My Guilty Verdict of Identity Political Sins

 

I awakened this morning realizing the horrid truth that I am an affront to identity political fears. Of all my sins, probably my most egregious is that I am a male. Not just male but also heterosexual. Well, I may as well admit to my further crimes, I am white as well. At least I do not fit the final box on the White, Male, Heterosexual privilege chart, I am not a true WASP as I am not Protestant. But as it turns out, I may be in an even worse category; I am a Jew, and not just a Jew but a Zionist and conservative Jew. I may as well admit it as it has cost me dearly in the past making me a pariah in more than one Synagogue across the fruited plains and both coasts as well. But I am even worse than the run of the mill White, Male, Heterosexual, Conservative, Religious and pro-Israel individual, I am proud of my guilt because I know that there is no real guilt to be had. The only true sin I have committed is not having any difficulty owning up to my presumed guilt and will gladly profess my preferences before my accusers. Of course this simply infuriates them further as they only gain advantage when people like me act ashamed and defensive to their accusations. Me, I simply revel in them and laughingly watch as those who would greedily stand pointing out my guilt over my groveling and writhing body on my face and begging forgiveness as they haughtily instruct me that I must confess my sins. They cannot utilize someone who refuses to beg and instead stands proudly before them stating that sure I am exactly what you accuse me of being, so what! That is the wrong stance and they are used to people that apologize for their sins, not reveling in them and using the identities as a badge of honor that it should be and not a sash of shame. I will not eat humble pie nor will I claim to be sorry for my accomplishments as I earned each and every one and none were simply given to me because of my so-called privilege.

 

You see I refuse to play by the rulebook of Identity Politics. This book states that in order to win every argument one only need accuse the other side of committing some unforgivable sin. The person is white or male or heterosexual or conservative or belongs to any group which can be cast as a majority, well, except being male as men are actually a minority. Their rules are to hit any sensitive spot where they can accuse you of being one of the deadly privileged kinds of personhood and if no prime example exists, then they just throw accusations until they hit a nerve. The accusations start with the obvious but let us say their adversary is someone such as Star Parker who is an American syndicated columnist, Republican politician, conservative political activist, author and very attractive (see below). Her disqualifying identity is that she is famous and even more unapologetic than I. They would strike her for being a known conservative and a Republican and those would be the last words they manage before she would tear them apart piece by piece. That is a side effect of proud and informed conservatives; we usually are not at a loss for words. But even those of us who are capable of giving as good as we get, if not better, is that we are defenseless against the current dilemma, the massive attacks such as are showing at Republican politicians’ town hall meetings.

 

Star Parker

 

Protesters exploded in anger after a chaplain prayed in the name of Jesus at a town hall meeting in Louisiana hosted by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy. They did just as decent, or should we say indecent, a job heckling at a decorated Viet Nam veteran when he attempted to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The hecklers shouted things such as, “Pray on your own time. This is our time,” and “Amen. Let’s get on with it,” while others insisted, “Separation of church and state” and so on and so forth. Chaplain Sprague told the media, “I’ve never been shouted down throughout a time of prayer like that,” adding “I’ve never been in a situation like that. It’s sad there wasn’t honor and respect for God.” Cassidy said in remarks reported by the Times-Picayune, “Wow, they booed the name of Jesus.” Some mentioned that they were suspicious as to the origin of these disrupters as they claimed people from their area would never have acted in such a manner. Our sense was it had been noted that there were numerous vehicles which arrived early with out of state license plates which we found to be suspicious explaining why the event had been hijacked with some of the locals betting that the disrupters were likely paid for their disruptive and disgusting performances. Their providers likely should be happy as it appears they got their money’s worth.

 

 

This has been the recent explosion across the width and breadth of the United States at numerous conservative town hall meetings held by Republicans. These have been in concert with the events we spoke of in our article from yesterday titled, “The Left and Their Dream with the Shadow Government” where there have been concerted rioting taking place in major liberal cities and college campuses with many locations security personnel and police instructed to stand back and allow the “demonstrators” space to express themselves. In an event not too long ago where Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to give a performance or something at the University of California Berkley Campus where because he was perceived as a conservative speaker, he is more libertarian than conservative, there was a riot staged with the campus police instructed not to interfere resulting in over one-hundred-thousand-dollars damages to the campus before everything calmed. He was denied speaking so their actions were rewarded and this will serve Berkley, the birthplace back in the 1960’s of free speech, poorly and probably just serve to encourage a much larger disruption the next time anybody considered controversial is invited by anybody to appear.

