Mirrored Madnesses, or--Both Houses, Plague On

"...sometimes I can think six impossible things before breakfast."

One of the more prevalent ironies in most political debates is the fact that a categorical position often lays the seeds of its own contrary argument. 

Sometimes this is due to the simultaneous pursuit of contrary aims.  Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry illustrated this last year, explaining that "stop-and-frisk" put liberals in a "moral bind" because it presented an opportunity to advance their vision of a "gun-free polity" through a means they "revile" as "comprehensively wrong".  

[I personally AM for stop-and-frisk; I think a gun-free polity; especially anywhere in the US, is well-nigh impossible [nor truly desirable], but I hold other positions vis-a-vis registration and restrictions that lead NRAniks and other categorical absolutists to label me as an ammophobe.  C'est la vie.]

Other times, it occurs when two advocacy movements ostensibly on the same side of the political fence make a zero-sum claim to the mantle of their movement's authenticity.  This has been occurring on the conservative side for a while; even before David Brooks' piece about "Republican Incompetence" a few weeks ago where he decried notions or "revolutions" as the antithesis of everything conservatism is supposed to stand for, former W. staffers were decrying their former boss as traitorous to conservatism.  [This doesn't even consider the bandying of the term "RINO".]

Then there's the ultimate progressive brouhaha between the radical feminists and transgender activists about what defines a woman and why either side is [and isn't] in consonance with progressive principles.  [And all this was happening before and after the Jenner saga.]

Recently, the efficacy of so-called "conversion therapy" was called into serious question with the disbanding of one prominent "ex-gay" "ministry", the legal finding that one prominent "therapy" outfit engaged in consumer fraud, and the very public distancing of two religious organizations--one Southern Baptist, the other Orthodox Jewish--from the practitioners of said "therapy", if not decrying the possibility of said "therapy" ever having any efficacy.

[What actually makes the persistence of the idea even more borderline criminal is the possibility that there are reparative therapies for victims of abuse who might have developed unwanted inclinations as a result, it probably actually existed and was efficacious before the moral wingnuts and panicked relatives latched on to "conversion", and now it's going to be lumped into that category.  However, this time the burden of proof has to be upon the practitioners of the real therapies to distinguish themselves from the "converters"; the proposed bans should go through in all states, if not on a Federal level.]

However, while I am all for bans on "conversion" "therapy", I wonder if my erstwhile progressive "allies" would feel the same about transsexual operations [especially ones designated for minors!!!].  Yes, there are differences between all these scenarios, and I almost share the progressive vitriol for religious-influenced activity turning into a horror show [which is what specifically makes "conversion therapy" particularly galling, the base assumption being that it must work because G-d wouldn't allow anyone to be born irrevocably gay].  But at the very least, not only are pro[re?]gressives guilty of hypocrisy, but they are just as guilty of the same type of categorical thinking as their theocratic opponents.

I personally can't stand either.  But I think the theocratic right will claim me faster than the regressive left.

Such is the life of a self-hating conservative.

Not Even Close

Apparently, success in politics is not predicated upon how well one performed tackling the analogy questions on the SAT's Verbal section.

In her otherwise spirited and welcome second debate performance Wednesday night, Carly Fiorina made an unfortunate and forced policy analog between the Iran Deal and the brouhaha surrounding defunding Planned Parenthood.  What makes it all the more galling is that she ostensibly reverted to using a similar series of historical and political fallacies that the Obama administration has used to proffer the JCPOA.  I doubt that Fiorina--her own personal views on abortion notwithstanding--actually believes that pro-life forces actually have a "right to deceive" to forward their policy goals, but by using a spliced--not even edited--video--as her Trump [sorry] card, she all but endorsed the tactic.

Another similar false analogy employing historical fallacies can be seen making the rounds of social media regarding the ostensible "refugee crisis" hitting Europe right now.   A few progressive outlets were comparing the "undocumented" crisis to the Holocaust last summer; now even some Jewish hand-wringers are going as far as self-flagellating over a perceived attitude that announces "I sure as hell don't want them coming here".  

In addition to the fact that I have not seen anything anywhere on the web where an indentifiable Jewish concern expresses the above sentiment [which in certain cases may not be all that morally perturbing as "open borders" advocates wish it to be], anyone and everyone should be infuriated by the need to even waste the effort to provide the requisite education in history and politics to fellow MOT's who are ostensibly steeped in both.  I accused a Facebook friend who posted the about sentiment as engaging in borderline anisemitism, one exercise in inappropriate hyperbole deserving another [social media is just more honest than the genteel backstabbing occurring in academia under the classy veneer.  Honest debate hasn't existed since at least 1968.]

