THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES, 2018 EDITION (UPDATED and moved to front): It’s kinda weird the way the intersectional left demands that we all ignore the reality in front of us in the service of ideological ends. So, for example, teenage girls shouldn’t object to having a boy with gender dysphoria who has male genitals naked in the locker room with them, because they should understand that despite the reality in front of them, he is “really” a girl. Similarly, Linda Sarsour, who is fair-skinned (and an Arab-American, a group that has always been “white” in American racial parlance, even if much darker-skinned), feels entitled to lecture to her “white sisters” as a “woman of color”. Apparently wearing a hijab magically turns a white women into a “woman of color,” because intersectional politics demands it. Meanwhile, my much darker-hued Iraqi-Jewish relatives are white oppressors. You can’t make this make this stuff up.

UPDATE: RELATED: Male Gym Teacher Punished For Refusing To Oversee Middle School Girl Get Undressed In Boys’ Locker Room

YOU WERE EXPECTING INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY?:  Boston Globe Defends Mobbing of Jewish Republican.

So now comes Tom Mountain, a Jewish Massachusetts Republican official who, on Friday, November 2 was blocked from his own office by a group of Democrats wearing Jewish prayer shawls while chanting that Republicans are the party of White Nationalism and are responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Pittsburgh. Mountain, understandably annoyed, told reporters that these people were “a disgrace to the Jewish people” and “an embarrassment to this country.” The mob of Democrats refused to let him through and the police had to physically haul them off.

Globe headline? “Mass. GOP official calls Jewish protesters ‘a disgrace’ and an ‘embarrassment.’”

Had the Globe any integrity at all, they would have reported – in either the headline or the lede – that Mountain himself is a Jew.

Jews have always been famously internally disputatious, going back at least to the Maccabean era, when more traditional Jews emerged victorious over Hellenizers in the war that led to the restoration of Jewish rule in Judea under the Hasmoneans now celebrated during Hanukkah. The Holocaust and the emergence of Israel created a few decades of general solidarity, but the reaction of left-wing Jews to a massacre of Jews by a neo-Nazi in Pittsburgh–to blame American Jewish Republicans, and, bizarrely, Netanyahu and Israel, complete with calls in mainstream outlets to excommunicate Trump supporters, suggests that those days are over.

Mainstream Jews of moderate liberal to moderate political proclivities, a majority of American Jews, are going to have to choose between the modern-day Hellenizers whose actual religion is a pastiche of left-wing cliches, and those who are loyal to something akin to traditional Judaism. I don’t doubt the traditionalists will win in the end, if only because they are producing far more Jewish progeny per capita than are left-wing secularists. Unfortunately, in the meantime the leftists are proceeding to destroy formerly mainstream American Jewish institutions. The small denomination known as Reconstructionism, once the most intellectual branch of American Judaism, has devolved into a theological joke, much larger Reform Judaism is on the brink, and the once-respected (albeit liberal-leaning) Anti-Defamation League has become a center of partisan progressive hackery. I’ve been sounding apocalyptic about this lately, but let me repeat: a Neo-Nazi murdered eleven Jews, and the immediate and continuing reaction of a very vocal segment of American Jewry has been to use the occasion to attack fellow Jews.

DEFENDING BERNIE SANDERS (!): Bernie Sanders Says Not All Voters Who Feel ‘Uncomfortable’ With Black Candidates Are Racist.

People of Sanders’s generation would have distinguished between being “prejudiced” and being “racist.” That linguistic distinction has been lost, but it’s a useful one. Most people who are “prejudiced” against members of a group don’t have the hatred/hostility that “racist” implies. (Same is true of “anti-Semitism.”) It would be better if we had still a way to linguistically distinguish, for example, between people who have mild negative stereotypes of a group but interact with members of those groups in a totally respectful way (“mildly prejudiced”) and, say, fans of Stormfront (“virulently racist”).

