This is all futile fantasy. The Democrats will “steal”the election with skillful use of ballot harvesting and dropbox stuffing. They did it once; they”ll do it again and again.
There was a poll from NY saying Jews will vote Biden-Trump 40/53. So yeah the dems really shouldnt take the Jewish vote for granted anymore. They need to remember that the largest group of Jews in the US are orthodox . It’s not just Israel they vote about but they vote family values.
I think the largest group of Jews are still the Reform movement. However, given birthrates, there's no doubt that the Orthodox will reach parity within the century, and then things will get very interesting indeed.
So explain this poll. If the Reform is the largest group of Jews in NY (US). I really can't see any Reform Jew saying they will even vote for Trump never mind pulling the lever.
I'm not sure firm conclusions can be drawn from a single poll, but I don't discount the possibility that it's accurate. However, there's no breakdown by denomination, so it's impossible to say whether that's a factor.
I don’t actually have anything. It just seems like the orthodox community is growing in NYC and reform seem to be disappearing here. Of course it could also be that the orthodox get married young and have children young and the generation of young reform Jews just havent gotten to that point yet.
There is no possible justification for the barbaric slaughter and torture of human beings, especially babies, young children, elderly and woman. Those that support the Hamas genocide on October 7 are extremely evil themselves. It is unbelievable that so many of the so-called "tranny" perverts support Hamas. They can't possibly realize that in the extremist world of Islam their lives are considered as worthless as are Jewish lives. As for Jews that vote for Demonrats, they are as foolish and blind as the blacks.
Life, liberty, culture, society in this Republic are disappearing at a frightening rapid rate. The question is are there enough people awake to what is happening, and willing to fight, to save this country from falling into the mortal abyss.
This article is an enigma to me. Although I have not read the Gulag Archipelago, every quote I have heard ascribed to Solzhenitsyn has given me the distinct impression he would not be voting Democrat for what I thought were obvious reasons.
I no doubt do not have an in-depth awareness of Jews political views, but find it ironic you use him to
warn us of what may be in store for Socialist voting Jews.
Well, I was more interested in his critique of US/Western society of the 1970s and its remarkable relevance to today's society. He was certainly a deeply conservative and in some ways reactionary man, but I'm not so interested in how that affects US partisan politics at the moment. I think his prescience is something to contemplate for both Republicans and Democrats, and indeed anyone in the West at the moment.
But on the other hand: damn. another classic I havent read. I am already drowning in good books I still havent read through. "The Sabres of Paradise", "Islam a critical history", "eunuchen für das Himmelreich" etc sadly dont read themselves. Maybe I still get to Solzhenitsyn this year.
You nailed it. I'm a Canadian prof/lecturer under suspension for saying I stood with Israel and ranting (not overreacting, they are different) to the Israel massacre in a message to a stranger in South Asia on LI. The Palestinian sympathizers amongst faculty, staff and students have gone to war against me. I've been off four months, you can't really fight a university tribunal, it simply doesn't follow due process and you just exhaust yourself. The CA has some hope. But the casual reaction to an active (and pre-announced as happening by admin unofficially) destruction of a man's career is startling. You are right, there is no fierce, Voltaire like believe in free speech, it's very basic. If you say something I don't like you shouldn't be allowed to and should be fired. It's not just the young people. But they seem to really think that if you say what you believe (and they do in private) you getting fired is no issue. And the man who complained against me and calls for the extermination of Jews, etc, etc? He has the same complaint against him as the one that I will get fired for. Hundreds of posts. But he has had no discipline, nothinig, no suspension. So if it's only my free speech, it's more just a case of me being on the wrong political team. Supporting Israel is not something I am allowed to say at my university. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/university-teacher-faces-firing-for-denouncing-hamas
This boilerplate statement "Nor is the problem confined to the left" is really tiring. It makes me want to stop reading. The left is obviously the primary source of the problems dictated in this article. So the boilerplate "I'm a liberal and I need to state that this 99% liberal problem is not entirely liberal" is just such a canard that it destroys my respect for the writer.
I'm not a liberal or a conservative, I hope. I have leanings in both directions on different issues. I like to think of myself as something of a skeptic politically, although perhaps that's self-congratulatory. Nonetheless, I think there are certainly elements on the right that reject republicanism and the constitutional mechanisms of the American republic at the moment. Should I just not address that?
