Friday, April 15, 2022


A consensus can be both powerful and wrong

by Alana Newhouse

In 2017, I was one of the few among my friends who didn’t attend the Women’s March. I recognized the legitimacy and even urgency of the cause, but I had concerns about the movement and its leaders. When I asked questions or noted inconsistencies, clear answers were never forthcoming. Instead, my impulse to examine and weigh evidence was suddenly considered suspect. I was sneered at, if not openly attacked: Was I against empowering women? Against the elevation of women of color? In favor of rape?

Once the answers were finally uncovered—showing the march to have been mired in financial mismanagement, to say nothing of the antisemitism espoused by its founders—some of the same people who questioned my allegiance to my own sex, or my politics, or whatever else they suspected, confessed to being shocked that they were putting money in Louis Farrakhan’s pockets while funding an organization that badly damaged the cause they meant to support.

In the summer of 2020, Jewish groups tripped over each other to issue press releases supporting Black Lives Matter—the movement, not the idea. Every Jew of goodwill agreed that nothing could be more important than adopting this slogan wholesale, painting it on walls, adding it to websites, stamping it on children’s clothing, putting it on lawn signs and, of course, writing out large checks from personal and communal accounts, immediately. The fact that the checks hadn’t been written yesterday, or years ago, was already a scandal.

When well-meaning people inside of communal life asked whether those Jewish leaders knew anything about the organization that would be cashing these checks, the questioners were reflexively branded as racist enemies of progress. I believe that many of the people who said these things sincerely felt, in the moment, like they were on the right side of history, and that those asking questions were not. But now that the truth has come to light—with one BLM organizer holding forth about how charity transparency laws make her feel unsafe—I wonder if they will ever be granted apologies.

When Tablet defended the Satmar community’s response to draconian COVID policies, including their insistence on sending their children to school or their commonsense inquiry into why one would close playgrounds—forcing people to stay indoors, often in close quarters, during an airborne pandemic—our writers were called medieval science-deniers. When people asked questions about mask mandates and vaccine passports, they were smeared as anti-vaxxers and right-wingers—even when they were obviously nothing of the sort.

In an age of uncertainty, it feels good to cast the habit of questioning aside and embrace the idea that the cautious weighing of evidence is unnecessary. Your side walks in light. The other side dwells in darkness. And indeed, there is nothing wrong with fighting racism, wherever you find it. Fighting for equal rights for people of any gender, orientation, or sexual preference is good. Promoting public policies that bring safety and security, and clear air and clean water, and needed medicine and economic opportunity to more people is a noble aim. Protecting the environment is also good. There is nothing wrong with opposing Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

What is wrong, as I now see it, is that none of this activism results in making anyone’s lives better. The Women’s March collapsed under the weight of the very sorts of problems raised by its few early skeptics. Time’s Up has been mired in one scandal after another. Barely a year and a half after garnering an Emmy, a $5 million book deal, and an army of “Cuomosexual” fans online, the former governor of New York left office in disgrace. According to New York Magazine’s Sean Campbell, Black Lives Matter spent $6 million on a mansion for its leaders. The word “science” was used to shame those who wouldn’t fall in line and boost the profit margins of large pharmaceutical companies that had been, barely minutes before, justly infamous for lying to the public and profiteering off of illnesses that they often did little to heal—and even, as in the case of America’s recent opioid epidemic, caused.

The public campaigns that utilize these virtuous slogans on social media are political tools, wielded by people who are interested in corralling the public toward a variety of unrelated ends—including their own self-enrichment. If you’re wondering whether or not your favored cause is a radical effort to help those who are genuinely in need or powerless, there’s an easy way to find out:

Ask yourself why BlackRock—a corporation making it impossible for middle-class Americans to own homes—is draping itself in the language of social justice. Ask yourself why, in fact, so many corporations now all support the same roster of causes. Ask yourself how all channels of discourse in America suddenly flow in the same direction, making local and institutional and communal distinctions that were once defining seem vanishingly trivial. Why do all universities have the same politics and curricula and trigger warnings and quotas? Why must all hospitals and schools have them too? At what point does one accept that all of these causes and crises are related, that the closeness of their relationship to each other is quite strange?

A new and decadent power center has been built, made up of the federal government and a constellation of corporations and nonprofits that operate as connected wings of the same sprawling complex. The people who control the key platforms and networks are aggregating power to themselves at the expense of everyone else. These people and the institutions they dominate are not interested in social justice, or any other kind of justice, except to the extent that they can be used as shields. They festoon their corporate headquarters with slogans about women’s rights, Black rights, and trans rights while hoovering up millions of jobs and billions of dollars that once belonged to small- and medium-sized American businesses and shipping it all to China. Through their networks of foundations and NGOs, they have emptied out America’s free press and turned most of it into a quasi-governmental political propaganda apparatus that is remarkably empty of meaningful information about how power works in America and why the quality of so many people’s lives keeps getting worse.