 

All of these actions have been far from amusing and have served to reinforce that my making Aliyah was the correct action even though my doing so had nothing to do with American political scene, it was the result of a promise made to myself when I was quite young, nine to be exact. My wife probably would have preferred my informing her of this little item before we were married and the look on her face when I announced we were moving to Israel one evening in passing as if it was simply another casual remark. Her reaction was less than casual and in the end we made the trip and it has made us both quite happy to be here. She still holds dearly to her Americanism and the politics are a sort of interest though she does not dwell politics quite as I do. She spends more time socializing and having events with other ladies and groups, often dragging me along (well, not always dragging as I do enjoy many events and am going to pay for admitting this). Perhaps we can take less of a panicked look at events in the United States, at least far more relaxed than our friends still back there, especially those residing near and about the nation’s capital. That space allows for a more unattached review where things do not strike us as if it were right outside. For that we have our own set of political and other possibilities which take center stage over the events in America, as they should. Still, we at BTC still need to stay up to date on events back in the United States in order to write on them, so we still know and react to events, just do not need to worry if the demonstrations will be coming down our street or block our way to the store or wherever. As stated, for that we have our own difficulties from time to time.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Senator McCain, the Media Moderate Republican Leader?

 

That is the favorite phrase we seem to read whenever the media is about to attack some Republican for some treachery or perceived misdeed. They have been appearing repeatedly in articles when there is a need for a quote of a Republican questioning, disagreeing, criticizing, decrying, denouncing or in some other way disgracing President Trump or those in his administration. Often the article will then point out how President Donald Trump is not a normative Republican or has often contributed to Democrat candidates or some other action which apparently should disqualify him from support by the entirety of the Republican Party. Such articles often then explain that obviously President Trump running for President as a Republican, a false Republican, but a Republican just the same, must be opposed by the Democrats and their final conclusion is always that President Trump must be opposed by everybody because he has forsaken both parties and is a disruptive influence on American politics. What these articles appear to have missed is that the recent political season has been a revolt against politics as usual. The first, and until Trump, the biggest and most obvious sign was the Brexit vote. The European Union was campaigning against any move by the British to leave their ranks and Prime Minister Cameron even went so far as to threaten to resign should the BREXIT vote remove Britain from the European Union. Well, the people were, according to almost every poll, predicted to vote to remain by a small margin and the result was more definitive than predicted but was in favor of leaving. The British are taking a long and winding approach to leaving presumably in order to allow time for reconsideration which is not likely coming. The good news is that Cameron did resign as threatened, or promised depending on your viewpoint, and the British have a Prime Minister who presumably has their confidence as she is in favor of withdrawing from the European Union even if slowly. Then there were rumors of the European right wing parties gaining strength, especially the nationalist parties, and that it was expected that the German elections would replace Chancellor Angela Merkel who was likely to lose and then that French President François Hollande announced he would not seek reelection. Donald Trump winning as President of the United States was just the crowning exclamation point on the dearth of the liberal west which just a few years earlier with the reelection of President Obama was looking as if they would rule for the foreseeable future.

 

