RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/01/granting-value-to-the-world/

By making happiness incompatible with man’s essence, Schopenhauer found himself deaf to Goethe’s wisdom: “If you want to delight in life, then you must grant value to the world.”

In the great contest to be the world’s gloomiest philosopher, there are many high-ranking competitors.

I won’t say that philosophers have cornered the market on gloominess. There are other walks of life that have always been abundantly supplied with people who can find a cloud in any silver lining.

But as a group, philosophers can give anyone a run for his money.

It is true that the sage Zarathustra is said to have been born laughing. And Aristotle seems to have been a happy, well-adjusted family man.

There are other cheerful chaps (interestingly, all great philosophers in history have been male) scattered here and there.

Some people will find it odd to find Thomas Aquinas on the list of those with a sunny disposition. But anyone who was so plump that he had to have a semi-circle cut out of the refectory table cannot have been too gloomy.

Then there was the great Nicholas of Cusa, the 15th century German cardinal, statesman, scientist, philosopher. He was a world-affirming fellow, as was proved by his having endowed a monastery with a vineyard for its perpetual support. Someone told me it is still going strong, 500 years later, though I haven’t checked up on that.

That Gloomy Philosophy

BACK ON APRIL 27, 2021

https://reason.com/2021/04/23/senate-passes-anti-asian-hate-crimes-bill-that-doesnt-prohibit-discrimination-in-college-admissions/

The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that purportedly combats anti-Asian hate on Thursday. The vote was 94–1.

The bill would create a new position within the Justice Department to review anti-Asian hate crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also requires the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on preventing anti-Asian discrimination.

“There has been a dramatic increase in hate crimes and violence against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders,” the bill asserts. (It explicitly names the Atlanta spa killings as an example of this, though it’s not actually clear the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus.)

The lone dissenter on the vote was Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo).

“As a former prosecutor, my view is it’s dangerous to simply give the federal government open-ended authority to define a whole new class of federal hate crime incidents,” said Hawley in a statement.

He has a point, though this bill is not particularly vast or sweeping. The stronger argument against the bill is that it does nothing to address one of the most obvious—and odious—forms of anti-Asian discrimination: college admissions.

Many elite colleges, public universities, and even selective high schools explicitly discriminate against Asian applicants in order to artificially tinker with the racial makeup of the campus population. This means that Asian students whose grades and test scores would have gained them admission had they been white, black, or Hispanic are routinely turned away. Contrary to popular belief, the biggest beneficiaries of these schemes are often white students.

Courts have generally held that race-based admissions do not violate civil rights law if they are very narrowly tailored. But Congress could explicitly require educational institutions that receive federal dollars to cease discriminating against Asian applicants. (They could even call it an antiracist initiative.)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) proposed an amendment to the bill along these lines, but it was defeated in a close vote: 48–49. Thus the version that passed the Senate aims to tackle anti-Asian hatred, but is silent on perhaps the most common and systemic form of anti-Asian bigotry in the U.S.

POSTINGS WILL RESUME TOMORROW

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-enduring-terror-of-violent-crime?token=ey

A harrowing story of a violent crime in Oakland was reported by San Francisco television reporter Dion Lim. On Tuesday night, four armed men invaded the family home of a couple and their seven-year-old daughter. The criminals broke in as the mother was preparing to put her young daughter to bed. They tied up the couple, brutally beat the father, repeatedly threatened to murder all of them — specifically threatening that they would first shoot the daughter — and then ransacked their home over the course of a full hour, stealing all of their possessions and much of their life savings.

A GoFundMe page has been created by a family friend to tell the story and help them financially recover (their identities are being concealed pending the apprehension of the criminals). I have donated to it and encourage anyone who can to do so. But I also want to convey why this particular recent crime resonated for me and produced particularly strong levels of empathy. It is because, weeks ago, I experienced something quite similar — though thankfully without my children involved — and largely wanted to share what happened for the insights it provided me and to explain why violence of the kind this Oakland family just suffered is so brutalizing.

On March 5, I was at a farm that we have been renting during the pandemic that is roughly 90 minutes from our home in Rio de Janeiro. It is isolated and beautiful. I’ve begun my day for the last five months by feeding the chickens, rabbits, ducks, swans and peacocks that are there: a perfect way to connect to farming life. My husband and our two children had spent the week in Rio because the kids had school entrance exams that required a faster internet connection than is available at the farm. Because March 5 was the day before my birthday, they had all planned to come to the farm that day, but decided at the last second that they would come early the next morning instead.

So that night I was alone there with one off-duty police officer who works with our family to provide security. At roughly 9:30 p.m. that night, I was speaking with a friend on the telephone when I noticed that our dogs — twelve of whom were at the farm, with the rest at home — were barking incessantly and intensely for a sustained period of time, which is unusual. I ended the call to see why they were so agitated and walked out of the house toward the gate where I heard them.

https://worldisraelnews.com/tributes-pour-in-for-black-jewish-actor-yaphet-kotto-wh

One of Hollywood’s few Black Jewish actors was proud of his Jewish heritage and African roots.

One of Hollywood’s few black Jewish actors, Yaphet Kotto, has passed away at the age of 81, after a career that spanned half a century and cast him in memorable rolls with stars like Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Roger Moore.

Kotto’s wife, Sinahon Thessa, posted on Facebook that her husband died in the Philippines.

“This is a very painful moment for me to inform you all fans, friends and family,” Thessa said. “You played a villain on some of your movies but for me you’re a real hero and to a lot of people also. A good man, a good father, a good husband and a decent human being, very rare to find.”

Yaphet Kotto’s father came to America from Cameroon in the 1920s and was an observant Jew who spoke Hebrew, the website MaNishtana documented. His mother, Gladys Marie, converted to Judaism and Kotto related that his father’s family originated from Israel and migrated to Egypt and then Cameroon, and had been African Jews for many generation.

