised billions more.

Poor Gaza, where children are forced to martyr themselves for Hamas leadership who couldn't give a rat's ass if those same kids live or die.

Poor Gaza. Someone please help the damn Gazan people..We have tried for 40+ years, but their corrupt leaders, non existent desire for peace and inability to gain control of their extremist elements leaves us here.

Poor Gaza. 

Perpetual victims. Historical liars. Rabid anti-Semites. The world's most beloved terror group.

UPDATE - 1:

Michael Goodwin reinforces the key points made in this post's extract, and then writes about the Hamas' big brother wing in the United States:

Naturally, Israel’s superiority drives the left crazy, with the anti-Semitic wing of the Democratic Party calling the response inhumane and even terrorism. Rep. ­Ilhan Omar ridiculously claimed the war is unfair because Palestinians don’t have an Iron Dome.

She should have reminded ­Hamas of that before it started the rocket barrage.

Then again, the warning would have fallen on deaf ears because Hamas paints a target on its own civilians by hiding explosives in residential neighborhoods and putting rocket launchers near schools. If it spent half as much on schools, medicine and civilian infrastructure as it spends trying to kill Jews, Gaza would be far better off.

If Hamas, and the palestinians cared about being "better off," peace would have been achieved decades ago.

UPDATE - 2:

Study the photo taken in Israel a few days ago, then read this from Not the Bee:

On the right are the rockets being fired indiscriminately by Hamas terrorists at Israeli neighborhoods.

On the left are the IDF's Iron Dome interceptor missiles twirling as their insanely advanced systems try to match the trajectory of the Hamas rockets to keep them from killing innocent people.

This photo represents the clash of technologies, ideologies, and civilizations themselves. It perfectly encapsulates the struggle that's happened in Israel, not only for the past few decades, but for millennia.

And which side has the international left chosen?

It's Over?

It's a miracle! The pandemic is over!! Vaccinated people can take off their masks!!!

It appears that the Biden administration, driven by focus groups that indicate growing and widespread anger at their irrational (some would say, insane) mask mandates (not to mention school closures and lockdowns), have finally decided to follow (actual) science that has been well-known and documented for over 12 months—masks have had marginal benefit and in some cases, do more harm than good; are completely unnecessary outside; do little to protect people in large indoor spaces; are monumentally intrusive, and, I suspect, were used as a mechanism for subjugation and control by petty blue dictators at the state and city level who got off on their pandemic power. 

There's also the non-trivial problem of vaccine resistance, driven in part by the idiotic requirement that until yesterday, vaccinated people had to still wear their masks. More than a few reporters have encountered folks who have said, "If I can't take off my mask, why bother getting vaccinated?"

Steven L. Miller writes:

Just like that? Nothing about this pandemic, or the science behind it, or the vaccines that have stopped it, tells us that something changed suddenly and magically for vaccinated people yesterday. But today we can finally lose our masks, as President Biden’s CDC finally announced a full loosening of mask restrictions other than crowded indoor spaces and public transportation. Joe Biden wants you to believe that this day arrived by the good graces of science and his administration’s tireless work, but that would be incorrect. The public has been getting vaccinated since early January and we are now five months into 2021. It’s the same vaccine, yet we are supposed to buy the idea that today, May 13, 2021, will go down in history as the day the pandemic suddenly ended.

Perhaps Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci finally found Florida and Texas on a map and that is why they chose today to lift CDC mask recommendations. Or, more believably, perhaps the Biden administration found itself on the back end of its most disastrous week since taking over on January 20 and needed to apply an emergency brake as the news cycle spun out of its control. The Biden administration was faced with skyrocketing inflation, a catastrophic jobs report that shows the country sliding backwards, the news that Russian hackers shut down a pipeline which led to fuel shortages throughout most of the eastern and southern US — and just this morning, dodging questions on if the administration helped in any way facilitate a $5 million ransom payment, as well as a growing conflict between Israel and Gaza. Biden was hitting a 10 on the 1 to Jimmy Carter scale.

Those of us who live in Florida have rejected catastrophist thinking since, umm, June, 2020, now almost one year ago. Sure, the pandemic did damage, sure there was real cause for concern, but most people—not all, but most—got on with their lives. Floridians paid little attention to the CDC's Legion of Doom pronouncements and mandates throughout the second half of 2020 and throughout all of 2021, and the state bounced back—fast.

So for those of you in Blue states, burdened by unnecessary lockdowns and mandates, your masters at the CDC say it's all okay. Welcome back to the world. We're glad you've finally arrived.

