VP Harris co-signs college student's anti-Semitism, Neo-Nazi threatens journalists, Jews and ADL employees, Andrew Yang leaving the Dem Party could signal larger realignment (The Five for 10/05/21)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
New folks keep subscribing to The Five every day after my appearance on The Vance Crowe Podcast, so it’s probably a good time for a re-introduction.
The Five is a 2x/weekly publication focusing on the important (as opposed to click-baity-y) stories shaping our world.
Tuesdays: hard news
Fridays: Culture & Commentary
With that being said, let’s dive in.
[one]
Vice President Kamala Harris visited George Mason University last week, where she appeared to offer a soft endorsement to open anti-Semitism.
The student, who described herself as part-Yemeni, part-Iranian, objects to last week’s subsidy of American arms manufacturers, which is what last week’s somehow controversial Iron Dome funding bill amounts to. The funding, she said, ‘hurts my heart, because it’s ethnic genocide and displacement of people, the same that happened in America, and I’m sure you’re aware of this’. Congress, she said, was ‘sending taxpayers money overseas’ while Americans were ‘struggling with healthcare’.
Harris didn’t just nod along. She praised the student for her lies. ‘I’m glad you said that,’ she said. ‘Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth should not be suppressed, and it must be heard.’
There was nothing true in what the student said. Her perspective is poisoned by malignant fictions. The idea that Israel is drawing ‘taxpayers money’ away from domestic needs is upside down. By law, about 80 percent of all aid to Israel must be spent in the US. In other words, the aid is an indirect subsidy to American workers.
Observations:
A. As I write about fairly often here, being the parent of an ethnically Jewish child means I’m going to be pretty upset by anti-Semitism from any direction…but it’s tough for me to see it coming directly from the White House.
B. Part of this can be attributed to a post-facts society where a college student can claim it “hurts her heart” that Israel has missiles that…shoot down rockets, which are being fired at civilians.
C. I guess if you’re against all foreign aid…you’re against all foreign aid, and there’s not much to talk about. That being said, the Iron Dome components are made in the U.S. As far as foreign aid goes, this is one of the rare cases where American jobs are being directly created.
D. I believe the vast majority of Republicans and Democrats alike would have done the right thing here, and not patted this college student on the head like a lost puppy for complaining that less women and children are blown up in Israel over American policy.
E. If you are distraught about lowering civilian deaths, that does not mean the U.S. has a policy issue…that means you have a mental health issue.
[two]
A black woman in suburban Atlanta has been charged with impersonating the KKK and making terrorist threats against minorities in her own neighborhood.
CBS Atlanta reports:
A 30-year-old Douglasville woman named Terresha Lucas has been charged with making terroristic threats in the Brookmont subdivision of Douglasville.
According to the Douglasville Police Department, residents on Manning Drive began receiving notes last December from a person who claimed to be a white male member of the Ku Klux Klan. The notes threatened to burn down homes and kill people.
The police department's investigation into the notes led them to Lucas, who is a Black woman.
Lucas, who described herself as a 6-foot tall, white male with a long, red beard, has been charged with 8 counts of making terroristic threats.
The first notes were received Dec. 21, 2020. Other notes were received Feb. 17, Feb. 22, March 1 and March 3. After a 6-month absence, a final note was received Sept. 6.
CBS46 reported in March that the notes were received by at least 7 Blacks who lived in the neighborhood and that the notes contained the N-word and talked about hanging people and killing kids.
Until Sept. 6, Douglasville PD says it did not have much to go on. However, they got the break they needed on Sept. 6 when evidence was found linking the notes to the home of Lucas. Detectives were able to obtain a search warrant and then found other evidence that ties Lucas to the notes.
On the surface, it appears this woman is suffering from mental illness (if she’s telling the truth about believing she’s a six foot tall white man with a long red beard)…or is a really odd liar.
However, that’s not the whole story.
While I would never point the finger at a political leader, news outlet or celebrity and claim “_____ committed this horrific act because of your rhetoric,” the fact that everything in modern society is painted as a life-or-death moment on Twitter and 24/7 cable news coverage alike…likely plays a role in mentally unstable individuals becoming violent.
Or, in this case, threatening others.
It’s easy to shrug off this story now that the alleged perp has been captured, but I can only imagine the constant terror the residents of Douglasville who received death threats were feeling, especially considering the KKK is declining, but still active in the U.S.
[three]
Sigh.
I wrote the above story, and an hour later, a real Neo-Nazi was arrested for terrorism (who did pretty much the same thing as the fake Neo-Nazi above).
Breaking 911 reports:
The leader of a Neo-Nazi hate group ‘Atomwaffen’ was convicted Wednesday of five federal felonies for his conspiracy to send threatening posters to journalists and employees of the Anti-Defamation League.
Kaleb Cole, 25, of Montgomery, Texas, was convicted of conspiracy, three counts of mailing threatening communications, and one count of interfering with a federally protected activity. The jury deliberated about 90 minutes following the two-day trial.
