2021- The Best Of

 

It was a weird year,  the second full year of COVID19 restrictions.  During this topsy turvy year, the Vatican slapped restrictions on saying the Latin Mass.  The Illinois Holocaust Museum made “show me your papers” a requirement for admission and then squelched dissent on the internet.   At least it didn’t have a loudspeaker at the entrance, barking “Mach schnell!” to give it the full effect.  That’s where we are now.

There was an attempt to return to normalcy by summer.  Baseball was played.  Ravinia had somewhat of a season, although it was very lightly attended.  Movie theaters re-opened. 

It this tentative and somewhat abbreviated year, there were some highlights, nonetheless.

Film

I have to confess, I have some catching up to do.  I saw relatively few films this year and I will try to catch up during the icy months.

But of the films I saw, I liked Minari, a film about a young Korean family that emigrates to Arkansas after immigrating from Korea and tries to make a go of it by working the land.   It’s somewhat of a remake of The Grapes of Wrath story, with all the family drama.  A Quiet Place II wasn’t bad, especially since there has been a paucity of good sci-fi and horror films lately.

Nomadland received best picture at the Academy Awards but I thought it was awful- dark, depressing, spartan with uninteresting characters.  It was especially tedious since we are living through a dark, depressing, dystopian period.   Similarly, Land was predictable and tedious, and I had high expectations for it.

The more interesting medium were a few mini-series that I liked a great deal.  At the top of the list was Queen’s Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy.  Queen’s Gambit was magnificent.  The acting was very good.  The writing was excellent and the character development was superb.  Anya Taylor-Joy was a wonderfully complex character.  The writers were able to translate a slow moving game into a riveting experience.  The Beth Harmon character was a bit of a composite of Bobby Fischer and Janis Joplin.  Marcin Dorocinski played her Russian nemesis, Vasily Borgov.  Dorocinski is actually Polish and is one of a raft of excellent Polish dramatic talent that surfaced in the last couple of years.

World on Fire was a WWII drama and PBS mini-series, starring Helen Hunt.  The first installment was centered on early WWII.   It was a sweeping project, developing characters on several continents.  Like Queen’s Gambit, I found it to be quite authentic (except for a couple of Woke nods).   Helen Hunt was outstanding and the scenes in Poland were done by Polish actors, headed up by the young, beautiful and talented Zofia Wichlacz.   I’m very much looking forward to Season 2. 

PBS Masterpiece also pulled off another masterpiece with All Creatures and Small.  The beloved James Herriot books were wonderfully done in this remake.   Season 2 starts soon and can’t get here fast enough. 

Books

Fiction

This was a tossup.  I really liked Should We Stay or Should We Go by Lionel Shriver.  This novel is about an older couple that makes a mutual suicide pact to avoid the inevitable decline and expense of old age. The twist is that Shriver ingeniously provides alternative endings.   Shriver’s biting and incisive intellect just drips out of this novel.  Also very inventive was Klara and the Sun by Kazou Ishiguro.  In this futuristic (but not far off) novel, a family purchases a synthetic companion for their chronically ill daughter.

Both these novels deal with themes that baby boomers will likely have to confront in the near future.  And both authors handled these issues in very original ways.

Nonfiction

There were several excellent candidates in this category.  We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State by Kai Strittmatter was very good as was This is How the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth.   Nuclear Armageddon is no longer our sole humanity ending dread.

But my vote for best nonfiction book goes to the dean of American History, Gordon S. Wood for his short and very readable concise volume, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution.  In less than 200 pages, the 87 year old Wood spins out an essential primer on our great Republic.  In seven short chapters, he lays out an essential foundation of how we came into being, and the origins of our Constitution.  Best of all, Wood devotes an entire chapter entitled Slavery and Constitutionalism to destroying The 1619 Project and the falsehoods being propagated by Nicole Hannah-Jones without even naming her or The 1619 Project.  He utterly upends her basic argument:

The Revolution changed everything: unfreedom could no longer be taken for granted as a normal part of hierarchical society.  Almost overnight black slavery and white servitude became conspicuous and reviled in ways that they had not been earlier.