Then the media was all over the prediction by Senator Chuck Schumer, the great spokesperson of the Democrat left, where he prognosticated the divorce between the Republican Party, or at least those Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and President Trump. His claim was that in four months there would be a splitting between true Republicans and Trump because of his ignoring protocols and not giving them adequate measure in his appointments and his populace stances which they cannot agree with and would rub roughly making them chafe and itch so badly that they would have to disassociate from Trump to remain pure. You have to understand that the media will quote anybody claiming that Donald Trump is making enemies anywhere and with anyone, any group, any political faction or any people holding purist views. They seek anger from any quarter and will attack any crack with crowbars of skepticism trying desperately to turn the slightest crack into a chasm if there is even the remotest of possibilities it will alienate Trump from voters. You see, Donald Trump must be brought low for he is a scoundrel who has bested the media in the game of words. They are used to having all the words coming from them and that their words win in the end and that there be no way around their words. Then there came Trump and the Twitterverse where Tweets are louder than all that the media’s words can carry. His reaching the public directly and telling them exactly what he means and what they should believe about him in 140 characters or less. The media cannot fight Donald Trump even in the Twitterverse because they have never mastered brevity as their trade is wordiness and Trump has mastered cutting to the chase and directly to the chase. The media attacks with lengthy diatribes and Trump replies with 140 characters or less and they have no answer for these tweets. The people get the essence of Trump and the media is powerless to dilute his wisdom, his tweets.

 

Politics has changed and Trump along with the Internet has changed it and never again will campaigns be won by cumbersome political machines and large campaigns. Brevity has become the new watchword and that 140 characters or less limit is the initial cause with short attention spans being the final touch. Campaigns will be held just as much on YouTube as every in person appearance can also be shared with the world in real time and then returned to be viewed again and again. Donald Trump has taken politics out of the hands of the political machines and eventually this revolution could bring down the large political parties. This was the idea of a candidate back during the 2000 elections whose campaign literature and all was on the Web, the Internet, where his supporters had hoped it might catch and go viral, a phrase not even born at that time, or in its infancy. This campaign did benefit from these postings as it gained the campaign the support of a group which was already Internet savvy, the gun rights groups which found his pro-gun stance to their liking and came out solidly behind him. Unfortunately that proved not to quite be sufficient in a rather liberal area but it did give hope that perhaps there would be a future where the Internet would trump, pardon the pun, the regular media and the rest of the structured political monopolies. That day has arrived and this genie will not be put back in its box. This new paradigm scares the likes of Senator McCain, Senator Schumer, the media and the leadership of both parties. Their regular power structure has been toppled by a campaign which utilized the media as their public awareness source having the media carry their water and do their advertising for them while straightening any wrongful reporting or damaging news reports and editorials by going directly to their base online and stating that their positions and responses to accusations and rumors would be made on Twitter, YouTube or their web address. People got used to seeking information refuting news stories, or at least clarifying them, by following Donald Trump on Twitter or finding his actual campaign appearances recorded on YouTube or, as a last resort, going to his web site to find answers.

 

Fake News Galore

 

Where will the media go without political campaigns every four years depending on them carrying their water when there is a firehose called Twitter and a garden hose for a slower and more detailed watering of the public on YouTube and other locations on the Internet? That is a good question and with the way they are currently acting, that question becomes all the more pressing. The torrents of “Fake News” stories are not doing the media any favors. When the people now trust the President more than the media covering him and the President remains trending on Twitter, then this will only trend worse and worse for the media. With every story told about President Trump which he denies and then gives his version in one, two, three or so 140 characters Tweets basically asking, “Who are you going to believe, Donald Trump or the lying media?” Unfortunately for the media the majority of the citizenry, according to a poll, believe Donald Trump over the White House Press Corps, which kind of answers the previous question. The media, if it knows what is good for them and their future, should start speaking straightly and honestly even if the news is not to their liking. With every story which results in the media being shown to have told another set of lies, their credibility sinks lower and further from any ability for redemption. When people have direct access to the seats of power, the actual leaders and their real statements, the media faces a real problem. They no longer filter the information the people receive as the leaders and politicians and the people have direct access to the real stories in the words with which they were spoken. They have little actual choice but to give the truth or face obsolescence as they spiral into irrelevance. Imagine a world with no New York Times, no Wall Street Journal, no Washington Post, no CNN, no Fox News and the remainders of the mainstream media have collapsed into a pool of lies of their own making. In some way it is really a shame that it had to be Donald Trump who brought about this change and gave the media their comeuppance. But then it was always going to take somebody famous, flamboyant and somewhat irregular to bring about such change, so, in a way it needed to be somebody exactly like Donald Trump.

