The Virtue of Community

Nothing like a little Aristotle to clarify your thinking.

Consider this. In the psycho world people are treated as individuals, as independent and even as autonomous. When psycho professionals define the goal of treatment, and even of adult life, they see people moving toward less dependence, less concern for the wishes of others, less willingness to follow the rules that society lays down, and more creative, individually.

Now, consider this, from Aristotle, quoted by one Chris Arnade in a Free Press essay:

“Anyone who cannot form a community with others, or who does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is no part of a city-state; he is either a beast or a god.” 

Arnade continues:

…there is no such thing as a human without a community, and all cities are a reflection of that.

People are human because they belong to communities. They follow the rules that make them members in good standing. They know that some people also belong to their community, while others  belong to other communities.

Arnade theorizes that human despair come about when people feel that they have been separated from their communities:

Human despair is no longer primarily a result of economic destitution; rather, it is due to a lack of functional and healthy communities, and the current challenge for most of the world’s political class is understanding that.

If  standard forms of community no longer function people join other forms:

 When traditional forms of community erode—family, faith, place, and yes, bowling leagues—people will gravitate toward drug traps, bars, and gangs, like water running to the lowest point.

My theory, which I’ve been suggesting since the lockdowns began, is that the spike in crime, protests, and other antisocial behavior in the months and years immediately following was a manifestation of the despair that comes when humans are wrenched apart; a national and sometimes global display of the pent-up, simmering anger that comes with isolation.

As it happens, psycho theorizing sees human development in terms of love and aggression. People seek to become one with each other through romantic love. And they aggress others who interfere with their self-contained self-sufficiency.

As for the other important point, therapy insists that your truth is the worst, whether it is the worst you have ever imagined or the worst someone has ever done to you.

If we return to Aristotle we discover that he saw the most important ethical relationship as-- friendship. You can find this in his Nicomachean Ethics.

Friendship is a social tie. In principle, it does not contain lust or aggression. Better yet, as Aristotle put it, friends see the best in friends. They do not look to uncover the worst. 

If true love is not the meaning of life, then marriage is not merely an expression of love. Marriage is based on roles, rules and routines.

It, like other community institutions, is based on the ability to follow one set of rules. If you cannot follow the rules, then true love is not going to bail you out.

Fundraising

It’s that time of the week, again!

With a warm welcome to new subscribers. And, a special thank-you to paid subscribers.

Today is Sunday, so we take the day off from opining in order to request donations. They are the fuel that keeps this work going. It allows you to show that you want me to continue. Dare I say, requesting donations is preferable to tithing.

Not to be overly obvious, but it takes time and effort to put up a new post every day. Very few others manage to do so. Thus, it’s a job, one that, in my humble opinion, is worthy of compensation. 

If you would like to donate please make use of the Paypal link on this page. If you prefer, you can mail a check to 310 East 46th St. 24H. New York, NY 10017. Please make the check out to my name, Stuart Schneiderman.

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Please accept this expression of my gratitude for those who will donate and for those who have done so already. Many thanks!

Saturday Miscellany

First, the Justice Department finished its analysis of the Jeffrey Epstein case and concluded that there was no client list and that Epstein committed suicide.

More than a few people, on both sides of the aisle, found this explanation unsatisfactory.

Among them, Alan Dershowitz, who said this:

I know for a fact [Epstein] documents are being suppressed and they're being suppressed to protect individuals. I know the names of the individuals, I know why they're being suppressed. I know who's suppressing them, but I'm bound by confidentiality from a judge and cases, and I can't disclose what I know. But, hand to God, I know the names of people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that's wrong.

So, who do you believe? I tend to think that Dershowitz is being truthful here and that the Justice Department is protecting someone.

Second, remember Lena Dunham. She produced and starred in a television show called Girls. Then she moved to London and has produced a new show.

About Dunham the highly estimable Julie Burchill has this to say:

To be fair, anything Dunham makes would irritate me. I feel that I have something like an allergy to her. There’s the bovine quality of her face – so at odds with the razor-sharp intelligence her fans claim she has. And there’s the way she appears to have allowed random passers-by to graffiti on her body (if you’re that rich and don’t bother with a decent tattooist, you’re either pathologically stingy or pathetically self-loathing). These combine to make up a most unappealing visual. I can’t talk – I’m a toothless, grey-haired hag. But then, I stopped stripping off in public when I was 18. Dunham spent quite a lot of time doing so throughout her most famous years, during what seemed like an endless series of Girls.

