Herz for . . .

Stop Calling Us Idiots

I am from the Gold Coast (U.S. Census Bureau, Super-Public Use Microdata Area Region 09600). In my neighborhood, this election season has been one of alarmism and hand-wringing about the Death of Democracy/Rise of Fascism that a new Trump term would usher in.

Now that the election is over, the analysis is not “what did we miss?” Rather it is “how come these voters can't see the terrible thing that they have chosen?”

Speculation is made about why Ms. Harris lost that has nothing to do with her vision or policy. Rather it suggests we are still racist, she was “perceived as weaker,” “she started late,” racism, misogyny, the female glass ceiling, her natural allies somehow lost sight of how good she is for them, and her “loss of the culture war.”

Too many of the people here in lower Fairfield County are clear they know what is good and right in the world, and Trump is not that. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be brainwashed, at the very least is not capable of making sound judgments.

Here's the thing. If you were so wrong, if this “populist” wave blind-sided you so badly, maybe it is time to look at your own premises. Maybe it is time to look at what you believe about people and human nature and our role in the world. Maybe it it time you look at what you perceive as threats and what that says about you, not what you think about us.

What I think, and What I think You Miss

I obviously can not speak for anyone but myself, but I believe I do capture a sentiment here.

First, we who supported Trump all breathed a sigh of relief on his election. I expect stress related admissions to emergency rooms were fewer in the wake of this election. I don't think anyone is surprised anymore by the hysterical social media outrage of those on the left. It is reminiscent of Hilary's loss. It is funny how we don't seem to do this on the right when we lose.

I think they are angry because we have stepped in the way of their revolution. We on the right think this is good.

Your Fears Reflect Your Outlook

Alexander Solzhenytsin reminds us that the line between good and evil passes through the hearts of all men. You act as if it passes only through the hearts of your enemies. “You can be trusted, but we can not” seems to be the underlying idea.

We hear this from young socialists all the time. “There never was a true socialist state.” The idea is always that if you give us the power, we will usher in the new utopia.

It may be true that there never was such a state, but it is human nature that assures there never could be. You fail to believe this. You have determined that if we are just fed the good and right information, if we learn to properly regard our enemies, we will all see your light.

Those who elected Trump fear that this is how you see the world, and your press, the mainstream press, has done nothing to dissuade us of this notion.

We believe in the First Amendment. We believe that a free press helps us clarify our thinking, discuss our ideas, and creates a better world. Maybe this belief is naive, but aspiration toward it is better than what goes on now.

Under Biden and Kamala, we have been treated to a war on the Orwellian concepts of misinformation and disinformation. Those who question vaccination, those who question the wisdom of our climate policies, those who question challenges to what we once thought were basic truths, are not interrogated and reported on. They are cancelled.

You have privileged thin skin over robust conversation. If someone says something anti– anything, he is labelled a –phobe of some sort and instantly demonetized and cancelled.

You have tried to shut down Elon Musk because he bought Twitter and expunged the censors. In the run up to this election, your Rachel Madow suggested that Elon should be made to pay a heavy price for his speech, but Hilary and Robert Reich were among those who paved the way for this absurd outburst. That Madow could get away with it suggests your side doesn't even believe itself. If your ideas were so self-evidently correct and righteous, you wouldn't need to shut down the one place where people can express a different opinion.

Where is your support for this great man who would probably have paid a heavy price if the election had gone the other way?

Specifics

Abortion

My State's Senators Murphy and Blumenthal are still going on about “reproductive rights” and suggesting Trump is the enemy.

He has declared otherwise. He has acted otherwise. Yet you are convinced that he wants to impose on you a different set of values. Why are you unwilling to let states decide their own values? What makes you so sure that the values you would impose on us are correct? What other values would you impose upon us if you could?

Maybe we are okay with the current balance. Your failure to grasp this might suggest you really don't get us.

Gender Ideology

Some of us see this as an attack on the truth. While this whole line of treatment is showing itself to be one more mass hysteria, you still celebrate the butchering of our children.

Connecticut, in an affront to reality, has offered people to select non-binary on their government identifacations.

We are fighting about whether XY “girls” can compete in sports. You won't cover it.

Weaponization

Senator Murphy fears that President Trump might weaponize the DOJ and Military. Why would he fear this? President Trump did not do this the last time he was president.

On the other hand President Biden did, or let Merrick Garland do so. Former President Obama did the same with IRS scrutiny of right-leaning businesses.

