Wrapping Fish

For decades, we've been told by the very best people that the New York Times (NYT) is the pinnacle of journalism, that its reporting and opinion shape the nation, that along with the Washington Post and other legacy media outlets, it guides the nation on a moral course. No matter that the NYT (along with its left-wing counterparts) is a mendacious propaganda sheet, that its reporting is not only dishonest and strongly ideologically-biased, but that it omits important stories that don't fit the prevailing narrative and actively promotes known hoaxes that amplify the ignorance of its readers.

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And then there's the New York Post (NYP), always characterized as a blue collar tabloid that is pap for the masses. Yet over the past few years, it's the NYP that has done real reporting, broken important stories, and offer truth when the NYT offers propaganda. In a way, it's kind of funny. The newspaper of the elites is a rag, and the newspaper of the masses does actual journalism and offers opinion that might anger the Red Guard but otherwise accurately reflects the heart of our nation.

In today's NYP, the editors comment on the Biden administration's attempt to help Hamas survive. They write:

Remember: Hamas is at fault for the ongoing war. Not Israel.

The terror group could’ve ended the war months ago by returning the hostages it has instead chosen to keep.

Hamas could have avoided the war in the first place by not committing the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

The onus is not now somehow placed on Israel to simply give up a necessary battle for survival in order to appease the global left.

That Washington has joined this farce shows that the rot has fully infected the highest levels of the executive.

There’s now clearly no hope of a cure without political change in November — which means defeating Biden and the Democrats who enable him is now a moral and geostrategic necessity. 

I just hope that the many supporters of Israel, both Jews and non-Jews, remember this—along with open borders, $20 happy meals, an Afghan exit that left the Taliban (Hamas' kindred spirits) with $80 billion in armaments, billions in bribes for the Mullahs in Iran, lawfare that is both despicable and unprecedented, leftist DAs who allow violent criminals to be released on zero-cash bail, the COVID debacle that had Democrats defending the closure of schools, and a President suffering from the early stages of dementia—when they go to the polls in November.

Of course the NYT will encourage its elite readership to forget all of that and vote for the Democrats. After all, what could go wrong with a leader who will only go from bad to worse and a backup who is even worse (if that's even possible).

Someone on X once posted a meme that went like this: No self-respecting fish would allow itself to be wrapped in a page torn from the New York Times. That sums things up rather nicely.

UPDATE (03-27-2024):

Roger L. Simon provides additional insight into the Biden administration's strategy to neuter Israel's attempt to rid the world of Hamas as a fighting force and terror organization:

[I]n essence what the administration is recommending the Israelis ... allow a terror organization whose ideology has included death to all Jews, even so far as to add at one point something called “Jewish trees,” to exist alongside them. These are the same people who parade near-naked Israeli women hostages in their town squares for all to gawk at and revile.

And yet the Biden administration is now “objectively pro-Hamas,” giving them a pathway to survival.

The Biden administration is also holding rearmament over the Israelis heads, particularly in the area of the ammunition.

From here on in, it will most likely be “Israel alone.”

In thinking about the atrocious behavior of Biden's people, I've decided that calling out his Team of 1s is insufficient. Where are the voices inside the Democratic party leadership who oppose this travesty? Why is it that AOC is allowed the absurd and mendacious claim that Israel is committing "genocide" without push back from within the Democratic party? Why are Democrat congress people not expelled for promoting pro-Hamas propaganda? Why was Senate leader Chuck Schumer chartered (by Biden?) with the job of suggesting that the democratically elected PM of Israel should be removed from office with little if any push back from within the Dem party? 

The "Why" is pretty obvious. The Democrats have evolved (first slowly during the Obama years and then suddenly during the Biden era) into the anti-Israel party. They joined the hard-left base in adopting the deluded Marxist view that Israel is an "oppressor."

And for that, the Democrats MUST pay a price for their mortal vacuity on the Israel-Hamas war and their anti-Israel stance. That price should be a massive election loss in November. I hope that is exactly what happens.

Waiting ...

Like all terror attacks, the attack in Russia in which over 100 innocent civilians were murdered is a tragedy. U.S. Intelligence attributes the attack to the Islamist terror group ISIS.

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I'm waiting for the Biden administration, other world leaders, the U.N., and most of the Democratic party leadership to:

• insist that we all understand the Muslim suffering that precipitated the attack;
• demand an immediate cease fire;
• request that Russia provide food and medical assistance to the families and relatives of the ISIS terrorists;
• suggest that Russia is responsible for the attack because it did not recognize the ISIS Caliphate.

And, of course, accuse Russia of "colonizing" the Caliphate and being generally racist.

Oops ... almost forgot. Where are the faculty and students at Harvard and other Ivies? It's been 24 hours since the terror attack and yet, there aren't any demonstrations asking us all to condemn colonialist Russia and support ISIS in their struggle to establish a Caliphate.