Nothing like a little girl fight to brighten your day.

Third, on the good news front, the Justice Department is cracking down on hospitals and clinics that mutilate children for a living. Dare I say that it is well past time that those who practice such abominations were doing hard time.

The New York Post has the story:

The Trump Department of Justice subpoenaed more than 20 doctors and medical clinics nationwide that perform transgender medical procedures on children, the federal agency announced Wednesday.

“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement….

Federal authorities also demanded access to protected patient data to determine whether any laws were violated and to spark policy discussions with providers regarding gender-affirming treatment, sources familiar with the probe told the New York Times.

Fourth, from The Free Press, its TGIF column. Always worth a read:

As floods ravaged Texas, drowning hundreds, some people celebrated. It’s true.

Here’s a Houston-based pediatrician, Dr. Christina B. Propst: “Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA. They deny climate change. May they get what they voted for. Bless their hearts.” And I apologize for how vile this is, but here is a former Houston mayoral appointee, Sade Perkins, after posting that the camp was “white-only”: “Maybe it was gods will to wash them lil cu#t$ away.” Perkins had been appointed by the former mayor to Houston’s Food Insecurity Board in 2023, which should make everyone feel very insecure.

Fifth, and then there is the Argentinian economic miracle, thanks to the nation’s new president, Javier Milei. I have often made note of what is happening down under in Argentina. Now the story has made its way to TGIF:

Anyway, Javier is presiding over an economy that’s expanding at an astounding rate, growing 7.7 percent in April compared with the same month last year. And in May, Argentina’s rate of inflation went below 2 percent for the first time in five years.

They emphasize the simple fact that a vast number of credentialed economists warned against Milei’s reform agenda. Now how do they react when they see that they were wrong?

Back in 2023, more than 100 economists signed a letter saying Milei’s policies would be a disaster. The signatories included Thomas Piketty, who you might remember as the author of a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century that liberals didn’t read but did have on their bookshelves a decade ago. Another is Jayati Ghosh, a UMass Amherst professor who recently signed another open letter saying Zohran Mamdani’s whackadoodle economic plans will be great for New York City.

So are Milei’s critics conceding that he had a point? Of course not. Instead, they’re finding Argentines (Argentinians? Argentiners?) who are still poor. And of course they’re also finding economists who say the statistics don’t matter, that they don’t really tell the full story, which is always “capitalism bad.” “[E]conomists warn that the figure fails to capture the reality of ordinary people struggling to cope with the most radical austerity program in Argentina’s recent history,” reports the increasingly ideological Associated Press.

The numbers may be better in Argentina, technically. But the vibes are not better. The American press would never allow it. Repeat after me: Venezuela is a success, and Argentina is a failure.

Sixth, as you must have noticed, the Democratic Party is having an identity crisis. Is it the party of centrists like Bill Clinton or is it the party of progressive maniacs and socialists like Zohran Mamdani? Tis a puzzlement.

Now, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee has announced that the Democratic Party retains a place for anti-Semitic scum like Mamdani.

From the New York Post:

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin brushed off concerns from Jewish Democrats on Wednesday about New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada.”

Martin, elected to lead the DNC in February, suggested that his party welcomes users of the chant associated with violent uprisings against Israel, in an interview with PBS.

“You know, there’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100% of the time with, to be honest with you,” Martin said, when asked by “PBS NewsHour” host Amna Nawaz about Mamdani’s repeated defense of the rallying cry for anti-Israel protesters.

Seventh, if he has been politically engaged I am not aware of it. I am speaking of Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank.

After explaining that Zohran Mamdani would be a catastrophe for New York City, Dimon went after Democrats:

“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots,” he said.

“I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.”

Does that settle the issue?

Useless Idiots

No one is going broke speaking ill of Gen Z. The cohort born after 1997 has already garnered a reputation for being useless on the job and politically retarded. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein wrote in the Wall Street Journal that they were a generation of useful idiots. Dare we mention that neither author is a MAGA Republican. Penn, for example, used to work for Bill Clinton.

Penn and Stein are dismayed to see so many young people supporting Hamas over Israel.

Put all this together, and it's little wonder that about half of 18- to 24-year-olds tell pollsters they support Hamas over Israel. By and large these young adults aren't hard-core ideologues; they're merely ignorant. About half of young Hamas supporters say they don't want to wipe out Israel and prefer a two-state solution. Call them the Useful Idiot generation, mouthing slogans and causes they don't understand and from which they would recoil if they did.