Totalitarian tendencies are emanating from the left. Suppression of the opposition, suppression of viewpoints, cancel culture, antisemitism, taking control of the institutions such as the federal govt (the executive branch employees are over 90% leftists), the control and debasement of universities to advance woke leftist culture, the leftist tilt of corporate America, and control of most of the other institutions (media, entertainment, etc), the use of the justice system to target the opposition (Trump, Flynn, others), this is all coming from the left. The left rioted for months following George Floyd's death, showing all the tendencies expressed in your essay, attempting to tear down society with their protests, but the institutions of the left cheered this on. On the right, maybe 1% have totalitarian tendencies, but the right is largely pro-Israel, the right is not jailing their opponents nor proposing to pack the supreme court. The right had one protest for a few hours that turned into a riot, and the left proceeded to demonize, persecute, and jail all those who participated.
Not only that, Solzhenitsyn was a victim of communism, a creation of the left, for which the majority of the left today still has sympathies for. Over the last few days, the leftist tech industry released an AI that says communism is not evil and deserves nuance - the most totalitarian and evil influence on the human race for the last 100 years, responsible for millions of deaths. Yet today's left does not see this ideology as evil at all. They's all be Bolsheviks given the choice. Even today, universities are filled with marxists, some studies show 50% of professors claim to be marxists. And the students at theses universities who are the activists, "the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable", those are entirely leftist. Conservatives, on the other hand, are routinely attacked and demonized just for expressing their political viewpoints on university campuses.
So to say these tendencies emanate from both the left and right is ridiculously false and destroys any credibility of the essay.
Any and all the threats described by Solzhenitsyn are almost entirely coming from one side of the political spectrum, the left.
I cannot agree with you, as I think you vastly understate the problem on the right. You say, "The right had one protest for a few hours that turned into a riot, and the left proceeded to demonize, persecute, and jail all those who participated." That is not at all what happened. The riot was intended to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. It almost succeeded. That is not something we can simply ignore and hope for the best.
Not a single person in that protest even had a weapon. As for the idea that those people could seize control of the country, that is just so absurd. I mean, seriously, a country of 350 million with the most powerful military un the world was at risk of being seized by a random group of people, maybe a thousand, none of whom even had weapons? Many of whom were allowed access to the Capitol by security (as shown in videos)? And you want to say "they almost succeeded". Succeeded at what? Most of those people were just strolling around the capitol! You can even see the videos, now that they've been released. Those people just walked around, most of them did not even go past the barriers erected for tourists! A guy with a buffalo helmet was about to take over the country? Are you serious? You think this is what he was saying to the security guards he was chit-chatting with? To say this "almost succeeded" shows how much you and many others have been totally brainwashed. The only thing they succeeded at was to delay proceedings for a few hours. They succeeded at getting a free tour of the Capitol building. A couple of them succeeded at sitting at Pelosi's desk. And one of them succeeded at getting shot and killed by a security guard. There was not even the slightest bit of damage. Heck, riots during Trump's inauguration caused far more damage and destruction. And guess what, those riots had the same intent, but hey, they were just fine because they were in support of the left. Jan 6 was a protest like those ones, and it was a protest for good reason, as the laws in many states had been unconstitutionally altered to make it easier for one side to win the election. Anyone who seriously wishes to claim that the transfer of power was threatened in any way, shape or form, that person is not a serious person, that is just a person who has been brainwashed by the leftist media in this country. Apparently a ragtag group of unarmed citizens can simply assume control of the nation, simply because they want to. Wow! Who knew?
As I suspected, you're not a serious person.
And your claim that "'m not a liberal or a conservative, I hope. I have leanings in both directions on different issues." - well that's a blatant lie, obviously, you've just proven it.
I'm sorry, but you are simply wrong. Many in the mob did have weapons. I didn't say they were trying to take over the country. I said they were trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and they very nearly did. Your claim that they just wandered around like tourists is not true. I've seen the videos too and the evidence of their violence is irrefutable. There was substantial damage to the Capitol. Many of them clearly wanted to attack or kill the Congress members present. I'm afraid you seem to have seen what you wanted to see and believed what you wanted to believe. You have a right to do so, but forgive me if I choose not to do the same.
One thing is for sure, I am not the one who is blind to the source of the totalitarian impulses in our society. Heck, just yesterday we learned that Obama's CIA directed foreign intelligence services around the world to spy on associates of Trump, and they did, they spied on about 20 associates for a period of years. Today another reporter for a conservative journalism org was arrested. And last week a the only anti-Biden reporter at CBS had her sources and materials stolen from her in an unprecedented act. Also last week, an FBI source used to discredit Trump was arrested after that source had turned his focus on Biden. But you think the guy with the buffalo hat in the two hour riot 3 years ago is the problem. You're still claiming that somehow a bunch of powerless yahoos in a riot that was no different than dozens of similar riots from the left, somehow these yahoos had the ability to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Brainwashed. You're one of the "useful idiots" that Solzhenitsyn talked about.
