The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Trump Now says Building Houses for Jews “Impediment to Peace”

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

Ha ha. It took him what, a week to flip? Those who think this guy is going to move the embassy to Jerusalem are fooling themselves.

Trump met with King Abdullah unannounced and unscheduled, in Washington, and came out with this gem. See if you can spot the contradiction. If you can’t you’re probably sleeping. Says the White House:

“While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal,” the White House said in a statement.

Here’s a translation from politician into English:

“While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace,” the White House said in a statement.

 

 

Donald Trump or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Who Is Worse on Immigration?

rafifarber Foreign Policy, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

roosevelt-trump-memeI am in no way defending anything that Donald Trump is doing with his immigration ban. I am not a fan of Donald Trump, I did not vote for Donald Trump, and I think the man is a bad person.

That being said, the liberals who are slamming Trump for his draconian immigration executive order should keep their hero, New Deal mastermind Franklin Delano Roosevelt in mind. Among other things, FDR:

  1. Imprisoned 120,000 Japanese American citizens, by executive order, for two and a half years, just because he felt they were a threat.
  2. Turned away 973 Jews on the St. Louis off the coast of Miami to their deaths in 1939.
  3. Refused to admit refugees from the Nazis into the US.
  4. Refused to even damage the death camp infrastructure during World War II allied bombing campaigns.

Beyond that, he confiscated the gold of every single US citizen and arrested anyone who kept any gold illegally. He imprisoned people during the Great Depression for doing work inside their own homes in his crazy “spread the work” schemes.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, has banned visas for a few hundred people from Yemen, Iran, Syria, and three other countries he doesn’t like that I don’t remember. I don’t think that’s good. But I have perspective.

But despite all this, let’s all remember the Official Accepted Truth:

FDR is a beloved national hero, beloved by Jews especially, despite imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people by executive order and sending 973 Jews to their deaths. DJT is a racist Islamophobic scumbag for banning visas from Muslim countries. 

Is Hacksaw Ridge the Greatest Libertarian War Film Ever Made?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I saw Hacksaw Ridge last week. I believe it is the greatest war movie ever made, from a libertarian perspective. Before I explain why, let me address two important things first.

One, Mel Gibson directed this movie. He should be judged by his work, and his work here is phenomenal. Don’t give me any of that homophobia anti semitism stuff that I “shouldn’t be watching movies made by a Jew hater” etc. I’ve made it clear many times that I don’t mind anti semitism or homophobia. I only mind violence against innocent people. People can hate whoever they want as long as they don’t act on it violently, and to my knowledge Gibson never has.

Second, the story is a true one, only mildly embellished for cinematic purposes, of a Seventh Day Adventist Christian named Desmond Doss who refuses to carry a gun as a soldier in World War II, but saves 75 people as a medic on the field of battle. Based on my research of the story behind the movie, the man is a tzadik (righteous person) and to minimize what he did just because he may technically qualify as an “idol worshiper” is childish, shallow, and cheap. Cases like his convince me even more that it doesn’t matter what you believe about God as long as you do the right thing.

I’m reminded of a question that an acquaintance of mine from a previous Yeshiva asked Rabbi Yitz Greenberg during a debate with Rabbi Reuven Mann, both of whom I respect. Yitz was talking about a group of Christians, nuns or priests maybe, who dedicated their lives to taking care of the mentally retarded. Not just mildly retarded, but to the point of being unable to do much of anything by themselves except grunt.  This acquaintance of mine challenged Yitz, asking if these Christians were indeed good people, and that perhaps they only “looked like” good people by doing things that “looked like” chessed (acts of kindness) but indeed are bad people because they believe in Jesus.

Yitz let him have it, saying that if you’re going to call something fake kindness because it does not conform to the exact philosophical stringency that you consider truth, then you’re suffering from philosophical hubris. In my acquaintance’s words (Rabbi Reuven Mann was a teacher of mine in the past):

Regarding whether Christian kindness is akin in any measure to God’s view in the Torah, Rabbi Reuven Mann later discussed that although visibly similar, Christian kindness must maintain a different and corrupt sense of kindness, since Christian kindness is framed by Christian values: their kindness might even extend to a murderer pleading for mercy. In such a case, Judaism would demand death for a bleeding terrorist, while we witness other religionists hospitalizing the Arafat’s of the world, showing mercy to child killers. Although Rabbi Greenburg’s (sic) argument for Christians who care for deformed children is highly charged with pitiful feelings, we cannot condone a system of kindness, which also medically treats killers. An evaluation of any system demands that all professed beliefs be evaluated, as a collective whole. Therefore, if any system harbors destructive kindness, then the entire system is corrupt.

