David Dubrow

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Your Defense of Zina Bash Should Be Bashed: A Guest Post by Paul Hair

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On September 4, Zina Bash sat behind soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing in the clown show we affectionately refer to as the U.S. Senate. Social Justice Warriors immediately accused her of being a white nationalist/white supremacist because, as she sat there for hours upon hours, cameras caught her touching her index finger to her thumb. (Spoiler alert: the OK symbol is not a white supremacist symbol. At all.) Conservatives rushed to her defense by saying there was no way she could be a white supremacist because she has Jewish and Mexican heritage, thus eliminating the possibility that she’s an icky white person. So went the latest incident of conservatives advancing identity politics; so went the latest incident of conservatives advancing the progressive agenda.

The progressive conspiracy theory that Zina Bash is some sort of white supremacist is so outlandish it deserves to be treated with nothing more than ridicule as another example of how insane progressives have become. It should have been an easy win for conservatives. So, of course, they screwed it up by playing the progressive game. They defended Bash by bashing white people; by making her racial/ethnic heritage the highlight of her defense. “She’s not white—that most evil of races—thus she can’t be a white supremacist. QED!”

The issue of Bash’s heritage was, and is, irrelevant. If she was 100% Anglo, Celtic, Nordic, or any other European heritage, what she did with her fingers is still a non-issue. It’s a sign of how appallingly unserious we’ve become that this kind of thing must be said. The progressive accusation against her was vile. Attempting to defend her with a “She’s not white!” defense is nearly as vile.

Unfortunately, there is nothing unusual about this latest failure of conservatism. Progressives have such a tight hold over every aspect of culture that not only do their own adherents think the thoughts they want them to think, but most conservatives think the thoughts they want them to think too. Thus, it’s standard operating procedure for conservatives to boast of how “We hate identity politics!” right before they form a working group to figure out how to appeal more to “non-white, non-cis, non-males.”

As long as conservatives continue following progressive rules and playing the progressive game, they will continue losing. And the failed defense of Zina Bash serves as the latest example of everything conservatives are doing wrong.

–Written by Paul Hair

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The Alex Jones Flap: Solutions

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Professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was recently removed from just about every social media platform in existence, including LinkedIn, but not Twitter.

Alex Jones is disgusting. He’s a 9/11 Truther, a Sandy Hook Truther, and a thousand other appalling things. Anyone who buys into his sickening brand of commentary is, by definition, a garbage person. *

But is his ouster from these social media platforms a free speech issue?

The easy response is that Instagram and YouTube and iTunes are private companies and can kick off anyone they want to. They’re not public utilities, but they’re being run like public utilities. On the other hand, by limiting content, they’re edging into publisher territory. So are they utilities or are they publishers? If a publisher declines to print your manuscript, is the publisher silencing you?

That’s the high-minded stuff. The theory. Let’s talk about practice.

In reality, Silicon Valley is a hive-mind of far-left progressive ideology from Google on down to Snapchat and beyond. This is inarguable, even if you find it troubling. The big tech companies loathe and contemn everyone who isn’t a progressive; it’s what animates them over profits. If you don’t enthusiastically toe the leftist line, they wish you’d just go away and die already. Alex Jones was a trial balloon. They’ll move on to normal people soon.

So what can you do?

You can opt out, of course. That’s one choice. One of the best things I ever did for myself was quitting Facebook, and I encourage all other normal people to do the same.  Void the field. Let the progressives have the social media platforms they built. This is preferable to the death of a thousand cuts they have in store for us.

The better choice is to treat them like Ma Bell and regulate the living shit out of them so they can’t just arbitrarily decide that you’re an unperson who spews hate speech. I’m a firm believer in free markets, but support of a free market, like support of the U.S. Constitution, isn’t a suicide pact. As long as these bizarre, anti-Western progressive panjandrums are bound and determined to de-platform everyone who isn’t a bizarre, anti-Western progressive, let them feel the wrath of normal people. It’s not a free market when one side has its thumb on the scale. They’re fighting dirty, so we have to fight just as dirty. Confound them with regulation after regulation. Put their arbitrary, hostile business model in jeopardy. Make them testify in front of Congress again and again and again and make them vomit up their dishonesty before the voting public. Progressives love regulating business, the environment, education, and everything else under or above the sun, so choke them with social media regulation until they can’t breathe.

