Kanye's Next Move

I've never been more miserable to have been right. One month ago I wrote, re: anti-Semitism, that "my spidy sense has been peaking geometrically." Well, we've come a long way, baby...and none of it's good.


For anyone who's never read a word of history, let me tell you what happens next with Kanye, now that repercussions have finally begun to snowball and he's losing his corporate connections:

"This proves the malicious strength of the shadowy Jewish conspiracy; able to seamlessly choke and bleed the righteous for daring stand up to them with mere words!"

And here's the follow-up:

"...and such is the daunting eeeeeevil power and dark control of these inferior subhuman vermin!"

Pro tip: You know things have reached a tipping point whenever you spot this tell-tale amalgam of "feeble, weak, subhuman vermin" and "powerful, crushing, dominating cabal". They're two sides of the same anti-semitic trope, of course, but, like bagels, it's not just a Jewish thing. Whenever hatred of any sort arises, so does this odd coupling.

Was Obama an incompetent college-failing half-wit, as the Right said, or a tyrant/saboteur bending government to his dastardly radical Muslim vision, as the Right also said?

For that matter, was Trump a clownish moron, according to the Left, or the most daunting peril to the republic in its history, also according to the Left (and, admittedly, me)?

This construction is evergreen. It never doesn't appear. Whenever you notice this amalgam of subhuman/superhuman, idiot/genius taking hold in a society - with people so gripped by hatred that they can't spot their own gaping illogic - alarm bells should ring. You're approaching a bad result. It's a harbinger.


If you're flailing to justify your own buy-in to that loopy amalgam, as I am, it's time to re-frame a few things. It's perilously easy to get spun-up into an antithetical but quite symmetrical, mirror-imaged irrationality. In fact, that spin-up - into a chain reaction of reciprocol hatred - is the very problem, not a mere symptom, even if you feel certain you're on the Good Side (the other guys feel that way, too).

There is only one esacpe from this madness: stop hating and join with reasonable people - including the vast sea of somewhat reasonable people with "wrong" tribal affiliation - against extremists of both sides. I.e. pay less selective attention to the extremists on the other side, and get woke to the holistic peril of extremism, period. Also: stop wincing at "both sides". Any pain you feel from that phrase was deliberately instilled by the dangerous radicals who helped stoke this mess.

Joining at center is the only way out, whether it happens now via force of will, or later in the aftermath of tumult and trauma.