The Oldest Hate

As a student of, and teacher of, Western Civilization, I can't help but notice certain patterns and trends.  And, having spent years thinking and reading about this overarching edifice, this incredible gift to humanity, I often ask myself what sin, what flaw, is apparently impossible to shake from the corpus of this remarkable achievement? 

The most constant negative feature of Western Civilization is anti-Semitism.  No matter what leaps we make in philosophy, or medicine, or technology, or human rights, Jew-hatred has never been shaken.  It clings to our civilization.  And it's not a harmless barnacle on the hull of our ship; it's a cancer within our collective body.

I don't think "=" means what you think it does.

Jews have always been targeted for persecution, exile, and genocide, from the times of the Pharaohs to the times of the iPhone. 

After a Roman Emperor exiled the Jews from Israel, he re-named that land "Palestine", as a way to mock the Jews by renaming their homeland after their historic rivals, the Philistines.

During the Black Plague in Europe 700 years ago, many European Christians blamed the epidemic on the Jews.  Massacred ensued.  Spoiler alert:  the Bubonic Plague was not a biological weapon of the Jews.

During the Crusades, Christian armies slaughtered Jews as they journeyed through Europe towards the Holy Land.  Because, you know, soldiers need target practice.

There is a myth about anti-Semitism, which holds that this pathology was invented by, and died with, this guy:

Hitler did not invent anti-Semitism; he tapped into a timeless current of Western Civilization.  And the hatred of Jews did not die with Hitler.  Hitler would have been very happy about this.

So, what explains this?  Post World War II anti-semitism falls into one of two larger camps; hatred for Israel, and generalized envy.  Theological anti-Semitism used to be a very powerful third strain (Jews as the "Christ-killers"), but as the West has become less religious, that type of Jew-hatred has faded.

So, hatred for Israel.  There are 55 Muslim-majority countries.  There is 1 Jewish-majority country.  There are more than 1 billion Muslims on Earth.  There are fewer than 20 million Jews.  There are well over 50 Muslims for every Jew worldwide.

But the position of nearly all governments of Muslim-majority countries is that the Jews are an intolerable, criminal, aggressive, expansionist threat to Muslims.

Above is a map of Muslim-majority areas in Africa and Asia.  Can you spot the Jewish behemoth on the map?  Zoom in.  Israel is narrower than the state of Rhode Island.  It's half desert.  And there's no oil.

The United Nations Human Right Commission levies nearly 50% of its complaints against Israel.  Coincidence?  The Human Rights Commission is presumably concerned with Human Rights, but how many countries on this map allow freedom of religion?  gay marriage?  universal suffrage? trial by jury?  One. Starts with I.  And it's not Iran.  Or Iraq.

"Trust me, this totally makes sense."

Ironically, the freest, safest place for Muslims on this map is.....Israel.  In Israel, Muslims have civil rights.  They can say what they want.  They can marry whom they want.  They can vote, and run for office.  In Israel.  Nowhere else on this map.

So, surely it's coincidence that the only Jewish-majority state on Earth is considered to be intolerable by dozens of other nations.

Now for generalized envy.  Jews are ridiculously successful, especially considering their very small numbers and their minority status everywhere on Earth except for Israel.

Jews comprise 2/10 of 1 percent of the global population.  But Jews have won more than 20% of all Nobel prizes.

He must have STOLEN his brain from someone!!

It is an objective fact that Jews, proportionately, DOMINATE finance, medicine, film, media, and a whole bunch of other things.  This is not a slander; this is a complement.  But, taking this fact into account, one is left with two possible explanations.

1)  Jews must be doing something right.  Maybe we could learn from them.  Maybe we could emulate their devotion to education, to family, and to tradition.  Maybe the fact that they're still here and still thriving should be an inspirational tale to ALL people.

2)  Or......they stole it.  Their success is evidence of their wickedness.  Their survival is evidence of their soul-less cunning.  The very fact that they defend themselves is evidence that they are insidious and violent by nature.