THE ACADEMY IS IN THE BEST OF HANDS: A professor of political science actual at a leading state university tweeted the tweet below. He apparently failed to notice that only one-third of the Senate is up for reelection at any one time, and of the seats that were actually being contested the Democrats did significantly better than 55.4%. This was the case even though there was no Republican candidate running in California, by far the most populous state. Anyone can tweet something foolish once in a while, but the fact that this tweet is still up twenty-four thousand likes later suggests that he still doesn’t get the underlying fallacy. (Of course, his tweet also assumes that the Senate should reflect the popular vote, but even if that were the case it’s hard to see why a Democrat would object on “democratic” grounds to winning almost two-thirds of the contested seats on a day when they received 55% of the vote. If anything, someone who believed in proportional representation should be calling on some Democratic senators to resign in favor of Republicans.)

DEMOCRATS DON’T DO AS WELL AS HOPED/EXPECTED, GUESS WHO LINDA SARSOUR BLAMES: If you guessed, “the Joooz,” you win.

This illustrates a serious point about antiSemitism: it’s not “left” or “right,” it’s a conspiracy theory where you blame a phenomenon that you don’t like and don’t understand on Jews. Socialism or capitalism, sexual promiscuity or sexual repression, etc.; it doesn’t matter if it makes any sense, or if it’s directly contradictory to what you’re ideological opposites are blaming the Jews for. So just as you will see right-wing troglodytes blaming the Jews for enabling the left, you will find Linda Sarsour and company blaming Jews for disabling the left when it “underperforms.”

I BET DEMOCRATS ARE WISHING that Obama Attorney General Eric Holder had not set a precedent that the AG may simply ignore subpoenas from the House of Representatives.

SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE PRESIDENT CHRISTIE COLLINS JUDD IS APPARENTLY AFRAID OF BAD PUBLICITY FROM POTENTIAL LEFTIST STUDENT PROTESTS but not from students threatening and intimidating a conservative-leaning professor, with zero consequences. So let’s give Sarah Lawrence some bad publicity for Judd’s atrocious handling of this situation.

A VERY STRONG STATEMENT ON ANTISEMITISM: Donald Trump on Sunday: “This evil, anti-Semitic attack is an assault on all of us. It is an assault on humanity. It must be confronted and condemned everywhere it rears its ugly head. We must stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters to defeat anti-Semitism and vanquish the forces of hate. Those seeking their destruction, we will seek their destruction.”

This has to be among the strongest statements any president has made on behalf of Jewish Americans. Yet I could find no mention of it in the New York Times, Washington Post, and so on.

Compare and contrast Obama’s reference to Jewish victims of anti-Semitic terrorism in Paris as victims of zealots who “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris,” with the White House afterwards defending the proposition that the Jews shopping in a kosher market, somewhere that only Jews go, were not targeted because they were Jews, which was obviously untrue from the getgo.

UPDATE: A Facebook friend points out that you can find bits and pieces of the quotation, but not the full quotation, in the Times. But the way the Times isolates and portrays the final sentence, which I see as the strongest and most dramatic part of the statement, is bizarre and dishonest.

REMINDER: It’s very unlikely you will ever confront an active shooter, but if you do: run as far and fast as you can in the opposite direction of where the gunfire is coming from, and if possible don’t hide somewhere where you are cornered/trapped. If you do find yourself cornered in a room or closet, don’t just sit there and wait for the gunman to find you, have a plan (with your fellow cornerees) to confront and attack the gunman from each side of the  door as soon as he opens the door, and if you are in hiding an the gunman doesn’t appear, don’t come out until authorities give the all-clear signal. That’s what I learned in my State Department security training, and it’s advice that would have saved lives in several recent incidents. It’s undoubtedly very hard to keep these things in mind under the stress of the situation, but much easier if you have it firmly in your mind in advance.

FAKE NEWS ALERT: Correcting the ADL’s False Anti-Semitism Statistic. All reporters would have to do to see that the way the ADL has portrayed its study doesn’t match what the study itself says would to actually read the study, instead of just the press release. But they can’t be bothered to do that. Anti-Semitism, while low overall in the U.S., unites the left and right nutty fringes, from Farrakhan to Richard Spencer. A politically neutral, non-partisan watchdog is needed. The ADL under Abe Foxman, while far from perfect, was at least adequate in that role. Under Greenblatt, it’s become an arm of the Democratic Party.