Waiting ... waiting ...

Oh ... but making those demands of Russia—the country that suffered the terror attack—would be absurd, wouldn't it?

Inconvenient Polling

The Biden administration is really, really pissed that Israel doesn't see the wisdom in its demand that it allow Hamas to survive and prosper. Since the anonymous puppeteers who control a cognitively disabled Biden really, really need to stay in power after the elections, they need the support of the increasingly large hard-left wing of the Democratic party. 

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Unfortunately for the puppeteers, they thought that having Biden's teleprompter voice early support for Israel in their war against Hamas wouldn't offend the Left. They were dead wrong. The Democratic Left really, really doesn't like Israel—after all, they contend that the tiny democracy in a sea of hostile Arab Muslims (who want the country eradicated) is actually an "illegitimate state, composed of apartheid, oppressor, colonialist, white supremacists who are committing genocide," so who can argue?

The hard-left Dems are even more pissed than Biden's Team of 1s. Since angry leftists (are there any other kind?) might not vote in November, the anonymous puppeteers have made a hard left turn. A figurative memo has gone out to the Democratic faithful, and all kinds of passive-aggressive anti-Israel threats [1] are now emanating from prominent Democrats (think: Chuck Schumer), who like nothing better than telling us:

• how they really, really believe that 3,468,508 [2] palestinian women and children have been wantonly slaughtered by Israel because the Hamas health ministry tells them so;
• how they really, really care about palestinian suffering and demand that Israel alleviate the suffering of people who want them dead; 
• how everyday palestinians really, really want nothing other than peace 
• how palestinians really, really hate  Hamas 
• how Bibi Netanyahu is really, really bad (after all, he had the temerity to make the sainted Barack Obama look foolish all those years ago)

Of course, the Democrats tend to be fantasy thinkers, and that presents a problem when reality intervenes. The latest Palestinian Center for Policy and Research polling (Poll No. 91), dated 20 March 2024, is nicely summarized by Robert Satloff:

Hmmm.  So much for the suffering palestinians wanting nothing other than peace and really, really hating Hamas.

But when it comes to Israel vs. Hamas vs. votes-in-battleground-states, it's Israel that will get thrown under the bus. There are rumors that Biden and company will begin playing hardball with our Middle East ally in ways that will be a delight for those on the Left—hypocritical, vicious, and immoral, all at the same time.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]  The USA, back when it was led by responsible adults who had an operable moral compass, used to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. Now, Biden's Team of 1s tells us they've drafted a "cease fire" resolution, all in an effort to keep the palestinians safe and allow the death cult, Hamas, to survive and prosper. Incredible!

[2]  Ohhh ... you say this number isn't correct, that it's an exaggeration? It's no less correct than the 30,000+ number provided by Hamas that Biden and his buddies in the media keep quoting as a way to justify their concern regarding the palestinian humanitarian crisis—brought on, BTW, by the real world atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th. Every Israeli and palestinian civilian death that has occurred is on Hamas. Every. Single. One. 

Why is it, one wonders, that Biden (well, actually his puppeteers) and other prominent Democrats don't publicly demand that Hamas surrender unconditionally and return every single hostage? Easy, peasy—that would end the humanitarian crisis that the Democrats keep telling us they're really, really concerned about. They'd even get the cease fire they've been demanding as a twofer.

UPDATE:

Hugh Gurdon discusses the Democratic Party's slow, then sudden, transformation into an anti-Israel party:

... Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who called for Israelis to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accused of pursuing the war “over the best interests of Israel.”

This inspires the doubtless vain hope that Schumer won’t ever again denounce foreign interference in elections. More importantly, his speech casts light on the point at which the Democratic Party has arrived vis-à-vis Israel. Schumer is a circumstantial moralist who sees political leadership as the art of monitoring where his followers are heading and then putting himself at the head of the column. So if he is willing to undermine Israeli unity and give aid to Hamas, as his speech did, it’s because he knows his party is now that radical.

Its capture by the militant Left and its eager embrace of crackpot intersectionalism have made it constitutionally incapable of genuinely supporting our democratic, free, and, most of all, successful ally. Its true sympathies in the Levant — just as here in America — are with those whose incompetence, dishonesty, depravity, and failure class them as “oppressed," and the Left now simply sees Jews as oppressors.

The last paragraph in Gurdon's comment covers things nicely. The Left does indeed sympathize with "those whose incompetence, dishonesty, depravity, and failure class them as oppressed." Maybe that because in recent years they see themselves in the characteristics of the "victims" they admire. 