Let Themselves be Killed

Interesting, isn't it, that during the past administration—you know, the one that suggested that the palestinians and their elected leaders in Hamas were nothing more than terrorists who didn't deserve American aid dollars—there was little violence or upheaval between Israel and the palestininas. Even more profound, peace began to break out in the Middle East, with sworn enemies of Israel recognizing the tiny democracy in their midst. It was an incredible achievement that the leftist media did everything possible to bury or minimize.

But with the ascension of the Biden administration and its cadres of woke, anti-Israel leftists, everything has changed. Violence has returned in the aftermath of Hamas rocket attacks on major Israeli population centers. The Arab world is upset, not at Israel, mind you, but because Biden's handlers want to make nicey-nice with Iran's Islamist regime. And of course, the now predictable Leftist "outrage" against any Israeli attempt to defend itself has returned in full flower.

In an article entitled, "Why Won't the Israelis Let Themselves be Killed?", Brendan O'Neil writes:

The judgement and treatment of Israel by a double standard is one of the most disturbing facets of global politics in the 21st century. That double standard has been glaringly evident over the past few days. Israel is now the only country on Earth that is expected to allow itself to be attacked. To sit back and do nothing as its citizens are pelted with rocks or rockets. How else do we explain so many people’s unwillingness to place the current events in any kind of context, including the context of an avowedly anti-Semitic Islamist movement – Hamas – firing hundreds of missiles into civilian areas in Israel? In this context, to rage solely against Israel, to curse its people and burn its flag because it has sent missiles to destroy Hamas’s firing positions in Gaza, is essentially to say: ‘Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?’

No other nation would be expected not to respond either to internal disarray – Hamas supporters have rioted in parts of Jerusalem and around Al-Aqsa Mosque – or to foreign attack. Imagine if the Isle of Wight was home to a movement whose founding constitution expressed loathing for all ethnic Britons and which regularly fired hundreds of missiles into Sussex, Kent, Hampshire. Wouldn’t the British military respond? Of course it would. But the woke demonisation of Israel is now so acute that Israel is expected to take the military assaults of the radical Islamists to its south. To Western activists who find the very existence of Israel abhorrent, any effort Israel makes to protect its borders or its citizens is an affront to global peace and decency. They cannot understand why Israel doesn’t hate itself as much as they hate it, and therefore will not allow itself to be punished by its righteous enemies. How dare you live?

The Left has never met a fantasy it didn't like. So the fantasy that the palestinians somehow have the right to Israeli land (they do not) or for that matter, that the palestinians are a people that has been recognized historically over the centuries (they are not) is readily embraced by Leftists. No matter that the palestinians (or for that matter, the Iranian leadership) is racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and proponents of Islamic supremacy, the Left just loves 'em. Well, maybe not, but they certainly do HATE Israel.

O'Neil continues:

Here’s the irony of anti-Israel commentary and activism in the 21st century: it has the form of anti-imperialism but the substance of imperialism. Witness how campaigners brand Israel a ‘rogue state’, borrowing from the language of modern Western imperialism. Observe how they call on the Western powers to isolate and chastise Israel and to enforce sanctions against it. Or see how, in its more extreme form, anti-Israel activism promotes a racial caricature of Israelis as bloodthirsty, as uniquely dangerous, as a very particular threat to world peace. Anti-Israel sentiment adopts the postures of 20th-century national liberation while in fact pushing an agenda of Western chauvinism that views Israel as a distinctly problematic state in need of our virtuous punishment.

There is nothing positive in contemporary Israel-bashing. In its naivety, it assists the rise of Hamas. In its arrogance it empowers the West to determine the fate of the Middle East. All of this stores up more conflict and hatred for the future.

Where Israel is concerned, the fantasy thinkers on the Left adopt "naivety," "arrogance" and hatred in a toxic brew. Their moral preening suggests ignorance, not insight. Their 'outrage' is more like a tantrum than some meaningful expression of concern. And their fantasy of 'the palestinians' as some noble group of freedom fighters crumbles when it is confronted with reality and history.

UPDATE:

As a hard leftist, Trevor Noah can't resist the anti-Israel verbal diarrhea that he and his ardent followers consider to be "deep" thinking. He indirectly asks the question: Why Won't the Israelis Let Themselves be Killed? in a quote noted in this tweet. 

Seth Mandel's rebuttal is priceless.

UPDATE-2 (5-13-2021):

In the body of this post, I implied that the current administration has made decisions and personnel appointments that have encouraged the palestinians to reintroduce violence as a negotiating tactic. Jeff Dunetz breaks down the reasons for this (read the whole thing).