ANOTHER STUDY IN LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS: Aaron David Miller, who helped put unrepentant anti-Semitic terrorist Yasser Arafat in power in the territories, is now lecturing *other* Jews about the “moral hazard” and “risks” of their views on the American role in Middle East politics.

LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS DEPARTMENT: Below is someone who works for the Intercept and Al Jazeera blaming anti-Semitism on *other* people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Let me repeat, the Intercept and Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, this is as good a time as any to tell the anti-Semites who I’ve heard sometimes infest our comments section to get lost, you aren’t welcome here.

PATHOLOGIZING NORMAL MALE SEXUALITY: #Iamsexist. Are you a fifteen year old boy who occasionally “checks out” one of your female classmates? You are not only objectifying her, you are engaging in “soul murder.” Are you a man of any age who has sexual fantasies about women? You should be condemned for your “pornographic imagination.” Any serious points made by the author are overwhelmed by the parts where you think he must be engaging in satire, but he isn’t.

THIS IS NOT WHAT FASCISM LOOKS LIKE: Yale professor Jason Stanley in the New York Times: If You’re Not Scared About Fascism in the United States, You Should Be. Blustery quotes from Trump aren’t “fascism.” You know what actual fascism looks like? A judiciary controlled by the executive, militarization of civilian life, rubber-stamp legislature, no free elections, government control of industry, severe restrictions on press freedom, and cooptation of religious entities by the state. You know how many of these we have now? None. Nor is there any real threat of any of these occurring. Even if we were to accept Stanley’s claim that Trump uses fascist-style rhetoric,  fascism is not looming in America. This sort of nonsense should be beneath a serious academic, but, hey, it’s 2018, and everyone has gone crazy.

UPDATE: Stanley defended the fascistic Yale student activists who launched the infamous campaign of defamation against the Christakises over their suggestion that students not freak out over Halloween costumes. Stanley wrote, “But didn’t Erika Christakis, and most though not all of her defenders, express their views in a much more reasonable tone of voice than the students protesting? Yes. But sounding reasonable can be a luxury.” He followed up with some academic goobleygook explaining why “oppressed people” (a rather odd description of Yale students of any background) should be held to a different standard of behavior than the “privileged.” This is the state of the Ivy League, folks.

GAME, SET, AND MATCH ALREADY?: Harvard Admissions Dean Testifies as Affirmative Action Trial Begins: “Harvard University’s dean of admissions testified in federal court on Monday that in the interest of attracting a diverse student body, the school lowers its recruiting standards a bit for many students from rural regions — but not if they are Asian-American.”

The Hmong people living in the U.S. have among the worst socio-economic indicators of any American ethnic group. But not only don’t they get an admissions preference, whites from the same town get a preference over them because they are “Asian-American,” a nonsense category that includes everyone from Filipinos to Chinese to Indians, groups with wildly varying religions, cultures, and appearances. Yet Harvard maintains with a straight face that it doesn’t discriminate.

WORDS TO LIVE BY:

UNEXPECTEDLY: Me too excesses make male executives less likely to invite female colleagues on trips, to evening networking events or into their inner circles. People respond to incentives. If Me Too means that a man’s career and reputation can be ruined by an unfounded allegation of sexual harassment this creates obvious incentives for male supervisors to never be alone with female subordinates.

WE DON’T HAVE A “RADICAL RIGHT-WING SUPREME COURT,” despite lots of mewing on the left to the contrary. Here are some things that would be at the top of the list for a radical right-wing Court: (1) ban abortion nationwide as a violation of the right to life protected by the due process clause; (2) rule that publicly-provided (but not funded) education is unconstitutional because it inherently involves viewpoint discrimination by the government, or at least require vouchers for those who object to the public school curriculum; (3) overrule an 1898 precedent and completely abolish birthright citizenship; (4) Use the First Amendment as a sword to require “fairness” in the left-dominated media. Not only is the Supreme Court not about to do any of things, I don’t think any of these things would even get one vote on the current Court. Moreover, merely bringing the scope of Congress’s constitutional back to where it was, say, in 1935, which was already much broader than the original meaning of the Commerce power, probably wouldn’t get more than one or two votes. What you are looking at right now is a conservative Court that will only affect society on the margins, not a “radical right-wing” Court.

