vxbush 2/3/2020 6:15:38 AM

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So--who won the game?

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Morning, campers.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 7:19:54 AM

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Why I'm Not a Donating Alumnus (Part Eleventy):  

Just got an invitation from my alma mater (Georgetown) to an awards ceremony:

"It is Georgetown’s privilege to honor Speaker of the House of Nancy Pelosi (H’02, Parent’88, ’89, ’91) with a Patrick Healy, S.J. Award. Speaker Pelosi’s service to Georgetown and to her country is unparalleled."

Pass the syrup of ipecac.

lucius septimius 2/3/2020 7:28:30 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 2:

Patrick Healy S.J.?  Didn't know the Jesuits were all about abortion.

lucius septimius 2/3/2020 7:29:21 AM

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In #2 Occasional Reader said: service to Georgetown and to her country is unparalleled

Well, she is unparalleled perhaps in her perfidy.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 7:34:19 AM

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Reply to lucius septimius in 3:

Between this, and GU's cozy ties to the Qatari and Saudi oil ticks... blecch.  Their begging mailers to me go straight into the circular file. 

buzzsawmonkey 2/3/2020 7:41:06 AM

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Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 7:47:15 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 6:

That explains why all day, I didn't know if I was coming or going. 

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 7:55:02 AM

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Ugh.

How Star Trek funds Linda Sarsour and other islamists and assorted Jew-haters. 

buzzsawmonkey 2/3/2020 8:34:42 AM

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vxbush 2/3/2020 10:01:06 AM

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In #8 Occasional Reader said: How Star Trek funds Linda Sarsour and other islamists and assorted Jew-haters.

Ugh indeed. Of course, the son of Gene was raised in Hollywood; this shouldn't be a surprise.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 10:45:46 AM

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Steyn:

https://www.steynonline.com/10021/remembrance-and-appropriation

buzzsawmonkey 2/3/2020 11:26:24 AM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 11:

Years ago, back at SOB, I remember pointing out the phenomenon of "Holocaust-denial-by-inclusion."  I don't now remember the name of the poster I engaged with, but he was a very nice fellow.  I pointed out that there were two kinds of camps, under the Nazis---slave-labor camps and death camps.  The slave-labor camps included all sorts of people, including the perhaps ten or twenty thousand homosexuals whom the Nazis interned; Slavs; political dissidents; some Jews and Gypsies; French resistance fighters, etc., etc.  Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, which the Americans liberated, were slave-labor camps.

The death camps were something else entirely.  Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, and Auschwitz II (Birkenau), among others, were death camps.  These camps were much smaller than the slave-labor camps; they were the destination for people who were considered unworthy even of being worked to death under brutal starvation conditions for the glory of the Reich.  They were sent to these camps to be reduced to ash as soon as possible. 

The death camps were built as "the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem."  Not the "Slav problem," or the "homosexual problem," nor yet even the "Gypsy problem," though members of some of these groups were doubtless caught in the machinery of death and ground up in it.  They were built for the purpose of wiping out the Jewish population of Europe---and the Germans were able to degenerate to this national dedication to mass genocide because at the start of the regime the rest of the nations of the world said, in effect, "Oh, well, if you're just targeting the Jews, fine."  Just as Dr. Jekyll, once he'd first transformed into Mr. Hyde, sinks deeper and deeper into depravity, the first go-aheads given to the transformation of Dr. "civilized Germany" Jekyll into Mr. "Nazi" Hyde put Germany on the road to its genocidal depravity.

In this era, when "victimhood" is prized, and the Nazis, thanks to Leftist postwar revisionism, are the Gold Standard of Evil, "the Jews" are frequently accused of "hogging the Holocaust."  After all, millions of other civilians also died under the brutal Nazi regime, didn't they?  Well, yes, they did---and they did, in large part, because so many people, as well as so many governments, were perfectly happy to feed the Jews into the maw of increasing Nazi brutality, under the fatuous belief that their doing so would save them from being similarly consumed.  "The Holocaust" came about because so many people were willing to sacrifice Jews to save themselves---but now, like the barnyard animals who refused to help the Little Red Hen plant, and water, and reap, and cultivate, and grind the wheat, but who now want to share the bread, the people who made the Nazi genocide possible by excluding the Jews from the rest of humanity now accuse Jews of "hogging" the genocide that they enabled, because they want to eat the bread share in the Gold Standard of Victimhood.

When I was a kid, "the Holocaust" had not yet become a general term.  People referred to "the Nazi genocide," or "what the Nazis did."  I've spoken before about the unwisdom of using the term "antisemitism"---the pseudoscientific term invented by Jew-haters to make their Jew-hate parlor-acceptable---because using it shunts the reality of Jew-hate to the side in favor of specious debate over whether this or that action fits within the accepted "definition" (i.e., euphemism) of "antisemitism."  The same is true of the term "Holocaust"; attempting to include all of the casualties of the Nazi regime under the rubric of "the Holocaust" is to deny, once again, the reality of what the Holocaust was;  an attempt to wipe a particular population off the face of the Earth, merely because they were members of that particular population.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 11:55:01 AM

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In #12 buzzsawmonkey said: After all, millions of other civilians also died under the brutal Nazi regime, didn't they?  Well, yes, they did---and they did, in large part, because so many people, as well as so many governments, were perfectly happy to feed the Jews into the maw

Okay, but that hardly lessens the evil of what was done to those non-Jewish victims.  Me, I have no problem with the term "Holocaust", as long as it's explained, as you point out, that Jews, uniquely, were targeted as a class for extermination. 

buzzsawmonkey 2/3/2020 12:01:27 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 13:

Basically, I agree with you; your way strives to avoid the inclusion-denial that I'm decrying.  