If we have to bake that cake, you’ve got to let Alex Jones spew his stupid crap on Facebook. Regulate, regulate, regulate.

 

*What’s amazing is that Jones, as loathsome as he is, is no different from Rachel Maddow, who works for NBC. Why aren’t social media companies going after Maddow? She promulgates moronic, offensive conspiracy bullshit to unthinking drones every day herself. **

**You know the answer to that.

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Hold On

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Three years ago, Liberty Island published my short story Hold On. I wrote it in response to the Obama administration’s policy of encouraging thousands upon thousands of citizens of Latin American countries to enter the United States as refugees.

In the wake of the recent media outrage over illegal immigrant children being separated from their parents at the border, Hold On has become more relevant than ever. It’s about bureaucracy, family, upheaval, and yes, separation.

You can read it free of charge here.

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Bits and Pieces 4/26/2018

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I got the cover art for The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, and it looks terrific. Fits in perfectly with the previous books. I’ll likely do a cover reveal before long.

Now that business is out of the way, let’s talk about some other stuff.

—

After watching a series of mediocre-to-terrible movies, culminating in the execrable ordeal titled Get Out, I got concerned that I may have just grown tired of movies in general. If tastes change, why can’t interests?

Pleasantly, I found that this is not the case after watching and enjoying Baby Driver. This was a fun movie. A bit long in the last third, but I couldn’t help but like all of it. It straddled the line between comedy and drama, not taking itself too seriously, and did what movies are supposed to do first and foremost: entertain. Not sure why John Bernthal got top billing; he was in the movie for five minutes at most. John Hamm rose above his Mad Men role to become a great guy to watch. Ansel Elgort was likable and vulnerable without being weak. Lily James had an ethereal, vintage beauty and charm that she used like a bludgeon, making you want to watch her and only her. Everything fit together well, everything was neatly done. (I even liked Kevin Spacey. Is that bad?) Overall, this is a rare film that lives up to the hype.

—

The story of Alfie Evans is absolutely brutal, and it underscores four important points:

  • There is a pernicious and disturbing tendency for far too many of us to place vitally important decisions wholly in the hands of “experts.” Experts have become the new royalty, now that social media has proven that the previous royalty, politicians, are as buffoonish and ineffectual as we always suspected them to be. Medical experts in the UK are starving a baby boy to death. If that’s the value of expertise, I want none of it.
  • This would not happen in the United States of America. Other citizens of other countries are subjects. We are a free people, born and bred. Rarely has such a distinction been so sharp.
  • The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights precisely because of situations like Alfie Evans. Gun-grabbers love to talk about gun-free Utopias like those found in Europe, but they don’t seem to understand the vast cultural differences between the U.S. and, say, the United Kingdom.
  • History has ended for Europe, and its death throes are terrible to watch.

I pray God Alfie Evans can leave to find treatment. I pray for his family.

—

The entire Starbucks situation is so bizarre, so ludicrous, that I can’t help but think we’re all being experimented upon by aliens studying human behavior in the 21st century. What happened is that two black men walked into a Starbucks and wanted to use the bathroom. The store manager told them they had to buy something before they could use the bathroom. They refused to buy anything. They stayed inside the establishment as non-paying non-customers. The store manager asked them to leave if they weren’t going to buy anything. They refused to leave. The store manager then asked the police to remove them. The police came and asked the non-paying non-customers to leave. They refused to leave. The police then handcuffed them and escorted them from the premises. The race card was thrown, successfully. Starbucks will now close down over 8,000 stores for an afternoon to teach their apparently racist employees how not to be racist anymore.

I have a few questions about this situation that I’d like cleared up:

  • Who refuses to leave a private business when asked to by a representative of that business?
  • Why couldn’t one of them buy a $2.00 cup of coffee and defuse the entire situation? At that point they’d have gone from non-paying non-customers to paying customers. They could’ve then used the bathroom and sat there as long as they’d have liked.
  • Who refuses to comply with a police officer’s instructions?
  • Why is this a company-wide Starbucks problem instead of an individual problem? It’s like shutting down an entire town for a day because someone’s car was broken into. It makes no sense.
  • Is there anything better than washing down a hate-chicken sandwich with a hot cup of racist joe?