He goes on later to assert:

With independence, nearly all the independent states, including Virginia, began moving against slavery, initiating what became the first great antislavery movement in world history. The desire to abolish slavery was not an incidental offshoot of the Revolution; it was not an unintended consequence of the contagion of liberty.  It was part and parcel of the many enlightened reforms that were integral to the republican revolutions taking place in the new states.

And just like that, Hannah-Jones argument is laid waste.

I had an opportunity to hear Gordon Wood speak and meet him a couple of years ago.  With Samuel Eliot Morison, Page Smith, Edmund Morgan and Bernard Bailyn gone, Wood is one of the last to hold up the candle of the miracle of the origins of America.  American History departments have been shrunk to almost nonexistence and have been stuffed with the gender studies and grievance studies people.   Wood is a treasure and, at 87, this may be his last, but best effort.

 

Thank God It's Over Pt. 1

 

Like most of you, I am eager to put 2021 behind me.  It was a strange and disorienting year, one in which we nearly completed two years of “15 days to flatten the curve,” the Biden Administration took over the reins of government, Afghanistan collapsed, inflation reared its ugly head with a vengeance, cities were wracked by rampant crime, CRT demonstrated how embedded they were in our educational system and China threatened us with hypersonic nuclear missiles.  Trump’s exit from government did not heal our divisions.

It would be easy to fall into hopelessness and despair.

But I am rather hopeful.   COVID19 and CRT seem intractable in our society but I see some very positive developments.   That is why my year end post will be a little different that I have posted in previous years.

2021 was the year of The Great Realignment.

COVID19 changed our patterns of living, as did the unchecked crime in urban areas.  And the false religion of CRT changed our relationships with many established institutions.   We woke up one morning to find that we could not go to the office, and now we are in the process of being barred from restaurants, bars and public places unless we have a government approved vaxx pass.  We also woke up to find that our liberal institutions—the media, higher education, and K-12 education systems are not liberal at all.  They had been transformed into propaganda centers, from which dissenters were exiled and publicly pilloried with the scary label, “RACIST!”  A society that barred religion from schools and the public square now embraced the new Woke religion, which had made its doctrine compulsory in schools and workplaces across the country.  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion became omnipresent and if you so much as raised a skeptical eyebrow, you were… well, excluded.  Similarly, despite the very mixed results of the vaccines, the unvaccinated are also in the process of being marginalized, treated like lepers of biblical times.

Throughout history, totalitarians have enjoyed a tremendous first mover advantage.   But the pushback has begun in earnest, and it is gathering momentum.

In The Great Realignment, I have shifted away from organizations that have gone Woke.  I dropped my membership in the American Writers Museum as soon as it had a program featuring Kathy Griffin.  I punted the Newberry Library as soon as it held a Drag Queen Story Hour.  When The American Scholar featured “The Problem with Whiteness” as its cover article, I immediately canceled my subscription with a note, “There is no problem with Whiteness.”  When Loyola Academy decided to permit a large Black Lives Matter sign and begin allowing CRT into the curriculum, donations to that institution were halted.

Instead, I shifted my memberships, donations and subscriptions to the non-Woke.  Library of America gained a new member.  The Willa Cather Foundation did not go Woke, so I signed up (she is one of my favorite writers).  I moved my subscriptions to The Spectator and Backwoods Home magazines.  I dropped the N.F.L., N.B.A. and MLB and pivoted to golf and hiking instead, becoming more of a doer than a spectator.  Most significantly, I joined The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, a grassroots organization aimed at restoring the principles of MLK (www.fairforall.org) and have attended several of its events. 

The Great Realignment also pushed me beyond the traditional Republican/Democrat or Conservative/Liberal dichotomies.   With the degradation of journalism, I sought out other avenues to hear what others have to say about the momentous events and changes that seemed to be occurring.

I found podcasts to be much more in depth, nuanced and intellectually honest that anything produced by institutional print, broadcast or social media.

Here are the podcasts that I regularly listen to:

-Dark Horse Podcast – Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, a husband-wife team of evolutionary biologists that were run off by the Wokesters at Evergreen State and have a lot to say about the COVID19 pandemic, among other topics.

