Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Let’s Not Forget those Who Enabled Those Campus Anti-Semites for Many MANY Years

Posted: April 25, 2024 by datechguy in culture
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  • King Richard: Well, sir rascal, tell me, who are you?
  • Robin Hood: I’m called Robin Hood.
  • King Richard: It seems I’ve heard of you.
  • Robin Hood: Nothing good, I hope.
  • King Richard: Oh, now I remember. How does your loyalty to Richard set on a killer of knights, a poacher of the king’s deer and an outlaw?
  • Robin Hood: Those I’ve killed died from misusing the trust that Richard left them. And the worst rogue of these is the king’s own brother.
  • King Richard: Oh, then you blame Prince John.
  • Robin Hood: No, I blame Richard. His task was defending his people instead of deserting them to fight in foreign lands.
  • King Richard: What? You’d condemn the Holy Crusades?
  • Robin Hood: I’ll condemn anything that leaves the task of holding England to outlaws like me.
    • The Adventures of Robin Hood 1938

Yesterday I talked about the pampered college radicals who never had to deal with responsibility in their lives and contrasted them to my father. Today I want to talk about the some of the folks responsible for them.

For many years a group of us decided the culture wars were worth fighting. We bemoaned the idea that children were no longer disciplined. We scoffed at the idea that everybody got a participation trophy, we bemoaned the culture of death and the removal of God from the public square.

And when we warned that being American was not enough to guarantee our freedoms, that people had to be taught and encouraged and educated about how and why we were the richest and most powerful country that ever existed, that if we did not do so our society would fail that the laws of cause and effect had not been repealed. What happened? We told to shut up.

We were trying to turn back the clock, we were out of step with the times, we were on the wrong side of history. I remember years ago at a Tea Party event there was a “mainline” conservative who came down on us who fought the culture war hard. We were told those fight cost votes that the GOP needed and if we just kept our mouths shut about the culture we would win. They didn’t believe that it would come to this, that the fight wasn’t worth having. They wanted us to keep still. They didn’t realize what Andrew Breitbart always noted, that politics was downstream from culture.

These folks share a good chunk of the blame for what’s happening today but that’s not the biggest irony of the situation.

The biggest irony of all of this is that the primary targets of these attacks. The Jewish students on campus, come primarily from families who embraced the culture wars, who had to problem with restricting conservatives speakers and demonizing conservatives. Who treated Tea Party rallies and the people who attended, people who left their venues cleaner than they found them as the epitome of evil. They are among the folks who enabled the left wing ideologues, who supported the redefinition of marriage, man and woman and who though both the campus, media, both news and entertainment and via large corporations gave into to the radicals in order to be considered part of the proper crowd.

And when conservatives were banned on campus or shouted down for years they at best said nothing or at worst agreed. The worst of their wrath were saved for people like, Pam Geller and Robert Spencer and Bridgette Gabriel and David Horwitz who saw what was coming and warned them of the anti-Semitism of the left. They were labeled as purveyors of “hate speech” to be shunned and banned.

Pam, Robert, Bridgette and David would have likely given anything to be wrong about what was coming but they were rejected like the Prophet Jeremiah and treated as such.

Now the whirlwind is upon those who rejected them and all that remains is to decide what they consider a worse fate:

  • To be hounded, threatened and attacked by anti-Semites who want them dead OR
  • Or to admit they were wrong about us and Join the side of folks they hated & vilified for years.

I honestly don’t know which choice they will take.

UPDATE: Kurt Schlichter doesn’t know that answer either but he’s not confident that they will choose wisely:

Jewish Democrat voters are going to need to make a choice, survival or the comfort of liberal illusions. 

The Real Culture War Elite Violent Campus Anti-Semites and their Faculty Enables vs my “White Privileged” Dad.

Posted: April 24, 2024 by datechguy in culture, education, education, elections, politics
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Lieutenant Harold Kaminsky: [to Captain John Earle, who demanded confirmation before alerting anyone when informed of a sub sighting in the restricted zone] You wanted confirmation, Captain? [Pointing to the Pearl Harbor fleet aflame] Take a look! There’s your confirmation!

