A Historic Power Imbalance? The Left's use of the word “problematic” does not explicitly state the problem; We are to intuit it — There is a kind of délicatesse involved…

When my fellow academics refer — as they started doing a great deal toward the end of the last century — to the problematics of a topic, they are listing not annoying things that need to be fixed but intriguing twists that deserve extended consideration. 

Investigating the origins of the word "problem(atic/al)" — the adjective of which has recently enjoyed quite a renaissance among the Left — in the New York Times, the Columbia University linguist John McWhorter asks the question, What’s So Problematic About ‘Problematic’? 

These days, the plural “problematics,” as wrinkle-browed exegesis of complex academic issues, is a marginal term. So is the straightforward sense of “problematic” meaning “full of problems,” as in “Sunflowers are problematic as a large-scale crop.” The word is in wide circulation, but its current incarnation is as a euphemism for a very specific kind of problem or a very specific kind of person.

Its newest usage is a way to say, without saying, that something is perpetuating a historic power imbalance — especially when it comes to race. An example is “Your fave is problematic,” a catchphrase that got around for a while starting in the 2010s as a way to call out fandom for people whose values are deemed to be incorrect. Fandom for the television host Trevor Noah earned this designation when a series of his old tweets, including coarse jokes about subjects such as “fat chicks,” surfaced in 2015. The most recent star deemed to be problematic was Patti LuPone, who in a recent New Yorker article referred with rather acrid dismissal to two Black stage stars.

It’s significant that this use of the word “problematic” does not explicitly state the problem. We are to intuit it. There is a kind of délicatesse in this, a way to circumvent the thorny national conversation about concepts such as intersectionality, wokeness and cancel culture. That impulse toward euphemism, too, is a natural part of language. And it is no less clear as a result.

In other words, what is problematic is something to feel ashamed about. I.e., it has something to do with "racism" and (what is preposterously called) America's "original sin." Typical leftist mentality…

Note to leftists: all societies throughout history have had historic power imbalances (although rarely racial). Nothing did more to correct these than America's capitalism — a synonym for the free market.

 … As for the ancient Greeks, the transformation of a word that meant to propose something would surely have struck them as otherworldly. But then again, “nice” started out meaning “ignorant.” In any language, plus ça change … well, the more they change.

One last problem for consideration: You might imagine someone of Harding’s era would recognize the expression “no problem,” but it didn’t really come into circulation until the 1960s. Sometimes what seem like very ordinary words or expressions are recent coinages. My favorite example is “oink.” The first written “oink” is in 1910. Before that, a child who was asked what pigs say would probably answer either “squeak” or “wee-wee,” as in the little piggy that went “wee-wee-wee all the way home.” And if you think about it, “wee-wee” is closer to the sound of pigs than “oink.” Bring back “wee-wee”!

In the Beginning, America's Democrats and the Europeans Alike Strongly Supported Israel; What Happened? The Jews Had the Gall to Stop Acting Like Communists

What the heck has happened to the Democratic Party? 

Over at PJ Media, Rick Moran asks one heck of a question in his article about Graham Platner (i.e., The Man With the Nazi Tattoo [Who] Is Blowing up the Democratic Party). The question could also be applied to (West) Europeans, whose countries were steadfast allies of Israel immediately after its creation and for two to three decades after that. (Remember the Suez Crisis of 1956, with Brits and Frenchmen allied with the Israelis against the Egyptians?)

What has happened to the Democratic Party? The strong support for the creation of the state of Israel in the immediate aftermath of World War II by Democrats convinced Harry Truman to support the motion at the UN for Israel's creation (among other factors). About 70% of American Jews either identify as Democrats or vote Democratic in elections.

The answer may be surprising to some, but the fact of the matter is that shows the entire planet's affection for social democracy, democratic socialism, or socialism pure and simple, or whatever you want to call it, and to have each country's citizens treated as welfare beneficiaries. And for the first decades of its life, the Jewish state acted more as a communist nation. (Toda to Sister Sarah for the Instalink.)