We have been living through a nightmarish pandemic for the past year in which half a million Americans have died, 73,000 of whom were Black people whose death rate from Covid 19 is twice that of Whites. Survivors of Covid often have long lasting symptoms whose ramifications remain unknown. People of all races have lost their jobs, their small businesses, their homes and their ability to feed their families. Yet the Queen of Television, a woman known throughout the world by only one name chose to devote two hours of screen time to the tribulations of a wealthy privileged couple who claim they have been dissed by their royal family as well as the British press.

Given the climate of our times, in which we see daily reports of minorities who are sustained only by volunteer food deliveries, is this the best time to recount the distress of a duchess who contemplated suicide when insensitive questions were asked regarding the color intensity of her unborn child? And could this affront actually have been sufficient to produce that jaw-dropping reaction by Oprah in her interview?
“What,” she whispered dramatically, blowing it softly twice in case we reached for popcorn and missed the first shlock wave.

There are many unfair and problematic issues pertaining to race but devoting a major tv spectacle to the hurt feelings of two of the most privileged people in the world certainly is offensive at this moment. Watching both billionaire Oprah and multi-millionaire Harry and Meghan sitting in one of America’s most lavishly expensive neighborhoods while Americans can’t afford to pay their rent or their mortgages and are dependent on government bailouts is outrageously insulting to Blacks, Bi-racials and people of all races.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-contemptible-oprah-sussex-circus?token

It will take time before the smoke of battle clears from the Oprah Winfrey interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and we can more properly assess its impact. It is unlikely, however, to dent support for the monarchy in Britain. 

Indeed, the whole Oprah/Sussex circus tells us nothing about the Royal Family that withstands proper scrutiny. It tells us a great deal more about Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and America itself. And none of it is good. 

From the reported reaction, it seems America is overwhelmingly on the side of Meghan and unquestioningly believes the preposterous story she has told of her own alleged persecution and suffering at the hands of the royals (other than the Queen herself, who by Meghan’s own account treated her with nothing but kindness and has now had her whole family smeared and trashed for her pains). 

In America, there seems precious little desire or ability to subject the Sussexes’ denunciation to anything like the scepticism it requires. For the whole thing was not only an attempt to besmirch the Royal Family by spraying a poisonous miasma of unspecific smears and unsubstantiated assertions. It was also riddled with astonishing ignorance and contradictions.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/britain-the-battle-royal/91440/

Prince Harry and Meghan Markel no doubt stopped short, in their interview with Oprah Winfrey, of the offense of lèse-majesté. It’s no longer illegal in Britain to deface the dignity of the crown, anyhow, at least not in any practical sense. Then again, too, their unburdening themselves of their grievances seems calculated to wound a monarchy that, at least in our view, Britons are likely to need more rather than less in the generation ahead.

That might sound like an odd sentiment from these quarters. The New York Sun is, after all, a tribune of republican principles. Yet we make no secret of our admiration for Britain and, most recently, its scramble for independence from the European Union. It has just placed a strategic bet on its own Commonwealth, and it’s going to need the monarchy that does so much to hold it together.

Even without these larger issues, the drama of the Sussexes is simply unseemly. In Ms. Markle’s own telling, it began with a quarrel over wedding dresses, when her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge, made her cry. To plunge from there to a charge of racism is horrifying, all the more so in the way it was done; Meghan, almost in passing, mentions “concerns and conversations” about “how dark” Archie’s “skin might be when he’s born . . .”

That left Ms. Winfrey staring, open-mouthed, for several long seconds until she exclaimed “What?!” At one point she asked: “Who is having that conversation with you?” It elicited no clarifying answer. So it’s a classic small group libel. By refusing to name the alleged racist, British journalist Daniel Johnson writes, Harry and Meghan must know that they are casting aspersions on the entire royal family.

To make matters worse, Prince Harry, according to Ms. Winfrey, later asked her to make clear that the culprit wasn’t his grandmother or grandfather, meaning the Queen or Prince Philip. That has the effect of focusing the aspersions on an even smaller group. All wrapped in the rhetorical device of preterition, the damning of someone or something — in this case the monarchy — while suggesting one is not doing so.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9338343/PIERS-MORGAN-Meghan-Harrys-nauseating-two-hour-Oprah-whine-athon-disgraceful-diatribe.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK

Salacious.Scandalous.Sanctimonious.Spectacularly self-serving.

Those were just my initial thoughts after ten minutes of the Oprah whine-athon with Meghan and Harry, and while restricting myself to only using words beginning with the letter ‘s’.

By the time I’d finished the whole two-hour orgy of pious, self-indulgent, score-settling twaddle, the steam was erupting out of my ears like an exploding geyser, and my lexicon of rageful epithets extended to the full range of the alphabet.

Never have I watched a more repulsively disingenuous interview.Nor one more horrendously hypocritical or contradictory.

Here we had the Duke and Duchess of Privacy flinging out the filthy family laundry for the delectation of tens of millions of people all over the world, whilst simultaneously bleating about press intrusion.

They moaned about the terrible pain of their royal titles but were also outraged their son Archie wasn’t allowed to be a Prince.

They told of their constant trauma from nasty newspaper stories, but repeatedly insisted they never read any of them.

They claimed they were forced to sign gazillion-dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify because Prince Charles cut off their allowance, despite Harry inheriting millions from his late mother Princess Diana and having his entire life bankrolled by the Royal Family.

And so, it went nauseatingly on.

In the middle of a pandemic that has already taken over 2.5 million lives, a staggeringly rich and entitled couple living in a $14 million sun-kissed California mansion wanted us all to know that THEY are the real victims around here.