Tora Tora Tora 1970

I found myself thinking of my father yesterday and realizing that the people who are currently occupying colleges and screaming for the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews would have defined him as having “White Privilege”.

Well he certainly was white (although many in society didn’t consider the children of Sicilian immigrants white and he certainly was loaded with privilege his entire life.

  • He had the privilege of being born to a family of 9 from Parents who came from Sicily with nothing
  • He had the privilege of leaving school at 13 to work full time in the paper mills to help support a family that while having a little bit of land was dead poor.
  • He had the privilege of working through the shutdowns of the plant to clean out the vats for extra money in an age when there was no such thing as “welfare”.
  • He had the privilege to spend years in the Pacific on an Ammunition ship knowing it would take but a single hit for his life to end it his 20’s.
  • He had the privilege after the war of running a bar and restaurant in a town that didn’t like Italians.
  • He had the privilege of enduring gunshots fired at his house and business for being an Italian businessman in the wrong town, of being jumped and in one instance run over for daring to carry on and not pay protection.
  • He had the privilege of seeing his wife and mother of his four children at the time caught in an explosion at his place, being badly burned but somehow surviving to eventually give birth to a fifth child.
  • He had the privilege of using his skills as a carpenter to build the house where he moved his family to and eventually build next door to his mother-in-law after her husband died to take care of her.
  • He had the privilege of having her move in with her and devoting himself full time to her welfare when she was too sick to live in her house next door.
  • And he had the privilege of after a lifetime of labor to die just after retirement at 65 before he ever received his first social security check.

But the biggest privilege he had was being brought up in a faithful Catholic house, marrying a faithful Catholic wife and during all that time of unremitting labor and danger thanking God for all the blessings he had. Always sharing what he had with strangers in need and never complaining about his lot, at least not in the 23 years that I shared a house with him.

Yet in contrast we see people attending elite universities, people who have rarely if ever had to struggle, who would be considered part of the 1% not just of this nation but of all human history abusing that advantage to gain an elite education, flouting the law and terrorizing their fellow students whose primary crime is to belong to a race that has survived thousands years of various attempts to exterminate them.

I’ll wager these pampered fools never had “no” said to them in their lives. They wouldn’t have lasted 15 minutes in the great depression let alone on the battlefields of World War 2 in the world where my dad and millions like him bore the “privilege” of responsibility. They’ve not builders they’re destroyers.

Even worse the “adults” in the room are encouraging them to continue such behavior and at the highest levels of Government people holding power do little or nothing out of fear that enforcing the law might cost them votes come November.

In my fathers day they would have been quickly arrested and subject to the full penalties of the law and in states like Florida where sanity still rules they are, which is why you aren’t seeing Campus takeovers and bridges blocked, because people protest within the boundaries of the laws and the adults in charge make sure that if they cross the line between exercising their rights and abusing the rights of others, they suffer the consequences.

These kids never faced the consequences of their actions. Now all of us get have the “privilege” of doing so.

Media malpractice on the Dexter Reed police shooting

Posted: April 14, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Dexter Reed Chicago Police mugshot. Source: Chicago City Wire.

By John Ruberry

On his Prime Time show last Thursday, Jesse Watters, nailed it when he excoriated the mainstream media over headlines used to describe the deadly shooting of Dexter Reed by a Chicago Police tactical squad last month.  Reed was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, which in Illinois, is a legitimate reason for police to pull a driver over. 

A Chicago police officer asked Reed to roll down his front windows, which initially he did, but then he rolled them up, he ignored demands to get out of his SUV, then he fired his gun eleven times, wounding one cop.

Headlines like these, Watters reported, were used about the Reed shooting:

“Black man dead on Chicago street after cops fired nearly 100 bullets.” 

“Police fired 96 shots in 41 seconds killing Black man during traffic stop.”

