What's Worse? Part II

This might be the beginning of a series… then again, it might not.

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I hope I didn’t sound as if I’m complaining yesterday, because I detest three things equally: complaining, whining, and propaganda. Don’t complain or whine: do something. As for propaganda, even my side’s, nothing disgusts me more. Just give the unvarnished truth and I’ll make up my mind.¹

It was just a statement of fact. I’m in a horrible, self-defeating, self-consuming rage because of impersonal forces beyond my control and I don’t know how to get out of it. I feel as if I’m caught in a spider web.²

And although October 7th is the biggest single factor, it’s not the only factor. I’m pretty good at not picking scabs or obsessing about what is, what happened, and what can’t be changed.³ You can’t change reality — you can change only your reactions.

But—and here comes something that might sound like whining for which I apologize in advance—

Everything is shit. When I say everything, I mean everything.

Here’s a by no means comprehensive list of the all-encompassing suck.

The state of NYC. I mean, we almost did it. We came back from the dead. We cleaned up the city, put criminals where they belong (in jail) and prevailed over the forces of barbarism. It’s always been a tough environment, always will be, but we made the city livable and walkable.

The problem is that New York City is a machine Democrat town. When I say machine, I mean machine. Running as a Republican is virtually hopeless. we have had Republican mayors, but only when there’s a genuine feeling of crisis, or (as in the case of John Lindsay) when they have political talent and looks oozing from their pores and the opposition is negligible. Otherwise, the machine will win. It is incapable of any kind of positive action.

I’m not going to go into it here, but they managed to pass congestion pricing, while the streets are clogged with dangerous e-bikes and bicycles, whose drivers regularly disobey traffic signs, go onto sidewalks, and in general, make walking in NYC (once a glorious experience) into a nightmare. I feel trapped. Sit in my apartment and stew. My once nearly fail-safe method of stressbusting has been ruined. I hate these people. But I digress.

What a can of worms this is. I could fill page after page. And that would be complaining because every time I kvetch I say to myself: why don’t you run for office? Or do something more than just tweet? If you hate Gale Brewer⁴ so much, run against her.

Well, I’m not. I’m just a kvetcher, I guess.

The NY Times. Another can of worms so big it’s disgusting to think of.

I know that a lot of people claim the paper is “left-wing.” Unpopular opinion: I don’t think so, not in the classical sense. It’s a liberal paper. It’s run by the Sulzberger dynasty, a rich, patrician clan. They are not socialists.

If you want left-wing socialists, you’ll read World Socialist Web Site — interestingly, they ran a series of articles debunking The 1619 Project.⁵ For their own reasons, of course: they believe in class analysis and abhor racial identity politics. But the scholars were top drawer and the series was devastating.

The 1619 Project is the brainchild of a woman of mediocre intellect who has her position solely because she’s black. No other reason.

The Times is obsessed with race, meaning, black people. In the last few years as wokeness descended like a dark cloud, it went from being tetchy liberals to obsessed. I could give dozens of examples, but I’ll confine myself to three.

First, they ignore the fact that violent crime in urban areas is disproportionately black, while focusing on trivial incidents like the one between the birder Chris Cooper and the dog walker, Amy Cooper (no relation). I refuse to rehash the details here. If you care so much, read one of the myriad articles they wrote about this encounter.

Contrast this with the Times’ coverage of crime in NYC. It’s a huge taboo to say that black men commit violent crimes out of proportion to their numbers in the general population.

So I’ll say it:

Black men commit violent crimes out of proportion to their numbers in the general population.

Blacks are 23 percent of New York's population, but they commit 75 percent of all shootings, 70 percent of all robberies, and 66 percent of all violent crime, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those crimes.

Whites are 33 percent of the city's population, but they commit less than 2 percent of all shootings, 4 percent of all robberies, and 5 percent of all violent crime.

The victims of elevated urban crime are rarely commemorated. [emphasis added]

Actually, the victims of elevated urban crime are rarely never commemorated.

Remember Kristal Bayron-Nieves?

No? Never heard of her?

She was murdered at age 19.

Here she is.

Here is the “human animal” who coldly gunned her down. I am fully aware of the implications of using that now notorious phrase in all its layers and connotations and I use it unashamedly.

The Times ignored the story until the NY Post made a big deal of it, then they grudgingly consented to cover it.

They ran one shitty article:

That’s it. There were a couple of articles that mentioned her to make a point, but only one article about her. But when a white dog walker and a black birder have words in Central Park—that “rattles the nation”!

But that pales in comparison (may I use that phrase or is it racist?) to the civilizational problem of black women and their hair.

You’ll get pages of hits.

Last but not least… I almost hesitate to cite this as it’s so unbelievably STUPID, but here goes.

Yup, a writer for the Great Gray Lady, the paper of record, wrote something about a media-created thing between two brands of chicken sandwiches.

You see, chicken sandwiches really mean a lot to black Americans. So much so that there was a war between Popeye’s and Chik-Fil-A, with of course, the latter coming out 2nd because no matter how much they apologize for it, they’ll never overcome the stain of being white Christians to the New York Times.

If I were to have said or written something like that, I would justifiably be called a racist.

I remember this incredibly stupid article because of a particularly vicious, mean-spirited passage:

It can be easy to misfire with dishes that have deep traditions among African-Americans — I recall my wife’s gagging as she described biting into macaroni and cheese made by a white co-worker, and discovering that it contained corn. Then there was the moment in 2006 when Oprah Winfrey took an on-air bite of a chicken-and-spinach dish made by a white woman who had won $1 million for it in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

“Did we add salt and pepper?” Ms. Winfrey asked with a befuddled grimace. (The woman had not.) “I think we needed salt and pepper.”