These kinds of dismissive views collectivizing hundreds of millions of people under such broad strokes is lazy and wrong. Everyone believes in different things. He has no proof whatsoever that those Christians who cared for the handicapped would have cared for a mass murderer. He’s just saying that because he wants to believe it, dictating from his philosophical pedestal what goodness counts and what goodness doesn’t count.

No two people believe in the same thing, and I don’t believe that anyone’s beliefs will save them in the world to come if they were not good people. I’m a dualist. Belief and action and totally separate. He integrates them, and I think that’s wrong. The only belief that really matters is the belief in doing no violence to innocent people. The rest are add ons, in my opinion, and you pick whichever you think is right. Maybe you get extra credit if you pick the right ones. Maybe you don’t. But I doubt the extra credit is worth much compared to the actual test, which is what you do with your life.

But on to the movie review.

Why I believe that Hacksaw Ridge is the greatest libertarian war story ever is that the typical libertarian angle on war is that it’s wrong, don’t go, don’t fight, dodge the draft, refuse. That’s an OK angle, but Hacksaw Ridge is different. The angle here is, “The State is taking people to fight. I don’t believe in war, but I’m going to go to this war because if other people are being taken and may die, I have no right to stay home in safety.”

It’s straight out of Sefer BaMidbar:

הַאַחֵיכֶם, יָבֹאוּ לַמִּלְחָמָה, וְאַתֶּם, תֵּשְׁבוּ פֹה.

Your brothers will go to war and you will sit here?!

This is the warning that Moshe gives to the tribes of Reuven and Gad when they request to stay on the other side of the Jordan rather than cross. So Reuven and Gad go and fight with the other tribes rather than stay behind.

Desmond Doss absolutely refuses to pick up a gun. He has an equal conviction against killing and against just staying at home as a conscientious objector in the comfort of his home while others die. So he vows to do whatever he can to save as many lives as possible. He ended up saving 75 lives – both Japanese and American – while getting shot and wounded 3 times during the Battle of Okinawa in the process. All the while refusing to pick up a gun.

We libertarians can always look down from our moral high ground at those who volunteer for war as just misguided suckers at best. But if there’s a draft and people are being taken, while it is still moral to refuse service, it is above and beyond righteousness to go to the front lines of such a war, regardless of whether it is justified or not, and refusing to kill, doing nothing but saving lives in the process at the risk of your own.

Aren’t the soldiers getting shot at, guilty of being part of an unjustified invasion? Some of them, probably yes. There was no reason to invade Japan at all. But some were drafted into it by force, and to save those lives is justice.

Desmond Doss was harassed terribly by the State, and almost was imprisoned for years for refusing to pick up a gun. He made a promise to God that he never would, after almost killing his alcoholic father for beating up his mother. He made a neder (vow) to God and he didn’t break it. He would not bow to the State. He was not an anarchist or probably even a minarchist, but he had his lines that he would not cross, a value that was higher than the State, meaning he was not a Statist.

Hacksaw Ridge is not a movie about refusing to go to war or the injustice of war. It’s about doing what Moshe Rabeinu did when he voluntarily left Pharaoh’s palace to join his brothers in slavery. He didn’t have to do that. This was the first thing we ever see Moshe actually do as a man. He chose to. This is what Desmond Doss did.

It’s easy to refuse orders and sit at home. It’s not easy to refuse orders and go to war, not to participate in it, but to save those who were drafted into it, both Japanese and American, trying to save as many drafted slaves as you can from dying for the State, whichever State they were forced to fight for.

The only thing that I think Doss should have done differently is that he should have refused the Medal of Honor he got from that murderer Truman. I can’t say “That’s what I would have done,” because I probably would never have volunteered to go to an unjust war I don’t believe in just to save lives. So I’m only criticizing from down below here, not from up high, and I know my place.