Starbucks’ self-immolation is very much a red-on-red situation, and it’s fun to watch. And yet…kind of pathetic, also.

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Bits and Pieces 3/29/2018

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Easter’s coming up, so you know what that means: another great opportunity to buy lots of chocolate in various shapes, sizes, and flavors.

Just kidding. I know it’s really about coloring eggs and going to brunch.

While we’re on the subject of Easter, here’s an opinion piece written in The Fenwick Review, which comes out of the College of the Holy Cross:

Professor [Tat-Siong Benny] Liew’s contribution to [They Were All Together in One Place?: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism], a chapter entitled  “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires: Cross-Examining John’s Engendering and Transgendering Word across Different Worlds,” demonstrates the centrality of sex and gender to his way of thinking about the New Testament.  In the chapter, Professor Liew explains that he believes Christ could be considered a “drag king” or cross-dresser. “If one follows the trajectory of the Wisdom/Word or Sophia/Jesus (con)figuration, what we have in John’s Jesus is not only a “king of Israel” (1:49; 12:13– 15) or “king of the Ioudaioi” (18:33, 39; 19:3, 14– 15, 19– 22), but also a drag king (6:15; 18:37; 19:12),” he claims.5 He later argues that “[Christ] ends up appearing as a drag-kingly bride in his passion.”6 

Liew goes on to further describe Jesus Christ as a drag queen. In some circles, this is what passes for theological scholarship. This is serious academic study.

This is crap. This is why many of us are not going to push our children into a college system that produces this kind of bilge. Liew would never imply that Islam’s Mohammed was a cross-dressing person of indeterminate gender; Liew wouldn’t dare. Nor, I suspect, would Liew do the same with Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob in my faith: Judaism. So-called academics like this Liew character are cowards and reprobates, and the longer they stay within the college system, the more debased the entire enterprise of higher learning becomes. You’ve got to get the idea out of your head that this is normal. That this is what academia is meant to explore. It isn’t. This is deliberately inflammatory crap tarted up as serious study by people with axes to grind and/or significant emotional problems. It’s not ethical to ignore it in the name of tolerance. If you think college is the right choice for your child, it’s your duty to push back against this.

Unless you’re trying to raise a child whose major is Queer Dance Theory. Be honest: is that what you really want for your kid?

—

Rather than repeat everything I’ve said about Facebook in the wake of everyone being mad at Facebook, I’ll just point you to these two pieces I wrote here and here. Social media is a bit like a handgun: a tool, neutral until it’s picked up and used. Until we can all learn to use it in a way that doesn’t let it use us, I think we’re all justified in treating it like a gun. A gun manufactured and maintained by people with undeniably sinister intent.

—

We need to talk a little more about using children as human shields in the political process, which I touched on here. The latest and most disgustingly egregious example of this is the recent March for Our Lives rally, in which the children who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gave partisan political speeches on behalf of left-wing politicians under the false flag of saving lives. If we’re going to address these issues seriously, let’s keep some basic, undeniable truths in mind:

  • Experiencing a terrible event does not magically confer wisdom, no matter how terrible the event may have been. Experiencing terrible grief also does not confer moral authority on any issue. As mature adults we must sympathize, lend an ear, and offer comfort. Helping to shoulder a fellow human being’s burden is a good thing. Altering public policy on the basis of individual trauma, no matter how keenly felt, is not a good thing, particularly when those policy changes are based on emotion rather than reason.
  • The vast, vast, vast majority of children do not have anything incisive or original to say about public policy, including policy relating to firearms issues. They lack the experience, wisdom, and knowledge to promote a solution worth considering.
  • As children, we all have expressed stupid, foolish, unwise, and poorly-considered ideas. However, most of us haven’t been bankrolled by wealthy political activists from Hollywood, professionally managed by politicians, and trotted out as sages (prophets) dispensing wisdom.
  • Activists who use children as spokespeople do so because those children are considered unassailable: to disagree with a wounded child is to turn a blind eye to that child’s traumas. How dare you criticize a young, innocent child, no matter what that child says or does? This is a disgusting and deliberate attempt to use these children as human shields in America’s ongoing political struggles. It was racist to disagree with the previous president; now it’s monstrous to disagree with David Hogg.
  • The adults behind these children are entirely without shame, ethics, or moral character. This includes these children’s parents. They are not good people. They’re not people you’d want to associate with.
  • Thee children have been given free rein to say anything they like, no matter how inflammatory or sickening, because they’re “trying to participate in American democracy.” The conclusion we’re supposed to reach is that there’s something wrong with you if you push back against the notion that you’re a bloodthirsty wannabe child killer because of your membership in the NRA. If you do anything other than sit back, nod sagely, and accept your demonization, you’re a bad person. A snowflake.