Remember the kibbutzes? These were collective communities, many of whose leaders stood in awe of Comrade Stalin, as they did around the world — the degree of far leftism in the Wikipedia article on kibbutzes will make your eyes roll — and I know of Danish friends, including a former girlfriend, who went over to Israel for several months to live the Kibbutz experience, meeting volunteers from around the world. Indeed, Denmark was full of Maoists in the 1960s, which formed collectives — groups of (mostly but not only) young people dedicated to turning an apartment building or a mansion into a communistic mini-paradise where the many inhabitants share meals and chores — some of which survive to this day. 

The general assumption is that leftists worldwide started turning on Israel after — and because of — 1967's six-day war, but what is unmentioned is that (although the modern state of Israel was founded largely by secular Jews — war hero Moshe Dayan, for instance, was apparently unconcerned about the symbolism of liberating the Wailing Wall and it was only under pressure that, in full uniform, he left a note among its cracks) by this time Israelis were largely in the process of turning away from the kibbutz experience, i.e., what appeared to many left-wingers around the world as betraying the Marxist principles leading to a bright new future around the world. 

As Philippe Karsenty pointed out a few weeks ago (when the spokesman of le Comité Trump France was asked why so many Jewish VIPs in France rallied to the defense of the government television's anti-semites), 

 … these Jewish figures … are first and foremost left-wing before they are Jewish. And there is nothing more dangerous for the Jewish people and Israel than left-wing Jews. They are the ones who have led Israel to its worst defeats, to its worst compromises. They are the ones who got one of the worst American presidents toward Israel elected: Barack Obama. They are the ones who got the Islamist Zohran Mamdani elected mayor of New York… Left-wing Jews are narcissistic masochists, corrupt financially or intellectually.

 … [The al-Durah] affair illustrates the profound bad faith of the left and its conspiracy-minded cronies who claim that the French press is serving "Zionist propaganda." In reality, from France Télévisions to Le Monde, including Libération and L'Humanité, the overwhelming majority of the media landscape adopts, on the contrary, an obsessively hateful stance towards Israel, as everyone could see after the massacre of October 7th. … Leftism is a mental illness!

Indeed, Israel itself is lucky — as is the world — that over the decades, the country's inhabitants turned away from the leftist direction, and, to a certain extent, rediscovered its religious roots. See Dennis Prager's notes in his Rational Bible books for Deuteronomy 4:28 (pages 57-58, see below), where he mentions Jewish non-believers through the centuries and through the millennia, Jews (among them Karl Marx) who were lured by other, secular, religions: the founder of Prager University explains "What Happens When Jews Abandon God."

Update: Check the comments section to see the prediction that Da Tech Guy made as far back as 10 years ago…

Homophobia? What Nobody Tells You About the "Hate Crime" of Leaving Skid Marks on Rainbow Crosswalks

When you think about it — and hardly more than for 15 seconds or so, if that long — then the charge that kids and adults alike leaving skid marks on rainbow crosswalks represents some kind of anti-gay homophobic hate crime turns out to be little more than nonsense.

Last Saturday (as mentioned a couple of days ago), Instapundit's Ed Driscoll linked to Powerline's memes in the Week in Pictures — while Sarah Hoyt did something similar by linking to… Sarah Hoyt's personal website.

With regards to Powerline, among this week's cartoons was the one at the very top of this page. The main message of the joke is quite serious: that the woke PC leftist drama queens go berserk over one type of "crime" — is it even a misdemeanor?! — while, conversely, being open to and understanding — certainly if the person belongs to the correct oppressed minority — to far worse types of crime, not excluding (attempted) murder.

But another, perhaps lesser, issue is that — again, when you think about it — the skid mark-leaving on rainbow crosswalks has nothing to do about homophobia or transphobia (or whatever other phobias you want to talk about) in the first place.

It is about kids, or teens, or tweens — and even adults (young or otherwise) — having fun. Who knows? Maybe a number of the skid mark-leavers have been gay themselves?

Leaving grayish skid marks upon gray asphalt is simply not as noticeable as upon parts of roads which are painted in vivid and brillant colors (is it okay we say flamboyant colors or is that also homophobic?) — and even, with the rainbow motif, in multi-colored stripes.

There are only bike riders and car drivers "ruining" the rainbow display and that, in dramatic fashion with their wheels; there don't seem to be many "far-right" pedestrians coming with paint or tar or anything to pour something over the display…

Whatever the colors' symbolism is supposed to represent is simply not of much interest — if any interest whatsoever — to these people and what matters to them, the excitement of leaving one's mark. 