-Honestly with Bari Weiss- Another person canceled by the New York Times and now has her own substack and podcast.  She has displaced Terry Gross as the finest interviewer in the country.  Her September 8 interview with author Abigail Shier, Courage in the Face of Book Burners, is simply magnificent.

-New Discourses by James Lindsay- an in-depth explication of the Woke, CRT and Trans movements and their antecedents -Marxism, Maoism and Stalinism.  

-The Glenn Show- Podcast by Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury.  Glenn brings authenticity of his Chicago South Side roots to push back on Woke.  As an African-American from inner city Chicago, he brings a particularly poignant point of view to the fray.

-The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast- Back from his leave, Peterson had warned us about the dangers of post-modernism years ago.  

-The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad.  Like Peterson, Saad has been pushing back against the “Blue Hair People” for decades.  Like Bari Weiss, he is an excellent interviewer, and meets the challenge with humor and sarcasm rather than anger and bitterness.  His book, The Parasitic Mind was one of the best books I’ve read this year.   His most recent interviews with UChicago professor Dorian Abbot, Sociologist Goran Adamson and Dr. Janice Fiamengo are not to be missed.

Two of the writers that I most enjoy are:

Peachy Keenan, the non de plume of a young Catholic mom from California, who writes for americanmind.org.  Her writing is punchy, witty and sensible.  She is a more refined, less bitter, caustic and obnoxious version of Anne Coulter. 

Douglas Murray, author and defender of the West.  Murray has written The Madness of Crowds and The Strange Death of Europe.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4XhZytdD0

As a rather traditional Christian Reagan pro-American conservative, I find it fascinating that two of the people that I pay attention to are Canadian- Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad and Douglas Murray is British.  And the podcasts I never miss are Honestly and Dark Horse, by two traditional liberals, Bari Weiss and Bret Weinstein.  This is a signal that there is a true realignment.  I find a much greater intellectual kinship with Weiss and Weinstein than most mainstream Republicans these days.

Crime and Punishment

 

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot visited LA and San Francisco to see how they handle smash-n-grab.  That’s a bit like sitting down with Elizabeth Holmes, formerly of Theranos to see how she did product development.

Major cities across the US are in the midst of a crime wave, enabled in large part by Woke DA’s whose elections were financed by George Soros and Woke “bail reform” efforts that have led to violent criminals being released without bond.  

Chicago, in particular, is under siege, having eclipsed 800 murders so far this year, some of them quite heinous.

·        A 70 year old retired special ed teacher slain on the way home from a White Sox game on the Dan Ryan Expressway.  The shooter was identified but never charged.

·        A 36 year old female graduate student was stabbed to death just blocks from Sears Tower on a Sunday morning.

·        Most recently, a 71 year old former restauranteur was executed in Chinatown.

·        A University of Chicago student was slain on the way home from his internship last summer and a recent graduate was murdered in the middle of the day for $600 worth of goods.

This is just a sampling of the horrific occurrences over the past year in Chicago, which has seen over 4,300 shootings, 1,600 carjackings, beatings, muggings and numerous other organized smash and grabs.  The spike in crime has devastated these cities.  Restaurants, retail establishments and tourism are taking a beating.   Large retailers like Target have gone to Congress asking for help.   Joe Perillo, owner of Gold Coast Exotic Motor Cars in Chicago, a one-time supporter of Lightfoot publicly lashed out, “Enough is enough.”

Ironically, during the same week as Jussie Smollett was convicted of staging a fake hate crime, Woom Sing Tse was randomly shot and killed in broad daylight.

In the midst of all this, I raise some important issues:

1.      Why was Darrell Brooks, the driver of the SUV that mowed down 60 people in Waukesha, not charged with a hate crime?  Why was Alphonso Joyner similarly not charged with a hate crime for the murder of Mr. Tse in Chicago? You can bet that if races were reversed, charges would be brought.  If we are to invoke hate crime statutes, shouldn’t they go both ways?