Freedom of Speech

President Harry S. Truman—a Democrat in the old-school sense of the word—had this to say about government censorship:

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

The current Democrat president, his DoJ and other deep state agencies (e.g., FBI, CIA, CDC, NIH) have adopted covert and overt strategies that are designed to "silence the voice of [their] opposition." They tell us that it's all about eliminating "dis-information" (which almost invariably turns out to be the truth) or abolishing hate speech (which is usually just speech that criticizes their positions and decisions), or that it's in the interest of public health (when what they propose is NOT in the interest of public health at all) or in "defense of democracy" (which is laughable, given that they're working hard to eliminate freedom of speech, an overriding principle of democratic governance, rather than encourage it).

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And when someone steps up in defense of free speech, he is demonized by the Democrats' trained hamsters in the media and investigated by the same government agencies that are the enemies of free speech. That someone would be the current owner of X (once known as Twitter), Elon Musk.

When Musk was interviewed by ex-CNN talking head, Don Lemon, it was a lot like Mike Tyson getting in the ring with a lobotomized Woody Allen. Lemon is a guy who thinks he's smart, when in fact, he's not very. Lemon challenged Musk on his principled stand in favor of free speech, suggesting that it was flawed because ... all the faux claims noted earlier. Here's a snippet of the conversation:

DON LEMON: We don't agree on this.

ELON MUSK: Yes, you want censorship and I don't.

DON LEMON: No, I don't want censorship.

ELON MUSK: Yes, you do.

DON LEMON: No, I want responsibility.

ELON MUSKl: I think you desperately want censorship. You want censorship so bad, you can taste it.

DON LEMON: No, that's not true. It's not true. I think that there's right and wrong.

And I think that when you have a platform that's as big as yours and as powerful as yours and as influential as yours, and you are a person of consequence to the world with what you do, that there is a certain responsibility that goes along with what you have on your platform and what you put out to the world. And I think that's important. You don't see that responsibility?

ELON MUSK: I think we have a responsibility to adhere to the law. And if people want the law changed, they should talk to their elected representative and get the law changed and then we will adhere to the law. But if you want us to go beyond the law, that is, that is us deciding to be censors. And I'm against censorship. I'm in favor of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech only is relevant when people you don't like, say things you don't like, otherwise it has no meaning.

All of this is occurring as SCOTUS is in the process of deciding a government censorship case. In her comments as part of that case, liberal SCOTUS justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, said, "'... you've got the First Amendment hamstringing the government." Did she imply that was a bad thing? I'm not a legal scholar, but as I understand it, the 1st amendment is supposed to limit the power of our government from suppressing opposing speech. The Constitution was written to protect the people—NOT the interests of the government.

The Democrats—particularly the increasingly large left-wing of the party—have an authoritarian tendency. They see every solution to the problems facing our country as a centralized and large government. Free speech threatens the authoritarians because it questions their world view, their orthodoxy, and their ideas. And for that reason, in their view it must be limited. They're wrong, but then again, they're wrong about most things.

Pyramid of Lies—Part II

In my post, entitled Pyramid of Lies, I discussed the mendacious propaganda used by anti-Israel activists and their leftist supporters. They fabricate an ahistorical record of the region and accuse Israel of "atrocities" in a largely successful effort to memory hole actual atrocities committed by the terrorist death cult, Hamas. 

Robert Garboyes provides useful insight into the process that allows Hamas and it's leftist friends, along with their thousands of media enablers, to make the propaganda work. He described things this way:

1. FABRICATION: Hamas concocts Accusation X out of lies, half-truths, and wild exaggerations;
2. AMPLIFICATION: UN, NGO, and media shills trumpet and augment Accusation X;
3. VILIFICATION: Accusation X goes viral, and outraged readers—antisemitic, gullible, or both—rage in the streets;
4. EXONERATION: Accusation X begins to fall apart as exculpatory evidence emerges;
5. PRESTIDIGITATION: As a con artist plays his shell game, Hamas issues Accusation Y to distract attention from the disintegration of Accusation X;
6. BOWDLERIZATION: As the tide of evidence rises in Israel’s favor, some news outlets quietly edit or delete the now-discredited Accusation X from their sites. Some issue half-hearted, little-read retractions. Some just leave the incendiary libels out there in perpetuity. But, with Accusation Y now dominating the news cycles, Israel’s exoneration on Accusation X is barely perceived.
7. REFABRICATION: As Accusation Y begins to crumble, Hamas gins up Accusation Z. 

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Garboyes process description is on-target and could easily be added as layers within my Pyramid of Lies. But I think his characterization of those who buy into this heinous propaganda as "anti-Semitic or gullible" is only half-accurate. 

There's little doubt that "pro-palestinan activists and the anti-Israel leftist supporters are (at their core) anti-Semitic. If they were not, you wouldn't see placards reading "from the river to the sea" advocating the extermination of Jews and their country at virtually every "pro-palestine" demonstration. You wouldn't have leftist mobs spray painting anti-Semitic slogans on Jewish businesses in New York City. Businesses, by the way, that have no relationship whatsoever with the Hamas-Israel war but are undoubtedly Jewish. Krystallnacht, anyone?