This is an important fault-line.  The fact that the most persecuted group in the history of the world is not only still in existence, but is the most successful group in the history of the very world that's been trying for millenia to destroy it, is a remarkable thing. 

Do we stand in awe of that?  Or do we devolve into that timeless cycle of paranoid, conspiratorial envy which has perennialy weakened and discredited our effort to overcome our worst impulses?

Our Lady

Any person who appreciates civilization was surely devastated, disoriented, and profoundly confused by the images of Notre Dame being engulfed in flames.  How could this happen?  Was it arson?  Did Hitler come back from the dead? 

The fire appears, at this point, to have been accidental.  Thank God.  The only thing more dangerous than incompetence is malice.  This tragedy appears to have been precipitated by the former.

This building, which I was blessed to visit 3 times, is an exemplar of so many things.  Here is a breakdown of why Notre Dame matters, in no particular order of importance.

1)  It is obviously an iconic symbol of the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church has come under fire lately, and for good reason.  The rage directed at the Catholic Church for the child rape scandal is not only entirely justified; it is actually far too little and far too late.

But the Catholic Church is 2000 years old.  What else have they done?  Built Western Civilization.  Even if one is not Catholic, none of us can deny that, without the Catholic Church, we would not have the civilization that we do, this incredibly fragile jewel that we have inherited out of either blind luck or active grace.

The oldest universities in our civilization were built by Catholics.  The greatest charitable organizations are run by Catholics.  The best hospitals, specifically those explicitly charged with treating the most vulnerable of us, are funded by Catholics.  Catholics have exponentially increased the childhood cancer survival rate.

 
There are certain things we can all agree on.  Keeping kids alive is one of them.

The Catholic Church is rightly condemned for its many sins, but it is also irrationally deprived of the monumental credit it is due for building, and saving, the civilization which most of us take for granted.

2)  Notre Dame is a symbol of the super-organic nature of humanity.

Again, whether you are religious or not, humans are, at their best, super-organic.  Without getting into theology or metaphysics, we can all agree that humans are super-organic in the sense that, even when their organic existence ends, parts of them survive.

So what about us is super-organic?  What survives this "crude matter", to quote Yoda?  Out words, which can be written down; the ink does not disappear when we die.  Out works:  what we have built, or repaired, or painted, does not disappear when we die.

Here is the super-organic nature of Notre Dame: it took 100 years to build.  The people who started the construction knew, by definition, that they would die long before it was completed.  So why did they do the work if they would never see the result?

But that's the whole point.  The generations of people who built Notre Dame were doing what we all, hopefully, are doing in incremental ways every day; we are on this Earth to make things marginally better, to add something, no matter how small, to honor and advance our ancestors' work, and to set an example for our children.

It's not about seeing the cathedral finished; it's about, inch by inch, ensuring that the cathedral will be finished someday, even if you are long dead when it happens.

That's faith.  That's civilization,  And that's something that must be honored and revered, or else the entire human journey will be reduced to Netflix and chill.

Sloppy Joe

Joe Biden is running for president for the 3rd time.  Why is that considered considered okay, while the idea of Hillary running for a 3rd time is considered gauche and distasteful?  I'm just asking this question because I'm desperately hoping for a Trump-Clinton rematch.

We've already jumped the shark when it comes to politics, so let's just enjoy this thing; let's laugh so that we don't cry.  Trump-Clinton 2020, aka Trump-Clinton 2.0, aka the She-Match, aka Vladimir Putin's ultimate fantasy....

That would be so great.  Regardless of the outcome, it would be epic.  It would be part Shakespeare, part Jerry Springer, part American Ninja Warrior, and part Mystery Science Theater 3000, in an utterly amoral, nihilistic abattoir in which virtuous rhetoric and anything remotely resembling basic decency and/or honesty shrivel up and die.