Different people have different words for this new monolithic reality, but everyone who isn’t either naive or craven knows that it exists. I envision it as a pyramid—one that contains the sum total of every slogan and brand name and source of prestige, acting and speaking in unison. To live in its shadow, to take one’s moral or political or social cues from the pyramid’s overseers, is not simply an act of idol worship; it’s a form of servitude.

For American Jews, our addiction to being insiders is especially dangerous at this moment, because it means siding with people who don’t like Jews very much, and in some cases actively wish us harm. But it’s more than that, for everyone: When status becomes the reward for serving those in power, who in turn reduce the rest of the population to forms of abject powerlessness, then seeking it out becomes toxic. And it’s not simply that we shouldn’t be participating in this system; it’s that we—especially those of us who care about the less fortunate, who want to see more justice in the world, who want more safety and health and prosperity for greater numbers of people—should be leading the charge out of this Egypt, helping to build the institutions and communities and companies and cultural organizations of a new and better future.

Because if there is the pyramid, there is also a space emerging outside of it—a space increasingly populated by people who want to take back their right to question, who want to experiment and quarrel and even get things wrong sometimes but to do so according to their own consciences, and who are willing to sacrifice comfort and prestige for that freedom. The people who dwell here are not part of any political faction or ideological school—or rather, they are from all of them. Indeed, the operative distinction in the near term in American politics will not be between left and right, but between insider and outsider; between those incapable of leaving their fleshpots and those who would willingly face uncertainty and risk for the chance at a better world. Between the majority that stays and is swallowed up by history, and the minority that leaves and makes the future.

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Pervasive Leftist hate of their own society

Like many of us, I am always baffled by the nihilism and self-loathing attitude towards the West that dominates our offices, dinner parties, and restaurants.

Black Lives Matter protesters can loot small businesses during the middle of a pandemic. Climate Change activists can obstruct traffic streets while holding signs advocating for socialism or communism – causes that have killed 100 million people since the Russian Revolution.

In inner-city suburbs of Australia, I’ve seen murals where the Australian flag is being shot and lit on fire.

Instead of calling these people out for openly supporting movements that have committed some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century, we celebrate them.

On the flip of a coin, when people are fighting for important things like freedom – the Canadian Trucker Blockade or the Melbourne Lockdown Protests – they are written off as far-right looneys and neo-Nazis.

The double standards are astounding. If you are on the wrong side of politics, be careful of these vicious representatives of our pseudo-collective conscience because they’ve turned virtue signalling into a blood sport.

Whenever I hear our modern-day saints – the Cardinals of the new 21st century Church – adding up the injustices and flaws in our society, I always ask them the same question I have asked several times in these very pages; ‘All objective data suggest we are fortunate enough to live in the most prosperous and inclusive society in human history. Can you name a better period to live in?’

As you could imagine, I am always met with crickets. None of these people, who have a bizarre fetish for victimhood and ostensibly solving social issues through meaningless conversation, can name any other time than now.

The jury is still out as to whether I will ever get a credible response. Though, I recently keep coming across an interesting answer worth sharing.

In retort to my question, I am repeatedly told that Vietnam’s economic boom over the past twenty years shows how socialism is superior to capitalism. Furthermore, they suggest we adopt this model to end all the problems the world is experiencing.

As the old saying goes ‘if it’s too good to be true, then it probably is’. Vietnam is not a shining beacon of hope for socialism. In fact, it’s the opposite.

According to the World Bank, ‘Vietnam’s shift from a centrally planned to a market economy has transformed the country from one of the poorest in the world into a lower middle-income country. Vietnam now is one of the most dynamic emerging countries in the East Asia region.’

The Vietnam success story started in 1986 when the government sought to liberalise their economy in 1986, under a policy known as ‘Đổi Mới’, which saw them switch to a socialist-oriented market economy.

Before the restructure, central planning and isolationism were not effective apparatuses for helping the country recover from the Vietnam War. In 1985, the GDP per capita was US$231, about 70 per cent of its population was living below the poverty line and the economy was on the brink of collapse.

Change was needed and Đổi Mới’ is widely considered a success, with the poverty rate being reduced to 58 per cent by 1993.

Thanks to this strong foundation, Vietnam underwent dramatic economic changes in the early 2000s which expanded the roles of the private sector, saw the government sell state-owned assets and a Bilateral Trade Agreement signed with the United States.

Following this, Vietnam almost immediately became one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

The World Bank reported that, ‘Between 2002 and 2020, GDP per capita increased 2.7 times, reaching almost US$2,800. Over the same period, poverty rates declined sharply from over 32 per cent in 2011 to below 2 per cent.’

In terms of infrastructure, the country went from 14 per cent having access to electricity in 1993 to 99 per cent in 2016.

Health standards also rapidly improved, ‘Infant mortality rates fell from 32.6 per 1,000 live births in 1993 to 16.7 per 1,000 in 2017. Life expectancy rose from 70.5 to 76.3 years between 1990 and 2016.’

After being considered one of the most impoverished countries on earth just 30 years ago, the World Bank says it is now on track to become a high-income nation by 2045.

