Yabut strikes me as a close cousin to Whataboutism. "Yeah, but . . . ."
Watched. Read. Wept.
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Current Lingo: ‘Yabut’
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Glenn Reynolds on Barack Hussein Obama
The Instapundit is spot on:
And speaking of Obama, he’s suddenly reappeared. It’s been an open secret in Washington that much of the Biden Administration’s policy – and particularly its mideast foreign policy – has been run on instructions from the Obama crowd. And now suddenly Obama has shown himself to opine on the Hamas massacre in Israel: “What Hamas did was horrific, and there is no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.”
He added: “You have to admit that all of us are complicit to some degree.” No, I don’t admit that at all. I think that Obama is complicit, by favoring not only negotiations with, but outright subsidies to, terrorists instead of eliminating them. I also think that he’s trying to spread the blame to “all of us,” now that his policy is a disaster.
And what’s this “occupation” stuff? Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, before Obama was elected President. Hamas considers the entire nation of Israel to be an occupation, and wants it to be Jew-free “from the river to the sea.” Is that what Obama means by occupation?
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Up on the Roof
Not "The Drifters" version.
Given the pronounced 'libertine wobble' of leftists, it is passing strange that they would support Islamists who are anti-libertine and anti-liberal in excelsis. The loons of the Left appear to have lost their minds so much so that they care not whether they lose their heads.
Tony Flood, who sent me the graphic, remarks, "This is the outward expression of a fifth column movement that doesn't care about any cognitive dissonance we detect. On a brighter note, take a gander at page one of this week's The Militant!"
Socialists make for strange bedfellows, but we need a broad coalition to defeat the forces of anti-civilization. Exciting times up ahead, my friends. I advise investing in 'precious metals,' in a broad sense of the term to include Pb and its delivery systems.
2 responses to “Up on the Roof”
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Wolff on Israel
Robert Paul Wolff, 30 October 2023:
I have found the series of comments on the Israeli situation interesting and helpful. I have not responded to them because I am so upset by what is happening that I can barely watch the news reports of it anymore. Let me make one small observation. There has been talk by Israeli officials and others about how this is an existential threat to the state of Israel. Let us just keep in mind that Israel is the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons and more generally is far and away the most powerful militarily. The attack on October 7, horrific and ugly and sadistic as it was, was no more a threat to Israel's existence then [than] was the attack on the twin towers on September 11 a threat to the existence of the United States.
Two points by way of rebuttal.
First, while it is true that Israel is the only nation in the region with nuclear weapons at the moment, that is very likely soon to change thanks to the concessions and fecklessness of the Obama-era appeasement policies vis-à-vis Iran promoted by puppet Biden and his (mal)administration.
Second, the October 7th massacre was not an isolated event, but part of the larger project of clearing the space "from the river to the sea" of Jews and their state once and for all. This larger project is part of a still larger one that without exaggeration can be called genocidal: to exterminate the Jewish people.* And beyond this there is the anti-civilizational project of destroying our superior Western culture, one pillar of which is Judeo-Christian, and whose last bastion, bloodied, decadent, and tottering though she be, is the Great Satan, the USA.
I will leave it to others to comment on the psychology of Jews like Wolff who embrace leftism. Some will say that he is a self-hating Jew who has internalized Jew hatred and turned it upon himself. I take no position on that speculation, but I do think a distinction is called for, namely, the distinction between a self-hating Jew and a Jew-hating Jew. Obviously, a Jew could hate himself for reasons other than his being Jewish. But every Jew who hates himself because of his Jewishness is a self-hating Jew.
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*To characterize the October 7th attack as "genocidal," as I heard one commentator do this morning, is a semantic stretch of the sort that is frowned upon here. Precision in the use of language is essential to intellectual hygiene.
32 responses to “Wolff on Israel”
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Why the Jews are Constantly Getting Slaughtered
4 responses to “Why the Jews are Constantly Getting Slaughtered”
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Halloween: 15th Typepad Anniversary
The Typepad incarnation of MavPhil is now 15 years old. It has racked up 6,637,776 page views, which averages out to 1211 page views per day. It boasts 11,838 posts and 14,342 comments. And this despite shadow banning.
I thank you for your patronage. Double your money back if not completely satisfied.
"If you like to think, you'll like my blog; if you don't like to think, you need my blog."
I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path. All dressed up with nowhere to go. Nine lives and dressed to the nines. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition. Guitar solo starts at 3:03. And of course you've heard the story about Niels Bohr and the horseshoe over the door:
A friend was visiting in the home of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, the famous atom scientist.
As they were talking, the friend kept glancing at a horseshoe hanging over the door. Finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he demanded:
“Niels, it can’t possibly be that you, a brilliant scientist, believe that foolish horseshoe superstition! ? !”
“Of course not,” replied the scientist. “But I understand it’s lucky whether you believe in it or not.”
Purr-honian Cat:
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And You Call for a Cease-Fire?