But gullible? Hardly. Deep down, anti-Israel activists know that FABRICATION is going on, but they look at that activity as a weapon of war—all the better to destroy a tiny Jewish State that exists in their midst and infuriates/humiliates them with its democracy, it's economic success, and its powerful military. 

And the Left along with its media puppets? They're not gullible—a characteristic that is far too kind and implies an innocent belief in bad information. Rather, they are fantasy thinkers who suffer from victim envy. They adopt the outright fantasy that Israel is a "colonizer" and an "oppressor" of palestinian victims. As such, they fervently believe the FABRICATION because it fits their fantasy worldview. And when reality collides with fantasy and EXONERATION occurs, they're the first to adopt REFABRICATION.

Sadly, there is no stopping this. The only way for Israel to prevail is to do what it's doing. To refuse to allow the useful idiots in the West to change its course. Ultimately, Israel must destroy the infrastructure that allows Hamas to do what it does. Even then, Jew hatred will remain strong in the Arab Crescent. 

The road forward will not be easy, but following the voices who think cease-fires and negotiation with hard men who want you dead is a formula for survival is a recipe for fools.

A Pyramid of Lies

Throughout the months of the Israel-Hamas war, I have argued that virtually all of the claims made by anti-Israel activists and their leftist allies are built on a "Pyramid of Lies." At the base of the pyramid is the canard that Jews—an indigenous population in Judea for more than 3,000 years—are somehow "colonizers" or "occupiers." One level up the pyramid of lies is the notion that palestinians are a unique culture with unique ties to the region. The label "palestinians" (lack of capitalization is purposeful) was created in the 1970s by the PLO and designed to serve as a wedge in any attempt to achieve a peaceful settlement with Israel. The palestinians are Arab Muslims with the same religion, culture, and ties to the region as the hundreds of millions of people in the Muslin Crescent. At the next level is the notion that a "palestinian state" was somehow "stolen" or "occupied" by the Jews. There has NEVER been a "palestinian state" in the region.

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There are many other layers (absurd claims of "genocide" and "apartheid" come to mind), but the cap stone of the pyramid of lies has been adopted by vast swathes of a biased media, by leftist politicians, by academics at elite universities, but ignorant students, by many Democrats in the USA, and by the Biden administration in particular—the notion that 30,000+ women and children have been wantonly killed in the Israel-Hamas war.

Norman Fenton has done a detailed analysis of the Hamas' casualty propaganda (read the whole thing) and states: 

ONE of the most bizarre aspects of the Israel-Hamas conflict has been the way the entire mainstream media accepts without question the casualty figures from Hamas (who, of course, run the ‘Palestinian Health Ministry’ in Gaza that provide the figures). This is despite the fact that it is known that Hamas massively fabricated casualty figures in previous conflicts (for example, by classifying most Hamas fighters killed as civilians and including all naturally occurring deaths during the period of the conflict).

The only justification I have seen for using figures provided by a proscribed terrorist organisation is that UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) have ‘largely corroborated’ them. Yet, as has now been proven conclusively, not only is UNRWA in Gaza essentially controlled by Hamas, but many of its members are Hamas operatives, including several who took part in the October 7 massacre.

A few days ago Hamas assured the world that exactly 30,960 Gazans have been killed since October 7. The mainstream media duly accepted this figure. Yet the same Hamas people who know this precise number of Gazans killed say they have no idea how many of the 134 Israeli hostages whom they have been holding in extremely secure locations for over five months are dead or alive. And not a single mainstream media voice questions the inconsistency in this knowledge about deaths in Gaza.

Detailed statistical analysis indicates that Hamas's claims are faked, but that hasn't stopped the media and Joe Biden (among many others) from using them as a cudgel to suggest that Israel must stop its effort to destroy the Hamas death cult. 

Two days ago, the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, served as the Biden administration's cats paw and suggested that the democratically-elected Israeli Prime minister should be removed from office because he refuses to buy into the Pyramid of Lies. Schumer is a despicable partisan hypocrite, but he is representative of a substantial percentage of the members the Democrat caucus. Like tourists who visit an actual pyramid with "oohs" and "aahs," the Democrats have become useful idiots that not only promulgate Hamas propaganda but amplify it. Disgusting.

UPDATE (03-16-2024):

With the following tweet on X, the inimitable Gad Saad provides us with additional insight into the Pyramid of Lies that lies at the core of all palestinian pronouncements:

Those on the left (including media and academia) who not only quote but amplify the NPPP lies are among the millions who are Normalizing Insanity.

Embracing Fantasy

I never bother watching the Academy Awards, although I do realize that a lot of people enjoy the spectacle. For me, spending precious time watching a collection of pampered Hollywood types indulge in a self-congratulatory celebration is just a bit much.

