Close Encounters with the Terza Età

Ever since I turned 25 or so I’ve been making a concerted effort not to get old. I try to avoid expressions such as “Kids these days…” because I still remember what it was like to be a kid in those days. People who use such expressions are undeniably old farts by my lights, and that is my working definition of “getting old.” In the back of my mind is always Socrates skipping rope with his nieces, a pretty good example — however fanciful — of the usefulness of youthfulness.

Last weekend we were at a wedding (not ours) in Perugia. At the reception lunch, they stuck us with the over-60 crowd, which I tried to view as an opportunity to familiarize myself with lesser-known points of view. I no longer have living grandparents, and I don’t hide my fascination when Italian octogenarians tell of the bombing of San Lorenzo or of having killed a Nazi or two in the hills outside Rome back in the day. But this time conversation was less poetic. I was roped in by a woman whose face resembled an old football. She had quick, intelligent eyes. What pearls of wisdom might fall from her lips, I wondered?

“I giovani di oggi…” Kids these days, again. This time I wasn’t going to take it lying down. “Kids these days what?” I rebutted. The answer was even more savage than I imagined. “They have no values, no morals. They don’t know right from wrong. It’s the parents, though. They no longer have time for their children.”

I debated with her for 20 minutes or so. I offered myself as an example (I often seem to make a handy one) of a person who grew up with working parents, who spent time in the afternoons alone after school amusing himself in front of the television, and whose friends largely did the same. Granted, many of my “friends” from those days ended up with a criminal record, but this cannot be easily blamed on too much self-reliance.

“Americanate,” she tore into me. American children may be expected to be self-sufficient for a few hours a day while their parents wile away their lives making a living, but this certainly won’t fly here in Italy. Apparently, an Italian child should drink its mother’s milk until the ripe age of 40 (I know some that do), or until the mother is old enough to be spoon-fed lukewarm minestrina by her unmarried, live-in offspring.

“But do you really believe that things were better in the past? Were people more moral, were they better people?” I was pleading for an answer that would allow me to rationalize my time spent listening to a woman hell-bent on insulting me.

“Assolutamente.” I should’ve seen this one coming. At this point I desisted, put on my most charming smile, and filled my mouth with truffles.

What was to be learned from this encounter with the terza età? Is humanity headed downward in an endless spiral, destined to devolve, each generation more immoral than the last? What do we mean when we talk about morals? Do I have the same morals as an eighty year-old woman from Perugia? Are we talking about real morality, or the Ten Commandments?

I suspect, however, that we do not all have the exact same criteria as to what constitutes a moral life. This I gleaned from her facial contortions when I affirmed that both my parents had been married three times. Another americanata, to be sure, perhaps the worst of the bunch. However much we agree on basic principles of good conduct — don’t steal, don’t murder — there is still much that separates us. Had I told her that I am both Jewish and an atheist, and that I have homosexual friends, I wonder if she would’ve fallen out of her wheelchair. Of course, I understand the power of taboos. I wanted to have a serious discussion, not shock the poor woman to death.

To her credit, she did tell my wife and me that we were a good-looking couple — like the Obamas. She caught me off guard, and I wondered what lurked beyond that remark. I’m still getting used to people waving the American flag instead of burning it.

As she was being wheeled out to her car, my elderly new friend reached up, pinched my cheek and intoned: “You’re a good kid. You’ve got a clean face.” With those words, she disappeared into the sunlight. I felt oddly vindicated.

Published in The American

Whose Catastrophe?

Dick Morris & Eileen McGann have a new book out called Catastrophe: How Obama is Fucking Up America. Now, I wouldn’t bother even mentioning this, but there is a humorous sidenote. Pick up the book, turn to the author bio blurbs on the back flap, and read for yourself:

“[McGann]…works with Dick…specializing in using the internet to win elections.“

Well, kids, Obama won the last elections, and there was much talk that websites like Facebook and YouTube–to name the obvious culprits–were instrumental in pushing his campaign over the top. My question for Morris & McGann is: what elections have you won recently?

Adolf Hitler Was Not an Atheist

…but even if he were, what difference would it make? This is a ridiculous syllogism: Hitler was an atheist, therefore atheism = Hitlerism. One might as well point out that Hitler was a heterosexual, or a homo- or bisexual and come to a similar conclusion. On the other hand, it is just as unwarranted to point to all these pious Hitler quotes about God and the Saviour in order to construct another syllogism: Hitler was a believing Christian (or at least able to fake it passingly well), therefore Christianity = Hitlerism.