“Deadly Chicago traffic stop where police fired 96 shots raises serious questions about use of force.”

Watters points out that deep in the story the “journalists” mention that Reed shot as the cops first. 

But the media knows that often users only look at headlines of stories as they appear on their smartphones. They don’t bother to read the stores that accompany these headlines, or they are blocked by paywalls. 

The mainstream media doesn’t want to report the news–it wants to advance a left-wing agenda. Foremost on their agenda is to re-elect Joe Biden so the man who sends mean Tweets, Donald Trump, doesn’t return to the White House. The uproar over the police killing of George Floyd pushed the frail Joe Biden past the finish line in 2020. The media is hoping, with Reed, that history repeats and a new backlash can drag an ever-frailer Biden to victory.

The media, both local and national, is borrowing a page from the Trayvon Martin shooting, by using old photographs of him, of when he was younger and well, cuter. The Chicago media, in their stories, used high school photos of Reed, who was 26 when he was killed.

Chicago’s most-read newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, have a general policy, instituted in 2021 against using mugshots in stories. Of course, they both made an exception in the case of Donald Trump. The Chicago City Wire, derided as a “fake” newspaper by Chicago’s self-appointed media elite, has no such rule, so it published Reed’s mug shot.

That’s not all. The City Wire reports that was Reed arrested twice in 2023. The first bust was for retail theft, the second was for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

The City Wire also revealed that Reed, who once worked as a security guard, received a Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan of $20,832 for his business that consisted of “all other support activities for transportation.”

Thousands of very suspicious PPP loans were issued to Chicagoans during the COVID pandemic, particularly in impoverished areas not known as hubs for business activity, including West Garfield Park, where Reed lived.

Sam Charles of the Trib managed to do some insightful reporting today when he revealed that Reed was shot in 2021.

“I’m physically disabled and mentally unstable with PTSD, short-term memory loss, slurred speech, drop foot in one of my legs, blindness in one eye, shoulder/arm hard to move, weakness and/or sensitivity,” Reed, who was 26 when he was killed last month, wrote in an August 2023 court filing. “With all these medical conditions it has been hard for me to work and/or do certain things.”

Well, if Reed was truthful in that filing, then I have a question: Why did Reed–and as we know, he was arrested for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon last year–have a gun? And where did he get the firearm?

Chicago has among the toughest gun laws in America.

And of course, Reed, despite his troubles, should have known want what to do when police officers pulled him over.

On Thursday’s Chicago’s Morning Answer show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson on WIND-AM, John Garrido, a former CPD lieutenant, told the hosts, “This incident, like so many other ones, could have easily been avoided,” Garrido explained, “all [Reed] had to do was comply. All he had to do was roll the window down, open the door, get out of the car, and he would live another day to tell stories about how the police somehow violated his rights.”

Garrido had more to say about Reed. “He was in court–or supposed to be in court–two weeks prior to this incident.” The former cop theorized that Reed possibly was afraid if he was caught by the CPD tactical squad with a weapon, one that he was not supposed to have, that he could have been sent to jail.

Clearly, there is more to learn–and report–about the Reed death. But it appears that the mainstream media cares more about one thing–advancing their left-wing narrative.

As for the Tribune and the Sun-Times–as well as national outlets–why not reach out to someone like Garrido when reporting on Reed and similar police stories?

Note: Proft says he is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which publishes the Chicago City Wire and other local publications.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A Pair of Pet Peeves of Mine Concerning War

Posted: April 4, 2024 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas
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Hacom: Reger, these are young men. They are not old enough to be excused.
Reger: They’re visitors.
Hacom: Well, have they no Lawgivers in the Valley? Why be they not at the Festival?
Captain Kirk [in local dress]: We heard that you might have rooms for us.
Reger: There. You see, Hacom? They’ve merely come looking for a place to rest afterwards.
Hacom: The Red Hour has already struck.
Tamar: Hacom, these be strangers. The Valley has different ways.
Hacom: Do you say that Landru is not everywhere?
Tamar: No, of course not. It’s simply they may have different ways.

