Thoughts And Writings At Year’s End

America, Ilana Mercer, Kids, Relationships, The Zeitgeist

LAST WEEK’S COLUMN was a reality check on American “freedoms,” in the context of Julian Assange’s travails.

It appeared on WND, Townhall.com, Unz Review, and the column’s new home: The New American. It is now available on IlanaMercer.com.

I thank all my editors for being such a pleasure to work with–especially my new, young, conservative friends, Rebecca, Rob and John. If only you lived closer to this state, WA—an exquisite place (what a joy it is to run outdoors in its lush beauty), but chock-full of the coldest, most alienating people (BC, before Covid). No amount of one-sided friendly love and good-will wins these Yankees over (as though by osmosis, the immigrants, too, assume the Yankee mien and “manners”). “Friends” here are what I’ll term calendar friends. They’ll text you once a year, and if lucky; pencil you in. After the agonies of 2020/21, such shallowness is not for me.

Thoughts about the heroic Julian Assange led to a stream-of-consciousness titled “On Being a Man.” Before the pronoun deconstruction, which all principled writers will blithely ignore, “man” also meant mankind. In other words, “On Being A Man” simply means on being a mensch, and applies equally to men and women and all entities between. To the “On Being A Man” thoughts I will add this: Brave men can FIGHT. But a man who picks fights—and feuds—with real friends is never brave. To the contrary.

It’s uncharacteristic to my writing, but as I age and as the anguish around me increases–I’ll endeavor to share with greater regularity personal insights gleaned, in case I can be of help to my readers—the young, especially. They inhabit an atomized, lonely world, where interpersonal pain is compounded by digital escapism (instead of real communication) and the evil strictures of the COVID cartel (especially pronounced in WA).

UPDATE II (6/19/022): On Being A Man. A Brave Man

Culture, Ethics, Gender, Ilana Mercer, Morality, Relationships, The State

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It suddenly struck me, as I was compiling old column material for a recap of Julian Assange’s travails, that most men are cowards. (The “man” noun here is used in the traditional, generic sense, as in mankind. As a woman, I am part of mankind.) Perhaps I ought to use the word mensch — it means “a person of integrity and honor”—and ask: How many men have the courage and character to step up and honor the highest principles or the best of humanity when they encounter these? Too few.

Most live defensively or ignorantly, betraying the good for the bad or the mediocre, and justifying their ennui. That’s why men like Assange are impressive and important and true. They show us the principled way, at least in the political realm.

While most men live in-thrall to miserable entities or manipulative people and the bonds these impose; Assange has shown us the right way to live within our own orbits; dangerously, if you must, never on your knees; bravely seeking that which is the best and the finest, in principles and people. The finest is not the most perfect. Thus patience and tolerance, even love, is required, not rigidity and rejection in search of perfection.

Julian Assange, no doubt, was just cocky and young when he launched WikiLeaks—so confident in the liberal, tolerant polities that gave rise to his libertarian sensibility. Suddenly he found himself being martyred in a cause he thought he would simply win. Was he not sired in the Free World, a son of freedom?

That “Free World,” alas, has placed Assange in a position of giving his life in the cause of exposing global state and corporate corruption and the collusion betwixt. He should be thanked for his service, for Assange did not enlist to do The State’s bidding in futile, wicked wars in faraway lands, or in the corridors of power. Rather, he went-up against the Administrative, Warfare, Surveillance Supra-State and for The People.

An honest man asked on Twitter how to become courageous. I am hardly an authority. I try my best, in writing and in person—having never betrayed my first principles for popularity or pelf.

I have, however, known people who never step up, who live mired in cowardice, wasting their considerable mentation and manhood in a state of fear, and in the quest for equilibrium. Or, gulling themselves into believing that when they slavishly serve the unworthy, at the expense of the worthy and to the exclusion of higher quests; they are being principled—and ever-so good. Ignominy is theirs, brought on by fear and cowardice.