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Some Hollywood types are possibly just a little uneasy that they make tens of millions while the workers whose names scroll by at 60 mph at the end of a feature film make peanuts. The Glitterati seem compelled to polish their social justice bona fides on stage when they win awards. I'm told that there were more that a few of them who participated in this year's Oscars, but none quite as noteworthy as Jonathan Glazer. John Podhoretz summarizes Glazer's 17 seconds of fame by noting that it:

... provided the only memorable moment at the Oscars, after the International Feature award went to the British-Jewish Jonathan Glazer. His movie, The Zone of Interest, is literally set next door to Auschwitz and (I haven’t seen it) makes clear the horrors going on merely through the sounds that travel across the wall between the commandant’s house and the death camp.

One could say The Zone of Interest win was the Oscar way in 2024 to punch the Holocaust card, and boy did Glazer punch it. Standing aside his two producers (one of them an oligarch named Len Blavatnik), and visibly trembling with what appeared to be terror, he took out a piece of paper and read out:

"Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?"

We can, if we wish, debate the meaning of this poorly written set of sentences for a couple of seconds, or until there’s another anti-Semitic attack somewhere that is the direct result of October 7th, whichever comes first—and guess which will come first. Any way you look at it, it’s disgusting.

I don't know Glazer's politics, but I suspect he's one of millions of anti-Israel leftists who desperately need to prove to their fellow travelers a desire for 'justice in Palestine.' This allows them to draw moral equivalency between the rape, murder, mutilation, infanticide and kidnapping perpetrated by a death cult, Hamas, that is supported by 3/4 of the palestinlan population, and a declaration of war against that death cult—and by default, their supporters—in response to the atrocities committed by the death cult. It's astonishing, but hardly surprising, that Glazer is tone deaf to the irony of making a film that alludes to similar atrocities committed only 80 years ago. 

I think that Glazer is doing what many on the left are doing--playing what Will Storr has called "The Status Game." In my book, Normalizing Insanity, I write about it:

[Storr] argues that all of us have brain circuitry that might be characterized as “copy-flatter-conform.” To succeed in the status game, we need allies, and the higher the status of those allies, the better. If those allies (e.g., influencers, members of a particular follower group) believe in a fantasy idea or narrative, our “copy-flatter-conform” circuitry pushes us to emulate their beliefs. As a consequence, Storr points out that “sometimes we end up believing crazy things.”

When people normalize insanity, they actually normalize the belief in “crazy things.” Those who embrace a fantasy idea do it for a number of reasons—fear, ideology, connection with others of like mind, hysteria (driven by some motivating emotional factor) and status. 

Because Hollywood deals in fantasy every day, it's not a giant leap for Hollywood's movers and shakers to think that fantasy ideas are, in fact, reality. That why they embrace Hamas' propaganda and lies—malign fantasy is still fantasy, after all.

But believing fantasy, even malign fantasy, does not excuse anyone from exhibiting their profound ignorance of historical fact in front of millions of people. When Glazer uses the word "occupation" he does exactly that. If he were capable of shame, he might feel it now, but I'm sure he's basking in the glow of higher status bestowed by a group of Hollywood morons who have allowed their embrace of fantasy to overwhelm their recognition of this reality--if any one of them stepped foot in Hamas' Gaza, they'd be dead in less time than it took Glazer to finish his acceptance screed.

"Normalizing Insanity"—The Book is Live

My new book, Normalizing Insanity, is now live in hardcopy and e-book (Kindle) editions on Amazon. As an introduction, I've included the Preface.

To purchase the paperback edition on Amazon, click here.

To purchase the Kindle edition, click here.

Preface

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been suffering from cognitive dissonance lately. Someone in the government or the media or academia or even the entertainment industry has an idea that doesn’t make a lot of sense. It becomes a viral narrative—a story that we’re all supposed to believe. You wonder, Is that really true? “Journalists” who are supposed to speak truth to power don’t question the narrative, they confirm it almost every time as long as it comes from the right people with the right ideology. 

Social media influencers begin pushing the narrative. Researchers at universities back it up, entertainers on late night talk shows mock anyone who questions it. Finally, government agencies use the narrative as the basis for policies that are more than just crazy—they’re ineffective and sometimes, downright destructive. 

Remember a virus that visited us recently, SARS-Cov-2, a.k.a. COVID-19? Sure, you do. Remember how the government insisted that SARS-Cov-2 came from wet markets in Wuhan, China? Wet markets are places where exotic animals are sold as food, and yeah, they have been the source of viruses in the past. But right down the street from the wet market in Wuhan, there was a Virology Lab where, rumors had it, the scientists were working to genetically modify bat virus variants. A few people suggested that maybe SARS-Cov-2 was inadvertently leaked from the lab, and all hell broke out. Our public health oracles at the time told us, “No way!” The hamsters in the mainstream media jumped right in, not asking any questions about the government claim of a wet market origin, mind you, but rather questioning the sanity of the people who thought it might be a good idea to investigate.