THE DEMOCRATS OVERPLAYED THEIR HAND, AS THEY HAVE BEEN DOING SINCE NOVEMBER 2016: John Podhoretz: Kavanaugh: The Surprise Ending

Ford’s testimony was powerful, and had she been able to surface a piece of evidence as insubstantial as a piece of down—but one with any substance whatsoever—Kavanaugh would not have survived it. But she didn’t. And she hasn’t. The entire planet knows who she is, knows her story, and knows her claims. Not a single piece of corroboration has emerged. It is fair to assume there isn’t any. We don’t destroy people when someone says “trust me, he’s bad.” We don’t … unless we want to destroy him anyway and are willing to use any piece of evidence to hand.

In addition to the folks who assumed Kavanaugh was guilty because he’s a “privileged white male” and presumptively anti-abortion (a non sequitur, I know), and those who didn’t care if we was guilty, there were those who really, really wanted him to be guilty because it would affirm some narrative or other. But what kind of people *want* a prominent federal appellate judge, former secretary to POTUS, to turn out to be a gang rapist?

WHY ARE FEMINISTS MINIMIZING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RAPE? Seen on Facebook: “I’m amazed at the progressives who argue that Kavanaugh should not have expressed anger that he has been accused of being a rapist, and that he shouldn’t have lashed out at such accusations even if they are entirely false. If being accused of being a rapist isn’t a big deal, then rape isn’t a big deal.”

SENATOR GRASSLEY DEMANDS THAT FORD TURN OVER THERAPY NOTES: Well, “demands” may be too strong, because presumably he could subpoena them, though he may hesitate to set a precedent that would undermine the doctor-patient privilege in other Congressional investigations. But he’s absolutely correct that Ford has no reasonable case for withholding notes that she and her supporters have relied on in support of her allegations. In related news, Grassley reveals that Ford’s ex-boyfriend states that contrary to Ford’s Senate testimony, Ford once helped a good friend prepare for a polygraph exam.

INTELLECTUAL BUBBLE-DWELLER REVEALS HE DWELLS IN A BUBBLE: The Brookings Institution’s Benjamine Wittes: “Yet few observers seem to dispute [Ford’s] credibility.”  There is Rachel Mitchell, for one, but my social media filled is filled with smart, skeptical individuals who dispute Ford’s credibility.

One problem with much of the commentary on Ford’s testimony is that people who should know better are using “credibility” as a synonym for “sincerity.” A credible accuser isn’t a “sincere accuser,” but a believable or trustworthy accuser. If Ford testified that Kavanaugh was possessed by demons, we wouldn’t find her “credible,” regardless of how “sincere” she is.  And so long as Ford refuses to produce her therapy notes, she isn’t a credible accuser.

ALL OF THESE HARVARD LAW STUDENTS SHOULD HAVE OBJECTIONS FILED WHEN THEY APPLY FOR BAR ADMISSION: Harvard Students Filed Multiple Title IX Complaints Against Brett Kavanaugh To Get Him Fired. To put it bluntly, these claims are legally absurd, and at best a publicity stunt. If these students are willing to abuse legal process for political reasons while still in law school, what can we expect of them as attorneys?

UPDATE: It’s not clear how many, if any, of the students filing the Title IX complaints are law students. It’s grossly unethical regardless.

SHORT ANSWER–YES: Is Ford’s Credibility Undermined by Her Refusal to Produce Her Therapy Records?

THIS SHOULD BE GETTING MORE ATTENTION: I had totally missed that Christine Blasey Ford was asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide the notes of her therapy sessions, and refused to turn over any of them. I have explained in detail here why the credibility of her allegation against Judge Kavanaugh could not be accurately assessed without access to her therapy and psychiatric history in general, and especially much more information about the therapy sessions in which, by her own account, “she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life.”

Now, I totally understand why someone would not want to turn over therapist records that undoubtedly discuss intimate details of one’s life. But if you are in the process of derailing a Supreme Court nominee based on otherwise unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct thirty-six years ago, and in that process giving the nominee a reputation as a rapist, it seems to me you have the moral obligation to either turn over all relevant evidence, or withdraw your allegation. In the absence of that evidence and any corroboration beyond her say-so, if I were a Senator I would ignore the allegations.