2.      Isn’t a fake hate crime actually worse than a hate crime?  A hate crime is directed at one or more individuals.  A fake hate crime, however, is directed at societal cohesion as a whole.  It is calculated to create racial animus where none exists.  Moreover, in the cases of Bubba Wallace and Jussie Smollett, those perpetrators had accomplices.   Politicians and the media were more than willing to make judgments before any of the facts were known.  In the case of the actual perpetrator, the correct punishment should be

3.      What do we do about “feral youth?”  This is perhaps the most difficult and vexing question our society must face with regard to criminal justice.  One of the teens involved in the robbery and murder of 18 year old Tessa Majors in NY was only 13 at the time and was sentenced to a mere 18 months in juvenile detention.  The teen girls that killed the Pakistani Uber Eats driver received an easy plea deal.  In Chicago,  young Adam (Li’l Homicide) Toledo was killed by a Chicago patrolman when he turned with a gun in his hand in a dark gangway in the middle of the night.  Carjackers are often 10-16 years old and I saw one film clip of a 5 year old kid that was part of a carjacking team.   What is to be done with these rogue youngsters.  In the case of youths that would be convicted of murder or attempted murder, as the girls that killed the Pakistani driver, I would be hard pressed to have hopes for a future for them, or that they could be rehabbed.  

4.      The explosion of crime in major cities simultaneously leads one to question whether this is simply a wrongheaded set of policies or whether something more nefarious is going on.   Is there intent to  purposefully force professional class and working class citizens (mostly white) people out of urban areas—deport them, if you will, or rather lead them to self-deport?  In Chicago, it seems to be backfiring, as professional class and working class blacks are exiting the city.

These are not easy issues to discuss but they must be faced head on if we are to save our great American cities.

Mythbusting

 I’m going to write a few things that will make some people uncomfortable.  So be it.  We’re well past the point of comfort now.  Most people understand that we are in a different place now, that many of our institutional safeguards have given way and many institutions such as the FBI and CDC, instituions that we expected to protect us and be nonpartisan about it, have become partisan tools.   To be sure, some of the erosion has been due to COVID, but much has been due to accepting as gospel myths that turned out to be false.  And I freely admit that to some extent and at one time or another, I bought into all of these. 

No longer.

We need to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. 

This pithy slogan of George W. Bush was used as the justification for invading Iraq and for the 20 year debacle in Afghanistan.  In the shadow of the horrors of 9/11, it seemed to make sense.  We all heard the last calls of the frightened people on flight 93 and those trapped on the upper floors of the World Trade Center.  We all got behind W’s rationale for doing anything it took not to have that happen again.  But it turned out to be a false choice.  

We spent billions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, only to erode our standing in the world, exhaust our military, increase Iran’s influence in the Middle East and leave the Taliban with a nation state and advanced weapons. 

Al Qaeda and the Taliban and Iraq deserved an appropriate response but our policymakers chose the highest cost option—in blood and treasure.  And an overlooked cost to these misadventures is that we gave our future adversaries a free look at our doctrines, strategies, tactics and technologies.  And in the case of Afghanistan, we actually turned our weapons over to them.

If we have free and open commercial trade with China, a more prosperous middle class will bubble up, demand more freedom and the CCP will be forced to moderate, and China will become more like us.

A mere 4 years ago, I sat in the audience while Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama proclaimed this and a year later, I had lunch with libertarian economist Deirdre McCloskey, who voiced similar sentiments.  Enriching China may turn out to be the biggest policy mistake in history.  Our politicians blithely overlooked Tiananmen Square for three decades, pretended it didn’t happen and kept waiting for this sea change to occur.  What we got was exactly the opposite of what was predicted by the “experts” – an aggressive, bullying dictatorship that abrogated its deal on Hong Kong,  is threatening Taiwan, lying and covering up the COVID outbreak, threatening us with hypersonic missiles, and exercising hegemony in the South China Sea.  Our political, cultural and business leaders grovel before the CCP.  The NBA fears being shut out and disciplines people that criticize China.  Congressman Eric Swalwell openly cavorts with Chinese spy Fang Fang without serious repercussions, and the leader of America’s largest banking institution, Jamie Dimon obsequiously issued a public apology for offending the CCP.  Pope Francis had no reservations about openly criticizing Donald Trump is silent about China’s Uygher concentration camps and did a secret deal that purportedly gave the CCP veto power over appointments in China.  University of Chicago’s John Mersheimer has a must read article, The Inevitable Rivalry  in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs and I highly recommend it.  All this will be very difficult, if not impossible to reverse.  Since allowing China to join the WTO, I would argue that we have become more like China, rather than the other way around.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-10-19/inevitable-rivalry-cold-war

Mass incarceration is a problem.