You gave away the problem in our politics when you wrote "Jewish Americans are one of the most reliable blocs of Democratic voters in the US." Why in the heck would any group want to be a reliable voting block? We could solve many problems if the parties were made to work harder for votes.
I agree, but we are faced with the reality that the majority of American Jews simply will not vote for a Trumpian Republican party under almost any circumstances. If they defect, it will be to a third party or simply not voting.
Then they make the bed they have to sleep in. While the attitudes and beliefs of many young Americans don't bode well for the future, the majority of older leadership among the democrats not only let this happen but actively encouraged it (BLM/Antifa violence, trans cult violence, Antisemitic violence, and the attacks on parental rights and children's bodies). If none of this causes them to defect, those votes are not worth fighting for, imo.
Great essay. The "mini-totalitarianisms" that most of the non-young population ignore are a huge and expanding threat. Among the under-40 crowd, the degree of abandonment of the very notion of a republic is probably more pronounced now than it ever has been in the US. Ditto for the superficiality of the thought. And the maliciousness.
Crisis? What crisis?
I like the "No delusions, no despair." It's akin to "cheerful pessimist," which is how I sometimes describe myself.
[...not sure that social media "enforces idiocy," but it certainly "reinforces idiocy" and rewards it.]
This is all futile fantasy. The Democrats will “steal”the election with skillful use of ballot harvesting and dropbox stuffing. They did it once; they”ll do it again and again.
Exactly. I would like to think that people wouldn't fall for it again, but I'm not holding my breath.
There was a poll from NY saying Jews will vote Biden-Trump 40/53. So yeah the dems really shouldnt take the Jewish vote for granted anymore. They need to remember that the largest group of Jews in the US are orthodox . It’s not just Israel they vote about but they vote family values.
I think the largest group of Jews are still the Reform movement. However, given birthrates, there's no doubt that the Orthodox will reach parity within the century, and then things will get very interesting indeed.
So explain this poll. If the Reform is the largest group of Jews in NY (US). I really can't see any Reform Jew saying they will even vote for Trump never mind pulling the lever.
Do you have a link to the poll? It would help me answer your question.
https://www.thejc.com/news/usa/majority-of-new-york-jewish-voters-intend-to-vote-for-trump-says-new-poll-j1ejhx7w
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-beating-biden-by-9-points-among-new-york-jewish-voters/
https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/us-news/majority-of-new-york-jews-to-vote-for-trump-poll/
I'm not sure firm conclusions can be drawn from a single poll, but I don't discount the possibility that it's accurate. However, there's no breakdown by denomination, so it's impossible to say whether that's a factor.
This indicates that the Orthodox community is about 10% of the total American Jewish population https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-identity-and-belief/
For some reason, I haven't been able to find stats on the denominational breakdown in New York itself. If you have info, do send.
I don’t actually have anything. It just seems like the orthodox community is growing in NYC and reform seem to be disappearing here. Of course it could also be that the orthodox get married young and have children young and the generation of young reform Jews just havent gotten to that point yet.
There's no doubt that the Orthodox are growing and Reform isn't. So your instincts are right in that sense.
There is no possible justification for the barbaric slaughter and torture of human beings, especially babies, young children, elderly and woman. Those that support the Hamas genocide on October 7 are extremely evil themselves. It is unbelievable that so many of the so-called "tranny" perverts support Hamas. They can't possibly realize that in the extremist world of Islam their lives are considered as worthless as are Jewish lives. As for Jews that vote for Demonrats, they are as foolish and blind as the blacks.
Life, liberty, culture, society in this Republic are disappearing at a frightening rapid rate. The question is are there enough people awake to what is happening, and willing to fight, to save this country from falling into the mortal abyss.
Hi Benjamin,
We meet again 😉
This article is an enigma to me. Although I have not read the Gulag Archipelago, every quote I have heard ascribed to Solzhenitsyn has given me the distinct impression he would not be voting Democrat for what I thought were obvious reasons.
I no doubt do not have an in-depth awareness of Jews political views, but find it ironic you use him to
warn us of what may be in store for Socialist voting Jews.