Here’s What the Russian Hacking Complainers Are Really Saying

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I’m trying not to follow this but it seems so bizarrely stupid I just can’t help it. That people are portraying that they actually believe this just confirms that we are populated with adult babies.

So here’s how I understand this. The Hitlery Clintonites are complaining that the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta’s emails. And that this caused Americans to vote for Trump instead of Hitlery.

OK. Let’s assume that’s 100% true.

So what they are saying is that because Russia exposed corruption in the DNC and incredibly twisted satanic stuff in Podesta’s treasure chest of disturbia plus some of Hitlery’s explicit double-talk, it’s now Russia’s fault. Americans should not have known about any of this, and if they were kept in the dark as they should have been, Hitlery would be president and all would be well. Americans should not know about the corruption and sick behavior of the upper political class and because some of it was exposed, the election is invalid.

I’m confused. Shouldn’t the Hitlery Clinton people be mad at the DNC and Podesta for being what they are, instead of blaming Russia for exposing what they are? Nobody is claiming anything that Russia supposedly hacked is fake.

Stephen Hawking Proves Even So-Called Geniuses Can Be Economically Illiterate

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luddite-main_fullI’m not sure how much of a genius Stephen Hawking actually is versus how much his intellect may be inflated in the public consciousness due to his ALS and his miraculous survival with it. The moniker of smartest man alive has somehow stuck with him where I doubt 99.9% of the people who see him that way have any idea of his work aside from a Brief History of Time. That’s really all I ever read from him. Admittedly I have no mind for complex mathematics and physics.

But I do have a mind for praxeology and logic and deductive reasoning. Apparently, I’m much better at it that Stephen Hawking, who seems quite the dolt on the subject.

Yes, Hawking beats me on physics and hard sciences, 100% I concede. But he like most others suffer from the Luddite Fallacy and thinking only one step deep when it comes to simple qualitative deductive logic.

Says Hawking:

“The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.”

With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to retrain for a new world and support them financially while they do so,” he added.

Facepalm. The automation of anything does not lead to lasting unemployment. It never has and it never will. Factories themselves didn’t lead to the unemployment of those who make things by hand. Most of that employment merely shifted industries to making the machines. Automated factories will simply move factory workers to some other industry where labor is needed. Why does this even have to be explained to Stephen Hawking? What is the block in people’s heads that prevents them from understanding this basic truth?

It’s not an observation. It’s a logical necessity. Unemployed labor factors is a market that clears at a certain price. All markets clear by necessity, therefore all labor displaced by automation clears in some other form of employment. The only thing that can perpetuate unemployment is welfare and minimum wage, because these are coercive rather than market phenomena.

The more automation, the more labor is freed up to do other things, the higher the supply of stuff and the lower the prices of stuff. Standards of living rise. That’s what happens because of automation, so even if a group of workers is displaced into lower income jobs, the tendency is that the price of goods and services drop more relative to that drop because of the very automation that displaced them.

Typewriters didn’t lead to the end of the human race for displacing transcribers. Computers didn’t lead to the end of the human race for displacing typists. Amazon did not lead to the end of the human race for displacing brick and mortar retailers. Airplanes did not lead to the end of the human race for displacing transcontinental shipping companies. Cars did not destroy humanity by unemploying horse and buggy drivers. Computerized farming equipment and cow-driven plows. Lab grown meat will not lead to the end of the human race by unemploying cattle farmers for God’s sake man!

A cure for cancer will not lead to the end of the human race by unemploying oncologists, and a cure for ALS will not lead to the end of the human race for unemploying the manufacturers of Stephen Hawking’s specialized wheelchair.

In the absolute worst possible scenario when our entire lives are automated by machines and nobody can think of anything else that needs to be done, nobody would have to do anything anymore and we could all learn Gemara all day. Or physics. Or spend our time figuring out how to cure ALS. Or whatever.

It’s certainly an amazing thing that Stephen Hawking doesn’t get this. The phenomenon as to why he doesn’t get this should be studied. To me it is more interesting to solve than the problem of ALS, because economic illiteracy is ubiquitous and very dangerous. It leads to the outlawing of automation, which is what Hawking seems to be proposing. Doing that would kill many more people than ALS.