Dare we say that this is charitable. Penn and Stein believe that we should forgive these useful idiots because they do not know what they are doing. They are supporting a free Palestine without noting that Jordan is a Palestinian state, except that it is a monarchy, not a liberal democracy. They militate for queers in Palestine without understanding that under Sharia Law gays are executed because their sexuality is a capital crime. 

Supporting Hamas means supporting massacres of the innocent, gang rapes of women, murder of children, even babies. Do today’s useful idiots know this? Of course not, they are too stupid to bother with reality. 

Speaking of stupid, one of America’s two major political parties nominated an idiot for the role of president of the United States. Of course, she was not even remotely qualified to do the job. But, the bien pensant elites of this nation rallied to support her.

As they did for the moron that Joe Biden placed on the Supreme Court.

Historically, the term “useful idiot” was coined by Lenin to describe Westerners who were unwitting allies of the Communist movement. And yet, all things considered, the Revolution that the radical left promised was tried in the twentieth century… and failed miserably. 

All things considered yesterday’s useful idiots are today’s useless idiots. After all, how stupid do you need to be to understand that Communism failed?

Take the case of Zohran Mamdani, candidate for mayor of New York City. Young people thrill to his program of reconstituted Communism. Tyler Cowen addresses the Mamdani platform and shows that the least reflection could easily led intelligent people to reject it as patent and rank absurdity:

I understand why such proposals might thrill some New Yorkers—especially struggling young people. But as an economist I know there is long-standing research showing, for example, that rent freezes lead to apartment shortages and also to quality collapses and deteriorating neighborhoods. Ultimately, it hurts the working class. I also know that the government does not have the flexibility or the profit incentives to do a good job running our grocery stores. They probably would lose money trying, forcing taxpayers to make up the difference. And even the Soviet Union did not wish to experiment with completely free bus rides. Usually service quality is higher when the users have to pay something, thereby boosting the incentives to take their desires seriously.

Writing on the Free Press Tyler Cowen points out the rank stupidity of one Hasan Piker, a newfound hero to the radical left:

… dismantling the guardrails of civilized conversation, has now become normal behavior among many socialist influencers. One of the most prominent is Hasan Piker. To choose just one of countless examples, the Twitch star spoke about an American war hero in this way: “What the fuck is wrong with this dude? Didn’t he go to war and like, literally lose his eye because some mujahideen, a brave fucking soldier, fucked his eye hole with their dick?” He suggested that the brave soldier “deserved” his fate. And he stated, on several occasions, that America deserved 9/11.

Finally, Cowen makes an intriguing and salient point. How much of the generalized hatred of the country derives from what he calls bad events. When you lose wars people are less likely to feel patriotic:

Perhaps bad events are to blame for the initial uptick in negative feelings. In 2001, hijackers flew planes into the Twin Towers—a previously unimaginable event for most Americans. The United States was taken down a peg. The second Iraq War then failed. The Great Recession came in 2008, followed by a slow labor market bounce-back. Covid and its aftermath were the next nightmare. Should it be such a huge surprise if the negative feelings have dug in and stuck?

Unwanted in the Business World

Apparently, reality does bite. The people who are in charge of hiring for corporations have discovered that today’s college graduates are basically useless in the business world. Whatever they were studying, they did not learn any useful skills. Worse yet, they lack the kind of executive skills needed to function on the job. They think that work is a four letter word. See this, from The College Fix.

So, reality has caught up to the American university system. Students are taught to be woke. They are told to ignore the wisdom of the past. They learn to be self-indulgent narcissists, drowning in their sorrow over how oppressed they are.

They might not all be out on the streets fighting against the Gestapo, that is, against government law enforcement agents. But many of them are. And those who are not certainly sympathize with those who do.

In the meantime, the word is out. Today’s young people are simply not worth the trouble. They expect to be coddled and swaddled. They have no work ethic. They complain and whine about whatever. They are quick to take offense. They feel entitled and do not respond to feedback. That is, they cannot tolerate being told that they can improve.

As the old saying goes, they are thin skinned. It counts as a form of depression. 

More importantly, this generation as a whole never learned to work. They were granted awards and prizes simply for showing up. They did not learn that hard work is required to excel at competition. They are so thoroughly involved with their own self-interest that they ignore the best interest of their companies. Many companies have decided that they are not worth the trouble.