However, just to make the central point that should pre-empt any more attempts at forcing the above analogy: the Jews in 1938--under the threat of annihilation because of who they were--had nowhere to go, and the world basically legally codified closing all borders to them.  Aside from the Yazidis, no one faces anything near that level of a genocidal threat.   Additionally, the international community is spending all sorts of political capital trying to make everyone else responsible, so no one is going to actually get together and make a concerted, united effort to close borders again.  But after what happened to the Jews, they--and by extension Israel--are the LAST group[s] of people who should have ANY moral responsibility to speak up, other than to say "It's YOUR problem."

Finally--there is the sordid matter of Ann Coulter's "f---ing Jews" tweet.  In truth, her antisemitic blurt is probably less dangerous than Obama and the State Dept. dogwhistling about "lobbyists" in the debates over the JCPOA, or Chief Obama TL'er Jon Stewart basically taking sides in last summer's Gaza war while pretending to be evenhanded. She also likely miscalculated about how far she could ride Donald Trump's coattails back to the mild cultural relevance she once had and lost, figuring that his anti-PC stance would "trickle down" and make her less of an outlier than she currently is.

Nevertheless, the progressive types who might cry that conservatives who don't call her out might be engaging in the same moral relativism of which they accuse their Leftist counterparts of engaging in might have a very slight prima facie point.  For about 22 seconds.

And this should be easy to rectify.

While Coulter's dogwhistle might have been unintentional [though her comments in 2007 about "perfecting Jews" by converting them all to Christianity might reveal her true mindset], it behooves Jews of all political inclinations--but especially more conservative ones--to agitate loudly enough that she becomes considered as socio-culturally toxic as Bill Cosby currently is, even if the Left seizes on a tenuous talking point that all Right-thinkers ascribe to her weltanschauung as a side-effect; she needs to be made to pay with her career, and Donald Trump must publicly and forcefully disavow any connection with her, or he needs to be made to pay a political price as well.

There are times when insane questions can be parried with sane considered answers.  There are other times when a querent needs to be forcefully embarrassed into both silence and compliance; later on, the answer can be proffered in ways that make everyone think that the truth was so obvious that whomever posed the question suffers further abject humiliation in public, and no one ever again tries to put "f---ing" and "Jews" together in a phrase.

Jews need to be respected, even by our ostensible erstwhile allies.

Parallels

I didn't watch any of the Presidential webcast Friday where he interacted with the leadership of the American Jewish community in an effort to simultaneously ostensibly allay their fears and sell the JCPOA as the best method of preventing Iran's attaining a nuclear weapon.

It has been posited in some circles that the President's unfathomable attitude toward Jews in general and the Zionist project in particular notwothstanding, it still is heartening that he has shown that he feels compelled to respond to the Jewish community's concern rather than ignoring them outright.  [Although one might also assume this was a more subtle attempt to both lecture and divide the Jewish community rather than actually mollify it.]

I'm not sure from what historical parallels these more optimistic assessments are drawn--and in the circles where I've heard them, they haven't been based at all on more "progressive" sociopolitical notions, which would almost mandate an almost lock-step support of the President.  No: they've actually emanated from communities where opposition to the JCPOA is usually vocal and almost unceasing.

Hearing this assessment recently, I was searching for historical analogs, and today two occurred to me.  While both may be strained to a point, there's enough commonality between the events surrounding the JCPOA and German President Paul von Hindenburg's appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor in 1933, and between the JCPOA and Palestine High Commissioner Herbert Samuel's appointment of Haj Amin al-Hussieni as Mufti of Jerusalem in 1920.

Hindenburg's case may be instructive, because as late at 1932, as detailed in a JTA dispatch at the time of his death two years later, "von Hindenburg sent to the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith a message in which he expressed disapproval of the limitation of Jewish rights and also of all anti-Jewish attacks. His message was in reply to a white book submitted to him by the Central Union setting out the facts regarding Nazi terroristic methods practiced against the Jews.  The Hitlerites, as well as General von Ludendorf protested von Hindenburg’s statement and later Nazi deputies in the Reichstag unleashed a vicious attack on “Der Alte,” denouncing him and describing him as “the Jewish candidate.”"  [Did he "have their back"?...]