ALS research is part of my work, actually, since I analyze cutting-edge pharmaceutical research.

Aryeh Deri Gets Even More Evil – Requires All Jews To Give Fingerprints to the State By Force

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Surprise surpirse. The biometric ID trial run was a success, and now Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Yemach Shmo, is going to require every single Israeli citizen to give him their fingerprints by force.

I am going to say this once, and I am not saying bli neder.

I will burn my fingerprints away in acid before I give them to the State of Israel.

If Deri wants to tattoo a number on my arm, he’ll have to hold me down and put me under general anesthesia.

I urge everyone to passively fight the State on this and do not give these kappos your fingerprints of your own free will. No violence, just passive resistance. And if you have the courage to burn your fingerprints off with acid before they can take them, I would encourage that.

Absolutely no violence should be taken against Deri, but if God chooses to take him away from this world, as Pavel Chekov said to Scotty from the bowels of a nuclear wessel, “Now would be a good time.”

This does not constitute a curse against Deri, in case that is illegal. May he live forever, as Leonidas once said. I love him, of course, along with all selfless public servants. Prasied Be Their Holy Names.

Kiko Alonso, Son of a Cuban Exile, Flattens Castro Sympathizer Kaepernick to Win the Game For Miami Dolphins

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

Perhaps sports is more than just letting off steam.

Hours before the death of Fidel Castro, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick defended the murderer and wore a Castro T-shirt. Miamians, and I am Miami born, celebrated Castro’s death as they rightly should.

Kaepernick was the star of the game for the 49ers, but he came up 2 yards short of tying the game with 2 seconds left. Kiko Alonso, the Dolphins linebacker, ran up from behind as Ndamukong Suh tackled from the front. Kaepernick was literally flattened by Alonzo with his legs bent back.

Kiko Alonso is the son of a Cuban exile, who celebrated the game-winning brutal tackle with his son in the locker room. Here’s the Miami Herald on what went down:

It ended with Kiko Alonso delivering the game-ending blow on Colin Kaepernick and helping deliver to the Miami Dolphins their sixth consecutive win.

And moments later, in a Dolphins locker room filled with celebration, that was Alonso proudly putting on a headband that replicated the Cuban flag and meeting with his Cuban exile father and other family members to enjoy his enormously productive day.

Castro is dead. The Dolphins won by flattening the Castro sympathizer. If God ever cares about sports, it looks like He just showed it. Check out the last play. Alonso crushes him from the top while Ndamukong Suh dives into his legs.

Trump, Kaepernick, Castro, Two Reversals

rafifarber Health Care, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

kaepernick-castro-shirtI mentioned in an earlier post that I supported Colin Kaepernick, San Francisco 49ers quarterback, for not standing during the Blood Spangled Banner. I knew it wasn’t an intellectual stance or that he necessarily understood what he was doing or even that he was doing it for the right reasons, but still it takes courage to stand up to patriotic drivel.

Now I can no longer support him, because it is clear he’s just a statist idiot who wanted the US government to do more whatever.

He was caught defending his wearing of a Fidel Castro T-shirt saying he supported Castro’s “education system”.

Pathetic. When a murderer tells educators what to do, it’s not praiseworthy. It’s akin to a murderer rounding up all farmers, killing all but one, telling the lone survivor to plant one orange tree and then people praising the dictator for producing oranges.

How many people did Castro kill? How many of them were teachers? How many teachers did he threaten if they didn’t teach how amazing Castro is? Yeah, amazing education system that one.

Just in time for the Dolphins game. In Miami, they celebrated as they should. Hopefully the Miami Dolphins, who celebrate Castro’s death appropriately and justrly, will crush Kaepernick who praised this murderer’s central planning. Dolphins just scored a touchdown as I write this. Kaepernick should retire and shut up.

Donald Trump, who I never liked, actually said the right thing about Castro. That he was a murderer and how he’s dead and that’s it.

One cheer for The Donald. If there is anything good about him, it’s that he doesn’t care about political correctness.

