Wednesday Potpourri

First, a few words of wisdom from Van Jones:

If progressives have a politics that says all white people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil it’s kinda hard to keep them on your side. If you're chasing people out of the party, you can't be mad when they leave.

Second, Mike LaChance offers a comment on the Nazi baiting that seems endemic to Democratic politicians:

For months, leftists have been marching in cities and on college campuses with Hamas flags, harassing Jewish people and Democrats have said NOTHING because they need these people's votes. Their anti-Trump accusations of Nazism are meaningless.

Third, Noah Pollak offers another comment on the same issue:

Right now, the Democratic Party is funding Iran with hundreds of billions of dollars it is using to arm terrorist groups and launch ballistic missiles at the Jewish state. This is clown world level chutzpah.

Fourth, we note with some chagrin that certain writers are promoting a boycott of Israeli and Jewish writers. Judith Shulevitz responded, quoting Lionel Shriver:

Writers like Salley Rooney and Arundhati Roy who drum up industry-wide boycotts of other writers betray a fundamental failure to understand what writers do for a living and need in order to survive: "The impulse to form a mob is surely antithetical to the impulse to record your thoughts in text in private and to have your unique voice broadly heard," writes Lionel Shriver. "It is not in the interest of any writer for publishers, agents, and festivals to be the preserve of a narrow ideological position on any issue. If you actually are an independent thinker, which we might imagine would be a criterion for your job, you are bound to fall out with the orthodoxy at such institutions at some point down the line."

Fifth, Kristen Welker is competing for the crown of being the most stupid television journalist. JD Vance schooled her:

JD Vance: "If we're ever going to get out of the mess that Kamala Harris left us in."

Kristen Welker: "Donald Trump was president for 4 years while Russia was essentially invading Crimea."

JD Vance: "Oh that's a misunderstanding of the history Kristen.

We had Russia invade another country during Obama.

We had Russia invade another country during Bush's term.

We had Russia invade a sovereign nation during the 'leadership' of Kamala Harris.

The one 4 year term where Russia did not launch a full scale invasion of a neighbor was under Donald Trump."

Sixth, as though she had not demonstrated manifest incompetence in her handling of the war in Ukraine, the head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen has come out in favor of censorship. She wants to immunize everyone against disinformation.

John Leake refutes her notion cogently:

1). Knowledge about the world is constantly evolving through constant inquiry, discussion, and dissemination. Knowledge is NOT a static thing. This is why countries with stifling censorship regimes have experienced intellectual, scientific, and artistic stagnation. Their rulers try to freeze the human mind in its state at their moment in history.

2). NO state, university, or ecclesiastical committee has ever been in possession of the full truth of any matter. Official orthodoxies have always been challenged by heterodox thinkers. Indeed, virtually every major advance in human insight has been performed by heterodox thinkers.

3). As John Milton observed in his 1644 pamphlet, Areopagitica, contending with error is an intrinsic part of learning and discovery. We literally learn by making mistakes and correcting them. If free speech is suppressed for the objective of preventing the propagation of erroneous thought—or “vaccinating against it”—it will become extremely difficult if not impossible for people to learn and discover.

4). Without a single exception in history, the people who hold power always advocate the orthodoxy that sustains and extends their power and that of their friends and supporters.

Seventh, another day, another expression of frustration about the work habits of Gen Z. Apparently, the young generation is a walking and talking calamity.

The New York Post explains:

They’re swiping. They’re griping. Their fingers are busy scrolling and eyes are constantly rolling.

They’re Zoomers in the workplace.

And they are the most “annoying” demographic plaguing offices nationwide, per a recent report.

“According to respondents, 29% say Gen Z coworkers are the most annoying to work with,” revealed researchers from LLC.org, Limited Liability Company experts. “Lack of work ethic, complaining and entitlement were the top three annoying traits of Gen Z coworkers.”

Making matters worse, whipper-snappers of the digital era, workers ranging in age from 18 to 27, also rank as the “least productive” folks on the clock as compared to their millennial, Gen X and Baby Boomer colleagues.

Eighth, on Monday Lawrence Summers underwent a long interview on Fox News, by Martha MacCallum. Considering that Summers was among the first economists to assert that the Biden spending program, as of early 2021, would produce a spike in inflation, we count him as possessing integrity. Moreover, he was chased out of the presidency of Harvard University for not being sufficiently woke. Thus, we take him seriously.

At the end of his interview Summers claimed that he had been speaking to corporate executives and they had told him that they would never hire as CEO someone who had Donald Trump’ lack of decorum. Being verbally incontinent would disqualify Trump from their consideration.

Truth be told, I count among those who believe that Trump would do himself and us a great favor if he could put a lid on some of his off-the-cuff pronouncements.

Then again, the alternative in the current election is a subliterate buffoon who cannot formulate a coherent sentence in English when not using a teleprompter. And who giggles uncontrollably far too often.

Would these executives hire Kamala over Trump? I will let them speak for themselves.

But that is not the only problem with the analogy. We must keep in mind that corporate CEOs and other senior executives are hired by a board of directors, not by popular vote. A CEO is selected by a committee, not by the populace. When you need to appeal to the general public you cannot behave as you would if you are seeking the votes of a couple of dozen people.

At the risk of being more churlish than usual, I would point out that the education level of the average board of directors largely exceeds that of the average citizen. 

Considering the quality of education in America, if you want to appeal to large numbers of people you do better to emphasize emotion over reason.

Ninth, as for the current slander of the former president, it is useful to see what Israelis think about the American elections, and especially what they think of “Adolph” Trump. Surely, they would be the first to recognize an anti-Semite.

The New York Post reports that, by a very large margin, they prefer Trump:

An overwhelming number of Israelis (66%) prefer Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump over Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, according to a Channel 12 News poll the findings of which were revealed on Monday.

The survey, conducted a week before the U.S. election, found only 17% of Israelis choose Harris, while another 17% had no preference.

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