Israel at War—Darker Impulses

In any number of posts over the last 3 or 4 years, I have argued that many within our culture have embraced and normalized insanity. Driven exclusively by the American Left, it began in earnest with the COVID debacle. I won't bother revisiting the authoritarian and otherwise insane policies and dictates that negatively affected the lives of children, adults and senior citizens. But that level of insanity opened the door to those on the Left who adopted another insane mantra, derived from critical race theory—systemic racism!

During the summer 0f 2020 and in the midst of pandemic insanity, a recidivist criminal and drug addict, George Floyd, was killed in an encounter with police. Unquestionably a case of police malpractice, Floyd's death was the catalyst for a series of urban riots in which arsonists burned down property in cities across the country, more than 20 people were murdered, retail establishments were looted by organized gangs of thugs, police and federal building were attacked, historic statues were toppled, and activists claimed their "rage" at Floyd's death justified all of the destruction and violence. Incredibly, the propaganda media kept telling us that the riots were "mostly peaceful." Even more incredibly, the federal public health establishment (who had banned large groups from gathering due to a pandemic) proclaimed that "racism was a public health issue" and therefore getting together to demonstrate (a.k.a., riot) was okay, but please wear a mask.

The Left's trained hamsters in the propaganda media worked hard to gaslight a concerned public, telling us that the George Floyd rioters had legitimate grievances, and their frustration under the "oppression" of "systemic racism" justified their violent and destructive acts. But many of us didn't take the bait, so a counter-story had to be created.

It isn't far-fetched to argue that the American hard-left desperately needed the J6 riot (originally called "an insurrection") to help erase the memory of the summer of leftist rage. In fact, any attempt to compare the J6 riot with the 2020 summer riots was shouted down—it was a forbidden topic. As a consequence, the memory of the summer riots faded ... but not as a lesson for the Left.

It's reasonable to contend that the communication model used for the summer riots of 2020 is analogous to the model used after the Hamas atrocities of October 7th. Even for the hard-Left, it was challenging (but in their warped worldview, not impossible) to justify the wanton slaughter of over 1200 innocent civilians or the barbarous acts that accompanied that slaughter. What were Hamas' allies on the Left to do?

The answer was to use the characterization similar to the one used to claim that the 2020 summer riots were "justified." But also to replace a set of true villains that were allies of the Left with a set of faux villains that were enemies of the Left. This was the prototype.

Fred Bauer writes:

The ugly displays of anti-Semitism that have erupted across the United States over the past month are at once the extension of the racial “reckoning” of the summer of 2020 and a profound challenge to the legitimacy of this supposed reckoning. One of the reckoning’s premises was that the urgency of injustice demanded the suspension of civic order and the norms of a liberal society. Rioters were thus permitted to torch public buildings, loot businesses, and tear down statues of “problematic” figures from the past. When the New York Times ran an op-ed by Arkansas senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to help put down violent riots, the newsroom dissolved into a struggle session that ended in the departure of multiple staffers, including editorial page editor James Bennet ...

Despite years of warnings about the importance of democratic norms and liberal democracy, the American establishment mostly blessed these efforts. Foundations poured hundreds of millions of dollars into identity-politics activist groups. Major public institutions adopted the creed of the reckoning. Even mild criticisms of ideological purges—such as the Harper’s “Letter on Justice and Open Debate”—were treated as reactionary screeds ...

Now the promissory note of the reckoning has come due. In habituating people to the idea that righteousness justifies the abrogation of individual dignity and dismissal of political pluralism, the reckoning taught lessons deeply at odds with the functioning of American democracy.

It grows ever clearer that the hunt for “microaggressions” and the impulse to expunge America’s historical figures might not be simply the products of refined sensitivity or some naive excess of care. Instead, the yearning for extraordinary measures to confront “injustice” can speak to darker impulses—to dominate, to humiliate, and to hurt.

The true cost of these tactics has become more explicit. In cities across the world, activists rip down pictures of people, including children, taken hostage by Hamas. Such actions send clear message of animosity: the sufferings of Jewish hostages should be erased. No monuments for the wrong people has become a chic sentiment in elite American spaces. Now that logic is being chillingly applied to those slain, maimed, and abducted by Hamas.

Despite draping themselves in the pseudo-moral authority that they alone associate with their warped version of "social justice," the hard-Left adopted the communication model that worked well in 2020. To counter the rather unpleasant (to them—disgusting and evil to the rest of us) reality of Hamas's atrocities, they quickly rolled out their "anti-colonialism" message, their insane contention that Israel was perpetrating a "genocide," their evil suggestion that Hamas's barbarism was somehow justified by the "oppression" that the group suffered, and that Israel, not Hamas, was to blame for the attack. All of this is insanity, but the Left's propaganda media (meaning, once again, 95% of all media) embraced it with little skepticism, and their perverted  message is delivered to the public at large.

The hard-Left are certainly the perpetrators of this filth, but they are accompanied by many more moderate leftists who remain silent, along with an even larger number of Democrats who although uncomfortable with some of the message, refuse to condemn the insanity and refute the message. 

The hard-Left, along with its silent supporters, has let their masks slip and has now publicly embraced their inherent "darker impulses"—"to dominate, to humiliate, and to hurt." They have embraced anti-Semitism as a virtue, they have aligned themselves with a murderous Islamist death cult, and they do this loudly, publicly, and proudly.

They are as despicable and they are dangerous. It's time that those who haven't been infected by their insanity say, "Enough!"