Yet, when he needed to save his precious German Fatherland, and, having convinced himself he could control Hitler only by handing over the high office he had worked so hard to deny the future Fuhrer, von Hindenburg rewarded Hitler's gangsterism with the Chancellorship after the Nazis had suffered a downturn in the polls in the most recent election.  Once can compare this to trying to rehabilitate a certain Islamic Republic by rewarding them in advance for unverified compliance with a legally dubious agreement that subverts a sanctions regime that had been effective and has now been short-circuited.

In Samuel's case, in trying to please all factions that were engaging in a tug-of-war over the newly conquered Palestine, Samuel reverted to the previous Caliphate policy that had been the Ottoman modus operandi in appointed al-Husseini to the position of Mufti, where he proved to not only be a thorn in the side of the British colonial authorities [at least, those who weren't already sympathetic or actively furthering his murderous tendencies] but a paradigm of religiously motivated genocidal Judeophobia, particularly when he ended up in Berlin during World War II.  [Not for nothing came the remark about the High Commissioner [alternatively attributed to Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George]:  "When they circumcised Herbert Samuel, they threw away the wrong bit."]

In both of these cases, ostensibly well-meaning statesmen had concerns other than the well-being of the Jews, which, while one can always maintain may not have to be the primary concern or interest of a state, somehow always prove to be a litmus test of how a power can act against it's own interests in cases where the authorities assume that their interests and the Jews' are automatically at odds, whereas in fact the Jews' interest prove to be aligned with those of the States in question all along.  That is why--as this writer opined recently--the protests against the JCPOA must continue regardless of the result of the upcoming Congressional battle.

Postgame With The Clock Still Running, and Other Silver Linings

Even with the announcement from Rep. Maloney that she will oppose the Iran deal, the failure to overcome the veto still seems likely, and there is now the possibility that Sen. Reid will engage in a filibuster to make sure the vote against the deal that would trigger the vote never comes to pass in the first place.

But there is no reason for the opponents of the deal to stop protesting, even [or especially] after the possible veto and subsequent failure to override.  Au contraire: the pressure needs to ratcheted up more than a few notches even after Sept. 17.

One only actually needs to conjure up the spectre of the ostensibly failed Iraq War which the cabal in this White House and State Dept. wields so deftly to scare deal opponents [and supporters] and turn it on its head.  All one has to do is remind the Democrats that they once were for the war before they were against it, and they can be for this deal before they were against it as well.  [This flip flop is unlikely to happen with any GOPer.  Maybe it's in the DemNA.]

The reason that gambit might work is simple: maintaining this principled and fierce opposition to the deal even if it "passes" will put all of its supporters on notice that they will be electorally vulnerable in the next round.  In which case those who even voted to allow the deal to be implemented might work to either undermine its gifts to Iran--especially since, as a distinct non-treaty, its enforcement is shady as it is, and we already know that the WH/DOS cabal will likely already be trying to undermine any type of enforcement that makes the Mullahs uncomfortable.

Aside from making a mess of this deal, the other positive side effect is that it will completely isolate the President and force him to do everything to shore up his legacy project via executive order, which will further highlight just how the deal was cemented against the wishes of the majority of Americans.  Additionally, an implemented and failed deal can redound to the ill electoral effects of the 2016 Dem Presidential candidate, whomever s/he is, because the burden of proof cred vis-a-vis national security will always be on the Dems rather than the GOP.

Additionally, as Aaron David Miller pointed out--the reason the deal itself didn't give away more than it has was partially due to the unceasing opposition, which thankfully won't stop.  So--even though it will take 15 years to accurately gauge the possiblity--if this deal does "work", there's no reason the GOP and certain "lobbies" shouldn't have the chutzpah to take credit for making sure that it had any teeth, rather than becoming the Iran reclamation/rehabilitation project the President all but alluded to around the time of his 2009 Grovel in Cairo.

Finally, the President's singular pursuit of this deal as his legacy even if it leaves his party in tatters is of a piece with their reluctance to campaign on Obamacare in the 2014 midterms: it reveals that there is a possibility that eventually his personal agenda and his parties can be forced to diverge, and he could be compelled to sell them out for his own personal prestige.  Which hopefully can only hurt all of them across the board at the polls while he attempts to become the next Jimmy Carter.