But that's probably not going to happen.  So, what about Joe?  Joe Biden is the 2020 version of Hillary Clinton. Old. Very Establishment. Big fan of the Iraq War. Relatively moderate compared to the Jacobins that are taking over the Democratic Party.  Progressive.  But not "eliminate borders" progressive.  The person who should win. 

And both of their claims to fame are sucking at getting elected president, but being very close to people who do not suck at being elected president.

In a more normal time, Biden would coast to the nomination of a party who understood that the primary objective, aka the only objective is to win.  If you don't achieve the primary objective, the secondary objective, and all objectives after that, are null and void.  Especially when running against this guy:

 
How. On Earth. Do you lose to this guy?  Joe Biden is going to run on the premise that he can win the states that Hillary lost.  Maybe.  But not unless the economy implodes.

Incumbents have been very successful in American presidential elections.  I don't think that's necessarily a good thing, but it's a thing.  A certain standard has to be met.  What does Joe Biden have to offer?

He seems normal and sanguine and measured and responsible compare to Trump, but who doesn't?  

The problem with Biden is that he is not nearly radical enough for the people whose votes he needs.  There are so many candidates that he will be able to crowd out some competitors, but eventually it will come down to 3 or 4 choices for the Democrats.

Bernie. 

"I hate capitalism, even though I've never participated in capitalism, except for that one time I became a millionaire because I wrote a book about how much I hate capitalism."

Bernie will obviously be a finalist. Biden probably will be too. But the general public will not pick the nominee; Democrats will.  

Democrats have one job:  win the general election.  But most Democrats, and most Democratic politicians, are not behaving like people who understand this most elemental fact of literally every either/or decision that has ever been made in the history of human civilization.

Fight or flight?  strawberry or vanilla?  Biggie or Tupac?  Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi?  Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese?  Do I stay or do I go?  

If your response to these scenarios is, "well, none of them are perfect, so I refuse to engage in this", you are missing the point; a quest for perfection inevitably fails.  Plato figure this out thousands of years ago; strive for improvement, but do not make the perfect the enemy of the good.  

"I have a very big brain....and all the best words.  Ok?  Ok."

The Democratic primary voters, I think, will destroy Biden for not being left enough.  Biden will be left behind for not being behind the left.

The Bernie bros will be thrilled of course, until the general election, at which point they will have lost the world and their souls, after accusing Joe Biden for seeking the world at the expense of his soul.

Of Mike and Men

The recent Leaving Neverland documentary, in which two men recount harrowing and heartbreaking accounts of being serially and repeatedly raped by Michael Jackson when they were children, has elicited many responses.  It is, I think, impossible to watch this piece without having very visceral reactions.  It also, like all good works, raises lots of questions, most of which transcend the specific details and personalities involved.

But let's start with the specific people and alleged events covered in this documentary:

The first and most obvious question that anyone who has seen Leaving Neverland must ask themselves is, "do I believe this?".  Do I believe that Michael Jackson was a serial, predatory pedophile?  On balance, if I had to answer this question, I would say yes, I do believe that this is largely true.  But....to paraphrase another weirdo, everyone has a big but.

And there are lots of big buts here.

1)  NONE of the claims against Michael Jackson, including those featured in this documentary, were a) reported to police at the time of the alleged crime, and/or b) not associated with a simultaneous attempt to sue Michael Jackson for millions of dollars.

Michael Jackson was one of the most sued people of all time.  When the first pedophilia accusation was made in the early 1990's, the parents of the alleged victim pursued money first.  They got the money in a civil settlement.  The terms of said settlement did not preclude the parents or the child from pursuing criminal charges, yet that never happened.

The men featured in the documentary did not report the alleged crimes at the time; they waited until Michael Jackson had been dead for years, and then they sued his estate, a very important detail that was utterly glossed over in the documentary.

2)  Michael Jackson was obviously a very, very broken person.  So weird, and so broken, that it's almost an objective fact, rather than a subjective opinion.  His behavior around young boys was bizzarre, off-putting, and inappropriate.  But...