Take a look at the massacre map. Then read this:
The world is yet again staring at the near inevitability of another global conflagration. The flashpoint is in the Middle East and the Hitler of our time: the Mullahs of Iran. The West, led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, have chosen to follow in the footsteps of the self-absorbed European leaders of the 1930’s in dealing with Iran and their terrorist legions of Hamas, Hezb’allah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Allah (Houthis) among others.
The Obama/Biden policy in dealing with Iran has been to facilitate Iran in becoming a dominant player in the region in the naïve belief that if the West, and in particular the United States, treats the Mullahs of Iran as equals, they will evolve into non-belligerent leaders who can be trusted. Even if that means the acquisition of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles and sacrificing America’s only resolute ally in the region, Israel.
But is the disastrous Obama-Biden policy naïve, or is it something worse: a deliberate attempt to "fundamentally transform" (in Obama's words), and thus destroy the USA? For example, why are no steps being taken by the Biden administration to control the southern (and northern) borders when it is a known fact that jihadis are entering the homeland?
Before 7 October it was clear enough that the purpose of the open border policy was to change the demographics of the USA in such a way as to make possible the permanent ascendancy of the Democrat Party. But now it can be seen that more nefarious motives were and are at work: to increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks within the homeland. And what would they accomplish? They would give the current regime the excuse it needs for an even more draconian assault on the middle class and traditional American liberties.
UPDATE 1 (11/1)
Senator Hawley in a Congressional hearing hammers Alejandro Mayorkas who bears the Orwellian appellation "Director of Homeland Security." Is there anyone in the Biden administration more emblematic of the abysmal mendacity of said administration?
These are very dangerous times. You'd best prepare for the immediate here and the possibly soon-to-arrive hereafter.
UPDATE 2 (11/1)
Pope Francis has called for a cease-fire:
"Ceasefire," he said, mentioning a recent television appeal by Father Ibrahim Faltas, one of the Vatican's representatives in the Holy Land.
He then added in his own words: "We say 'ceasefire, ceasefire'. Brothers and sisters, stop! War is always a defeat, always".What he means, presumably, is that war is always a defeat for humanity. Is Bergoglio ignorant of recent European history and in particular the Second World War? If the Allies had not defeated the Axis powers, humanity (in the normative sense) and the high civilization of the Judeo-Christian type that the good pope supposedly represents, would have ceased to exist.John Lennon famously if foolishly sang, "Give peace a chance." What he and Bergoglio the Benighted fail to understand is that sometimes we have to give war a chance.Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. The price of peace is a credible deterrent. Weakness and appeasement invite attack. Joe Biden is weak on multiple fronts; no surprise then that the upshot is war on multiple fronts.Conciliation is obviously a very high value. But how conciliate those who are religiously committed to your extermination? How conciliate those who would rather die than permit you to live?
25 responses to “And You Call for a Cease-Fire?”
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Allyship?
Explained here. Is this a parody?
Word found here:
“I started to see these intelligent, educated people, whose mission is to make our system better for people of color, suddenly posting all this anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian stuff,” Rose said. “I’m not changing my values, but screw the allyship. I will not stop fighting, because I believe in the causes themselves. But as for going out of my way to support, to post, to give money? I’m done.”
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First they came for the Saturday people . . .
. . . then they came for the Sunday people.
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The Axis of the Human Heart
Rod Dreher quotes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that 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. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.
This free Substack article by Dreher is one of his finest. Please do read it for your own good. And read it all: pay attention to the account of the unspeakable savagery of the American Indians, a savagery typically downplayed or unmentioned by leftists.
2 responses to “The Axis of the Human Heart”
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Billionaire Donors Withholding Loot from Leftist Seminaries
Long-time donors are finally waking up to the wokeassery* of once-great universities that have for decades been transmogrifying into leftist seminaries. ('Seminary' is etymologically related to 'semen' and in the seminaries in question the origin of the jism is masturbatory: nothing productive comes from these seed beds.)
I predicted the donor revolt on 13 October about a week after the Hamas savagery of 7 October. Case in point: Leon Cooperman. He's given some $50 mil to Columbia but will give no more citing the cranial feculence (my polite phrase, not his) of the Hamas-supporting students.
What is astonishing to many of us, however, is how the Cooperman cohort could be so clueless for so long. Cooperman just now discovered what has been going on since the '60s, namely, the "long march through the institutions"? Only now you decide to stop funding the anti-civilizational scum?
Better late than never, but no fool like an old fool.
Copperman's 80. The elderly tend to live in the past. They tend to be fat, lazy, complacent, inattentive, and lost in the petty particulars of their self-centered quotidian round, even if they are not, like Joey B., physically decrepit, non compos mentis, morally corrupt to the core, and a disaster for the USA and the world.
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*A coinage of mine which I am sure has occurred to others. Modelled on jackassery, a word recognized by Merriam-Webster. The donkey or jackass is the symbol, an aptro-symbol if you will, of the Democrat party in the USA which, once respectable, is now hard-Left and destructive of our republic as she was founded to be.
13 responses to “Glenn Reynolds on Barack Hussein Obama”