Think of it this way. You’re visiting Hershey, PA and you walk past a very big red brick factory. There’s a distinct smell of delicious chocolate in the air. As you walk just a little way down the street, you encounter a very large puddle of chocolate—right there in the street! Is your first reaction to think someone stole a bunch of candy bars from the local Walmart, melted them in the sun and created the puddle? Maybe not. You wouldn’t have to be Willy Wonka to think the origin of the puddle had something to do with the chocolate factory.  

It turns out that the Wuhan Lab “conspiracy theorists” were right all along,  although there are bitter clingers who still insist that it all had to do over-ripe bat and pangolin filets.  

“But, but,” you might be saying, “the origin wasn’t obvious at first.” That’s true, but it became increasingly obvious as time passed, and yet, the leaders of the public health establishment and their media shills insisted that there was nothing to see at the virology lab, move on.
Of course, the SARS-Cov-2 origin story is just a single story, and if that’s all there was, well, I wouldn’t have a book to write. But the origin story is indicative of something really weird that’s happening in Western countries. Ideas pop up, and with the right push, evolve into viral narratives that somehow engage an emotional response from a large group of people who follow the story. When the follower group hits critical mass, politicians get involved and create policies that address the narrative. 

But there’s a problem. More often than not, the original idea is based on a fantasy interpretation of our world. The narrative that it precipitates is nutty, but plays to the fears, uncertainty and doubt that affects members of its follower group. And the public policies that result? Sometimes they don’t make a lot of sense.   

Just to be clear, a "fantasy idea" is a statement of belief with little connection to evidence, facts, statistics, history, or common sense. But if influencers who promote the idea describe it right, it hits an emotional chord with followers and becomes conventional wisdom for millions.
Sometimes, a fantasy idea starts with good intentions. But as it grows, the narrative around it can go off the rails, leading to absurdity. When influencers push a fantasy idea and followers adopt it as "their truth," a few things happen. The idea creates a self-reinforcing echo chamber, and becomes the center of their thinking.  

And when all that happens, the idea and its narrative evolve. The idea claims to be an undisputed truth and becomes more extreme, even apocalyptic. If you question the idea or the narrative, you’re often accused of some form of moral failure. As this happens, things can begin to spin out of control. The idea, its viral narrative, and policies derived from it move from fantasy toward insanity. And when this happens with one idea, it tends to happen with others. It becomes easier and easier to allow fantasy thinking to take over. We normalize insanity. 

I'm an engineer, not an expert in fantasy ideas or social science. But maybe it's time for an engineering perspective—one that looks at the process that is used to transform fantasy ideas into viral narratives that become public policy. One that examines various inputs that start as noise and turn into something more dangerous. In any system—and western culture is definitely a system—small faults, if not nipped in the bud, tend to spread and cause unpredictable damage. When those faults get amplified, the damage can escalate, potentially causing the whole system to fail. 

That's what I'm seeing today, but not many folks are talking about the way our society has normalized it. Even fewer are sounding the alarm that it's spreading and could be a real threat if not contained. That's why this book exists.

It really doesn't matter what issues are most important to you. It seems as if insanity is increasing across the board. After all, what rational observer would label an embryo to be used in IVF as a "person"? What serious political commentator would suggest that a cognitively disabled candidate for POTUS was 100% lucid and in charge of his administration. Yet both things happened. And worse, many in society have normalized this craziness, shrugging their shoulders as if nothing can be done. Normalizing Insanity discusses why and how this happens, and what we can do about it.

Wolfophobia

A friend related a political cartoon image she saw recently. A pack of wolves, snarling and hunched for attack are approaching a small lamb with the clear intent to devour it. The caption at the bottom of the cartoon had a single word: "Wolfophobia."

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A few days ago residents of a neighbood just outside Smith College—a bastion of leftist thought and a hotbed of anti-Israel rhetoric—reported that Mezuzahs (Jewish prayer scrolls about 4 inches long) on the front door frames of Jewish homes were stolen and swaztikas were painted in other neighborhood locations. The president of Smith College, reacting to the incident, said that the college must re-double its efforts to fight Islamophobia.

A few months ago, leftists dropped their masks and allow their anti-Israel feelings to morph into overt anti-Semitism. When even our biased media began to express a small amount of concern, the Biden administration decided to act. They created “a National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia” task force. The President’s press secretary intoned:

“For too long, Muslims in America, and those perceived to be Muslim, such as Arabs and Sikhs, have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents Moving forward, the President, Vice President, and our entire Administration will continue working to ensure every American has the freedom to live their lives in safety and without fear for how they pray, what they believe, and who they are.”