Because we all know that he was so damaged, particularly because of his childhood, it makes sense that he would be the type of adult with a weird focus on children.  And since he was so rich and famous, he could afford to indulge children in extravagant attention, and all of that behavior was covered by the media.

If Michael Jackson were poor and anonymous, but with the same psychology, he may have chosen to be an elementary school teacher, so that he could be surrounded by youth and innocence.  And he may, in that parallel universe, have been a pedophile.  But he may have not been.  If men truly adoring and nurturing young children is automatically associated with being a pervert, we're all in trouble.

3)  Michael Jackson was the largest living magnet for grifters and con-artists.  He was the most famous man alive.  And he had LOTS of money.  Here he is, in a recently unearthed photo, during his daily exercise regime:

This type of person will ALWAYS be targeted by scumbags.  They will try to identify their target's weakness, and they will focus on that thing.  Michael Jackson liked hanging out with kids.  It was inevitable that some soul-less wretch would use their own children to try to extort him.  

To go back to our parallel universe, where Jackson was an elementary school teacher:  in that universe it would be far easier to assess Jackson's guilt, because it would remove the possibility of this insidious angle; no one sues a teacher for 10 million dollars.

4)  Jackson was put on trial once, and he was acquitted of all 14 charges.  One of the star witnesses for the defense?  One of the very same men who is now accusing Jackson of horrific crimes posthumously.  So this alleged victim either committed perjury to protect his own rapist, or he's lying now.

I think either scenario is entirely possible, but obviously this muddies the water, to say the least.

But there are two larger issues raised by this whole spectacle.

Firstly, what is our standard of justice?  If an alleged crime can not possibly be proven due to passage of time and/or total lack of physical evidence, is it acceptable to raise those allegations in public when it is obvious, by definition, that the truth can never be established?  Apparently, yes.

At least Brett Kavanaugh was still alive and able to defend himself, even though it was metaphysically impossible to prove his innocence, which, by the way, is not something that's is incumbent on him, or anyone else, under our system of justice.  

Secondly, if Jackson was a monster, which I think is entirely possible and quite likely, how do we separate the person from his or her work?  

Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter in the history of the English language.  But I bet he has been a shitty husband and father.

John F. Kennedy was a great politician and, I think, one of the best presidents we've ever had.  But was he a good husband?  Uh, no.  A thousand times no.

Kanye West is a great musical artist.  Does that mean I want him watching my kids, or putting a new roof on my house?  Or driving a tractor-trailer?  That's a hard pass.

Psychologists call this the halo effect.  Many people have an assumption that, if someone is amazing at one specific thing, they must be amazing at all things, and they must be a good person.  This is ludicrous.

If Michael Jackson was a child rapist, do we erase his art from our culture?  Maybe.  But that's a really important conversation to have.

What if it turns out that Leonardo daVinci was a rapist?

Burn it!!!!!  But do we really want to do that?  And if we do adopt that standard, what would we have left?  What great achievement in science, philosophy, art, architecture, or anything else, has been bequeathed to us by a person without sin?  None.

The question is: if the sin were so profoundly awful that it truly shocks the conscience, and Jackson's alleged crimes clearly meet that standard, do we destroy the sinner's contributions to our culture in order to exact revenge on a dead man?  Who would be served by that?

What About Russia?

Good news!  The President didn't commit treason!  Neither did anyone who works for him, or anyone who knows him.  I didn't commit treason.  You didn't commit treason.  According to the Mueller Report, "no American" conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.

That's what this was about, according to the Democrats and the media, who were almost entirely wrong.  But that's not what this was about.

The title of the Mueller Report is not "Trump-Russia Collusion Inquiry".  The title is "Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election". 

Did Russia interfere in our election?  It seems that the entire establishment agrees that the answer is yes.  I don't trust the establishment, but I trust Russia far less, so let's just assume that this is true.  If Russia is doing these things, shouldn't that be the focus?