Chuck, Here's Your "U.S. Interest"

The conventional wisdom surrounding the pending Congressional approval of the JCPOA indicates that the chances of its opponents coralling enough votes to veto depends on the efforts of one Sen. Charles Schumer.

Mssr. Schumer has indicated that his response is contingent upon that fact that "I have to do what's right for the United States first of all, and Eretz Yisroel second."

Five years ago, after I had given this administration about as much of the benefit of the doubt one possibly could vis-a-vis assuming it harbored anything but a clearly hostile attitude toward the Zionist project, I wrote the following:

"[T]he US [never mind the UN and the rest of the international community] has sat in its hands more than once while known genocides were in progress, against Jews and others.

"Should the spectre of dual loyalties [be] raised, the counter-spectre of Jew murder should be the response. The US needs to keep its business partners and the Islamist friends it seems to be chasing from engaging in the mass murder they repeatedly threaten to commit. Therefore: it is a distinct US interest to be seen as not willing to tacitly condone a second genocide, or, at the very least, the US should be forced to see that it become one: e.g., in one specific case, the US has to decide between a genocidal nuclear Iran and a possible economic crisis that would result from an Israeli peremptory strike.

"Transcendent blackmail isn’t a good way to make friends; however, the time to assume that the Jewish people haven’t been “de-friended” by this administration may be long past. The question of actual anti-semitism on the part of the President and his advisors—regardless of Jones’ and Gibbs’ behavior--is almost irrelevant: the two Presidents who arguably did the most for Jews and the Jewish state—Truman and Nixon—also arguably harbored the most anti-semitic personal sentiments of any White House occupant while serving in office. However, whether the result of transcendent blackmail or some genuine moral sense they were willing to draw the line at wholesale massacre of Jews. 

"I don’t care if this administration “likes” Israel or the Jews. But it is my right—if not duty—to remind them of the possible moral consequences of their likes/dislikes, and embarrass them into compliance."

When A Riot Is Not An Act

If you'd turned off the sound on the TV this past Monday night and just flipped back and forth between Fox and MSNBC with nothing but Buffalo Springfield in the background, you still would have known where the "battle lines bein' drawn": MSNBC--West Baltimore is justified in burning itself down, at least as much as if not more than the “space to destroy” initially granted to the “protestors” by Mayor Rawlings-Blake; Fox--so now you call in the National Guard?

In any case, the punditry from the even more doctrinaire progressives were way more inconsistent and disingenuous about the nature of the Batimore's urban spasm, calling the coverage an overreaction driven by racial bias/animus at the same time they were touting the revolutionary nature of the rioting as legitimate political expressions.  Marc Lamont Hill.  Ta-Nehisi Coates.   The “intifada” hashtag.   A facebook comment [which pretty much sums up the progressive left’s attitude]: “F*** buildings”. No matter whether there was anything—or anyone—in said buildings.

Consider that both MSNBC and Fox  focused on the burning cars and flying liquor bottles as opposed to the good citizens who may have tried to do things to quell the violence.   No one stays glued to the TV to watch the latter.  MSNBC is just as capitalist as Fox, even if they can’t admit it on the air because they’d alienate their core audience  [capitalism, again.  Oh the irony.]

Additionally, the further left again tried to compare criminal unrest perpetrated by predominantly white youths usually celebrating sports events with [usually] non-white youths committing similar crimes most often in response to more salient [if misperceived] events , in order to show that the media and wider American cultural response is to dismiss the white rioters as engaging in harmless fun while the black rioters are labeled as thugs and criminals.

Here the progressives seem to have a point.  But not really.  It's easily parried on two particular grounds.

The first is that rioting by any one at any time—because of the metastatic nature of mob violence—presents enough clear and present dangers that no matter what the motive or impetus, it needs to be met with immediate overwhelming force, deadly if necessary.   I’ve said the same thing about rock-throwers in the “occupied territories”: the nationalities of the rock throwers or the victims, or even the age of the rock-tossers, have no bearing.  You toss a rock at a moving car containing passengers, you are a clear and present danger to life and should be dispatched forthwith if need be to stop the assault.  

[In fact—and here’s where I may have to give some ground to progressives—the only reason the authorities DON’T dispatch the rioting white youths might simply be actuarial: fear of being sued if you shoot a rich kid.  Much less likely in the inner city.]

