Can’t Fight The Pressure

     I intended for my “Web vacation” to be a bit longer than this. I planned to take the whole summer off, to spend it writing fiction and only fiction. It seemed the best way to force myself to re-engage with the living world… something I’d been holding at arms’ length for far too long. You know, meet a few actual people, buy a round or two at the local tavern, tell some fanciful tales of skullduggery in high places and see which ones “grow legs.” But I made the mistake that doomed me to be a blog-blatherer in the first place.

     I read the news.

     It’s a mistake, Gentle Reader. Heinlein told us in Stranger in a Strange Land that it’s the source of the greater part of human misery:

     “But this lady is one of Ben’s fans; she reads his columns every night—a hideous vice.” Jubal blinked. “Front!”
     Anne appeared, dripping. “Remind me,” Jubal told her, “to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. Title is ‘Gossip Unlimited’—no, make that ‘Gossip Gone Wild.’ ”
     “Boss, you’re getting morbid.”
     “Not me. Everybody else. See that I write it next week. Now vanish; I’m busy.”

     Yet we do it anyway. Not all of us; just enough to afflict the society we live in with a deadly conglomerate of suspicions: the sense that things are out of control and careening downhill (they are)… the sense that those around us are “up to something” they’d rather we not know about (true for some of them, surely)… and the haunting fear that our covert maneuvers, however licit in the eyes of God, are on the verge of being found out and paraded before a clucking, finger-wagging multitude to our embarrassment, hazard, and prodigious legal expense.

     Anyway, I’m back for now. And if I may borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell, the passing scene continues to pass much as before.

     First on the carousel is the media’s treatment of the recent Israeli hostage-rescue operation:

     It was a busy weekend morning in the market at the Nuseirat refugee camp, Osama Abu Asi recalled. Fighting could be heard in the distance, but it didn’t keep away the shoppers, who perused the few bags of flour and sugar he had spread on his blanket.
     Abu Asi said he did not know that nearby, in an apartment one floor above the street, sat a young, dark-haired woman known around the world — last seen in a viral video clip being driven into Gaza on the back of motorcycle on Oct. 7, screaming, “Don’t kill me!”

     “He did not know.” Yeah suuurre.

     She was Noa Argamani, one of about 250 Israeli hostages taken captive by Hamas.
     Her 245th day in captivity had started like most others until, shortly after 11 a.m., she heard a knock at the door, followed by yelling. Suddenly, the room was filled with Israeli soldiers. “You are being rescued!” they shouted in Hebrew.
     “They simply came, just like that,” Argamani, 26, would tell her close friend Yan Gorjaltsan hours later.
     The rescue operation on Saturday that freed four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, was one of the most dramatic and deadly episodes of Israel’s war against Hamas. This account is based on more than a dozen interviews with former and current Israeli military officials, family members of hostages, and Palestinian eyewitnesses, as well as analysis of verified video footage.

     So far, not too terrible, for the Post. But hark:

     It was planned for weeks and executed smoothly, Israeli officials said, until the tight commando raid turned into a firefight with militants. The Israeli military responded with a massive aerial assault on the crowded streets of Nuseirat.
     The bombs kept falling and the streets echoed with screams, Abu Asi said.
     It was like “doomsday.”

     And a bit later:

     Hussam al-Arouqi, 33, was returning from the bakery with his brother Issam, he recounted, when two men in plainclothes and about 10 heavily armed soldiers poured out of the back of the Mercedes. The soldiers opened fire, hitting his brother three times, he said.
     “He fell to the ground and started bleeding” and tried to crawl away, Hussam said, adding that Apache helicopters were flying low overhead.
     It was more than an hour, he said, before it was safe enough to reach Issam and take him to the hospital in a donkey-drawn cart. Issam remains in critical condition.

     Get the idea, Gentle Reader? “Innocent Palestinians” were shot and bombed. Some were killed. And they’ll swear – the survivors will, anyway – that they “did not know” about the Israeli hostages being kept captive among them.

     The Post knows which side it’s on. So does CNN:

When not citing the IDF directly, CNN changes their chyron to read “hostage release” pic.twitter.com/lVJ51fQ6BD

— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) June 8, 2024

     The media are no friends to Israel. So what if HAMAS killed 1400 Israelis and kidnapped more than a hundred others? So what if rocket bombs from Gaza have repeatedly killed Israelis going about their ordinary, peaceful lives? Why should the “occupiers” be permitted to live in peace? All of Palestine is an Islamic waqf!