 

We have to face it that there are very few people in this world anything like Donald Trump. He brags like few others. Where he may not be as wealthy as he claims, he sure can play the part even if he has his doubters. He has the brashness to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Now he is deconstructing the myth of the inviolate media whose words are as pure unvarnished truth as he proves they are more often than not painted tapestries telling fanciful tales and yarns of myth and magic. He has challenged the evening anchors to a war of words and abbreviations and proving that his 140 characters or less are greater than their hour of comic coverage. This will be a battle of the ages and it will be amusing to witness. There is one warning we would like to impart to President Donald Trump. Whatever you do remember that it was the people who made you and should you believe too highly in yourself, they will remind you that you are very little without them and that the last thing they will accept from you is anything short of the truth. Do not for a moment believe that you are smarter or more wise than the people as their collective wisdom and ability to smell a yarn is far greater than any single person’s ability to get away with misleading them or concealing the truth from them. The people will always find out the liar in the end and they will more oft than not do it before the liar gets out of town. Tell them the truth and they will forgive the mistake and even the slightest of misconceptions, but lie and they will roast you like you can never know. Recovery from their anger is impossible and once deceived they will not be won back to your side for they are a mean mistress whose scorn will destroy the strongest of leaders. Keep the people at your side and nothing can stand against you, not even political parties because all political power arises from the people, or at least that is the theory. Trust the people if you ever hope for them to trust you. And if you could, be nicer to the media, please. OK, just kidding.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can President Trump Cure the Ills of America?

 

The United States new leader, President Donald J. Trump, promised to “Make America Great Again.” The real question should be can he cure the United States of her illness. This disease has numerous symptoms of which we will cover a few of the most threatening. The first on the list is a sinister little one which hides in plain sight. The current reproductive rate is 1.84 children per woman which is well below the 2.33 reproductive rate necessary for maintaining a nation’s population. This simply means that the United States will have fewer workers to support an aging population and this will only grow more and more serious over time. The only obvious solution is to allow for immigration, eventually massive immigration. From all expectation, any large immigration program will lead to a rebalancing of the predominant population statistics in the favor of whichever groups of foreign nations contribute to the immigration. The most readily available populations are from Central America and South America. This has been the trending for the past decades which is leading to a growing Hispanic population which is rapidly becoming the largest minority population and with time they will become the predominant population. There is a fortunate trait in that the vast majority of such immigrants hold similar religious identities and have a Judeo-Christian ethics and history which will make for a merging of the populations and not as much a shock to the culture or as much a threat for large changes in laws and outlook of the resultant population. Should the United States instead bring in immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) there would be an inevitable confrontation between the emerging culture and the currently existing culture. If history is any indicator, an increasing Islamic minority would at some point lead to an actual confrontation which the aging Judeo-Christian community who would most definitely loses.

 

The Donald-Make America Great Again-Trump

 

This problem has been traced from demographic studies to have a direct relation to the legalization of abortion after the 1973 Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision leading to nationally recognizing a legal right for a woman to obtain an abortion. The good news is that the numbers of abortions have steadily decreased over the past few decades. The not so great news is that this has not led to any measurable increase in the reproductive rate as was expected. Demographic studies have shown that couples are waiting until later in life before getting married. This had led to the obvious postponement of starting families and, as in most cases both husband and wife are professionals with careers, they often put off having a family until even later leading to many couples having a single child , or worse, deciding not to have children at all. Societal studies have also seen a trending in millennials for their deciding to forgo marriage, children and even permanent relationships instead settling to have small groups of friends who have open partnerships or some simply leading singular lives dropping in and out of relationships never desiring to become involved in a permanent relationship. Perhaps these individuals will settle down later in life but that will likely lead to a childless relationship as they may wait until past the point of fertility. Whatever the future, the current trends indicate that the only solution to the American childlessness will be through immigration and praying that the new immigrants prove immune to the childless culture as they come from a more reproductive friendly culture.