You can’t make this stuff up. A “national strategy” to combat Islamophobia is instituted not when there are overt expressions of hatred for Muslims, but when leftist protestors and Muslim activists are on the national news every night shouting anti-Semitic slogans on college campuses and in big cities across the country.

In my new Book, Normalizing Insanity (soon to be released on Amazon), I write:

Mainstream Islam (and their millions of non-Muslim sympathizers) take the position that an Islamist death cult, Hamas, is an anomaly. They argue that Islam is "the religion of peace," and it bears no culpability for the actions of a “few” psychopaths. 

But it seems as if Islam keeps generating these death cults—al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boco Haram, ISIS, the Houthis—to name just a few. More than a few of the Islam’s religious leaders are Islamists who preach Jew-hatred to tens of millions of adherents around the world. Others have threatened and attacked Christians. Many Arab Muslim countries have ejected the Jews who once lived there. They are now proudly Judenrein and still have the gall to suggest that Israel is an "apartheid" state. 

And somehow, the West is the guilty party in all of this? When it defends itself or retaliates against Islamist psychopaths [or asks inconvenient questions about mainstream Islam's actual intent], it's somehow at fault?  Islam—one of the largest demographic groups on the planet—is the "victim," and Islamophobia (today, as in 2001) is a major issue that we need to worry about? WTAF! 

The wolves smile.

 

 

An Alliance Driven by "Victim Envy"

The blogger Neo helps us to understand the fascinating—nah, wrong word, maybe disgusting or repugnant or bizarre might be better adjectives—alliance between Islamist anti-Israel activists and leftist university students and faculty at elite colleges and universities across the West. That alliance has resulted—just this past week—in violent anti-Semitic episodes at UC Berkeley, threatening walkouts at UC Santa Barbara, along with less violent but no less repulsive anti-Semitic demonstrations at many other elite bastions of progressive enlightenment. Using an idea originally proposed by Jillian Becker, Neo suggests that the alliance has formed because leftist elites suffer from "victim envy."

Artwork AI Generated

Young anti-Israel neo-Marxists who live privileged lives on tree covered campuses tell us they care deeply about groups who are suffering, but they actually envy groups that they perceive to be "victims." Victims can do no wrong. That means that the Hamas atrocities of October 7th—the rape, murder, mutilation, and kidnapped—were all justified by their victim status. The Israeli "oppressors" had it coming.

The young neo-Marxists' victim envy is amplified by the the fact that they themselves are not victims. They have access to all the latest amenities, a wide variety of vegan dishes served by chefs in gleaming cafeterias and nearby restaurants, clothing that would make anyone in the third word envious, and the moral assurance that only profound historical ignorance can foster. Egged on by Islamist activists who are happy to psychologically project on Israel their desire for another Jewish genocide, the allied students and faculty have vacated their "safe spaces" and "words are violence" memes to endorse actual mob violence and spittle-laced, anti-Semitic rhetoric. To call them despicable is being overly kind.

I know, I know, 'tell us how you really feel.'

But let's get back to the underlying cause of the alliance between these two entities—purportedly pro-palestinian activists and young neo-Marxists. The blogger Neo quotes Jillian Becker who writes about an earlier generation of leftist activists:

"None of them [young German leftists in the early 1970s] really wanted to be poor, or oppressed, or hurt, or deprived of liberty, or killed, or compelled to do manual labor. What they wanted, what they envied, was not what victims had to endure, but the supposed esteem in which victims are held, their freedom from culpability, their high moral status. To be a victim—they seemed to believe—was to be innocent. And to be innocent was almost the same as being heroic."

Neo suspects that the same is true of the neo-Marxists of today:

It is quite obvious that this applies to the current sympathy of Western leftists for Palestinians and Hamas and for other jihadi terrorists as well. As I indicated in my essays about terrorists and romanticism, the intensity of the horror terrorists perpetrate only makes their Western sympathizers regard them as all the more dedicated and long-suffering; why else but from justified rage at oppressors would people labeled as “oppressed” be so cruel? So identifying with the perpetrators who are defined as victims – and who seek to increase the number of their casualties at the hands of their more well-to-do oppressors, the Israelis/Jews, the better to become more numerous victims – seems a good way of shedding one’s own detested privilege.

In other words, the Palestinians envy the Jews the Holocaust and seek to appropriate it and convince the world that the Jews are the real Nazis vis a vis the Palestinians who are today’s Jews. Then the Western leftists buy the Palestinians’ reframing and in turn envy Palestinian victimhood and sympathize with it. It’s victim envy all the way down.

But it's also lies all the way down. Every aspect of their belief system, every accusation, every misstatement of fact, every historical misrepresentation is a baldfaced lie. But in the through-the-looking-glass world of the neo-Marxists, none of that matters. It's "their truth" driven by a warped sense of envy.