Dunetz contends (correctly) that the implicit message sent to the "Triad of Israel Haters"—Iran, the palestinian authority, and Hamas—is that the Biden administration support for Israel is tepid at best. The result is violence in a region that was moving toward a new era under the past administration.

UPDATE-3 (5-14-2021):

Whenever Alexandria Ocasio Cotez speaks, idiocy, ignorance and illogic follow. As a committed socialist, AOC is predictably anti-Israel. The fact that she's wrong on the facts and wrong in her arguments never deters her juvenile babble. David Harsanyi comments:

Ocasio-Cortez, usually a font of half-baked socialist economic ideas, now regularly offers thoughts on the Israeli–Palestinian situation to her 12 million Twitter followers.

Here is one:

First of all, there are no “expulsions of Palestinians.” Six Palestinian families may be evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in a property dispute — and the Israeli supreme court has delayed a decision — over land that was seized from Jewish families by the Jordanian Army after 1948. It’s a complicated case, brought to the judicial system by private citizens and adjudicated in an independent court. The case has been litigated for nearly 50 years, through the existence of numerous Israeli governments, both left and right. Now, I realize Ocasio-Cortez has little use for independent judiciaries or private property — or history, for that matter — but cases like these are just a pretext for the Palestinian Authority, frustrated by the Abraham Accords and their own failures, to create chaos and deflect blame.

Second, the Al-Aqsa mosque was not “attacked.” Israeli police fired stun grenades and tear gas at rock-hurling rioting Palestinians, spurred by rumors of Jewish intrusions into the Muslim holy site. Palestinian leaders have relied on this ugly tactic for nearly a century — even before the idea of Palestinian state had been concocted — to gin up protests and insurgency. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the situation knows the Israeli government has absolutely no interest in controlling or taking Al Aqsa. If they did, they would never have handed administration of the site over to Muslim authorities. If they did, the Israeli military wouldn’t be rerouting Jewish marchers celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem to placate Palestinians.

Other Squad members such as Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib openly spread blood libel. If you listen to them, you’d think Israelis go around killing Palestinian children for kicks. It’s odious. They’re Jew haters, and there’s no reason to pretend otherwise.

And the Democratic leaders in response to this non-stop Jew-hatred? Crickets.

Hiroo Onada

Do you know who Hiroo Onoda was? If you're a COVID-19 catastrophist and therefore, a de facto member of the "Legion of Doom," it would be a good idea to find out. 

As a Legion of Doom member you have more than a few characteristics that conform to the following profile: 

• You've been vaccinated, but in the extreme, you refuse to leave your house, except in the most pressing of emergencies. 
• Even if you do venture out, you still wear your mask outside even after you've been vaccinated. 
• You still insist that masks MUST be worn inside, even in large, open spaces. 
• You glare at anyone who doesn't, thinking them uncaring and considerably less than woke about the ongoing dangers of the virus. 
• You ostracize the unvaccinated, needlessly afraid they they might infect you. 
• You demand that little children wear masks, even though there is not a shred of scientific evidence that justifies this cruel and unnecessary demand. 
• You still think it's a good idea to keep schools closed, disregarding the educational and psychological harm that this insane policy has inflicted.
  
• You still insist on 6-ft. social distancing, even as case counts fall and hospitalizations and deaths plummet. 
• You fixate on "variants," on India, on Brazil, on new (and absurd) claims that herd immunity can't be achieved, using that fixation to increase your fear level.
  
• You agree with Joe Biden that continuing to wear a mask after getting vaccinated is your "patriotic duty," even though study after study has demonstrated that a mask does little to stop the spread. 
• You watch CNN panic porn for two or more hours every day and worse, believe what they say. 

And above all, you convince yourself that anyone who doesn't adopt your quasi-hysterical worldview just isn't "following the science."

You are Hiroo Onada—a Japanese soldier who "fought" in the jungles of the Philippine archipelago for 29 years after World War II ended. 

Our national leaders love to characterize our efforts against the virus as a "war." It's a reasonable metaphor, I suppose. But there are many scientific reasons (and copious real-world evidence) to believe that the "war" against COVID-19 was fought by blue "generals" who didn't have a clue, who used losing strategies that were ineffective and often counter-productive. And when a few red generals took another path, the blue team became apoplectic, suggesting that death and defeat would follow. 

But it didn't. In fact, it was the blue team that suffered more losses (both human and economic) as they insisted on their fear-driven strategies.