Yes, we have been told that mass incarceration is a problem.  The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and a lot of it is due to our draconian drug laws, which affect minorities disproportionately.  Because they are poorer and can’t afford bail, they are condemned to sitting in prison.   This has been drummed into us for a couple of decades.

Well, we loosened or eliminated drug laws, went to cashless bail, and, in cities like Chicago, dramatically raised the standards for prosecution.   We are seeing the results of all this with the flow of blood on city streets and the ravaging of a retail industry by looters—an industry that is already reeling because of Amazon and COVID.

As with China, it turns out that mass incarceration was the solution, not the problem.  And this doesn’t mean harsh prison sentences for minor drug offenses.  This means keeping dangerous felons away from productive members of society.    I tweeted this comment:

“Exploring the ‘root causes’ is a useless academic debate and focuses on the needs of the perpetrator sometime off in the future, if ever, rather than the innocent victims today.”

Meanwhile, population will just bleed off, literally and figuratively.”

Ironically, it is the black community in places like Chicago that are bearing most of the suffering due to the propagation of this myth.

Immigration is an unalloyed positive for the country.

Our country needs immigration and I am hardly anti-immigrant, having been reared in a largely immigrant community. Yet, a sane immigration policy would take into account the needs of the country.  There are only 3 squares an immigrant can land on upon arrival:

1.      Employed, self sufficient and productive.

2.      The social welfare system.

3.      The criminal justice system.

That’s it.  We want lots of people on square number one.   We have plenty in squares 2 and 3 already, thank you very much.  A sane policy would filter out as many individuals likely to occupy squares 2 and 3 as possible.

Other factors which make unfettered immigration undesirable is that the demand for unskilled labor is projected to decrease in the future.  We simply do not need lots of people with strong backs and nothing else to bring to the table as we did a century ago.   Yet another problem is that our school systems and other institutions have gone Woke, which means that rather than being fully integrated into our society, new immigrants, particularly those of color, are being told that they are oppressed.  This is not good for a cohesive society.

Sticking blindly to these myths have wreaked tremendous damage to our nation and both Republicans and Democrats share blame for peddling them, along with the so-called “experts.”  We need to make adjustments to them and make them sooner, rather than later.   It’s past time to change course.

The Verdict

 There are plenty of op-eds on the verdict in the prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, so I will leave that to others.   Rather, I will comment on the comments and make an assessment of what this trial represented.

Of course, with social media, everyone has an opinion.  On the right, Rittenhouse is being hailed as a hero and his dismissal is a vindication of the 2^nd Amendment.  On the left, he is being smeared as a white supremacist and a murderer, mostly by the MSM, setting up a raft of defamation suits.

But I would focus on the reaction here locally from our political leaders--- the people that actually run the joint—J.B. Pritzker and Lori Lightfoot.   The links to their statements are posted below:

Pritzker

Governor JB Pritzker on Twitter: "Carrying a loaded gun into a community 20 miles from your home and shooting unarmed citizens is fundamentally wrong. Read my full statement on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict: https://t.co/Buh585oblf" / Twitter

Lightfoot

Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot on Twitter: "Here's my statement on the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. https://t.co/9jgE1eaZfo" / Twitter

 

First, that Pritzker and Lightfoot commented at all is problematic.  While blood flows weekly in the streets of their own major city, they are compelled to have an opinion on an occurrence in another jurisdiction.  Second, the contempt with which they view our judicial system in particular and the concept of separation of powers is simply breathtaking.   Whether or not you believe the case should have been brought in the first place, the charges were duly considered by a judge and jury of 12 and, despite the threats to both, the verdict came back “not guilty.”  Neither Pritzker nor Lightfoot sat through that trial, but they think they know better.