Is it that the left is scared of the right doing what the left so much wanted and tried to?

You buried the Russia Hoax. You buried the laptop. You ignored Walz's ties to China, his running away from the Guard when he should have been leading it.

But you were happy to go after Trump in as many ridiculous ways as you could. Maybe you should be scared, or maybe you should make peace with the hate in your own heart.

Former

President Trump, since he has been re-elected, has been called “former President Trump” 176,000 out of 572,000 (all time 14.2MM/53.5MM) mentions online (according to Google) since he was elected. Former President Obama 3910 times out of 26,200 mentions (2.16MM/15.1MM). By contrast “former President Bush” 353K/4.16MM; Reagan 163k/2.77MM.

You simply can't accept a “democratic” result. A recent editorial in Connecticut suggests we pull out of our commitment to the Popular Vote Compact, now that that might go in the “wrong” direction. We never should have gone there.

Gaming for Power

You have taken to gaming for power, and seem to have taken on that this is the whole (zero sum) game. Maybe you should look at Paulo Freire and his progeny, the Queers for Palestine, the anxious youth (made anxious by our captured education system) who are taught to revolt rather than think.

You ignore the rot that makes cheaters the head of Harvard instead of running them out of the institution. You have given up looking for the truth to “live yours,” a shallow pursuit at best.

You seem to have forgotten there is another possible model—a representive republic—founded on cooperation and mutual growth, on a Judaeo-Christian ethic that most of us still hold dear. We are proudly the “basket of deplorables” “clinging to our guns and religion” and are willing to protect our rights with our AR-15s (I carry a .45 instead) even though President Biden warns that “if you need to take on the Federal Government, you need some F-15s. You don't need an AR-15”

We Don't Think Our System is Rotten

You have been trying to convince us we are founded on many original sins (slavery, misogyny, world dominance, etc.) and fail to celebrate this country.

Your promised “unifiers” have wrought division, whereas our great divider has brought us closer, has made us all better off, and kept us out of stupid wars.

Trump

Whatever your reasons to dislike Trump, your vitriol is unappreciated.

What would be interesting is to see you now, when you know this is his last term, noticing how Trump has grown into this office and evolved both as a political creature and as a human being.

Maybe he is all about how he will be remembered. Maybe that is all ego. But maybe he is instead a man who has come to know himself as the champion of a people and of a great nation trying to make its best way forward.

While there were glitterati around Ms. Harris, President Trump brings with him, and has no fear of, the best and brightest to make this nation as whole as possible in the next four years.

If you look for that, and see how you can carry that vision forward, maybe you will find yourself relevant three and half years hence.

If, on the other hand, you stop up your ears and double down on blaming us, you will only be more shocked at the outcomes of the next election.

I was struck by your placement of the first editorial in your Wednesday paper (CT Post, Oct. 30, 2024) on page 2 under the guise of an article by Dan Haar.

The opinion page was even worse.

Your disdain for President Trump and cherry picking of facts is laughable. President Trump's handling of COVID is criticized. Do you forget the press excoriation of Trump when he went to stop flights from China? or your dismissal of his reporting in the fall of 2020 that a vaccine was forthcoming?

Maybe we did get some new jobs under Biden/Harris. Where's the analysis as to how many of these are from the rebound after the end of the COVID shutdowns? Where is the criticism of the authoritarian Biden trying to mandate the jab through OSHA? or closing down schools that never should have been? Personally, I found it extremely difficult to travel without being vaccinated, which I as healthy male should have been able to avoid.

A complaint is made that Trump separated families. Biden/Harris has been passing trafficked children on to unvetted non-relative sponsors. This wasn't happening at these rates under Trump, and he didn't need a new law to keep immigration in check.

I did hold my nose and vote for President Trump the first time. I support him enthusiastically now. We didn't have a world on fire under President Trump. We were respected, probably in part because our enemies couldn't peg President Trump. We had the Abraham accords instead of a multi-front war against Israel. There was quiet in Ukraine. China was not flexing its muscle around Taiwan.

And as to criminality, if the same energies had been expended by law enforcement against Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden, they would also be convicted criminals. Instead, President Trump famously refrained from going after Hilary. And Hilary now joins the voices who suggest that free speech guarantees should be moderated to suppress mis/disinformation.

At the end of the day, we know who Trump is, and we know what the world looked like when he was President. If anything, he has grown. The best and brightest and most committed are rallying around him now.