Atheism is not a theology or even a worldview. Atheism cannot bring society to its knees because it is not a totalitarian system. There is no danger that society will be taken over by reasonable people who test their ideas to see whether they stand up on their own or fall down flat on their face. We should be so lucky.

I just wanted to get that black on white because it is a recurring piece of nonsense when watching debates on YouTube such as this. Surprisingly,the Conservapedia (it is what it says) entry “atheism and mass murder” makes no mention of Hitler or Nazism. So go figure, even these people can’t keep it straight.

For those who persist in the unhappy illusion that people of no faith are some kind of evil muck clinging to the otherwise pristine bumper of believers on their long ride toward heaven, only to be chiseled off on the Day of Reckoning while the faithful march happily through the pearly gates to the great Cocktail Party in the Sky, I post the following video for your enjoyment.

Atheism Kills

Even if you’re a Christian apologist, how can you not cringe at Dinesh D’Souza’s howler: “If you think Bin Laden is bad, in his wildest imagination he couldn’t begin to match the crimes of atheism that have occurred within our lifetime. It is atheism, not religion, which is responsible for the mass murders of history.” But when was the last time you saw atheists doing this?

Marxist, Fascist, Muslim Obama

Here is a revealing comment to my recent post about anti-Obama hate speech. In fact, it is so perfectly blind in its sheer disgust of him that I felt it deserved a place of its own in a post instead of getting lost in the comments.The author calls herself The Mad Jewess, and mad she is. At what, it’s hard to say.

“I stood up to the excrement on Youtube, and advised them to REPENT: Rabbis4Obama, Jews4Obama, the list is ENDLESS of the sheep that voted in the Marxist, Fascist, Muslim Usurper in Chief..but remember, we dont make up a whole heckuva lot of the populace, and those that did NOT vote for the pig, NEED to get blogs and head almost far right, with a little balance.

As much as people dont want to admit it, MADOFF got rid of the JINOs; ACLU, and MANY, believe you me.”

Elsewhere, she decries feminism, blacks, abortion, divorce, the anti-christ, racism (against “white people”), Latinos, gun control, Bolsheviks…an this is all on the first page of her blog! If this is any indication of the general attitudes of the anti-Obama hate-clans, it’s a lethal cocktail of far-right xenophobia and the inability to distinguish one thing from another in order to make a cesspool of one’s personal hatreds. These people are not out to debate policy, they are out to offend by any means necessary.

Israelis need all the friends they can get to combat prejudice. But are Jewish xenophobes who court right-wing American bigots (the Left Behind people) the answer to Islamist death squads and anti-Zionist xenophobia on the far left?

The propaganda is essentially the same all around. Change the names, or melt them all together into a Zionist-Muslim-Commie-Fascist-Abortion-loving-Negro-hugging-Feminist hatefest to suit your own personal woes. There is nothing constructive about any of this, however. And it remains a mystery exactly why they think Obama’s policy on Israeli settlements is so unique. It may be ‘displacement’, but is is not really divergent or particularly original.

And Madoff is their hero.

Obama Bear Hug

If you haven’t seen this week’s Economist yet, it has an excellent cover. Just one of the many reasons we still enjoy opening the mail in the Age of Twitter:

In less than 10 years time, say the cyber engineers, the Web will connect every aspect of our digital lives to every other aspect of our nondigital lives – e.g., when typing an e-mail the Web will already know what the subject is and will suggest Web sites and books, as well as documents, photos and videos that are pertinent, and anything you have saved in the past that is still relevant today. It will be known as the Web’s “inherent intelligence.”


Centennial Oration by Robert Ingersoll

“One hundred years ago, our fathers retired the gods from politics.

The Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral courage and of political wisdom.

I say of physical courage, because it was a declaration of war against the most powerful nation then on the globe; a declaration of war by thirteen weak, unorganized colonies; a declaration of war by a few people, without military stores, without wealth, without strength, against the most powerful kingdom on the earth; a declaration of war made when the British navy, at that day the mistress of every sea, was hovering along the coast of America, looking after defenseless towns and villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, and when the principal cities of America were in the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, all things considered, it was the bravest political document ever signed by man. And if it was physically brave, the moral courage of the document is almost infinitely beyond the physical. They had the courage not only, but they had the almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are created equal.

Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world, the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal. With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war — centuries of hypocrisy — centuries of injustice.

What more did they do? They then declared that each man has a right to live. And what does that mean? It means that he has the right to make his living. It means that he has the right to breathe the air, to work the land, that he stands the equal of every other human being beneath the shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor — the labor of his hand and of his brain.

What more? That every man has the right to pursue his own happiness in his own way. Grander words than. these have never been spoken by man.”