Even worse, their instincts are to side with the rioters that were causing mayhem and attacked Rittenhouse.  Pritker’s claim that Huber and Rosenbaum “deserve to be alive today” and “deserve justice” overlooks their role in this, that justice was served and, by the way, Rosenbaum was a repeat pedophile.   The reality is that Rittenhouse likely saved a number of children in the future from his dastardly acts.

But most bothersome is the hypocrisy of their statements.   Both Pritzker and Lightfoot have spent the bulk of their administrations attempting to remediate “systemic racism.”  But it was “the system” that put in motion the unfortunate set of circumstances that led to the incident in Kenosha.   It was the MSM condemning the police for attempting to protect children and others from the acts of Jacob Blake.  It was Wisconsin governor Evers who abdicated his responsibility to protect the Kenosha community from the rioters by not calling out the national guard and a mayor that had his force stand down.  These failures led young Kyle to believe that he needed to step into the void created by failed politicians.  You can’t ask a 17 year old to use good judgment when you don’t.

Lightfoot showed real chutzpah, a mere week after a 24 year old recent University of Chicago graduate was mercilessly slaughtered on the street in the middle of the day in Hyde Park, chirped, “What Kyle Rittenhouse did was reckless, dangerous, and showed an utter contempt for human life.”  She goes on to ask for prayers for rapist Jacob Blake.  Lightfoot’s sympathies are unambiguously with the criminal class—the rapists, looters, and pedophiles.  

With over 4,000 shot and 773 homicides this year, Pritzker and Lightfoot should be focused on cleaning up their own jurisdiction first.   What is reckless, dangerous and contemptuous of human life is their policing and criminal justice reform policies.

Like Wisconsin Governor Evers, Pritzker and Lightfoot, along with Kim Foxx have abdicated a primary role of government—that is to protect the persons and property of law abiding citizens.   

And as I write this, the governor of Illinois and mayor of the City of Chicago, who both were compelled to leap to the side of Antifa and take a position counter to a judge and jury in Kenosha now stand silent as we digest the mass casualty event in Waukesha.

Suddenly, the cat has got their tongues.  And it should make you question whether you want to live in a place where either is in charge of governing.

Remembrance- It's Worse Than You Think

 

I spent some time yesterday reflecting on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.  I participated in the observance of the event through the Illinois Holocaust Museum.  Later, I listened to Bari Weiss’s podcast interview with author Dara Horn, who discussed her book, “People Love Dead Jews,” a collection of essays about antisemitism.

I found it appropriate to do them together as the ceremony at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Bari Weiss’s interview with Dara Horn were perfect complements to each other.

Although I am not Jewish, I have had a strong interest in WWII, and, in particular, the Holocaust.  I have read widely on the topic, reviewed several excellent films, such as Son of Saul, and wrote a piece a few years ago in opposition to the proposed Polish law that would have made speaking of the “Polish Holocaust” or similar references illegal.

At bottom, I still seek to understand how citizens in a civilized Western country could have done such things.  And I am also seeking to relate those events to some of the things that are going on right here and now in the U.S. and wondering how concerned we should be.

The ceremony at the Illinois Holocaust Museum was appropriately solemn and dignified.  It had the Israeli Consulate General give some remarks as well as the granddaughter of one of the survivors.  Most moving was the lighting of the candles by some of the survivors and the mournful singing of the cantor.

I urge you to listen to the podcast interview of Dara Horn.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/weekend-extra-why-people-love-dead-jews/id1570872415?i=1000541010284

Perhaps the most important takeaway is Bari Weiss’s assertion that “The fate of Jews and the fate of liberty are intertwined,” a statement I agree with wholeheartedly.  Some of their conversation focused on the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh three years ago, as well as the self-erasure that some Jewish institutions engage in in an effort to be more “inclusive.”

Yet, given current events, I found the ceremony and the conversation a little incomplete.  The speakers at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, while remembering the past, did not spend a great deal of time on the most worrying aspect of the current expressions of antisemitism. 