My concern is that, outside of these sacred precincts, that is too often not the case, and that inclusion-denial becomes the norm.  Were it possible to retain the distinctions you make in general discourse, I'd be fine.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 12:17:54 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 14:

I think it was Jonah Goldberg who, in reacting to a comparison of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade to the Shoah, acidly pointed out that "at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slaves were the lucky ones." 

Syrah 2/3/2020 12:24:09 PM

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Adam Schiff:  If Trump isn't removed he "could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war."

https://twitter.com/dailycaller/status/1224419427363573761?s=21

buzzsawmonkey 2/3/2020 12:27:50 PM

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Reply to Syrah in 16:

"Unhinged" is far too generous...

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 12:32:04 PM

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In #16 Syrah said: Adam Schiff:  If Trump isn't removed he "could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and leave Jared Kushner to run the country, delegating to him the decision whether they go to war." https://twitter.com/dailycaller/status/1224419427363573761?s=21

Much as I hate to utter the following two words... in fairness [sigh], Schiff does not appear to actually predicting Trump will do those things, rather attempting a reasoning-by-analogy rebuttal to the argument that impeachment can done if the President actually commits a crime.  He's saying that under that argument, Trump could, in theory, do those things, and yet be beyond impeachment. 

buzzsawmonkey 2/3/2020 12:33:36 PM

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In #15 Occasional Reader said: I think it was Jonah Goldberg who, in reacting to a comparison of the trans-Atlantic African slave trade to the Shoah, acidly pointed out that "at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the slaves were the lucky ones." 

He's right.

I'd add that I've heard stories from a friend of mine who grew up in a Hasidic community which had a number of camp survivors.  He described how the Nazis would make it a point to serve palatable food on Yom Kippur, and what these camp inmates went through to nonetheless fast on that day; to construct vestigial sukkahs during the holiday of Sukkot, so that they could make the proper blessings in them; etc. 

Their form of resistance is not as dramatic as the partisans-in-the-forest stories, but it was their way of fighting back, by saying, "OK, you want to eliminate Jews?  We will remain Jews in any way that is within our power to do so, despite your control over us."

It is my belief that these sorts of stories need more circulation.

JCM 2/3/2020 12:49:27 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 18:

Let's impeach all future presidents now, because of the things they may do we don't like!

Alice in Dairyland 2/3/2020 1:17:34 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 19:

Back in 2007?, my husband and I met a Jewish man who had survived the camps.  I used to think I could empathize with what those people had gone through.  He showed us the numbers on his arm and I knew then I could never in my worst nightmares know what it was like to have been him.  I don't know what impressed me more deeply that day; his tragedy or his insistence that obama never be allowed to become President.  September 11th shook me to my core, but this confirmed there really was evil in the world.  He spoke of his love and gratitude of this country and of his past history.  He warned us he had seen this before.  He absolutely terrified me, but truly put me on my path of today.  I will forever be grateful to him.

JCM 2/3/2020 1:22:03 PM

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Reply to Alice in Dairyland in 21:

I got to me a woman, I was 11 or 12 the time she seemed to be ancient. She survived the Nazi Camps, was "liberated" by the Soviet Army. Then spent time in the Soviet Gulags. She escaped into Iran she and her family stayed with a while. The US embassy arranged transit to Israel.

She made a deep and lasting impression.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 1:25:13 PM

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In #20 JCM said: Let's impeach all future presidents now, because of the things they may do we don't like!

Well... again, in fairness, that's not exactly what Schiff is saying. 

Let Me Be Clear, as our former POTUS was so wont to say; I think the grounds for this impeachment were ridiculous.  But it's a different argument to say, "a POTUS can only be impeached for committing a crime". 

Alice in Dairyland 2/3/2020 1:26:11 PM

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Reply to JCM in 22:

Buzz is right, these stories need to be told over and over, so it is never forgotten.

Occasional Reader 2/3/2020 1:27:46 PM

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Reply to Alice in Dairyland in 21: Reply to JCM in 22:

And both those stories are why I clearly say unto the Progs: YES, 393 million privately-owned firearms in the United States of American DO make me feel safer.  Because while that condition persists, "let's just round them all up and send them to the camps" will never come to pass. 

Alice in Dairyland 2/3/2020 1:31:56 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 25:

You certainly feel safer, but you are never truly safe.  Whether they kill you in an armed standoff on your doorstep or in a camp, you are just as dead.  You are right though, I'd rather go down fighting!

Kosh's Shadow 2/3/2020 4:38:09 PM

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In #8 Occasional Reader said: How Star Trek funds Linda Sarsour and other islamists and assorted Jew-haters. 

Well, I will immediately cancel my CBS All Access - wait, I never got it.

AND I won't buy any more Star Trek crap, not that I have done it in years.

Reminds me of Babylon 5, written by an atheist, but handled all religions with great respect. I think he was more Catholic than he thought he was.