Many economists credit the move towards a globally-oriented market economy for rescuing the country, showing how quickly capitalism can generate wealth, education, and a better quality of life for entire populations.

And to those who still think capitalism is soul crushing – like The Guardian who ignored all objective data in 2015 reporting ‘Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption’ – the Pew Research Centre found 95 per cent of Vietnamese people support capitalism.

This leads me to two possible conclusions. The progressive left is blinded by their pursuit of equality and cannot see the unintended consequences, or they are misanthropes who do not want humankind to prosper unless it’s through their monolithic worldview.

I hope it’s the former.

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LA’s crime surge migrates to wealthy, whiter zip codes

On March 22, in the broad daylight of a typically gorgeous day in Beverly Hills, thieves in hoodies and sunglasses took a sledgehammer to the plate glass window of Peter Sedghi’s boutique and furiously rummaged through the shards. In less than 90 seconds, the robbers stole more than $3 million worth of jewels. Two days later, in response to a wave of high-end robberies, the Los Angeles Police Department announced there would be no arrests. Instead, it cautioned Hollywood residents not to wear high-quality jewelry in public.

“Beverly Hills is one of the most affluent, safest neighborhoods in the world and now everyone is scared,” Sedghi said. “All of my clients – no one wears anything.”

Crime has risen dramatically in Los Angeles, as well as in many other major cities, since the start of the pandemic and last summer’s protests against police violence resulted in the slashing of many law enforcement budgets. News stories document rising fear across LA and crime has become the major issue in both the upcoming mayor’s election and a possible recall of the district attorney. It may not be surprising that issues of race and class are driving this concern, though they have a new twist.

Wealthy and predominantly white neighborhoods have experienced the sharpest upticks in a wide array of crimes, according to an analysis conducted for RealClearInvestigations by criminologist John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

The zip codes showing the largest increases are home to film and pop stars, including Beverly Hills, of "90210" fame, where Beyonce and Jay-Z have their West Coast house; Bel Air, of "Fresh Prince" Will Smith fame, where Jennifer Lopez now resides; and Los Feliz, where Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom share a house and where Angelina Jolie has resided since her divorce from Brad Pitt. Nearby, the U.S. Postal Service has suspended delivery to one neighborhood in Santa Monica – a town where celebrities including Tom Cruise, Christian Bale and Sandra Bullock reportedly have homes – because “multiple carriers have been subjected to assault and threats of assault.”

Lott’s analysis, which correlates census and LAPD crime statistics for the period January 2019 to January 2022, also reveals that those neighborhoods now account for much greater shares of the total number of crimes committed in Los Angeles. It shows that the richer and whiter the area, the greater the increase in both raw crime totals and percentages of total city crime. This includes a wide range of felonies, from robbery, burglary, shoplifting and car theft to aggravated assault and rape. Although poor and minority neighborhoods still experience the largest total number of crimes, including violent crimes such as murder, the shift to relatively safer neighborhoods is pronounced.

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Boris Johnson to send migrants from the Channel ‘straight to Rwanda’

Migrants crossing the English Channel to seek asylum in the UK will be flown more than 9000 kilometres to Rwanda to have their claims processed offshore.

The new policy will be part of a landmark immigration deal, to be detailed by British Home Secretary Priti Patel, under which thousands of asylum seekers will be relocated to the landlocked east African nation.

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson warns that “vile” people smugglers are “turning the Channel into a watery graveyard” with people “drowning in unseaworthy boats and suffocating in refrigerated lorries”.

Johnson will on Thursday, London time, unveil a series of measures aimed at tackling illegal immigration, including putting the military in charge of operations in the Channel from Friday.

He will also signal moves to end the practice of housing asylum seekers in expensive hotel accommodation and unveil plans for the first purpose-built reception centre in England to hold illegal arrivals.

The immigration blueprint is a key part of plans to relaunch Johnson’s premiership ahead of local elections and after hew was hit by a public backlash over “partygate”.

Patel has come under sustained pressure to cut the number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats. Already a record 4600 have crossed this year, double the 2021 figure. On Wednesday, 600 migrants reached the UK, the highest number in one day so far this year.

The Channel crisis has been blamed for exacerbating problems at airports by drawing Border Force officers away to handle it.

The plans are modelled on Australia’s offshore processing of asylum seekers in detention centres on the islands of Nauru and Manus, Papua New Guinea.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott with British Home Secretary Priti Patel in September 2020. The UK offshore plan is modelled on Australia’s Pacific solution.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott with British Home Secretary Priti Patel in September 2020. The UK offshore plan is modelled on Australia’s Pacific solution.

Alexander Downer, one of the architects of the Howard-era Pacific solution and formerly Australia’s high commissioner in London, has just been appointed by the British government to review the country’s Border Force department.

Ministers have struggled to remove illegal Channel migrants once they arrive in Britain and have been accommodating them in hotels at a cost of £3.5 million ($6 million) a day.

They believe offshore processing will act as a deterrent to migrants who think it is difficult for the UK to remove them

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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