 

Aryeh Deri, Donald Trump, and Politics as a Shared National Wet Dream Nightmare

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

america-burningI quoted this two posts ago but it needs another splattering. Aryeh Deri, head of the asinine Shas Party, the uncontested #1 Hillul Hashem in terms of inspiring normal people to hate Judaism with a fiery passion for being such an idiotic jackass, basically made the genius statement that Trump’s victory is a victory against the Conservative and Reform movements’ collective conspiracy to take over the US government. Here’s the quote (it’s real I promise) from the Jerusalem Post:

“Minister Aryeh Deri has welcomed Donald Trump’s election for what he said he believed would be the blow it will strike to Reform and Conservative control of the US government and against progressive Jewish influence in Israel.

Deri made his comments during an address to the local religious council of Ashdod on Thursday.

“There is no doubt that one can give thanks to God that all those who have damned the [Jewish] covenant and all those who would wipe out Judaism who thought they could take control here over the Land of Israel and lead all these reforms in order to destroy received their blow,” said the minister.

“Their influence and the great threat they posed to us as those who hold the US government, they understand that this power has disappeared from them today, and we can continue, God willing, to strengthen traditional religion and Judaism, transmitted down to us from generation to generation.”

What in the world does Donald J. Trump or anyone who voted for him have to do with Conservative and Reform Judaism?

It doesn’t have to be said that Donald Trump has absolutely nothing to do with the Reform and Conservative movements. There is absolutely no relationship at all between those movements and Donald Trump. Donald Trump cares about liberal Jewish movements as much as he cares about the right of gender fluid people to be addressed with gender neutral pronouns.

So what is Deri talking about? How does this make any sense, even to himself?

What he’s doing is essentially what every single other person truly emotionally invested in this past election is doing. He’s just translating Trump’s empty political talk into his own language.

Politicians don’t say anything that means anything. All they do is use meaningless catchphrases that talk about good and evil but are devoid of any actual content on what constitutes those two things. In Deri’s head, the evil people are Conservative and Reform Jews who are trying to destroy Judaism because they hate God, and it is the #1 priority of God Himself to stop them, obviously. They are the cause of all bad in the world, so of course Trump is talking about them when he talks about bad things.

When people hear politicians talking emotionally about good and bad things but lacking any content, they fill in the content with what they believe are good and bad things. It becomes a religion. You take what you hate and you pin everything bad in the world on whatever that thing is, while the empty rhetoric of whatever politician fuels it but you fill in the blanks. Whether it’s gays or Reform Jews or the “Establishment” or Evangelicals or environmentalists or global warming or climate-change-or-whatever-they-call-it-now skeptics or deniers or whatever, it makes no difference.

Just as anti Semites say the Jews control the government, or the Evangelicals say the God-hating abortion-loving atheists control the government, Deri says the Conservative and Reform movements control the government. It’s all the same complete nonsense.

So why is it so particularly bad this election cycle and why do I believe this is the last one for the country before it breaks apart?

Because there is a sense of an ending among many. There’s an innate sense among Americans that something is very wrong. They don’t know what it is but they know it’s getting worse. Most people can sense in their subconscious that America is at a breaking point. So that just makes people hate the people they pin their irrational hate on and love the people they pin their irrational love on. It’s why those who love Hillary so much, hate Trump so much that they’ll blab on about how his “hate for women” will be the end of the country. It’s why so called “minorities” are acting so afraid for their lives even though Trump is not going to kill “minorities”, a term which really has no meaning anymore because anyone can self-identify as whatever race they feel that they are. It’s an absurdity wrapped in two more absurdities.

It’s why those who hate Hillary so much love Trump so much and they will gush about some nonexistent revolution and how “Americans said NO!” and other such poetic nonsense you’ll read on right wing websites about how America is about to “change”. They didn’t say no to or change anything except Hillary Clinton, but they just exchanged her with another Hillary Clinton in Donald Trump. It’s all the same stuff. Garbage in garbage out. (Editorial note: I am not as nihilistic as George Carlin is here. I am essentially an optimist and I do believe in redemption. I just think that it has to get a lot worse before it gets better.) 

Nothing changed. All that happened was just an exchange.

But somewhere deep down, people know that this is it. What will happen is that the debt bubble will collapse during Trump’s first term. He’ll be blamed and there may even be a civil war as the massive welfare warfare state finally buckles and Trump can do nothing about it.