Star Trek The Return of the Archons 1967

We all have pet peeves in our life, my wife hates when I leave lights on (I like to see) and I hate pans left inside of pans on stoves while DaWife is all for it. But this article title hit a serious Pet Peeve of mine concerning war:

I Am Furious About the Relentless Anti-Israel Propaganda

Now the article itself by David Strom is better than the title. It talks about the relentless propaganda by the left, and by universities and by Hamas attacking Israel and he expresses his disgust thus:

But the truth is that very little of the criticism aimed at Israel is even remotely rational or motivated by anything but anti-Western or antisemitic hate, and I am sick and tired of it. And I am just as disturbed by the media’s spreading of that propaganda with far too little skepticism. 

Words have meaning. Actions have context. Hamas is objectively evil. 

While I share Mr. Strom’s support of Israel and his analysis of Hamas I’ve got to say none of this infuriates me.

Why? Two basic reasons.

First Hamas and the Arab World have been spreading propaganda about Israel from almost the moment of its creation, in fact there is a rather famous intercept from the 1967 War with Nasser pretty much blackmailing Jordan into joining the war and discussing how to spin the destruction of the Arab air forces. Falsehoods and lies are a basic tactic in Muslim Arab culture even to their own people (There are generations of Egyptians who have been taught since their birth that the 1973 war with Israel was a resounding victory).

Second and most importantly: This is war.

Right now Hamas is fighting for it’s very survival, they had no idea that Israel would respond in the way that they did and the people who cheered on Hamas on October 7th and rushed into Israel to steal what they could had no idea that they would be reduced to living in tents because of these actions.

The Qataris and the Iranians who are financing Hamas didn’t see this coming either. They’re happy to fund proxy efforts (Iran with the help of Obama’s pallets of Cash and Biden’s moves to push up oil prices) but don’t dare let the war touch themselves. If Israel decided to strike Qatar they would last about 30 seconds and Iran understands that a direct assault on Israel could give them the casus belli for a counterstrike that could contain a nuclear component to end the Mullahs once and for all.

So naturally they use the best cards they have in their hand which are playable.

For Iran and Qatar it’s money and that money is wisely spent on buying academics and media who are easily bought and pushing a narrative. There are plenty of Muslims in Europe and the US who don’t like Jews and would be happy to see them dead but without the ability or strength to legally slaughter the Jews in their midst they’ll settle for intimidation and vandalism and the spreading of propaganda across regular and social media until such a time in the future when their numbers grow to the point when they can can openly slaughter them.

For the far left which has been aborting and neutering their own children and encouraging other to do the same, they’ll welcome the additional number sure in the idea that it will be a generation or more before they are strong enough to take action against the gays, transgenders and libertines which the Arabs despise. (And if it means some Jewish leftists are demoted from Useful idiots to simply idiots to be discarded so be it).

For Hamas it’s the hostages. As long as Hamas holds them or can be thought of as holding them they have a card they can use to delay and disrupt Israel both in the field and on the home front, so no matter how much understandable outrage one might hold over the barbarity of holding hostages, especially women & children I’m not phased or shocked over their doing so because for them that’s the best card they have.

This is war, a game of life and death that is played to win, I’m not outraged about the Arabs playing the game in the way they see fit nor am I outraged over them saying one thing in Arabic to their own people and another to people in the west with different customs and standards. That’s what drives me nuts. This is not our culture, it’s not our standards. This is what the Arab/Muslim world is, it’s what it’s always been, it’s what they’ve been doing for decades and what people like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer and Brigitte Gabriel have warned the west repeatedly about. It’s not a secret and we should not be shocked and outraged that they act as they do.

If you want to be outraged, be outraged about the people who either through ignorance or expedience fall for or pretend to fall for it for cash, or fame or acceptance or even fear.

That’s something to be outraged about.

Instead think of how to counter it and act accordingly.

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