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.