But for the Democrats and the media, this insidious psychological operation launched by our century-long Slavic adversaries is less important than their hatred for Trump.

Let's imagine an alternative:  What if Hillary Clinton were President right now?

Collusion!

By definition, Putin did not know who would win the election, and all active and passive observers of American politics would have been insane to bet on Trump winning, up to and including election night. 

There is zero evidence that Russia directly changed a single vote via hacking or any other means; their campaign against us was apparently psychological, mostly low-level trolling on social media.

In other words, whatever intervention Russia carried out in "swaying" the election was over, by definition, when the polls closed on election night.  So what if Hillary had won?

The Russian interference still would have happened exactly the same way.   Would there have been an investigation?  Maybe.

Would the investigation have been called, by the Democrats and the media, "The Clinton-Russia Collusion" investigation?  Uh, no.

The "Trump-Russia Collusion" investigation was called so because Trump won.  Democrats are more offended by losing an election than they are by Russia interfering in that very election, but directly changing no votes in the process.

By the way, the idea that we are mortally offended by the very thought that any foreign nation would interfere in another nation's elections is...

So where do we go from here?  Where we should go is to a place where the Democrats and/or the media say something like the following:  We do not like President Trump.  We wish he hadn't won.  We hope he loses next time.  But he did not conspire with a foreign adversary to steal the election.  That's not a thing that happened. 

But that, of course, is not going to happen.  Instead, "collusion" will be cast aside (although surely still dredged out occasionally) in favor of "obstruction".  This process has already begun.

"Why is Trump so angry about this investigation?"  "Why is Trump telling people that he wants this investigation to go away?"  "Why is he publicly stating, over and over, that he is innocent?"  "Aren't those things a guilty person would do????"

Take a moment to consider how Stalinist this is.  We can't prove anything, but since we know he's guilty, let's not waste our time.  If he denies his guilt, that's evidence of his guilt.  If he is angry at being falsely accused and slandered in public, that's evidence of his guilt. 

If he were so innocent, why would he defend himself against lies and innuendo?  And even if he is innocent, he obstructed "justice" by proclaiming himself innocent of a crime he was innocent of.   Burn him!!

Any person who does not accept these things is, in my opinion, not being intellectually honest:

1)  The Russian government has, for 100 years, been dominated by only TEN envious, paranoid killers who have long been an active and passive threat to the United States.  They tried, in their own pathetic and impotent way, to interfere in the 2016 elections.

2) There is zero evidence that their pathetic flailing played ANY role AT ALL in said election.

3)  We should retaliate against countries that try to undermine us like this.

4)  We should not falsely accuse our fellow Americans of treason, regardless of politics, after these events.

5)  This is basically what happened here: Russia tried to screw with us.  It had no effect, because Russia sucks at most things.  Zero Americans helped them. 

Trump won, and it had nothing at all do with anything Russia did.  Then the Democrats and the media leveled a profoundly serious charge against the President that has been proven false.

The people who are mad about the very happy finding of this report (our President is not a traitor) will not let this go.  Before, they could argue that this was an innocent mistake, although their motives were never innocent.

Those people are now the equivalent of O.J. Simpson vowing to devote his life to finding "the real killers".

I think I just saw Russia-Trump collusion in the sand trap on hole 15!!!

If this investigation were actually about what its title explicitly stated, we would have specific details about what Russia did in 2016, with the help of precisely zero Americans, and what we can do in the future to prevent Russia from continuing this behavior. 

Has there been any of that today?  No.  And you know who's really excited about this maniacal infighting about a non-event which is dividing us and distracting us from the actual story here?  This guy:

Is Putin actually so smart that he realized that he could set this country against itself, its own legal precepts, its own institutions, its own standards of evidence, by convincing certain Americans that people who disagreed with them were traitors even when there was no evidence of it?  I hope not.  But that seems to be the case.  Clever kill, Vlad.  Clever kill.