And now as the "war" winds down, as more and more people get vaccinated, as herd immunity becomes a reality, it's rather important for doomers to remember the story of Hiroo Onoda. It's time for them to leave their self-imposed jungle and go on with their lives. 

UPDATE:

Bari Weiss provides an interested comment for the "Hiroo Onodas" among us:

    If you don’t want to go to the dinner, don’t go. Let the rest of us enjoy ourselves.

    To my mind, one of the best essays written during this fiasco of a year was by Dr. Norman Doidge, who explained in Tablet what lockdown does to us psychologically. “Lockdown bequeaths us a map,” he wrote, “in which my little home, my apartment, my room, the world inside is good and safe; but the outside, is nothing but dangerous. It begins by physically enclosing us, but ends by mentally enclosing us. We may not be paranoid (because there truly is a virus out there), but we nonetheless start living as paranoids do. Lockdown forecloses unlockdown.”

    In other words, once we are stuck inside it is very hard to unstick ourselves. I’m trying to remind myself of this truth when I find myself wanting to berate friends who, fully vaccinated, look at me with crazy eyes when I suggest coming over for dinner. PTSD might be too strong a descriptor, but it’s not so far off either.

    So try to have empathy for friends like these, who are having a hard time unlocking lockdown. But also: it’s ok to ignore their judgment and not waste a moment second-guessing having dinner with other vaccinated friends.

Personally, I'm beginning to run out of empathy. Listening to crazy talk and observing even more crazy actions tends to do that. On the other hand, it's becoming increasing easy to follow Weiss's advice and simply ignore the insanity—except when it infringes on my right to live my life.

POSTSCRIPT:

And if you're a 'normal'—concerned about the virus but NOT consumed by fear or hysteria—who has decided to eschew masks and live your life with others in public and private places? Then what? 

It's not uncommon for a member of the Legion of Doom to confront you, virtue signaling all the way, to suggest that you're being "irresponsible" or "uncaring," or that "you're not following the science" or the (now discredited) CDC guidance or whatever.

Here's how you should respond to the catastrophist:

I fully support your right to isolate yourself, to avoid public places, and to limit contact with friends and family.

But your fear and hysteria does NOT give you the right to control my life, limit my freedoms, or suggest that I am somehow less moral or caring than you. 

'Nuff said.

Corrupt and Unjust

In a lengthy article, Glen Greenwald describes how progressives in NY and MA destroyed the political prospects of their own chosen primary candidates once unsubstantiated allegations of sexual harassment were leveled against them. No matter that there was no proof, that the timing of the allegations was highly suspect, that the accusers statements were misleading—leftist groups immediately repudiated the candidates because—'believe the woman.'

This vicious and irresponsible destruction of reputation has become common among the Left and has been used repeatedly as a political weapon. That might be a consequence of their repugnant attempt to destroy Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh—an attempt that almost succeeded and likely would have had Donald Trump not shown courage (that's the correct word) in not crumbling under the onslaught of provably false allegations leveled by the Democrats and their media hamsters. Subsequent book-length investigations (e.g., here and here) indicate that the primary accuser at that time, Chris Balsey-Ford, was a liar and a political opportunist with a malevolent agenda. 

It is ironic that recent 'me too' allegations have been Democrat on Democrat. And yet, there is hypocrisy there as well. Greenwald writes:

Needless to say, when the stakes are high enough, progressives kick this framework of presumed-guilt and Believe-Women to the curb. When Joe Biden was the presumptive nominee against Donald Trump, they quickly vilified his accuser Tara Reade as a mentally unwell liar — just as they did in the 1990s to the group of women who accused Bill Clinton of various levels of sexual impropriety, including rape. When something like the presidency is at stake, female accusers of key Democratic male leaders are to be mocked and destroyed, not believed.

That is because there is no discernible principle at play. It is only about power. Why was the highly educated Christine Blasey Ford to be believed with no evidence in her accusations against Brett Kavanaugh, and why is [progressive Mayoral candidate in NYC] Stringer’s accuser, political consultant Jean Kim, to be believed, but Reade was not, even though she had more evidence of contemporaneous complaints to support her allegations?

But the far more important point is that any culture that is willing to destroy reputations and lives based on totally unproven accusations is one that is inherently corrupt and unjust. [emphasis mine] The ability to destroy someone’s life with nothing more than an uncorroborated claim voiced more than eighteen years after the alleged incident is a power with which nobody should be trusted.

True that! 

