Proportionality in war is a synonym for lethal stalemate, if not defeat

When Has War Even Been ‘Proportional?’ victorhanson.com/when-has-war-e… via @VDHanson https://t.co/dNJTTn1Nh0

VDH’s Blade of Perseus

When Has War Even Been ‘Proportional?’

Israel's conventional disproportionality is proving more effective than the terrorist disproportionality of Hamas.

Trump Revenge?

As Joe Biden’s polls plunge, his public bewilderment becomes chronic, and his exposed corruption can no longer be defended, pundits are writing furiously about the specter of “Trump revenge”. What is that, and why is it coming up now?

The Republican primary polls alarm them, but the general election polls favoring Trump over Biden utterly terrify them.

They privately concede that the crude-sounding Trump nevertheless did not weaponize the FBI, CIA, or DOJ.

The Trump-hating Pentagon, retired generals, CIA and FBI directors, the Washington FBI hierarchy—all of them knew that the fiery and bombastic Trump nevertheless did not hound out his enemies and turn these agencies and institutions into West Wing political operatives, in the way that Biden has destroyed the reputations of the DOJ and FBI.

So why the new mantra of “Trump revenge”?

Most likely, the Left is afraid because they know that if they were Trump and had suffered such weaponized lawfare from their opponents and in-house apostates, and yet had finally regained power, then they would most certainly go after their enemies with mass firings, weaponized indictments, and fake news stories.

In other words, they are scared that Trump thinks and acts like they do, and thus would do what they most certainly would do if in his place.

But for all of Trump’s loud banter, invective, and over-the-top tweets, he never sicced the bureaucracies on his political and personal enemies, and in that regard was never quite like the Left.

Why the Woke Anti-Semitism?

What exactly explains the campus hypocrisy and moral vacuity that fuels both DEI and anti-Semitism?

Ideology? Woke politics?

Certainly, a woke curriculum is a twofold sin, one of both commission and omission. By destroying rigorous courses and then replacing them with dreary partisan hectoring, it has made students ever more arrogant as they become ever more ignorant.

But do not forget that finger-in-the-wind campus administrators also count heads.

Under their new reparatory admissions, so-called whites make up only 20-40 percent of incoming classes, and as a result Jews are increasingly scarce at tony universities. Faculty DEI hiring matches the emerging student profile.

In addition, foreign students pay full tuition and are courted, especially those with petro-fueled scholarships.

The transcendent DEI/cultural Marxist ideology that has absorbed the curricula and culture of campuses postulates a bifurcated, victim/victimizer reductionism: Israelis and Jews are Western, white, and successful—and thus hated, while their supposed victims are not, and are thus sympathetic.

Ergo, there is an increasing hostility of DEI toward Jews.

We saw that with the disproportionate number of faculty who were self-described marginalized people and blasted Israel, praised Hamas’s murdering, or intimidated their Jewish students. The infamous BLM glider poster simply summed up the ideology of BLM and its affiliates.

Campus administrators, increasingly the recipients of billions of dollars from the Middle East, count heads. And there are a mere 9 million Israelis and 16 million Jews worldwide who are the objects of venom from a hostile half-billion-person Arab Middle East and a 2-billion-person Islamic world.

Add in the new Democratic Party, the campus’s uniparty: its left-wing, anti-Israeli, and in practice anti-Semitic, wing believes it is in ascendance and is felt by others to be so, especially on campuses.

Most campus administrators are transient, always moving and scheming to be promoted to a higher title at a university perceived as more prestigious. So, they make the necessary adjustments and do not wish to tamper with their DEI credentials—and thus endanger their careerism—by defending Israel and Jews.

https://x.com/batchelorshow/status/1722588059718345128?s=46&t=uFg60cbWZUXEBbbaPaZ57A

The Legal Circus of Letitia James

Letitia James’s farcical prosecution of Donald Trump might win a conviction, given the known temperament and biases of the partisan presiding judge Arthur Engoron. And things are now escalating well beyond the facts of the indictment for purportedly overvaluing real estate assets—an alleged “crime” that had apparently never been prosecuted in New York’s dog-eat-dog real-estate world.

The unprecedented nature of the alleged crime is nothing compared to James’s choice of defendant — not just the current leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, but also an ex-president polling increasingly ahead of incumbent president (and James’s and Engoron’s fellow Democrat) Joe Biden.

Old, resurfacing videos of James’s now well-documented long vendettas and rants against Donald Trump, her own confirmation of Trump’s charges of her racism (she once smeared the Trump administration “as too pale, too male and too stale”), the judge’s gag orders, the new polls, the simultaneous efforts of state lawsuits to take Trump off the ballot—all add up to a judicial absurdity unprecedented in U.S. history that is beginning to convince the majority of Americans of an extra-legal attempt to warp an American election.

Judge Engoron is in a similar fix.