It is a sad state of affairs. If you ask yourself why so many young people are drawn to the madness of Antifa and are more than happy to go out on the street to cause trouble, the answer is easy. It is all they know how to do.

They have been taught to live for the psychodrama, not for the hard work and achievement.

If they did not learn adult behavior in school and even at home, they will go out in the world to act like overgrown children. In some ways it must be worse in elite institutions, like the Ivy League. These schools have long since abandoned their mission to educate in favor of an effort to indoctrinate in woke ideology.

Worse yet, diversity quotas have helped fill classes with students who could not do the work. As noted some time ago, when affirmative action became the order of the day many students who could not do the work often resorted to plagiarism. When professors saw what was going on they were told by their deans that it was  best to give everyone an A, regardless of the plagiarism. Otherwise, they would be threatened with a charge of racism.

So, why would you work to get a good grade, or to hand your assignments in on time, when you know that certain members of your class were plagiarizing their work and getting excellent grades.

Thanks to DEI college became an exercise in what you could get away with. Merit was tossed aside, with the exception given for STEM subjects, most of whose students were from outside the country.

Since students are taught that hard work does not matter, they end up believing in socialism. That is, they believe that the government and businesses should take care of them. If someone is going to provide for your needs, regardless of the work you put into any activity, you are going to vote for socialists. You are going to disdain the free market and its competitive ethos. 

Wednesday Potpourri

First, well before the waters had crested Democratic political operatives were out shrieking that the Texas flood was Donald Trump’s fault. 

Some argued that it was the fault of the most recent Big, Beautiful Bill that Trump had just signed. Others blamed it on climate change.

For people who believe that everything is Trump’s fault, the flood was not just Biblical. It was a gift from Heaven, that is, God’s judgment.

One is not going to rehearse all of the arguments, but Chris Martz offers some cogent analysis:

Okay. Let’s talk some facts. The Camp Mystic flood disaster in Texas is very unfortunate, and I hope that all of the missing girls are found. The usual suspects are exploiting this tragedy to score political brownie points. 

Some left-wing activists are blaming this flood on “climate change,” others are blaming the deaths and missing persons on inadequate warning caused by low staffing at the National Weather Service (NWS) caused by Trump administration federal RIFs. 

First of all, staffing cuts played no part in this tragedy. The NWS issued a flood watch for Kerr County more than 12 hours ahead of the flood. They also issued a flash flood warning for Hunt and Ingraham THREE HOURS before the Guadalupe River began to climb. There was plenty of lead time with respect to the forecast and issuance of warnings. 

The flood was caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry becoming embedded into a broad mid-level trough over central Texas. These remnant lows are typically slow-moving and drop heavy rain over a large geographical area where the troposphere destabilizes. 

This particular one stayed quasi- (fairly) stationary, and caused massive flooding along the Guadalupe River, something that has happened many times before. In 1987, a flash flood on the same river killed 10 teenage campers from the Pot O Gold Christian Camp, with another 33 swept away who survived. 

Camp Mystic is built on a floodplain. It is on sediment that has been deposited by hundreds, if not thousands of floods over the last millennium. The event has nothing to do with climate change. 

And, the tragedy had nothing to do with DOGE cuts. If you are someone who has exploited this catastrophe because you just don’t like Trump, you need to take a serious look in the mirror. 

As for staffing, the National Weather Service had extra staff on duty at the time.

Second, as noted before, Zohran Mamdani, candidate for New York’s Mayor, is a gift that keeps on giving.

As does his father. 

Zohran Mamdani's father believes: 

The Allies and Nazis had the same goal 

Abraham Lincoln was Hitler's inspiration 

White people are the oppressors, America is the root of all evil 

BLM is the resistance Blah blah blah. Another wealthy leftist who hates America. Now we know who Zohran gets it from.

Not just a wealthy leftist. A Columbia University professor, too.

Third, on the Mamdani front, the candidate’s association with notable anti-Semites is certainly troubling:

Socialist New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani visited a controversial Brooklyn mosque to pray while on the campaign trail — just months after the imam had called for the destruction of Israel.

Mamdani posted a picture of himself speaking at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, alongside firebrand cleric Sheikh Muhammad Al-Barr, on his social media in January.

Fourth, and then there is this, the image of Mamdani ridiculing the Jewish holiday of Chanukkah. Via Newsmax:

A Jewish advocacy group harshly criticized democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani over the weekend for posting a "sick" video mocking Hanukkah and "cosplaying Jews," the New York Post reported.