Everyone is losing their minds in this election because they feel that the situation is at a breaking point, but they don’t even know what the situation is. So they take the targets they’ve been trained to hate and the targets they’ve been trained to love and they pin extreme emotions on these targets and personify it in a politician who spouts emotional language lacking any content which they then fill with their own beliefs and emotions, none of which have anything to do with the real actual reason why the country is about to fall.

Deri, being a particularly dimwitted moron, comes in and gives his own answer as to what he hates versus what he loves and says the election is really about THAT. But obviously it’s not. And it’s not about what anyone else is saying either.

Deri hates Conservative and Reform Jews, and he loves “god” whatever he thinks that is. That the content that he fills the empty rhetoric with. I suppose his imaginary version of Olam Haba is him surrounded by Conservative and Reform Jewish leaders impaled on stakes or something. His total unrelated conception betrays how everyone’s conception of this election has nothing to do with anything that actually matters. Everyone is simply projecting their own programmed fears and desires onto these two candidates, none of which are relevant to anything at all. It’s all imaginary conceptual barf.

When the debt bubble pops, the lefties will blame it on Trump’s “intolerance of women and gays and blah blah” and the righties will blame it on the fact that we didn’t bomb enough countries and kill enough people and it’s the Muslims’ fault blah blah blah.

But it always just comes down to money. The country is going to fall simply because it borrowed too much money to hand out to people who wanted handouts and more wars, and now its people have to pay the debt back by consuming much much less, meaning people will have much much less stuff and standards of living will plummet. Lots of fighting ahead. Ugly will it get.

The hystericals are right. The country is going down. But none of them know why. It’s like everyone is acting out their own personal nightmares and wet dreams. While you’re in the dream it makes sense, it’s either terrifying or awesome, but when you wake up you realize nothing about it made any sense at all.

This election was nothing but a joint wet-dream-nightmare shared by all americans who are all sleeping while their house is burning down, and they have yet to wake up. They smell the smoke but they’re filtering it all through their own versions of the wet-dream-nightmare they are all currently stuck in.

 

Another Libertarian Who Just Does Not Understand This Election

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

A libertarian friend comments. He has a gay son who has become a social justice warrior. Whereas I would not mind if my kid or kids were gay beyond being a little disappointed in less chances of having genetic grandchildren and more difficulty maintaining and passing down Judaism, if any of my kids turn into SJWs it would deeply trouble me. Let’s just leave it at that. I feel my friend’s pain and hope his son gets out of it somehow.

Anyway, here are his comments:

Your post really hit home today. I said almost the same exact words the day after the election. The crying and wailing and cheering is mystifying to me. I can ignore most of it, as I was not invested in this election at all. For the first time in my adult life, I did not cast a vote. The candidates were just too…too, you know…awful. As the election got closer, I waivered and thought that maybe I needed to cast a vote against Hillary, but that is not how voting works. The receiver of the vote does not say “oh, I know you voted for me because I’m not quite as disgusting as my opponent, so I am grateful and honored by your trust in me and I’ll be sure to pay attention to your concerns when I take office.” No, what the winner is really thinking is “they love me! They liked everything I represent! I have a mandate to do exactly what I want to do!” So I didn’t vote. Trump already thinks too highly of himself, and he was going to either win or lose without my one stinking little vote anyway.

Then my son made a very puzzling post on Facebook.

My son is 25 and still in college. He used to have a strong libertarian streak by hanging around with me, but we’ve lived apart for the past 5 years and he’s come under the influence of his boyfriend (yes, he’s gay) and the faculty and other students at the community college and the art school he has been attending. The art school and the SJW’s have really gotten to him. His world view and his language have changed so much that I often find it difficult to follow his train of thought. Discussing or arguing with him is a mind bender, as we often cannot come to agreement on simple facts. For example, women make $.79 for every $1 a man makes. An old fallacy, to be sure, but utterly beyond his ability to question. I think because he can’t believe that every teacher and feminist around him is wrong if they all repeat the same statistic so often. To him, repetition must make it true. The theory of the ‘big lie’ has been tested and found true in my son. Add to that the modern lexicon of the SJW, like ‘feminist’ (it doesn’t mean what it used to), ‘micro-aggressions’, ‘cultural appropriation’, and I think you can sense my bewilderment.