If I am wrong, then by all means make your case in the comments…

But if Dennis Prager is to be believed, on the other hand, LGBTQ+ 'Pride' Is Totalitarian:

The vast majority of Americans believe in tolerance of LGBTQ+ individuals but not in organizations expressing pride in them.

Why is this?

Because "Pride" is not about tolerance. "Pride" is totalitarian.

Tolerance is about behavior. "Pride" is about thought.

If the founder of Prager University is likewise wrong, feel free, again, to tell him/us so in the comments section…

Related: • The "Racism" Invective: How the Left's Mindset Works  

• Double Standards: How Can One Insist That Illegals and/or Anchor Babies Are U.S. Citizens If Indeed "We Live on Stolen Land"?!) 

 

Regarding the Islamic World's History of Slavery, a NYT Book Review Tries to Be Nice and Understanding

As The New York Times reviews Justin Marozzi's CAPTIVES AND COMPANIONS: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World, America's "paper of record" in no way resorts to the same kind of common depictions reserved for slavery in the United States as a country or region flagrantly condemnable (what am I saying? Damnable!) and abhorrent while ranting about the (ridiculous) concept of America's "original sin." 

No, it turns out that NYT reviewer Thomas Meaney wants to be tolerant, contextualize, and put things into perspective, condemning Western "myths" and "lazy generalizations" while drawing comparisons (or contrasts) with abominable Westerners such as George W Bush and Belgium's King Leopold II (his case can hardly be denied), not to mention… the patriarch Abraham. 

Nothing in his review about the generalized castration of the Muslims' male slaves or the fact that the Transatlantic slave trade pales in comparison to the fate of Africans forced to reach their Arab masters' regions, given that the "brutal" Middle Passage, however horrific, consisted, after all, of lying still in a ship (certainly, inhumanely, like sardines and in their own filth), which is still hardly comparable with the fate of Africans forced to spend weeks walking the entire way to their Arab destinations and that, indeed, across one of the hottest regions in the world, i.e., the Sahara desert (which, needless to say, allowed for more — for far more — deaths).

As it happens, the history about the Muslims' slavery in the Arab regions never seems to be condemned outright in the NYT's book review, but boils down to asking a simple question: How Should We View the Middle East’s Legacy of Slavery?

As … the British journalist Justin Marozzi … showcases the many types of enslaved people — eunuchs, harem women, mercenaries, unpaid laborers — who populated a region that stretches across modern-day Libya, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia, all the while demonstrating how the realities of bondage in these places differed from the more familiar chattel slavery of the West.

Until the late 19th century, slavery was a near universal institution, though it was practiced in so many varieties that the word could hardly encompass them all. Marozzi’s account begins in 632 with a “free-spirited woman” in the first caliphate who took a slave to bed, assuming it was her right as set forth in the Quran.

 … Marozzi refers to his scope of interest as the “Islamic world,” apparently because slavery, like so many other iniquities, was justified by the existence of rules found in religious codes. The Prophet Muhammad, like Abraham, was an untroubled owner of slaves, and “the legitimacy of the slavery, as pronounced upon by the Quran, is not up for debate,” Marozzi writes.

 … Most enslaved people over the span of the centuries were held in bondage for life, and treated inhumanely by their owners.

How significant was racism in the practice of slavery by Muslims? Marozzi suggests that the advent of racial prejudice in the Middle East might have preceded the rise of modern European racism by several centuries.

 … Marozzi … appears to know how easy it is to descend into lazy generalizations about Islamic culture, and, in doing so, to prop up Western self-regard. Nevertheless, Marozzi appears reluctant to wriggle free from some of the most robust myths of the Victorian age.

French Media Outlet: "Today, Donald Trump is the most rational and the most Cartesian national leader on the planet"

Regarding The War in Iran, Philippe Karsenty has been a guest on various media outlets, from BFMTV's debate shows — where the spokesman of le Comité Trump France says that "the degree of Israel's infiltration of Iran's secret services is quite impressive" — to Europe 1 — where Philippe Karsenty affirms that "today, Donald Trump is the most rational and the most Cartesian leader on the planet." (Merci à Sarah pour l'Instalien.)