Blaming the Jews
Victor Davis Hanson:
...
"Middle men, market manipulators, and secret smart guys who trafficked in inside breaks and shady deals?all these right-wing farmers used to swear pulled the strings of the American fruit market. When I asked my mother if this could possibly all be true, she would sigh, and say, 'No, no, no. You see when people fail, or when they are angry, or they become afraid and confused, they always blame those who are different or successful or confident. And often that means Jewish people, most of whom our neighbors have never met.'
"And then I grew old, and learned that it wasn't any more reactionary men of the soil who evoked the Jews to explain why they were not listened to, or felt weak, or were frustrated, but rather often very liberal, and self-acclaimed progressives. Instead of Shylock fruit merchants, the new sneaky Jew was the neoconservative?with a funny-sounding name like Wolfowitz or Perle who, due to some sinister genius, had hoodwinked red-blooded Americans into fighting and dying for the Likud party in Israel. Not 9-11, not Saddam Hussein's horrific record of genocide, not some systematic effort to end rogue states and terrorist havens, and not an idealism to bring consensual government to the landscape of the Middle East explained why we went to Iraq. No, it was once again the Jews.
"When I was young, my mother and father also lectured me about the paranoid style in American politics. ?There will always be someone like a McCarthy waving papers and shouting conspiracies,? they preached. At the time, inasmuch as they were agrarian conservative Democrats in a sea of reactionary Republicans, I think they were telling me to watch out for phraseology from our politicians like 'cooked up,' 'treason,' 'traitor'-and especially to be on the look-out when they screamed and frothed, and made all sorts of scary allusions like 'some leaders have told me in private' or 'the greatest example of (fill in the purported travesty) in American history.'
"And then I grew old and listened to Howard Dean quote al Qaeda's about killing Spaniards as proof of our blunders and ponder the 'theory' that George Bush knew in advance of 9-11; and Ted Kennedy refer to cabalistic meetings in Texas; and Al Gore scream, veins bulging and hair tossed, about the administration's treasonous war; and the Democratic National Chairman alleging that a President was AWOL while in the military; and John Kerry hinting at unnamed foreign leaders contacting him in secret?the conspiracists Chomsky, Gore Vidal, or Michael Moore no doubt all grinning off-stage.
...
"The world has changed. What was once liberal is now illiberal, and the old progressivism has become mean-spirited and opportunistic. What was once idealistic is seen as calculating. When I read about the 'Jews' now, it is almost always negative and emanates either from the European left or the so-called liberal university here in the United States. Israel, still democratic and still attacked by autocracies, is now hated rather than respected, not for what it has done, but for what it is. The world snored, for example, this week when suicide bombers were foiled in their attempts at getting at a chemical weapons dump so that they might once more gas Jews. Neither Kofi Annan nor Desmond Tutu, for all their recent media appearances, said a word when Palestinians apologized for murdering a jogger in Jerusalem on the mistaken impression that the poor Arab was a 'Jew.'
"When I turn on the TV and see some wild-eyed crazy-like public figure ranting, it is not a John Bircher frothing about pure drinking water and statesmen of dual loyalties, but prominent Democratic politicians like an Al Gore or Howard Dean screaming to the point of exhaustion, alluding to the end of America as we have known it, and citing a 'betrayal' of the United States. Secret meetings, stealthy friendships, and contorted past relationships?the purported exegesis of all this intrigue and plotting now comes out on NPR and in the New York Review of Books, not garish 1950 pulp newspapers printed in pink.
...
"Most Democrats we saw this year?Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, Terry McAuliff, and John Edwards?either grew up in aristocratic bounty or are themselves multimillionaires. Does this matter??only in the sense of sincerity and consistency. When Republican grandees talk of the glories of the free market you know what you get; when very liberal grandees talk of its evils, you have only the assurance that what they advocate and whom they champion most certainly will have little to do with the lives they themselves will live. And the message is no longer one of guaranteed equality of opportunity but of forced equality of results?as long as we accept that such a utopia applies for everyone else outside the world of corporate Ketchup money, astronomical trial lawyer fees, inherited Kennedy capital, Park-Avenue bond security, Sun Valley, and prep-school privilege.
"I don't know quite how they did it, but the Democrats' candidate looks as at home snowboarding at a ritzy ski resort as George Bush does at a NASCAR rally. And when I hear anti-Semitism, hatred of Israel, warning about Jews in government, fury about foreign aid, visceral hatred and rude exclamations, sinister conspiracy theories, and racial separatism it usually has come far more often from someone on the Left than Right and from one educated and affluent rather than poor and ignorant."
Victor Davis Hanson:
...