My humble reply, then, to the honest man aforementioned: “Within our orbits we can all try to stand up for the principles and people that are true and need our energies most. (And if you think that these people live in think tanks and political parties; appear on Fox News, work for Prager U, or have the material wherewithal to hold a conference—you are a follower; there is no hope for you.)

Oh, and brave men can FIGHT. But a man who picks fights—and feuds—with friends is never brave.

UPDATE II (6/19/022): “Man” is generic in conventional grammar. These insights apply, naturally, to women as well.

* Image credit

Ghislaine Maxwell: Not Evidence-Based Law, But MeToo, Sexual Moral Panic

Argument, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Sex, The Therapuetic State

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Prosecutions now rest on he-said, she-said hearsay evidence, on facts that can’t possibly meet the rules of evidence (the ones the United States once abided), or be corroborated for the purposes of a just prosecution ~ilana

The reviled and revolting progressives of MSNBC and the hollow performers on Fox News are all agreed:

Ghislaine Maxwell was [rightly] convicted on Wednesday evening of grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse… [and should face] decades behind bars for sex-trafficking.

The “incontrovertible” evidence upon which there ought to have been a sunset clause: The massage table. The gowns in the closet, too. Well, pretty much. My position with respect to prosecutions driven by sexual moral panic and revenge was expressed in “Mad, #MeToo Matriarchy Ensnared Bill Cosby.”

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine were and are degenerates, scum of the earth. But the evidence against Maxwell is hearsay evidence.

Moreover, when one hears phrases like “years of sexual abuse,” one envisages dark, dank quarters, chains, an inability to leave the scene of the abuse, and drugs to addle the victim’s awareness.

In reality—not that it matters any longer to US prosecutors—the case of Ghislaine Maxwell is one of, admittedly, under-age girls. But these women were coming and going as they pleased, eager and greedy for more of whatever Epstein was using to lure them. The sainted MeToo victims were greedy for this ghastly man’s gifts. If charges are to be leveled—the adults in the room bear responsibility, but the charges should never yield the kind of sentence Maxwell is facing.

“Sex-trafficking,” as a charge in the Maxwell case, looks to me much like getting Al Capone on charges of tax evasion: You can’t prove anything substantive, so you conjure any category of charges that will stick. Also known as corruption of the law and its purpose.

Yes, the loathsome two, Jeffrey and Ghislaine, traveled with their greedy “victims.” So, voila, “sex-trafficking,” a legal charge that sticks.

Corruption, degeneracy and more: Absolutely.
But law is about evidence. Contrary to what the legal “experts,” left and right, assert, a just system of law is not about, “turning the tables on the powerful, to give the vulnerable a voice,” a whine that could be heard on the cable universe, left and right.

RELATED: “Mad, #MeToo Matriarchy Ensnared Bill Cosby“:

Prosecutions now rest on he-said, she-said hearsay evidence, on facts that can’t possibly meet the rules of evidence (the ones the United States once abided), or be corroborated for the purposes of a just prosecution, in accordance with the legal standards of Western law (of blessed memory). Evidence is tainted, solicited decades too late, with utter disregard for the statute of limitations.

* Image is of the “evidence,” via New York Post

UPDATED (12/28): I Met Archbishop Desmond Tutu Twice: Con Inc. Should Just Hush Their Mouths About Him

Christianity, Conservatism, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Neoconservatism, South-Africa

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Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died (this BBC “stellar” news report does not “report” whether it was today or yesterday). I had attended the Archbishop’s inauguration with my father, the late Rabbi Ben Isaacson, who had been friendly with Archbishop Tutu.

My father and I also took a gracious (and sumptuous) afternoon tea with the Archbishop decades back in his official residence in Cape Town. (These events are mentioned briefly in my 2011 book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.)

However, the tracts being written about Tutu by American conservatives and neoconservative—and what a resurgence we are witnessing in this reflexive mindset!—are laughable. (Americans must refrain from writing about cultures that are not American; they are simply too insular and chauvinistic to shed anything but darkness on these matters.)