We still don't know who Kamala Harris is. And when we see a doddering Biden pretending to run the world, it makes those of us on Trump's side wonder who actually runs things. After promises of change and unity followed by administrations that have only riven us more, the only change we anticipate under Kamala is a push to the radical left.

We don't know from whence the Trump Derangement Syndrome. Maybe it is that he can't be cowed by you and isn't swayed by the usual political forces. The truth is he runs very much to the center, and he talks to people at their level. There's nothing like actually being heard.

Please get over your hate already and give the guy a fair shot.

Maybe the aside was tongue-in-cheek, but maybe it speaks to something.

At 71 I'm focused more than ever on doing what I can to try to secure peace, justice, and environmental sustainability for future generations. But there's also the pressing matter of how my generation (you know, the one that had everything and ruined it) can try to age with grace and wisdom.

from Stew Friedman, who does leadership stuff at Wharton.

You are so full of shit. Your generation has everything and has grown everything. Celebrate what you have created. Why are you buying into the impending doom narrative?

The world is greening. See Patrick Moore on this,

We are richer than ever and coming out of poverty at rates blowing past the U.N. goals for taking us out of poverty. This doesn't really get at the results we've created, but gives a little of the picture: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bjornlomborg/2023/02/13/prioritizing-the-best-solutions-for-sustainable-development/

You are right on the babies. Maybe we should have young co-eds actually vision out their lives. Maybe we should return to G-d and family and what brought us where we are .

Maybe we should be questioning the wisdom of Marx, Marcuse, Derrida and all the bullshit they have given us. Here's an analysis of that: https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1191-why-feminism-is-one-of-the-deadliest-and-most-destructive-forces-in-human-history-member-exclusive

Anyway, enough of my time on this.

Go out, breathe the air. Tell me if you really think the world is about to end.

I don't think it is, or is in danger thereof, unless we give in to the crazies trying to take over our college campuses and public conversations.

Cleaning up my computer, I found this piece, which I could not find as having published. It is unfortunately more relevant today. Maybe the mantra should be “Check Your Hate”

Two years now I have been at Sacred Heart's commemmoration of Kristallnacht.

Two years this has left me unmoved.

Last year, I came expecting to be made to feel uncomfortable. I am an orthodox Jew. Surely, a Catholic school's commemmoration in a Catholic Chapel would have some religious content or at least context to it, maybe a shout out to some apostle or the J-man himself for a lesson we should be taking.

It could have had a gesture across the religious divide, taught me something about where Catholicism has come, or how it has grown from its grievous indifference and even complicity in the events of World War II, and how it might have been a part of the fomenting of Jew-hatred that still infests this world, and how it is now praying and acting to celebrate the sanctity of every individual, saved according to Christian doctrine or not.

There was one glimmer of hope for me. At the end of the ceremony last year, one young lady from the choir, on her way out of the chapel, turned to the front of the chapel and bowed in acknowledgement of the place she was in.

With lowered expectations I came again this year. I was still underwhelmed.

It started with the politician's reference to his faith which his policies don't reflect.

It continued with exhortations to inclusion and seeing the humanity of the other, which of course has a place. Some of these terms are increasingly politically charged, or seemingly to me anyway, were used to push an agenda on the back of the Jews.

Then a chaplain got up decrying what some have done in the name of religion, but it is National Socialism, perhaps a religion of a different sort that ferried the evil of anti-semitism through the Holocaust.

The lesson supposedly is that it is not enough to say “I didn't,” but one must fight white-supremacy and anti-semitism, these two somehow linked, along with insurrection, by more than one.

The keynote, do not say the word hate.

In closing, it was suggested we must remember, now more than ever.

I suggest this is not particularly actionable advice.

What should we not forgot? Not to kill Jews today. Most of us have that one down. Less obvious today than it seemed when I originally wrote this.

What is missed, what our children have not been taught, is that the “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956.

The point is the Holocaust wasn't a one-off by distant people. It was simply the springing up of an anti-semitism that has simmered since there have been Jews, perhaps aided by a European enlightenment that was in the process of discarding G-d, losing along the way our absolute basis of morality.

The point is we do hate.

How easy it is for the left to tell those it doesn't like on the right to be ashamed of themselves, the subtext being that the target should exit the scene.

Ms. Campbell sees warning signs. Losing our grip in a shame-free world, CT Post, Jan. 16, p. A9. “Our moral maps” are off. According to her, the signs are flashing about our “country's purported slow side into fascism.”

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