Golden Boy Meets Clown Car

The 2020 Democratic field is beginning to resemble the 2016 Republican clown-car.  That clown-car resulted in Donald Trump besting 15 other candidates, none of whom took him seriously.

The Democrats should win in 2020 just as easily as they should have won in 2016.  But evidently they have learned nothing.  They are still animated by hatred of Trump and, by extension, half of their own potential voters, rather than by principles or even common sense.

Let's just talk about common sense.  If the Democrats were smart, which they most decidedly are not, who would they nominate?

Mayor Pete.  The choice is so obvious that of course they won't do it, and Trump will be re-elected.  I'm not saying that I want the Democrats to win, because, unless something drastic changes very quickly, I hope they lose.  And I say that as someone who finds exceedingly few redeemable things about President Trump. 

But just as an agnostic observer of the Democratic field, how can this guy not be ahead in every poll?

Here are the reasons why Pete Buttigieg is obviously the best candidate to run against President Trump and why he should be the dream candidate for the worldview that Democrats claim to hold.

1)  He's young.  He's 37.  He is several years younger than the two youngest men to ever be elected president, both Democrats.  They met one time:

Buttigieg, were he nominated, would be debating a President literally twice his age in 2020.  Elections are about contrast.  That's a clear one.

2) He's a veteran.  Democrats are widely perceived as being less supportive of the military than Republicans.  This is true, from a certain point of view.  But that debate can be bypassed temporarily if the Democrats nominate a combat veteran who chose to serve over a hedonist who chose not to. That could offer another compelling contrast.

3)  He's gay.  I don't care.  And I don't not care because I don't approve of his lifestyle; I don't care because it's none of my business and, when it comes to evaluating a person's character, who they are sexually attracted to is way, way, way, waaaaaaay down my list of important, or even relevant considerations.  God bless him.  I don't care. I don't judge.  And I assume he's not interested in who I'm in love with either. 

And the Democrats claim to be the great defenders of gay people.  But let us keep in mind, the first president to ever be elected after publicly stating that he had no objection to gay marriage was...

How are the Democrats not swooning over the prospect of a gay president??  Well, according to several recent left-wing think pieces, and I use the word "think" very liberally, Buttigieg isn't gay enough.

Or, in other variations, he's gay, but does not belong to any other victim group.  Gay?  Great. White? Male? Borrrrrriinnnnngggg.

4)  He's married!  Gay married!  And he's only been married once!  And he's still married to that same person!  Family values.  Another clear opportunity for the Democrats to hijack a typical Republican strong point.

5) He's from Indiana.  A red state.  Home state of the sitting Vice-President.  Even if Buttigieg doesn't win Indiana, that's not the point.  The point is that the Democrats could signal that they are aware of the existence of the middle 90 percent of the country and that they don't assume that every one living outside of major coastal cities is a deplorable troglodyte.

But of course they won't nominate Mayor Pete.  Because they can't help themselves.  What I find much more likely is the following scenario:

Due to the rules of how these primaries work, no one will win over 50 percent of the votes, simply because there are so many candidates.  But this guy will be in first place when the Democratic Convention begins:

Here we see Bernie Sanders after being asked why, if he opposed Trump's tax cuts, he didn't just keep paying the previous, higher rate. 

At this point the Democratic establishment will steal the nomination from Bernie in a back room in favor of someone else.  Possibly someone who isn't even running.  Maybe Michelle Obama.  And mark my words, Hillary Clinton has one more card up her sleeve.

However it shakes out, Trump will be re-elected, due largely to the fact that the Democrats are staring a dream candidate in the face and refusing to acknowledge it.  We have a very unsympathetic President.  A third of the country loves him.  I don't.  More than a third of the country hates him.  I don't.  I'm in the third camp, which sees him as a profoundly flawed vessel that is acting, sometimes unwittingly, to hold back the worst excesses of his political enemies.

The Democratic party is the only group of people who can fix this.  But they won't.  It's clear that they could, but it's not clear to them, because their vision is hopelessly clouded by their own self-obsession.  The Party of Science, everybody.  Not political science, evidently. 