 

Water Under the Bridge

To use a very old cliché – a lot of water has gone under the bridge since I took my four-month sabbatical from this blog. There's been lots of news: 

• Google created a progressive generative AI called Gemini that is so outrageously woke that even Google apologized for its outright idiocy (the AI, not the idiocy of the team that created it). They claim Gemini's idiocy was all due to a "programming error," but that's laughably inaccurate. [1]
• Donald Trump was assessed almost half a billion dollars for overstating the value of his properties when applying for a commercial mortgage. No one lost any money and the banks that made the loan offered to work with him again. The verdict was so outrageous that it bordered on insane. 
• Joe Biden now uses index cards for just about anything he needs to say and often seems to get lost when he walks more than 30 feet—sadly, his dementia is progressing, but his doctor along with a non-trivial percentage of all Democrats insist he's as mentally fit as a much younger man. 
• Vladimir Putin, following in the long tradition of other thugs who lead countries, offed yet another of his political critics. 
• Alabama outlawed IVF, a move so stupid is boggles the mind. 
• and on and on.

 Image generated using A.I.

Oh yeah, as I predicted in the Fall of 2023, the rape, murder, mutilation, and kidnapping conducted by Hamas on October 7th have been effectively memory-holed by the leftist media (meaning basically all mainstream media), only to be replaced by continual reports of the suffering of the palestinian people as Israel responds to Hamas' atrocities. During the months before I left, I wrote a long series of posts on "Israel at War" that among other things, discussed/predicted how the West would react to Israel's right to defend itself from the Islamist death cult, Hamas.

Therefore, I'm unsurprised that the war rages on, and even less surprised that the palestinians and the millions of useful idiots on the Left have built a "Pyramid of Lies" to justify their pro-Hamas stance. Those lies help these morally vacuous groups to proudly drop their masks and openly voice virulent anti-Semitic positions that are reminiscent of 1930s Germany. The lies have helped both groups psychologically project on Israel things that the groups themselves have endorsed—e.g., genocide and apartheid. The lies have been accepted and amplified by a corrupt and ideologically biased media whose vicious and dishonest coverage of the conflict helps keep pro-Hamas mobs on the streets.

Sadly, I fully expected that the leaders throughout the West would work to allow Hamas to survive by reining in Israel's defensive war. They're trying to do that right now, using the "humanitarian crisis in Gaza" as their excuse. Of course, they fail to mention that the crisis was brought on by Hamas, not Israel. And if the crisis is really as severe as they claim, why not put pressure on the 22 Arab Muslim countries in the region to take in some of the poor suffering Gazans—to alleviate the crisis, of course.

And shocker—you never seem to hear them demand that Hamas release ALL of it kidnapped hostages RIGHT NOW as a condition for cessation of hostilities. BTW, the kidnapping is a violation of international law that they enthusiastically apply but only for Israel, never for Hamas.

Nah, the palestinians are the victims in all of this, even though Arab polling indicates that 77 percent of those same "victims" support Hamas and 3/4 would like to see Israel cease to exist ("from the river to the sea").

So four months have passed but there are few surprises.

Well, wait ... there are a couple.

• It's truly surprising to note how quickly and effectively the Left has created violent anti-Israel (pro-Hamas) protests. Where did the funding come from. Who were the organizers? Who paid for the palestinian flags and pre-printed anti-semitic signs and placards? Why did all of that begin before Israel invaded Gaza? Just asking for a friend.
• It's concerning to examine how extremists on the Left have turned college campuses into cesspools of anti-Semitism. Why did the idea of "safe-spaces" disappear? How did snowflakes transform themselves the rabid, modern-day equivalent of Hitler-Jugend.
• It's shocking to see the depths of the rot that the pro-Palestinian demonstrators view as "morality."
• It's dumbfounding to see supposedly educated faculty and students, along with far too many politicians and "artists", adopt Hamas propaganda and lies as "their truth."

All of this is a form of insanity, and maybe the most shocking thing of all is that tens of millions of otherwise decent people seem ambivalent about it.

These are all examples of the normalization of insanity in our once-great country. But that's the topic for a book-length discussion. Good thing that's what I've been doing while the water keeps flowing under the bridge. The book is coming soon! 

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The best take on Goggle's Gemini AI may have been made by Grimes—the mother of three of Elon Musk's children; She posted this on X:

I am retracting my statements about the gemini art disaster. It is in fact a masterpiece of performance art, even if unintentional. True gain-of-function art. Art as a virus: unthinking, unintentional and contagious. offensive to all, comforting to none. so totally divorced from meaning, intention, desire and humanity that it's accidentally a conceptual masterpiece. A perfect example of headless runaway bureaucracy and the worst tendencies of capitalism. An unabashed simulacra of activism. The shining star of corporate surrealism (extremely underrated genre btw)

Perfect.