He is slowly creating an O.J.-like courtroom farce. The more Trump and his team understandably conduct the defense as aloud—and successful—political statement, the more transparently partisan an exasperated Engoron appears. His gag orders may well be unconstitutional and thus are for now largely ignored by Trump, putting Engoron in an even more embarrassing dilemma.

Will he jail Trump for violating his likely-to-be-successfully-appealed order. That is, will he try to put an ex-president and possible future presidential candidate of the opposing party behind bars in an election year for decrying an obvious politicized miscarriage of justice—and thus only end up empowering Trump?

Or in his doom-loop will he not fully enforce his own orders, and instead seek to disguise his mounting impotence by more desk-pounding, sermonizing, grimaces, and snideness?

We’ve seen nothing quite like this judicial mess in recent American history.

The Incredible Lightness of Barack Obama

Joe Biden is caught in a quadfecta of corruption, cognitive decline, a failed agenda, and eroding polls. Amid this apparent vacuum, an opportunistic Barack Obama — who used to be more discreet in managing his third term—is reentering the arena.

Last week, he came out as the overseer of the Biden administration’s AI agenda, even as his foundation’s “Democracy Forum” was warning Americans about the need for “inclusive capitalism” and the pathologies of “material consumption”—all this from a multi-mansioned multimillionaire.

Now, Obama is weighing in on the Gaza war by undercutting his third-term presidential proxy.

Yet just as he seems somewhat clueless about the contradictions of an erstwhile “community organizer” turned into a hyper-capitalist, consumption-addicted elite, so too Obama has little self-awareness about how much of Biden’s unpopularity derives from his continuation of Obama’s own agendas on the economy, border, crime, race, foreign policy, and energy.

His apparent obliviousness continues with his most recent odd assertion that, “The occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is [sic] unbearable.”

But Obama surely concedes that Gaza has been autonomous and free of Israelis since 2005, and governed by a “one man, one vote, once” Hamas clique since January 2006.

Obama added that, “If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth, and you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean – that all of us are complicit to some degree.”

In truth, Obama’s blanket accusation is absurd.

Over the last 17 years, an autonomous Hamas has managed to create both a hierarchy of billionaires ensconced in luxury Qatari hotels, and the most sophisticated subterranean tunnel city in the world—but little else except corruption, poverty, and violence for all concerned.

Obama again seemed unaware of his own confession when he lectured, “nobody’s hands are clean” and “all of us are complicit”.

Not quite, Barack.

Those most culpable for the current catastrophe are Obama and his team, who invited in Robert Malley to be their point man on Hamas; cooked up the “Shiite crescent” misadventure; snubbed the grass-roots Green Movement that sought to overthrow the Iranian theocracy; invited the Russians back into the Middle East after a 40-year hiatus; fled Iraq and fueled the ISIS caliphate; lifted sanctions on Iran, giving it a multibillion-dollar war chest that armed to the teeth Hezbollah and Hamas; estranged the U.S. from Israel; and created the media echo chamber that empowered the disastrous Iran Deal.

The rest was history.

There is an ongoing charity aid in the crypto space for pregnant women in Gaza who are unable to access proper healthcare. These women face immense challenges and desperately need of our support. Every donation, no matter how small, can make a significant…

There is an ongoing charity aid in the crypto space for pregnant women in Gaza who are unable to access proper healthcare. These women face immense challenges and desperately need of our support. Every donation, no matter how small, can make a significant difference in their lives. Together, we can provide the necessary funds to ensure they receive quality prenatal care, medical supplies, and support during childbirth. Let us come together and show these women that we care. A donation from you can bring hope to their lives and ensure a healthier future for both mother and child. Join us today in making a positive impact – together, we can make a real difference in the lives of these vulnerable women. For the sake of humanity let’s make the world a better place and we call for peace between the people of Israel and Gaza - FOR DONATIONS ????

https://gazamaternalcare.org/

gazamaternalcare.org

Gazamaternalcare

Gazamaternalcare is a modern, all-in-one platform for nonprofit fundraising, donor CRM, data management, marketing, and much more.

It is not easy to root out the Hamas death squads from their subterranean tunnels and cities and their human-shielded mosques, hospitals, and schools. It will be tricky to deter Iran and Hezbollah from entering the fray.

Meanwhile each day expect the campuses and streets to get a little bolder, a little closer to reifying their “river to the sea” chanting—as all the more Hamas erodes.

After all, there are no consequences to death chants. Even when the protestors incite violence, they correctly understand no college president will call them out.

Even when Rep. Tlaib incites mobs at the Capitol by shouting the lie that IDF leveled a Gazan hospital, she knows she is a protected “victim”—and her lies mere competing narratives.

When will they stop?

Not until the Democratic hierarchy disowns the growing Hamas wing of its own party.

Not until universities become more afraid of the donor class than they are of the DEI/pro-Hamas bunch and their protected hatred.

And not until a sane administration stops inviting to America those who despise their generous host.

None of that will happen soon—if ever.

So for now we Americans are like Diogenes the Cynic, stumbling around in broad daylight with a torch looking for just one honest college president, one truthful US president—all in vain.