The second and more crucial point is that while both sports- and grievance-driven unrest are both wholly illegitimate, it is the second version--rioting as the de rigeuer reaction to perceived injustice--that, contra to [or even because of] the progressive tenets that declare it justified, presents the much bigger threat to public order.  

[I can hear you, doctrinaire progressives about to yell racism, so read that again:  PUBLIC order, not SOCIAL order, and it isn't me conflating the two.]  

Grievance-driven riots are far more likely to have been deliberate rather than spontaneous, evidenced by the the direct targeting of the forces of law and order and general infrastructure as opposed to victims of opportunity.  This adds an element of intent and thereby amplifies the degree of criminal responsibility.

They also tend to be more trenchant.  Ironically, it’s Baltimore's own history that bears this out: the April 1968 riots following the MLK assassinations lasted for ten days in that city.   It therefore makes sense that more draconian quasi-military responses are necessary because these deliberate riots are less likely to stop in and of themselves.  

So when it takes a Ray Lewis to tell you “This is wrong.  DEAD wrong.  Go home”…you know which riot is not an act.

"Positive Reverberations"

One of the more headscratching moments in the run-up to Bibi's congressional address yesterday was when the Man Who Couldn't Defeat George W. Bush called out Israel's PM for being "profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush", a war that then Sen. Kerry "voted for" before he "voted against" it.

Aside from the obvious pot-kettle-black implications regarding the Secretary of State's credibility on THAT score, there are other reasons why Bibi's ostensible championing of Gulf War II should actually enhance his comparative credibility regarding Iranian nukes [notwithstanding that the SOS proves to have none, so the bar is admittedly low; small steps, all].

One complaint against Bibi's then-support was that he thought removing Saddam would "have enormous positive reverberations on the region".  Actually, according to some sources, Russia had a plan in place to overthrow him, but the US tipped off Egypt, who tipped off Saddam...because of the oil angle.  But that's on W and Cheney, not Bibi.  No one really thought Saddam was a legit sovereign.  [Some Iraqis NOW think it WAS better.  But again--that has more to do with the bungled postwar approach than the prewar cheerleading].

Which brings me to my next point: Bibi's "cheerleading" probably didn't include the "greet us as liberators" blurb.  If anyone understands the cultural mindset in the region, it's Bibi.  Certainly W had no clue; Cheney might have from his work with Halliburton; and Rumsfeld's insistence of doing war on the cheap really had nothing to do with the legitimacy of removing Saddam but a lot to do with misunderstanding how to confront a hostile middle eastern culture.  But again: ALL that is on W/Cheney, NOT Bibi--and maybe even on the Dems who voted for the war under perceived political pressure in 2002 while they actually knew ahead of time HOW W/Cheney were going to war on a budget; why would Bibi have even thought they would try that?  You can lay this one at the feet of Hillary and Kerry way more than Bibi.

Finally--and this illustrates how no one in current diplomatic circles has a sense of irony when it should be an occupational sine qua non--Ahmed Chalabi, who may have been one of the driving forces in pushing W to war, also was revealed to have been as likely as not on Teheran's payroll. However--just like when the US condemned VIETNAM when they invaded Cambodia in 1979 and [ancillarily, to be sure] stopped the Khmer Rouge autogenocide--both Right and Left have so much cognitive dissonance that they can't see straight: the Right about the Iraq war [with the exceptions of  Megyn Kelly and Glenn Beck], and the current administration that is so obsessed with making this deal with Iran that they fail to see how Teheran manipluates BOTH sides of the political fence.  So really, only an outsider like Bibi can really assess Iran's threat to everyone, becuase even if he mistakenly championed W's Iraq war, it wasn't because IRAN fooled him.

Finally, the V15 group spearheading the anyone-but-Bibi effort [which Politico disingenuously terms an "Israeli grass-roots group" while even the NEW YORK TIMES clearly identifies it as a WH-linked op] claims that Bibi is "obsessed with the Iranian nuclear program."  Aside from the fact that Iranian threats of nuclaer genocide might make him a bit nervous, one could counter that the Obama Administration is similarly obsessed with the Iranian nuclear program: obsessed with giving themselves political cover for what they see as something between an inevitability and Iran's soveriegn privilege, administration protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.   In fact, since they likely believe that an Iranian hegemony would be "have enormous positive reverberations on the region", they probably also think nukes would aid the scenario.

Until the reverberations emanate from the sounds of the first Iranian nuclear test.