The rest of Ingersoll’s speech can be read here.

Meanwhile, These People Are Insane

From The Jerusalem Post:

Thousands of haredim took to the streets of Jerusalem on Saturday evening, in violent protests against the Karta parking lot in the capital opening on Shabbat to accommodate Old City tourists.

According to initial reports, rocks were thrown and policemen trying to disperse crowds were pushed and shoved. Crowds of haredim also tried to break into the parking lot.

The protesters, demonstrating in the main haredi neighborhood of Jerusalem, Mea She’arim, claim to be pained by the desecration of Shabbat. Many of the ultra-orthodox Jews were apparently chanting, “Shabbat desecrators will die,” and vowed to hold further demonstrations next week.

Eyewitnesses said that protesters had formed a human chain to prevent police from dispersing crowds, while police set up road blocks around the area.

In similar protests last weekend, 57 haredim were arrested for disturbing the peace, according to Jerusalem Police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby. The detainees were taken to the city’s Russian Compound jail, where they were held overnight until their remand hearing the following day.

I hope God doesn’t read my blog. It’s still shabbos in Rome.

p.s. It’s hard to tell from the article if “Saturday evening” is still technically shabbos.The article was updated at 8:05 (Israeli time) this evening, which is less than one hour ago by my watch.It’s still light out in Rome. So weren’t the haredi themselves desecrating the sanctity of shabbat with their inane rock-throwing? Or did they find some talmudic loophole through which to crawl?

Message to the Obama Blasters

The real enemy?
The real enemy?

Some 70% of American Jews voted for Barack Obama in the last elections. Now, we find out we voted for Hitler? This is something I can’t quite digest, this pro-Israeli Obama-bashing. How did the conservatives hijack Zionism?

“The dhimmi in the White House” has increasingly become a sort of anti-Obama rallying cry. The scope is not to discuss or criticize Obama’s ideas on Israel (entirely debatable,as ever) but to dirty him with the dhimmi brush. He has been tarred and feathered as an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people and a lackey of Islamic rejectionism. As my blogger friend Jew With a View posted recently (quoting Joseph Farah):

I hope my Jewish friends remember this well. Many of them voted for Barack Obama. Many of them voted for Hillary Clinton. These are not your friends. These are the same kinds of people who turned away ships of Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1940s. These are the same kinds of people who appeased Adolf Hitler at Munich. These are the same kinds of people who made the reformation of the modern state of Israel so difficult.

We have gone from understandable criticism of Obama-administration pressure on Israel to stop existing settlement growth to a mischaracterization of Obama as–what? Hitler? Ahmadinejad? Appeasement incarnate, apparently. Farah goes so far as to call this “ethnic cleansing”, perhaps borrowing his human-rights jargon from the anti-Zionist hard left. My baloney detector is going haywire.

Is Barack Obama a cosmically-charged enemy of the Jewish people? Was he sent by God (or the Adversary) to beguile and destroy Jewish continuity in the guise of the president of the USA? Is he, as we are expected to believe, completely subservient to the Islamist lobby? Is he ransoming the State of Israel to appease the likes of Osama bin Laden and the Iranian regime? Does any of this sound familiar?? It sounds like the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis turned on its head. If only everything in politics were so black and white.

I’m all for crticism where it is due, and Obama is no exception. I used to feel disgusted at the hatred against Dubya, though I’ve never felt close to the Republican party or kinship with American conservative causes. I even stood up to fellow liberals when they crossed the line from criticism to hate speech. And there was a lot of that back then. Now it’s back–with a vengeance.

Can’t we say shoyn genug* to conspiracy theories once and for all?

* “enough already!”

Ron Rosenbaum: Typos or Neologysms?

I love reading Ron Rosenbaum’s blog. He is unafraid to confront both the idiots on the left and the dorkbots (my humble attempt at a Rosenbaumism) on the right. Besides, he wrote one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. I wrote about it here.

What infuriates me is that he is a rampant misspeller. I admit this gives me pause at times, although I know no one in perfekt and blogging is often done at high velocity: in cars, trains, helicopters etc…but can there be any excuse for the following waterfall of mangled orthography?

I did something I hadn’ t done for a million years. I listened to Dylan’s first album Bob Dylan, from beginning to end. Thirteen songs, 12 or them negligable material–and one song, if not immortal than at least awe-inspiring, awesome. It’s the next the last song on the album, which makes it all the more surprizing since you have to put up with 11 ho-hum imersonations of blues singers, impersonaltions of other folkies, covers of old chesnuts.

I mean, can’t you read it over just once, Ron, before striking the “publish” key?