Well, I was more interested in his critique of US/Western society of the 1970s and its remarkable relevance to today's society. He was certainly a deeply conservative and in some ways reactionary man, but I'm not so interested in how that affects US partisan politics at the moment. I think his prescience is something to contemplate for both Republicans and Democrats, and indeed anyone in the West at the moment.
First of all great essay as always-
But on the other hand: damn. another classic I havent read. I am already drowning in good books I still havent read through. "The Sabres of Paradise", "Islam a critical history", "eunuchen für das Himmelreich" etc sadly dont read themselves. Maybe I still get to Solzhenitsyn this year.
You nailed it. I'm a Canadian prof/lecturer under suspension for saying I stood with Israel and ranting (not overreacting, they are different) to the Israel massacre in a message to a stranger in South Asia on LI. The Palestinian sympathizers amongst faculty, staff and students have gone to war against me. I've been off four months, you can't really fight a university tribunal, it simply doesn't follow due process and you just exhaust yourself. The CA has some hope. But the casual reaction to an active (and pre-announced as happening by admin unofficially) destruction of a man's career is startling. You are right, there is no fierce, Voltaire like believe in free speech, it's very basic. If you say something I don't like you shouldn't be allowed to and should be fired. It's not just the young people. But they seem to really think that if you say what you believe (and they do in private) you getting fired is no issue. And the man who complained against me and calls for the extermination of Jews, etc, etc? He has the same complaint against him as the one that I will get fired for. Hundreds of posts. But he has had no discipline, nothinig, no suspension. So if it's only my free speech, it's more just a case of me being on the wrong political team. Supporting Israel is not something I am allowed to say at my university. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/university-teacher-faces-firing-for-denouncing-hamas
https://www.freedomtoffend.com/p/if-there-were-a-canary-in-the-coal?r=iy2ds&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Sue them for every penny they have. I'm not kidding, bankrupt them. There's people who will back such a lawsuit.
"...young American voters are virulently anti-Israel and, I would argue, viciously antisemitic."
Of course you would argue that...
Beat back the hun
A good compliment to this article would be Patrick Daniel Moynihan's article, "Defining Deviancy Down." Written 30 years back it is spot on.
This boilerplate statement "Nor is the problem confined to the left" is really tiring. It makes me want to stop reading. The left is obviously the primary source of the problems dictated in this article. So the boilerplate "I'm a liberal and I need to state that this 99% liberal problem is not entirely liberal" is just such a canard that it destroys my respect for the writer.
I'm not a liberal or a conservative, I hope. I have leanings in both directions on different issues. I like to think of myself as something of a skeptic politically, although perhaps that's self-congratulatory. Nonetheless, I think there are certainly elements on the right that reject republicanism and the constitutional mechanisms of the American republic at the moment. Should I just not address that?
In order to oppose an evil ideology, a little honesty is required regarding whom is the enemy. Otherwise, it's a waste of time.
Totalitarian tendencies are emanating from the left. Suppression of the opposition, suppression of viewpoints, cancel culture, antisemitism, taking control of the institutions such as the federal govt (the executive branch employees are over 90% leftists), the control and debasement of universities to advance woke leftist culture, the leftist tilt of corporate America, and control of most of the other institutions (media, entertainment, etc), the use of the justice system to target the opposition (Trump, Flynn, others), this is all coming from the left. The left rioted for months following George Floyd's death, showing all the tendencies expressed in your essay, attempting to tear down society with their protests, but the institutions of the left cheered this on. On the right, maybe 1% have totalitarian tendencies, but the right is largely pro-Israel, the right is not jailing their opponents nor proposing to pack the supreme court. The right had one protest for a few hours that turned into a riot, and the left proceeded to demonize, persecute, and jail all those who participated.
Not only that, Solzhenitsyn was a victim of communism, a creation of the left, for which the majority of the left today still has sympathies for. Over the last few days, the leftist tech industry released an AI that says communism is not evil and deserves nuance - the most totalitarian and evil influence on the human race for the last 100 years, responsible for millions of deaths. Yet today's left does not see this ideology as evil at all. They's all be Bolsheviks given the choice. Even today, universities are filled with marxists, some studies show 50% of professors claim to be marxists. And the students at theses universities who are the activists, "the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable", those are entirely leftist. Conservatives, on the other hand, are routinely attacked and demonized just for expressing their political viewpoints on university campuses.
So to say these tendencies emanate from both the left and right is ridiculously false and destroys any credibility of the essay.
Any and all the threats described by Solzhenitsyn are almost entirely coming from one side of the political spectrum, the left.