 

Islamic immigrants would also have a higher reproductive rate than the current American culture. The one catch is that it has been found that as financial wealth of a society increases, reproductive rates plummet. This was what has struck Europe and has been given as one of the reasons the political rulers have been allowing a free import of Syrian and other MENA refugees. Whether such a program was a good idea or a potential allowing for an infiltration leading to an eventual takeover by Islamic policies is something which is still being debated. Time may settle that debate before any conclusions are forthcoming. The one certainty is that many of the existing European populations are not overly excited about the newcomers and may be voting in a whole new and opposing set of leaders as elections sweep across the continent. Should Europe start to become an Islamic based society, then that may play well for solving some of the system shock for the United States as many of the elite, and any others with sufficient means, would flee Europe for the apparent safety of the United States. Much of this future will depend on socioeconomic developments and for the existing confrontations and other dangerous situations not developing into a far broader set of conflicts leading eventually to an all-encompassing conflict. This might actually have the effect of shocking the current Western World out of its self-serving egoism and realizing that there is only a future if there exists a prodigy to which to hand over that future and that depends on having said prodigy. Having such a revelation sweep Western society would be a blessing though it would be preferable for it not to have to be impressed through some horrific conflict as such changes have been initiated in previous eras. Such conflagrations have also brought down empires which not much earlier had been considered a permanent fixture assured forever into the future. The lesson there for the United States is that nothing remains on top forever, not Rome, not the British, not the Spanish, not the Egyptians, not Alexander’s Greeks and not even China, one of the longest continuous empires still existing and asserting a presence in the modern age.

 

Another serious illness striking the United States is the political divide which has not only grown wider this century but has also grown far nastier and more toxic. This past week proved this beyond any shadow of doubt. When President Obama was first elected in 2008 there was disappointment on the Republican side but most Americans hoped for the best. Many were disappointed but still believed there was hope and President Obama was reelected. After the 2012 election there was a smattering of protests which were nonviolent and largely quiet. The media made sure they had a short self-life by largely ignoring their existence. This present Inauguration brought back the protests and cries of foul from 2000 except with far more violence and vitriol. Madonna spoke of dreaming of blowing up the White House. That was quite far overboard as that would be such a waste of the rebuild after the War of 1812 which was finally completed in 1817 and President James Monroe moved into the new and improved White House. The demonstrations were boisterous and somewhat over the top including the burning of President Trump in effigy. The problem was with the violent actors who destroyed property, attacked police, attacked injuring innocent people who were simply attending Inaugural Dances including the insulting, spitting upon and injuring of a Gold Star widow and her sister. Spirited protests and debate are one thing and destruction of property and assaulting people and police is a completely different and unacceptable form of protest and should be considered beyond the pale. People work and depend on those places for their families and futures and the destruction of their workplaces hurt innocents and since a good many of these places were in major cities, especially those in Washington D.C. where over 90% voted for Hillary Clinton, most of the people hurt by these unscrupulous acts were Hillary supporters. Whatever the presumed excuse, such violence, if left unchecked, only grows and eventually leads to the destruction of the society.

 

The other problem with the violence was that it was presumed to be in support of groups which resemble numerous fascist entities of the past such as the infamous Brownshirts which used violence in order to scare the German people into demanding the government do something, anything, just end the violence. Once the people agreed to the government assuming emergency powers giving them absolute power, the Nazis wiped out the Brownshirts replacing them with the SS who became the new enforcers. The possibility that hidden somewhere within the leftist ranks are those seeking a repeat from history, using the rabble to stir up sufficient troubles at some point in the future to takeover and put in place a dictatorial fascist governance is all too possibly the end result. This has been the manner in which virtually every democratic based government has fallen throughout history; so saying it could not happen here is a fool’s gambit. Many of the demonstrations resembled the Red Guard demonstrations at the beginning of the Communist takeover of Russia deposing the Russian Provisional Government which was democratically elected in a limited vote and was presumed to be setting up a democratic form of government when the Communists decided they didn’t need any democracy, they simply desired replacing one dictatorial government with another. Caesar also replaced a democratic republic of Rome relegating the Senate into an echo chamber until they decided to depose him old school. The assassination of Caesar did no good as all it did was immortalize his name making it the title for the reign of dictators until the fall of Rome centuries later. Obviously saying it cannot happen here is a blindness that no democracy can afford. Reportedly, American Abolitionist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips on January 28, 1852 speaking to members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society stated,

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”

 

Beyond the Cusp