I came home from work on Wednesday to find my wife nearly in tears. Our son had written a ‘beautiful’ piece about the trauma of seeing Trump elected and knowing that he and his ‘community’ will be marginalized and oppressed for the next four years, or longer. But he will pull himself together and continue to fight for the causes of the LGBTQ community, and they will overcome the rampant homophobia that Trump will unleash. Then he wrote a very confusing passage in which he described himself as a ‘white passing’ ‘gender fluid’ gay person who will not let his beautiful life be ruined by the white majority (I’m working from memory here, but I think that is an accurate rendition.) “White passing”? I had to look it up just to make sure I understood him correctly. It appears that he rejects the fact he comes from Northern European stock, with about 1/64th Chippewa added in as a result of the French side of the family producing some ‘half breeds’ a couple of hundred years ago. I’m projecting when I say he must be embracing his Native American roots, because that’s the only non-white thing in him. (When I’m confronted by people playing the race card, I sometimes trump them with my Native American card, even though I find my genetic background nothing more than an historical curiosity. Works every time.) I checked out some websites that purport to help people with racial identity problems, and I see that the current rage is to refer to yourself as the race with which you identify. regardless of genetics. I really don’t know what he calls himself. Holiday conversation should be….(interesting, frustrating, maddening, hillarious….take your pick). By the way, I didn’t find the Facebook post to be ‘beautiful’ in the same way his mother and his gay friends did. I found it to be a word salad dressed with youthful angst.

I tried to bring some reality into my wife’s over-the-top concern for our son’s safety. There is no great anti-gay constituency out there. Straight people I know do not plot attacks on gays. Actually, they really don’t think about gays much at all. It’s just not that important. Live and let live. Today, my wife brought to my attention the story of a gay guy getting beat up by a couple of Trump supporters on election night. I researched it and found it lacking specificity, despite lurid details and a gruesome photo. then a follow up article retracted the ‘Trump supporter’ angle, and then another article noted that the victim could not be contacted for verification. Most likely a hoax…this time. But that is the kind of crap that gets people fantasizing about dangers that don’t exist, and acting out aggressively in response. The anti-Trump riots are very real and could be dangerous. My company canceled a business trip to NYC for Tuesday and Wednesday out of concern for our safety. Good call. This violent reaction is likely to be sparked by irrational fears and fueled by hoaxes.

Like you, I used to have an ‘inner homophobe’ that shuddered a little when I saw gay PDA. I haven’t seen it in my daily life for five years, so I’m not sure I still have it. The thought of gay sex doesn’t do anything for me one way or the other. Maybe I’m numb. Maybe I’ve evolved.

As for reading Atlas Shrugged, that was my early 2016 project. I had read it in my teens, 20’s, and 30’s, so it’s not so much that I wanted to know the story but that I wanted to revisit that book to see if it still held up twenty years after the last reading. Frankly, I expected to be disappointed in the artistry. Rand has been so derided as a clunky hack writer that I accepted she was best off writing non-fiction instead of fiction. Maybe, I thought, I really SHOULD be embarrassed to say I liked it, especially because I have a degree in literature.

On the contrary. It is beautiful. I was moved to tears at certain points, especially during Reardon’s thought-soliloquies. I could FEEL his pain. Her other characters also came alive for me in ways that I had not experienced in the past. I noted the compassion and humanity that she allowed her “cold and rational” characters to feel and demonstrate. It was a cornucopia of nuanced drama, with concern and charity demonstrated throughout. Her detractors have terribly mis-characterized this book, probably because the philosophical themes force the average person to think about their convictions in an uncomfortable way. It is easier and more effective to derisively dismiss than to honestly confront.

On the other hand, I could, and did, quibble with some word choices and some sentence structure. It was clear to me that she was not a native English speaker, as sometimes she used some odd phrases and unusual imagery. A good editor could have smoothed out the clunks, though Rand would have resisted, I’m sure.

As always, Rafi, you get my brain working and I feel compelled to jot down my 2 cents (it’s a half-a-buck now, with inflation). Sorry for the length. If you got this far, thanks for reading.