Mamdani shared a video on his X account last year from the Geeta Brothers Duet Group, which showed two men wearing wigs dancing behind a menorah, spinning dreidels, and celebrating with Punjabi-style music.

The pro-Jewish group Stop Antisemitism group wrote on X that "Zohran Mamdani posts Indian men cosplaying Jews, spinning dreidels and lighting the menorah." The post continued that "our holidays and traditions are sacred and not for your comedic pleasure @ZohranKMamdani — this is sick."

Fifth, the New York Post reports that some senior Palestinian officials are now interested in joining the Abraham Accords:

A group of five top Palestinian officials in the West Bank’s Hebron district said they are willing to leave the Palestinian Authority and join the Abraham Accords, recognizing the state of Israel.

The sheikhs penned a letter to Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, expressing their desire to transform The West Bank’s largest district into an emirate that “recognize[s] the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari — one of the most influential leaders in Hebron, the West Bank’s largest region — urged Israel and President Trump, who oversaw the Abraham Accords in his first term, to back the plan for self-governance.

Sixth, meanwhile, back in Germany, migrant crime advances exponentially. Via Zero Hedge.

In the last 10 years, we’ve welcomed a lot of ill-behaved and criminal young men into our country for no discernible reason, and along the way we’ve had the dubious privilege of discovering whole new categories of crime. There is the hostile-immigrant-drives-his-car-into-a-crowd-of-unsuspecting-innocents crime, there is the hostile-immigrant-stabs-a-bunch-of-random-people crime, there is the immigrant-gang-collectively-rape-underage-girl-in-park crime, and there is the immigrants-at-swimming-pool-molest-or-assault-various-children crime.

The latter has been stealing the headlines since the latest (allegedly carbon dioxide-induced) ‘heatwave’ in Germany. Recent stories include this one about a 25 year-old man of undisclosed background (who is almost certainly a migrant, otherwise authorities would not be so secretive about his origins) exposing himself to a bunch of underage teenagers at a pool in Asperg (Baden-Württemberg). Or this one, about a 21 year-old Syrian at a pool in Schweinfurt (Bavaria) caught exposing himself to four boys. Or this one, about men of “dark complexion” who severely beat an 18 year-old and threw him down some stairs. Or this disturbing one, about two Syrians who groped and assaulted a 12 year-old girl at a pool in Hof (Bavaria), forcing her beneath the water repeatedly and leaving her with a bloody nose.

Stories like this often come in groups, and what set off the present cascade was a particularly grim incident from June 22nd in Gelnhausen (Hessen), in which a group of Syrian migrants aged 18 to 28 molested eight or nine underage girls at the local pool. When the girls first complained about what was happening, pool personnel sent them back into the water. After this incident became a nationwide story, the Mayor of Gelnhausen, Christian Litzinger (CDU) gave an interview in which he appeared to ascribe the crime to “high temperatures”, which can cause “tempers to flare up”.

Seventh, what would we do without experts? Consider the case of Argentina and the administration of their new libertarian president, Javier Milei:

Javier Milei has lowered Argentina’s monthly inflation rate from 26% to just 1.5% The economy grew 7.6% in Q2 YoY Never forget… the media and professional class labeled him a dangerous “far-right” lunatic because he wanted to cut spending.

Eighth, on the therapy front, there’s  relatively recent therapy that seems to be producing good results. 

Consider the case of one Miley Cyrus. She claims that EMDR cured her stage fright:

Miley Cyrus has performed for some of the world’s biggest audiences — but for years, she quietly battled stage fright behind the scenes.

In a recent interview, the pop icon revealed that a therapy called EMDR was instrumental in curbing her anxiety.

“Love it. Saved my life,” she told The New York Times in May. “I’ve never had stage fright again. Ever.”

In another recent interview with Vogue, Cyrus said that EMDR felt like watching a movie in her mind — vivid and emotional, but grounding.

What is EMDR?

EMDR — or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing — is an alternative therapy designed to help people process unresolved trauma and emotional pain….

“EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, often through eye movements, tapping or sound, to help the brain reprocess those upsetting memories,” added Campbell, who leads a team of EMDR professionals.

She elaborated, “On a neurological level, EMDR helps shift the memory from being stored in the emotional part of the brain (the amygdala) to the more logical, rational part (the prefrontal cortex).”

I have no personal experience with EMDR, but I have it on good authority that you can produce a similar effect by fly fishing. I think that the same would apply to golf.