UPDATE:

Far too many people who make up "the woke" are nothing more than humorless leftist bullies who view their mission as one that roots out every person, publication or video—literally every form of communication—that they and they alone perceive as a violation of their self-defined societal norms. Their warped fixation on what they think is racism, misogyny, sexual abuse, LBGTQ-phobia, xenophobia, privilege, white supremacy, etc., etc would be amusing if it weren't so dangerous and destructive. It makes one wonder whether their fixations are actually a form of psychological  projection.

They see white supremacist "signs" in innocent hand gestures. They see sexual abuse in an innocent or inadvertent touch. They see "racism" in the words of an African American man or woman who disagrees with their ideology. They see xenophobia in rational decisions to limit illegal immigration. They see misogyny in any criticism of a woman politician's questionable leftist policies. And they work hard to cancel the person or publication that they fixate on.

Barton Swaim comments on the woke's failed attempts to cancel bestselling author Jordan Peterson. He writes:

The cancelers’ strange fixations mean that apologizing to them is folly. Mr. Peterson hasn’t apologized or disavowed any previous statement. Now there’s a rule for his next book: Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong. 

Those who have been attacked by leftist bullies should adopt that position. When you've done nothing wrong, don't apologize. Instead, call out the bullies that want to destroy you. They're easy to ridicule because their positions are often indefensible, dishonest, counter-factual, illogical, and puerile. Maybe that's why they so badly need to destroy those who oppose them. They simply can't win a honest debate—and they know it.

 

Ugliness

Some of the best thoughtful writing/commentary currently available can't be found in propaganda outlets like the NYT or WaPo. It's unavailable at tediously woke sources like The Atlantic or The New Yorker. And it certainly can't be found in Pravda-like, left-wing organs like CNN or MSNBC. Much of it has migrated to substack, where contributors on both the right and the left comment on today's culture and politics in ways that make the aforementioned media sources look like a third graders who look at the world like the uniformed children they are.

In an opinion piece, Paul Kingsnorth (subscription required) writes about the United States (and the West in general) and it's current political leadership, its dominating media, entertainment industry, academics, and even a growing number of its government bureaucrats. Why is it, he asks, that the current narrative tells us that we are "systemically racist," that "privilege" precludes any possibility for others to advance and succeed? Why is it that the woke tell us that we are irreparably broken and need an authoritarian socialist "reset" to continue as a nation? He writes:

Why is this happening and what is going on? Looked at through a wide lens, it is a deeply weird (not to mention WEIRD) phenomena. What sort of country is ashamed of itself? What people wants to be governed by a ruling class that holds it in contempt? What historical precedent is there for a lasting culture whose story-makers are embarrassed by their own ancestors? How can any culture continue into the future if it is teaching its children a deeply disturbing form of racialised self-loathing?

    Defenders of the current moment will usually respond that such accusations are hysterical. What is happening in the West, they say, is a long-overdue ‘reckoning’ with our culture’s past: the empires, the colonies, the imposition of our ways of life on the rest of the world. They’re not wrong about much of that history, however partially they tell the story. We know, or we should, that there were plenty of dark chapters in the Western past. If any culture takes to the high seas with cannons blazing and proceeds to paint half the world red (on the map and often on the ground), then at some point a reckoning will arrive. Actions have consequences. God is not mocked.

    But this is not a good enough explanation for what is now clearly a process of accelerating cultural disintegration. After all, plenty of other parts of the world – pretty much all of them in fact, humans being what they are – have dark pasts too, but you don’t see Russia’s cultural elites collapsing into spirals of performative shame over how Lenin and Stalin brutalised eastern Europe or killed millions of their own people (on the contrary, Uncle Joe is very popular there these days.) Japan’s murderous history in southeast Asia doesn’t seem to have led to a desire to dismantle its historic identity, and China is certainly not about to start apologising for the last four thousand years – count them – that it has been engaging in imperial expansion.

    No, something else is surely going on in the West, and especially in the Anglosphere, which can’t be explained purely by historical karma. Over the last few years, a new and still-coalescing ideology, which has been gathering steam in the post-modern catacombs of America for decades, has burst out onto the streets and into the studios, and is now coursing through the culture, overturning what was until recently uncontroversial or unquestioned. The energy around it is not that of the self-declared love and justice. It tastes of deconstruction, division, intolerance, hatred and rage. 

The ugly "deconstruction, division, intolerance, hatred and rage" is often masked by platitudes about "unity," fairness, and "equity," but just beneath the surface the ugliness remains. I'm not sure where this is going, but it's pretty obvious the destination won't be a good place.