For example, the authors of Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream, reviewed years back by Jack Kerwick on FrontPage Magazine, had picked on Desmond Tutu as an example of black privilege in South Africa! Of all things. Again, this is as laughable as it is to bang on ignorantly and endlessly about Tutu’s criticism of Israel, as if that’s never valid or permissible.

It must be an authorial tic peculiar to neoconservatives, and applied to anyone with an anti-Israel position, for which Archbishop Tutu is famous. He also opposed the Bush travesty that was the war on Iraq. It is also typical of the neoconservative’s ahistoric approach, where a proposition or an idea (black privilege) is applied without context or nuance, to any and all annoying blacks (Tutu became that alright).

In truth, Tutu embodied the old-style, old-school African gentleman. The Archbishop grew up in wretched poverty, received—and gladly accepted—a decent education courtesy of the Church, and worked his ministry so hard as to reap the rewards. (In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” I discuss the wonders done by the white-run churches in South Africa. What good equalizers were some schools in the old South Africa: Desmond Tutu, myself, and hundreds of thousands of other Africans, belong to the same alma mater: UNISA.)

Sure, Tutu was left-liberal and a critic of Israel and of neoconservative project (God bless him for that). But to me, as I said in “King Tut(u) Not So Terrific,” his impiety stems from never having piped up about the ethnic cleansing of rural whites, Afrikaners mostly, from the land in ways that beggar belief. Saint Mandela certainly remained mum about farm murders that are Shaka-Zulu worthy in grisliness.

And so, by the way, had our conservative and libertarian friends remained silent about farm murders until quite recently when talking about anti-white South Africa has become all the rage.

In any case, my meeting with the Archbishop Tutu was memorable. From that occasion I took away that Desmond Tutu was fond of my father and respectful of dad’s Jewish faith and scholarship. The two had a brief and lively exchange about a philosophical difference between Judaism and Christianity. My father was a redoubtable debater. Ditto Tutu. But both men were far better religious leaders than they were political activists, for which they, alas, became known.

UPDATE (12/28/021): In the tackiest manner, legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, who is currently using his analytical prowess to justify forceful, aggressive vaccination, deployed a visit to a Fox News set on an unrelated matter, to libel the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As follows:

“The world is mourning Bishop Tutu, who just died the other day,” hissed Dershowitz. “Can I remind the world that although he did some good things, a lot of good things on apartheid, the man was a rampant antiSemite and bigot,” spewed Dershowitz.

“The man minimized the Holocaust. The man compared Israel to Nazi Germany. When we’re tearing down statues of Jefferson and Lincoln and Washington, let’s not build statues to a deeply, deeply flawed man, like Bishop Tutu. Let’s make sure that history remembers both the goods he did and the awful, awful bads that he did as well.”

Others on the Fox News panel looked on at the Dershowitz train wreck in horror. Aside his uncivilized and boorish timing, Dershowitz’ views are skewed. They are utterly Israel and Jewish-centric. Tutu was indeed pro-Palestinian, but this did not make him an anti-Semite. And he certainly was no “Holocaust minimizer,” what ever that means. As mentioned, I had visited with him with my rabbi father, who was friendly with the archbishop. Tutu was polite, warm and kind.

Far more illuminating and interesting than Dershowitz’ Israel compliance shtick is my account, in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” of Israel’s friendship with Apartheid South Africa. Israel had refused to follow the West in isolating South Africa, and actively and productively—especially militarily—engaged with South Africa. Ronald Reagan tried the meeker form of “constructive engagement” before he was overridden by his Republican party, and told specifically that he was out of step in his wish to engage with South Africa, rather than punish her.

It’s not like Dershowitz ever met Tutu, but wait a sec, I had actually met the Archbishop, and even had the honor of attending his inauguration. Imagine! Mine is a real-life assessment that dares to fail the Israel First test. OMG!