     Article Eleven:

     The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?
     This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.
     It happened like this: When the leaders of the Islamic armies conquered Syria and Iraq, they sent to the Caliph of the Moslems, Umar bin-el-Khatab, asking for his advice concerning the conquered land – whether they should divide it among the soldiers, or leave it for its owners, or what? After consultations and discussions between the Caliph of the Moslems, Omar bin-el-Khatab and companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, it was decided that the land should be left with its owners who could benefit by its fruit. As for the real ownership of the land and the land itself, it should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day. Those who are on the land, are there only to benefit from its fruit. This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.
     “Verily, this is a certain truth. Wherefore praise the name of thy Lord, the great Allah.” (The Inevitable – verse 95).

     Well, Gentle Reader? Do you have a stance? Does Israel have a right to exist, or is it “consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day?” Or do you prefer not to take a side in a “religious controversy?”

     That was enough to get my blood up. (Granted that it doesn’t take much.) But what sharpens the impulse to vent is that a fair number of commentators nominally on the Right are openly espousing the hatred of Jews:

     It boggles the mind. The Jewish people are the most persecuted demographic known to history. Yes, they tend to excel when left alone. They take education very seriously, which a lot of Gentiles do not. The huge over-representation of Jews – especially Israelis – among Nobel Prize winners should convince anyone. Their centuries-long involvement in finance isn’t due to a conspiracy; it’s because moneylenders were despised throughout Europe from ancient times – and moneylending was one of the few trades that weren’t barred to European Jews! Has no one else read The Merchant of Venice?

     Thomas Sowell, when asked how the Jewish people could defuse the antagonism toward them from other groups, answered succinctly: “They could fail.” But they don’t. They study, and they work, and they don’t allow obstacles to daunt them. Also, they aid one another. So do Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese immigrants to the U.S. – and they prosper too!

     But the typical bigot didn’t reason his way to his bigotry. He resented his way to it. He envied, and griped, and detracted. For the one thing he won’t blame for his lesser degree of attainments is himself: his laziness, his lack of academic aptitude, his inferior work ethic, his unwillingness to assist others or accept their assistance, and so forth. He’d rather hate.

     What was it C. S. Lewis said in Screwtape Proposes a Toast?

     The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.
     The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.
     And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, lah-di-dah affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”

     Contemptible.

     One more emission of bile and I’ll close for today. There’s a growing conviction among Americans generally that the police are not to be trusted. It’s unfortunate – we’d certainly like to believe the police are trustworthy – but a growing number of stories to the contrary are making it hard. Here’s a recent one:

     SACRAMENTO — The bullet scars on the upper arm of Kyrieanna Liles, 24, serve as an obvious reminder of the November encounter with police that would forever change her life.
     Still, Liles says the emotional wound will take the longest to heal. Rancho Cordova Police Officers, claiming self-defense, opened fire on her fleeing car after a tense encounter in November 2023, striking her twice.
     “I know I’m safe and I’m fine but part of me just doesn’t want to remember it at all,” said Liles.
Liles sat down exclusively with CBS13’s Ashley Sharp to share her side of the story for the first time since being found ‘not guilty’ of assault on an officer and being released from jail.

     Wait just a moleskin-gloved moment there, Colonel: how did Mrs. Liles “assault an officer?”

     Read the linked story. Apparently a policeman tried to drag Liles out of her car through the driver’s-side window. Why? No reason. She hadn’t been and wouldn’t be charged with a crime for any previous conduct. She wanted to leave; he wanted to prevent her. She drove off. That, apparently, constitutes “assaulting an officer” in Sacramento. It certainly wasn’t resisting arrest.

     But what does firing ten shots at a vehicle known to be occupied solely by a woman not accused of any crime constitute?

     Media mishandling of the reporting of high-profile police encounters, especially with black perpetrators, has done American police much damage. But events such as the one chronicled above don’t help.

     I often find myself muttering “What’s the use?” and “I’m getting really tired of all this shit.” The C.S.O. catches me at it now and then. She, who somehow manages to retain her equanimity despite reading the same news sources as I, doesn’t get it. Perhaps you do, Gentle Reader.

     So anyway, it was a nice break, but I’m back. Damn it all.