By commission and omission, the State has been an ally to antisemitic forces.  On a national level, both Ilhan Omar have made clear antisemitic statements and the House of Representatives could not bring itself to censure them.   In New York, under the pretext of enforcing COVID restrictions, authorities bullied Hasidic Jews, stopped them from having funeral services and other gatherings.  Most egregiously, they chased young Jewish mothers with their children off playgrounds—even though children have almost no risk from COVID.   And in cities like New York and Los Angeles, Jews have been subjected to random attacks on the streets by African Americans, which attacks have been widely captured on video and disseminated on social media.  The passivity of law enforcement in these cities has been particularly harmful to the Jewish community.

So, yes, we are seeing a resurgence of anti-semitism here in the U.S.

It was a mere four years ago that I saw a flyer on a public bulletin board at the University of Illinois at Chicago that proclaimed, “White Supremacy starts with Jewish Supremacy.”  Now that we are seeing signs that the State is not unequivocally and forcefully pushing back against it, and may be tacitly ok with it, we should be very worried.

Dara Horn said that she objected to Jews being viewed as “canaries in the coal mine.”   I view it a little differently.  My Jewish brothers and sisters are on the front lines of liberty.  And we need to stand with them, even when some don’t see it yet.

Preying on Youth

 

Our society seems to be being pulled apart by a number of forces—our political divisions, urban crime, Cancel Culture, Woke ideology that seems to have taken hold in nearly every institution, the corrosion of our educational system, the corruption of our media.

But there is one development that worries me the most—and that is our society’s disregard for the safety of our young people, particularly when it comes to sexual assault and sexual exploitation.  Indeed, our institutions have been complicit in the most egregious violations of their personhood.  That our institutions look the other way.

Chicago Blackhawks
As more is coming to light about the sexual assault of Kyle Beach, the more we should be repulsed by an organization that swept this awful occurrence under the rug.  The offender, Brad Aldrich,  went on to coach in high school and assaulted a 16 year old, and who knows how many others.  The Blackhawks just obtained the resignation of general manager Scotty Bowman, issued a statement and asked that Aldrich’s name be removed from the Stanley Cup.  The league pressured Coach Quennville to resign from the Florida Panthers.

Yet, this is 10 years too late and, like the Catholic archdiocese, the Blackhawks remained silent and allowed Aldrich to move on when what happened to Beach was common knowledge.

That the organization covered up for Aldrich is hideous.  Whatever sins were committed by  the mismanagement of Bill Wirtz in comparison to what occurred under the aegis of his son, Rocky.

U.S. Gymnastics
It was hard not to rage as McKayla Maroney and others testified about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Larry Nasser.  Michigan State president Lou Ann Simon resigned in the wake of the scandal and her replacement, interim president John Engler resigned after he was quoted as saying that the victims seemed to be “enjoying the spotlight.”    Most incredibly, FBI agents changed Maroney’s statements, and were slow to pursue allegations against Nasser, which enabled him to abuse more victims.

Loudoun County
We learned that a 14 year old girl was raped in the girls’ bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt.  The school board covered up the crime, transferred the boy to another school, where he molested another victim.  The school board, which recently implemented a transgender friendly policy enabling a student that self identifies as a girl to have access to the girls’ bathroom.  In its eagerness to advance its trans agenda, the board and principal showed their eagerness to trample over the safety of adolescent girls and the result was a girl brutally raped and several others assaulted.   To date, no one has resigned.

For Kyle Beach, McKayla Maroney, Simone Biles and the other victims of Larry Nasser, Brad Aldrich, and the Loudoun County rapist, the assaults were defining moments  of their lives.  It was a horrible occurrence that forever changed the trajectory of their lives. 

These were outstanding young people.  In the case of the gymnasts and Kyle Beach, they were athletes that evidenced discipline to compete at the highest level of their sport. 

The outrage is not simply that these horrendous things happened to these beautiful, talented and innocent young people.   That is bad in and of itself.  But the grotesqueness of it all is that the structures and institutions PROTECTED THE PERPETRATORS, enabled them to go on to sexually abuse and exploit more young people.  These are organizations whose mission is, in part at least, to develop and showcase the talents of young people.  Instead, they actively colluded to coddle the predators.

It’s as if the people running these organizations learned nothing from Joe Paterno and learned nothing from the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church. 

These awful collusions and cover-ups are very bad indicators for our society.