"Middle men, market manipulators, and secret smart guys who trafficked in inside breaks and shady deals?all these right-wing farmers used to swear pulled the strings of the American fruit market. When I asked my mother if this could possibly all be true, she would sigh, and say, 'No, no, no. You see when people fail, or when they are angry, or they become afraid and confused, they always blame those who are different or successful or confident. And often that means Jewish people, most of whom our neighbors have never met.'
"And then I grew old, and learned that it wasn't any more reactionary men of the soil who evoked the Jews to explain why they were not listened to, or felt weak, or were frustrated, but rather often very liberal, and self-acclaimed progressives. Instead of Shylock fruit merchants, the new sneaky Jew was the neoconservative?with a funny-sounding name like Wolfowitz or Perle who, due to some sinister genius, had hoodwinked red-blooded Americans into fighting and dying for the Likud party in Israel. Not 9-11, not Saddam Hussein's horrific record of genocide, not some systematic effort to end rogue states and terrorist havens, and not an idealism to bring consensual government to the landscape of the Middle East explained why we went to Iraq. No, it was once again the Jews.
"When I was young, my mother and father also lectured me about the paranoid style in American politics. ?There will always be someone like a McCarthy waving papers and shouting conspiracies,? they preached. At the time, inasmuch as they were agrarian conservative Democrats in a sea of reactionary Republicans, I think they were telling me to watch out for phraseology from our politicians like 'cooked up,' 'treason,' 'traitor'-and especially to be on the look-out when they screamed and frothed, and made all sorts of scary allusions like 'some leaders have told me in private' or 'the greatest example of (fill in the purported travesty) in American history.'
"And then I grew old and listened to Howard Dean quote al Qaeda's about killing Spaniards as proof of our blunders and ponder the 'theory' that George Bush knew in advance of 9-11; and Ted Kennedy refer to cabalistic meetings in Texas; and Al Gore scream, veins bulging and hair tossed, about the administration's treasonous war; and the Democratic National Chairman alleging that a President was AWOL while in the military; and John Kerry hinting at unnamed foreign leaders contacting him in secret?the conspiracists Chomsky, Gore Vidal, or Michael Moore no doubt all grinning off-stage.
...
"The world has changed. What was once liberal is now illiberal, and the old progressivism has become mean-spirited and opportunistic. What was once idealistic is seen as calculating. When I read about the 'Jews' now, it is almost always negative and emanates either from the European left or the so-called liberal university here in the United States. Israel, still democratic and still attacked by autocracies, is now hated rather than respected, not for what it has done, but for what it is. The world snored, for example, this week when suicide bombers were foiled in their attempts at getting at a chemical weapons dump so that they might once more gas Jews. Neither Kofi Annan nor Desmond Tutu, for all their recent media appearances, said a word when Palestinians apologized for murdering a jogger in Jerusalem on the mistaken impression that the poor Arab was a 'Jew.'
"When I turn on the TV and see some wild-eyed crazy-like public figure ranting, it is not a John Bircher frothing about pure drinking water and statesmen of dual loyalties, but prominent Democratic politicians like an Al Gore or Howard Dean screaming to the point of exhaustion, alluding to the end of America as we have known it, and citing a 'betrayal' of the United States. Secret meetings, stealthy friendships, and contorted past relationships?the purported exegesis of all this intrigue and plotting now comes out on NPR and in the New York Review of Books, not garish 1950 pulp newspapers printed in pink.
...
"Most Democrats we saw this year?Howard Dean, Al Gore, John Kerry, Terry McAuliff, and John Edwards?either grew up in aristocratic bounty or are themselves multimillionaires. Does this matter??only in the sense of sincerity and consistency. When Republican grandees talk of the glories of the free market you know what you get; when very liberal grandees talk of its evils, you have only the assurance that what they advocate and whom they champion most certainly will have little to do with the lives they themselves will live. And the message is no longer one of guaranteed equality of opportunity but of forced equality of results?as long as we accept that such a utopia applies for everyone else outside the world of corporate Ketchup money, astronomical trial lawyer fees, inherited Kennedy capital, Park-Avenue bond security, Sun Valley, and prep-school privilege.
"I don't know quite how they did it, but the Democrats' candidate looks as at home snowboarding at a ritzy ski resort as George Bush does at a NASCAR rally. And when I hear anti-Semitism, hatred of Israel, warning about Jews in government, fury about foreign aid, visceral hatred and rude exclamations, sinister conspiracy theories, and racial separatism it usually has come far more often from someone on the Left than Right and from one educated and affluent rather than poor and ignorant."
Comments
Post a Comment