I cannot agree with you, as I think you vastly understate the problem on the right. You say, "The right had one protest for a few hours that turned into a riot, and the left proceeded to demonize, persecute, and jail all those who participated." That is not at all what happened. The riot was intended to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. It almost succeeded. That is not something we can simply ignore and hope for the best.
"It almost succeeded"
Not a single person in that protest even had a weapon. As for the idea that those people could seize control of the country, that is just so absurd. I mean, seriously, a country of 350 million with the most powerful military un the world was at risk of being seized by a random group of people, maybe a thousand, none of whom even had weapons? Many of whom were allowed access to the Capitol by security (as shown in videos)? And you want to say "they almost succeeded". Succeeded at what? Most of those people were just strolling around the capitol! You can even see the videos, now that they've been released. Those people just walked around, most of them did not even go past the barriers erected for tourists! A guy with a buffalo helmet was about to take over the country? Are you serious? You think this is what he was saying to the security guards he was chit-chatting with? To say this "almost succeeded" shows how much you and many others have been totally brainwashed. The only thing they succeeded at was to delay proceedings for a few hours. They succeeded at getting a free tour of the Capitol building. A couple of them succeeded at sitting at Pelosi's desk. And one of them succeeded at getting shot and killed by a security guard. There was not even the slightest bit of damage. Heck, riots during Trump's inauguration caused far more damage and destruction. And guess what, those riots had the same intent, but hey, they were just fine because they were in support of the left. Jan 6 was a protest like those ones, and it was a protest for good reason, as the laws in many states had been unconstitutionally altered to make it easier for one side to win the election. Anyone who seriously wishes to claim that the transfer of power was threatened in any way, shape or form, that person is not a serious person, that is just a person who has been brainwashed by the leftist media in this country. Apparently a ragtag group of unarmed citizens can simply assume control of the nation, simply because they want to. Wow! Who knew?
As I suspected, you're not a serious person.
And your claim that "'m not a liberal or a conservative, I hope. I have leanings in both directions on different issues." - well that's a blatant lie, obviously, you've just proven it.
I'm sorry, but you are simply wrong. Many in the mob did have weapons. I didn't say they were trying to take over the country. I said they were trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, and they very nearly did. Your claim that they just wandered around like tourists is not true. I've seen the videos too and the evidence of their violence is irrefutable. There was substantial damage to the Capitol. Many of them clearly wanted to attack or kill the Congress members present. I'm afraid you seem to have seen what you wanted to see and believed what you wanted to believe. You have a right to do so, but forgive me if I choose not to do the same.
One thing is for sure, I am not the one who is blind to the source of the totalitarian impulses in our society. Heck, just yesterday we learned that Obama's CIA directed foreign intelligence services around the world to spy on associates of Trump, and they did, they spied on about 20 associates for a period of years. Today another reporter for a conservative journalism org was arrested. And last week a the only anti-Biden reporter at CBS had her sources and materials stolen from her in an unprecedented act. Also last week, an FBI source used to discredit Trump was arrested after that source had turned his focus on Biden. But you think the guy with the buffalo hat in the two hour riot 3 years ago is the problem. You're still claiming that somehow a bunch of powerless yahoos in a riot that was no different than dozens of similar riots from the left, somehow these yahoos had the ability to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Brainwashed. You're one of the "useful idiots" that Solzhenitsyn talked about.
You gave away the problem in our politics when you wrote "Jewish Americans are one of the most reliable blocs of Democratic voters in the US." Why in the heck would any group want to be a reliable voting block? We could solve many problems if the parties were made to work harder for votes.
I agree, but we are faced with the reality that the majority of American Jews simply will not vote for a Trumpian Republican party under almost any circumstances. If they defect, it will be to a third party or simply not voting.
Then they make the bed they have to sleep in. While the attitudes and beliefs of many young Americans don't bode well for the future, the majority of older leadership among the democrats not only let this happen but actively encouraged it (BLM/Antifa violence, trans cult violence, Antisemitic violence, and the attacks on parental rights and children's bodies). If none of this causes them to defect, those votes are not worth fighting for, imo.
Great essay. The "mini-totalitarianisms" that most of the non-young population ignore are a huge and expanding threat. Among the under-40 crowd, the degree of abandonment of the very notion of a republic is probably more pronounced now than it ever has been in the US. Ditto for the superficiality of the thought. And the maliciousness.
Crisis? What crisis?
I like the "No delusions, no despair." It's akin to "cheerful pessimist," which is how I sometimes describe myself.
[...not sure that social media "enforces idiocy," but it certainly "reinforces idiocy" and rewards it.]