This passage makes me wish for a meteor strike.

The physical disgust he’s allowed to express for whites (“gagging”); the stupidity about “dishes that have deep traditions among African-Americans” (bullshit, total bullshit, some other time) and the casual contempt for a woman who was nervous in the presence of great fame.

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The demonstrations. To say “I’m a free speech advocate” in the US is dorm room posturing because of course it is. It’s the law in the US, end of story. Constitution, First Amendment, case laws defining the 1A, blah blah. It’s all been worked out beforehand.

Yet still campuses have been mobbed, threatened, intimidated, public spaces taken over and hacks like Glenn Greenwald scream “Brandenburg!” because it’s the only case he knows.

I’m not going to bother much about Greenwald except to say that he and his dittoheads bore the crap out of me. They’re just losers who know a little and think they can pull the wool over our eyes. Maybe that works on Twitter, but it doesn’t work in the real world.

He’s just a minor irritation. It’s the bigger picture that I find so dismaying.

Let’s begin here, with this article by Chris Rufo. It will teach you a lot about Antifa and the evolution and practice of their trouble-making ways.

Rufo: What is the attitude in police departments in response to the current pro-Hamas campus unrest?

Young: For the most part, the university police can’t really remove the protesters. So, they have to get the city to do it, but the cities are not eager to step in because there’s no upside for them.

Well, OK. Who can blame the cops for not wanting to get involved in a no win situation? But the police are supposed to uphold the law, right? Not only when it gets tough, but especially when it gets tough. And for them to say, “there’s no upside” is comparable to a firefighter saying, “I love my job except when there’s a fire to be put out” Or, “I won’t put out a fire set by arsonists.” No one would ever allow that.

Thinking of this in terms of “upside” and “downside” is childish and unacceptable.

I am completely sympathetic to the frustration of LE. They are being sent in to clean up the shit created by years of DEI, PC, and judicial coddling. But it is what it is. You signed up for it.

It is infuriating that the rioters function in a risk-free environment. It is galling to arrest violent demonstrators who will then be set free, or even compensated. But it must be done.

I am infuriated at the political establishment that excuses these demonstrators.

But here, I think Rufo goes off-track. Read the whole thing, as they say. I’ll just screenshot the parts I take issue with.

I disagree. Rufo is looking at this from the POV of political strategy. He’s a fine leader and on TwiX I’ve been open that I admire him as a man of action who has actually achieved results, but there’s too much Machiavelli and not enough principle in this. It might be right for a politician to think this, but it’s not right for an inspirational leader to say this.

“Let the blue cities sink in their own shit” may be a clever political tactic. It’s morally wrong and leads to bad outcomes.

I do agree that mindless LAW AND ORDER thundering doesn’t work in 2024, but that’s a matter of style, not substance. Point out that the demonstrators really are breaking the law and then do something. If that’s LAW AND ORDER, so be it.

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UCLA. The demonstrations (which seem to be back) were bad enough. and now, the revelations that The David Geffen School of Medicine has been turned into a woke trash can.

Is David Geffen going to do anything about this?

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The absolute capture of popular culture by the woke and its subsequent degradation.

I used to know Joe Franklin, the king of nostalgia. Though he made his fortune on the past, Joe once said to me, “You cannot knock what is current.” He followed trends keenly and had everyone on his show, especially young talent. He always promoted what was current. I have zero doubt that if he’d lived long enough he’d have had 15-year old Taylor Swift on his show. ⁶

Joe died in 2015. I try to think of him, wry, eternally bemused, when I look around me.

As you can see, I’m big on examples but in this case, the examples of pop garbage are too numerous.

I need only point to Taylor Swift as my case closer. The difference between her forgettable tripe and a genuine talent like Joni Mitchell is painful.

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Tomorrow I’ll draw some dots. There’s a connector between all of these examples of rot and decline.

For now, this is part of why I’m so disgusted.

1. A good example is the recent, gruesome video of the Nahal Oz girls being taken captive, which degenerated into an online argument about the Arabic translation. I don’t speak Arabic but I sense that the Israel government pushed it a bit with their translation of the curses and screams of the Hamas monsters to make them seem even worse than what they are. They didn’t need to.

They should have released the video untranslated. The pictures tell the story.

Then there are the rape confessions of Hamas prisoners seated in front of large Israeli flags. Why do this? It looks like coerced confessions. They are coerced confessions. I think that’s OK. But why push the message?

I don’t give two fucks about “hasbara” - something I’ll write about in due course.

I do think that in a war framing is important. “In war, truth is so important it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies.” We don’t have to go that far. Just present the facts and let people form their own conclusions.

2. Nasrallah betrayed his ignorance of biology when he called Israel a “spider web.” If only. Spider silk is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar.

3. In fact, “it is what it is” is my mantra. I have a draft about that which I put on the back burner. I’ll move it up.

4. NYC is divided into District Councils. Brewer is my area’s Council member, apparently for life given the demographics.

5. Don’t get me started on that—but I wrote a post pointing out its key logical flaw, here.

6. It closed in 1993 when she was five.

NY Times Obituary: The show was “an oddly long-running parade of has-beens and yet-to-bes interrupted from time to time by surprisingly famous guests… celebrities like Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby and John F. Kennedy were making their way to the dingy basement studio on West 67th Street… He booked Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Barbra Streisand, Bill Cosby and Liza Minnelli as guests when they were just starting out, and hired two other young performers, Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, as his in-house singer and accompanist."

“My show was often like a zoo,” he said in 2002. “I’d mix Margaret Mead with the man who whistled through his nose, or Richard Nixon with the tap-dancing dentist.”