Acknowledge these truths and we can talk. Have a great Easter.

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Moral Laziness in the 21st Century

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My little boy gave me this the other day, apropos of nothing at all. According to my moral betters, I love my guns more than I love him.

One thing social media has been good for is the exposure of the national id onto a public forum. A gigantic segment of our population has grown comfortable expressing knee-jerk reactions to current events as though such feelings were worthy of consideration by thoughtful adults. They’re not. They never were. First-response moralizing, particularly in the face of horrors like the Parkland murders, is in all cases childish, unwelcome, and empty of meaning.

And yet it’s out there and gotten legs, so we have to address it.

In the wake of Parkland it’s become daring, brave, or somehow original to express the idea that children shouldn’t be murdered, particularly when they’re at school. (“I just want the kids to be safe.”) It’s also become quite the thing to tell the world that children should have a safe place to learn. This is the default, least courageous position to take on any issue ever conceived of, because it’s inarguable. Bravo. You’ve gone out on a limb with the easiest moral stance. Take a bow.

Virtue-signaling on this (or any) issue is unspeakably lazy. It leads to the ugly claim that people who disagree with you on how school safety is to be achieved actually don’t care if children are murdered or not. It leads to false choice fallacies like, “Your gun fetish gets our children killed.” And it leads to large numbers of supposedly thoughtful and mature people blaming the NRA for crimes they literally had nothing to do with.

The serious conversation about guns that we apparently need to have can’t happen because the people who keep insisting on having that serious conversation are fundamentally unserious. Driven by emotion, by the id that demands that the scary thing be taken away at all costs, their intent isn’t to talk, but harangue. To shriek, with hands over ears, until everyone else capitulates. That’s not a conversation.

Once you’ve ascended the high, lonely moral pedestal of “No more child murders,” you’ve also concluded that few others share your rarefied air, and you can then demonize them to your swollen heart’s content. And you do demonize them. I’ve seen it. It led me to join the NRA myself. In all likelihood, I’m the only person in my entire family to have done so. I did it not because I’m particularly brave or have any love for the NRA, but because I can’t stand the shrieking, hysterical demonization from people whose moral authority is entirely self-derived.

This is why politicizing every tragedy is such a terribly poisonous thing. We’ve elevated our politics to a moral level, rather than seeing it as a function of group decision-making. If you call others unethical reprobates because they disagree with your political solution to a moral problem, then yeah, you’re going to go the extra mile and claim that these unethical reprobates love guns more than they love their children.

Limiting freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, a political document, is an expressly political act. Calling it a moral imperative because you happen to be one of the brave few who doesn’t want to see “our” children get murdered at school doesn’t make it a moral imperative. We can disagree on gun ownership in the United States, and if you have the stomach for it, you can try to use the engine of politics to see your point of view formed and flaked into policy. But what you can’t do is claim that your emotional, knee-jerk reaction is the right and proper moral choice in these dark times. Your moral default is neither brave nor inspiring, and you deserve no credit for it. It’s unfortunate that your teachers, parents, and mentors haven’t taught you this, but it’s the truth, and you’re better off knowing it.

Get out there and repeal that Second Amendment. Ban the things that frighten you. Use the power of the state to disarm us all. But don’t fool yourself into believing that your politics are anything more than childish emotionalism, and stop congratulating yourself for assuming the default moral position. You’re not special; you’re just lazy.

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