According to records in the case and testimony at trial, Cole, and other members of Atomwaffen participated in a plot to intimidate journalists and others by mailing threatening posters or gluing the posters to victims’ homes. The group focused primarily on those who are Jewish or journalists of color. Kaleb Cole created the posters, which told the recipients that “you have been visited by your local Nazis.” The posters contained threatening images, such as a hooded figure preparing to throw a Molotov cocktail at a house. Another poster contained the words “Death to Pigs,” which is the same message that followers of Charles Manson scrawled in victims’ blood during a home invasion murder.
In January 2020, the coconspirators printed and delivered or mailed the posters to journalists or others the group was targeting. In the Seattle area, the posters were mailed to a TV journalist who had reported on Atomwaffen, and to two individuals associated with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In Tampa, the group targeted a journalist, but delivered the poster to the wrong address. In Phoenix, the poster was glued to a bedroom window at the residence of the editor of a Jewish lifestyle magazine.
To connect a few dots here…yesterday, I had to call the police in the city of St. Louis after leaving work and finding my Catalytic Converter had been cut from the underside of my car in broad daylight, in the middle of one of the ritziest neighborhoods in St. Louis (while I was at work).
I was on hold for more than 10 minutes before I got a 911 operator, and waited another 20 minutes for police to arrive.
Crime, and especially violent crime, is statistically rising in the U.S.
And hate crimes are increasing as well.
Whoever you are, I hope you have thought long and hard about how to keep your family safe, especially if you live in a an area with increased emergency response times due to the Defund the Police movement.
[four]
In keeping with the theme of stories 1-3 in this issue, harassment isn’t the same as a hate crime, but it’s a half step down.
Harassing elected political figures comes from a worldview that only power and outcomes matter…individual rights, the rule of law, due process and collateral damage of the innocent be damned.
Just as VP Harris offered up a soft endorsement of anti-Semitism, President Biden appeared to lightly co-sign harassment against two Senators from his own party, who have refused to vote for Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill.
President Biden is dismissing Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s encounter with progressive activists — who berated her and chased her into a bathroom — as “part of the process” amid the debate to pass his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package.
Biden’s response came after he was asked Monday whether the activists crossed a line by filming the Arizona senator as she entered a bathroom stall a day earlier at the university where she lectures.
“I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics but it happens to everybody,” Biden told reporters, before letting out a laugh.
He was also asked about moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) being confronted by a group of activists on kayaks while he was on his houseboat in Washington, DC, last week.
“The only people it doesn’t happen to are people who have Secret Service standing around. So it’s part of the process,” Biden said.
Activists filmed Sinema while they accosted her in the restroom at ASU on Sunday, in an effort to pressure her to support the Dems’ $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for many illegal immigrants.
Biden had the opportunity to do the right thing here—to inform the public that it’s never OK to harass another person because of their beliefs.
In addition to being a terrible ethical move, it also further drives a wedge between Biden and moderate Senators Sinema and Manchin, who Biden needs to move forward with his policy agendas.
Which makes Biden’s comments an epic political maneuvering blunder as well.
UPDATE: Sinema was also harassed on a commercial flight last night. CNN’s Anna Navarro appears to have justified this harassment as well, a sign that the mainstream media may be turning on moderate Democrats.
[five]
Former Democratic Primary and NYC Mayoral Candidate Andrew Yang announced yesterday in a blog post that he’s left the Democratic Party to become a Political Independent.
My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society. There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day – but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever. Many of the people I know are doing all of the good they can – but their impact is constrained. Now that I’m not a member of one party or another, I feel like I can be even more honest about both the system and the people in it.
Full disclosure, although I’m a registered Republican, I haven’t donated to a general election Presidential candidate since George W. Bush in 2004. However, I did donate to both both Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard in 2019, because I wanted to help moderate and innovative candidates stay on the debate stage in a primary I viewed as flying off the rails, and I remain a fan of both as voices of reason in a world going madder by the day.
If you’re wondering why I don’t write about Republicans much these days in The Five…it’s because there’s just no news to cover. Go click around to a handful of media outlets and see for yourself—outside of fluff coverage about a Tweet by Ted Cruz or something, there are no headlines.
In January, the Democratic Party assumed control of the White House and both branches of Congress, the rare opportunity for in American politics for one party to push as much legislation through as possible before the House or Senate flips in mid-term elections.
So far, that hasn’t happened due to a deepening rift in the party between the likes of Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Manchin and Sinema and the pull of far-left Democrats including AOC, Illhan Omar, Ayana Pressley and Cori Bush (famously dubbed “The Squad”).
From what we have seen in 2021, Biden and Harris seem far more concerned with upsetting “The Squad” (see story #1—Bush, AOC And Omar have expressed similar just-below-the-surface anti-Semitism around the Iron Dome preventing civilian deaths) than with reconciling with the more moderate wing of the party.
Apparently, Biden thinks he can simply force moderate Democrats into going along with his policy agenda.
Andrew Yang’s decision to leave the party is a sign that Biden’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach isn’t working, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other Moderate Dems followed suit in the coming year—possibly to form a new party or coalition.
Until the next one,
-sth