Nine, Nine, Nine!

I find it is profoundly difficult to explain precisely why Star Wars is so important to me.  If I were 10 years older than I am, and had clear memories of seeing episode 4 (not known as such at the time), my connection would be even more profound and visceral than it is, which is saying quite a bit.

What is it about Star Wars?  It is an archetype of so many things.  Religious things, political things, scientific things, biological things, ethical things, ALL the things.  It cannot be pigeonholed.   It has always had a certain je ne sais quoi that I still cannot quite comprehend.

When my children were born, and were big enough to sit upright on the couch, I fell in love with Star Wars all over again.  And this time, I fell even harder.

Here is how I have felt since the first time i saw episode 8:

I loved episode 8.  Because it was Star Wars.  But it was too thin.  It felt like an episode in the middle of a 13-episode high-quality TV series, like the Sopranos or the Wire. It was compelling, but it didn't cover nearly as much ground as the middle of a trilogy needs to. 

Consequently, episode 9 has far too much to do.  An impossible amount of ground to cover.  All Star Wars fans know this.  But today we don't care.  Because the beauty of Star Wars is the face that grown-ass men and women make when they get a peek at new Star Wars. 

The title is profound.  How can "Skywalker" rise? 

"Skywalker" could refer to Luke, who (hopefully) will be a major character in this episode as a force ghost.  It could also refer to Anakin, who (even more hopefully) will be a major character in this episode as a force ghost. 

"Skywalker" could refer to Kylo Ren, who, let us not forget, is a Skywalker.  That's just not his last name.  Because of the patriarchy.  If Kylo is the "Skywalker" referred to in the title, that would imply that he is redeemed.  I really hope that doesn't happen.  We've already seen that story.

My third theory, which I hope to be true, is that "Skywalker" had become something akin to "Caesar"; it started out as a family name, but because of the larger than life actions of certain bearers of that name, it morphed from a proper noun into a title.

Julius Caesar's last name was Caesar.  But for 2,000 years after his assassination, people all over the world used his name to make themselves feel more powerful.




Pictured above is Czar Nicholas II.  "Czar" is Russian for "Caesar".  For thousands of years, people used the family name "Caesar" as a proper noun to instill respect and fear.  It didn't work very well for the man in the photo above; he was murdered by Communists, along with his wife, his five children, and 30 million other of his countrymen.  But I digress.

What  if "Skywalker" is the new "Caesar"? "Skywalker" could be synonymous with "force-user" or "Jedi".  "King" was replaced with "Caesar"; maybe "Jedi" will be replaced with "Skywalker".

If episode 9 is not wildly better than episodes 7 and 8, then this trilogy will be, in my opinion, the weakest of the 3 trilogies. 

No matter what happens in this film, I will love and revere Star Wars for what it is, for what it was, for what it will be, and for the fact that I still can't quite understand what it is that made me, and hundreds of millions of others, get all weak in the knees when we saw this trailer.

The Big Miss

President Trump is many things to many people, a walking, tweeting Rorshach.  He is a fascinating character with a unique ability to elicit either blind, irrational hatred or blind, irrational loyalty.  Most people, unfortunately, are utterly incapable of being remotely objective about this man.  This is due to his personality but also, in larger part, to how he is portrayed in the mainstream media. 

Of all the aspects of Trump that I find so interesting, perhaps the greatest of all is how the media, in their insatiable quest to slander and destroy Trump, have almost universally missed the biggest story in the history of modern American politics, the stuff that journalists fantasize about, the stereotypical Woodward-Bernstein moment amplified by a great order of magnitude.  It was right there in front of them.  And they missed it.  Entirely.

To put this into a different light, let's imagine what it would have looked like if the election of Donald Trump, and the investigations associated with that event, had instead been the 2008 election of Barack Obama.  What would that have looked like?

It's 2007.  A political neophyte begins an improbable campaign for the presidency.  He is at first considered a long shot, but it soon becomes clear he may actually capture his party's nomination and then the presidency.  As his chances of election seem to improve, members of the Bush administration become concerned, as they, the divinely appointed guardians of the republic, understand that Barack Hussein Obama simply can not be allowed to become president.

The John McCain campaign pays foreigners for completely unverified rumors than Barack Obama is a Manchurian Candidate, secretly in the pay of, or under the sway of, Saudi Arabia.  On the basis of this picture:

The McCain campaign brings these slanderous rumors, provided by paid foreign actors, to the Bush administration.  The Bush administration uses this "information" to secure warrants to surveil the Obama campaign.

As the Obama campaign gains strength, George W. Bush's FBI director and CIA director urge their inteligence officers to use whatever means they can to prove that the potential future president is a treasonous interloper.

Members of George W. Bush's Department of Justice exchange texts and emails in which they frantically assure themselves that Obama can't possible win, while also working feverishly to fabricate an "insurance policy" for the unlikely event that this incredibly dangerous man is actually duly elected to the presidency.

Obama wins.  The Republicans in Congress, and the mainstream media, spend the next two years investigating Obama-Saudi collusion.  George W. Bush's former FBI and CIA directors appear hundreds and hundreds of time on cable news outlets, sternly assuring viewers that they have secret information that proves the President's treason, and that said treason will be revealed in due time.

When the investigation ends, it becomes clear that there was no Obama-Saudi collusion.  The media and members of the previous administration had used all the combined power of the deep state (yes, there is such a thing) and the public airwaves to try to unseat a duly-elected president who they claimed had commited treason, a crime punishable by death.

How would the media have covered George W. Bush's administration spying on the Obama campaign?  How would they have covered the McCain campaign's use of paid foreign actors' gossip?  How would they have covered FBI agents desparetely pursuing an insurance policy to protect the deep state from the American electorate?

If this had happened to Obama in 2008 instead of Trump in 2016, the media would have gotten it right, I suspect.  They would have reported the truth:  that a sitting Republican administration and a current Republican nominee had conspired to slander and persecute their political rivals, and that the American people speaking via their votes did absolutely nothing to halt or slow this conspiracy.

That scenario would have been reported, rightly, as the biggest scandal in American history, as an attempted coup d'etat orchestrated by elected and un-elected members of the government, with the collusion of the mainstream media.  It would have shaken Washington, indeed the whole country, to its core.  So why did they miss this?

Two reasons.  Hatred of Trump and love for Obama.  They knew Trump was a traitor.  And they knew that the Obama administration could never be involved in such sordid skuldugery.  The rabid, fanatical, dead-eyed hatred of Donald Trump blinded the media to a degree that is impossible to exaggerate. 

Suddenly, the intelligence communities could do no wrong.  Suddenly, reporters did not require verification, or named sources.  "If True...." became a go-to, but soon even that faded away.  Suddenly, it became legitimate to spy on political opponents.

Because of their absurd prejudice, their collective narcissism, their grotesque self-regard, and their crippling confirmation bias, the media missed an unprecedented opportunity to earn the respect of the American people by actually doing their jobs.

During the 1970's, the media breathlessly reported on a president who spied on his political opponents, on American intelligence agencies illegally spying on American citizens of all stripes, from college students to reporters to presidential candidates. 

Thanks to this reporting, the American people learned that intelligence agencies are inherently a threat to a free people, and that we must be on guard against presidents using these agencies for domestic political espionage.  We learned this lesson.  The media taught us this lesson.  Then the media willfully ignored this very truth because....Orange Man Bad.

They have destroyed their credibility.  This is very bad for the country.  But it's not Trump's fault.  He was actually the victim in all of this, no matter how unsympathetic a victim he is.  How did Trump get the media to commit reputational suicide?  He criticized them.  This, they could not abide.  And in their incandescent juvenile rage, they proved that Trump was right, more right than anyone, including Trump himself, could ever have imagined.