Why Should We View the JDL as a "False Equivalency"?

A few weeks ago, there was a protest in front of a New York City synagogue which was hosting a real estate event featuring, in part, properties in Jerusalem. Pro-Palestine protesters, notably, chanted their support for Hamas ("Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here."), the internationally-recognized terrorist organization responsible for (among other crimes) the massacres on October 7. A smaller group of pro-Israel protesters affiliated with the far-right Jewish Defense League chanted their own racist slogans, including "death to Palestine."

The next day, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a statement condemning the pro-Hamas chants: "Chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city." There was some consternation about the supposed delay (of one day), but it appears that time lag occurred because Mamdani was consulting with high-level members of the Jewish community to ensure he got the statement right.

I noticed at the time, though, that the ultimate statement rightfully condemned the pro-Hamas chanting but not the equally appalling that came from the JDL. "We support Hamas here" is a despicable thing to say anywhere, but especially in front of a synagogue. No person of conscience should defend it (it is not surprising that there are several notable left-wing figures who lack any such conscience). But "death to Palestine" is equally rancid and should be equally indefensible. So why was it not included in Mamdani's condemnation?

I suspected at the time that it was left out because some factions of the Jewish community would have denounced its inclusion. Many of these figures would claim that they do not, of course, defend the JDL or chants like "Death to Palestine". But they would present including it in Mamdani's statement as "both-sidesing" or "all lives mattering" or in some other way diluting of the message condemning the pro-Hamas chants. And it seems the reporting bears my intuition out. An earlier draft of the condemnation was going to condemn the Jewish Defense League, but it was removed following protests by Jewish leaders who viewed it as a "false equivalence."

This is rotten. It's not just that complaints about "both sidesing" lack legs when both sides really did chant despicable things. It's also the choice -- and it is a choice -- by certain Jewish leaders to decide that condemnations of pro-Palestine extremists are in some way "diluted" or are less sincere when they come tied to calling out pro-Israel extremists present at the same event. Why should we feel that way? I don't feel that way. In fact, I feel rather ill at the notion that someone might think my equal standing as a Jew is threatened by condemning phrases like "death to Palestine." What does that say about ourselves? What does that say about what we are saying about ourselves, that we make such demands?

This is, I think, the end result of the tremendously destructive road too many Jewish leaders have committed to trotting down, where we have become obsessed with "all lives mattering" or "us too-ism" to the point that anything that even purports to tie Jewish safety to any sort of political universalism or solidarity is presented as an affront. It is not unrelated to the bone-jarringly stupid choice by the ADL (among others) to self-consciously cut itself off from historic allies because antisemitism must be fought alone or not at all. I don't mean to suggest that there are not serious challenges in the relationships Jews have with other communities, historic allies included. But in all of these cases, we are choosing to isolate ourselves. These are not instances where we are being forced out of coalitions or compelled to go alone. We are choosing to believe that the entire concept of allyship is a form of disrespect.

We don't have to think like this. Nobody is forcing us to hear "chants of 'death to Palestine' have no place in our city" and decide it means "Jews are lesser." There's no reason to make that inference, and there are many reasons not to make that inference. And so while at one level I am glad that Mamdani was consulting with and attentive to Jewish community concerns in the wake of the synagogue protest, it is a very bad thing that we've decided our "concerns" compel him not to condemn obviously despicable and indefensible rhetoric from the likes of the JDL. That Jewish leaders -- especially Jewish leaders who do recognize how wretched the JDL is -- think in those terms speaks to rot in our own psyche that we need to address, and quick.

What Are You Going To Do?

You know, as soon as I started reading this Paul Campos post about "respectable" conservatives who, in the event that Trump does (as he has started suggesting) try to cancel the 2026 elections, will inevitably find some way to explain why it isn't so outrageous or unlawful or norm-busting or what have you, I immediately thought "Josh Blackman".

Now, that was before I got to the halfway mark and saw that Blackman's name was, indeed, dropped. And perhaps laying a marker down on Blackman here is akin to bragging about picking a one seed to make it to the Sweet Sixteen of March Madness.

But lay down my marker I shall. I can even hear the formulation he'll use: "I can't bring myself to be mad about ....", followed by a citation to some non-analogous alleged liberal sin that supposedly demonstrates that this is all just part of the game everyone plays, and Democrats are just play-acting at crying foul.

Again, I don't pretend I deserve any credit for a bold prediction here. But Blackman really is just the archetype for this particular brand of hackishness. 

And if it feels unfair to say someone like him would really support nullifying the 2026 elections, that's part of the pattern too -- the whole point is the repeated practice of conservatives rationalizing behavior that, a few months earlier when it seemed inconceivable, they would have treated as outrageous slander to assert conservatives would ever rationalize:

Suppose the Republicans move to cancel or annul the 2026 elections.  What will be the justification from the center-right (the same people who never would’ve dreamed of annexing Greenland but now say it’s kind of a reasonable idea, the same people who never would’ve dreamed of endorsing insurrection but now say . . . the same people who never would’ve dreamed of shooting survivors on a boat but now say . . .)?

 In fact, I'd say this is the ur-story of Trumpism, dating back to his first arrival onto the political scene. As I wrote back in 2016, shortly after his first election: "Much of the conservative movement has spent the last two years slowly transitioning from 'it's an outrageous slander to say that a racist cartoon character like Donald Trump represents the conservative movement' to 'it's an outrageous slander to say that the American conservative movement is "racist" or "cartoonish" just because it adopted Donald Trump as its representative.'" It was not, in the scheme of things, too long ago that "supporting Donald Trump" fell into the category of "something so outrageous of course I, the reasonable conservative, would never do it and only a crazed partisan would contemplate otherwise." Blackman, after all, was on the "Originalists Against Trump" letter, urging that we "deny the executive power of the United States to a man as unfit to wield it as Donald Trump." But once Trump's presidency went from impossibility to reality, well, some people will make their peace with Hitler himself if it keeps the inside the inner circle.

Hand Foot Mouth Cock Sacky

It's been an eventful two weeks. And I'm not even talking about *gestures vaguely* the world.

Last week, Nathaniel started daycare. A few days later, on Thursday, I had my first day of class, and Nathaniel was diagnosed with hand foot and mouth disease -- aka coxsackie. My mom says the latter name "sounds better" than "hand foot and mouth disease". I'm unconvinced. While "hand foot and mouth disease" sounds like a reason to put a cow down, I'm not sure "cock sacky" is much of an improvement.

Anyway, Nathaniel was, as is his wont, completely unbothered by any of this. But it did send him home from daycare.

On Monday I had jury service. I arrived at the courthouse, checked in, found a seat in the holding pen, and then suddenly lost all color and started sweating profusely (I mean, profusely). I stumbled over to the main desk to ask for some water, which they provided ... along with calling the paramedics because "you don't look right." Thus ended David's jury service, and began several hours at the Kaiser Westside ER. Who doesn't love beginning a jury tenure seeing one of their fellows carted out on a gurney? (I actually asked the paramedics if this happened every week -- I kind of assumed that there was always someone who was "sick" and tried to get out of jury service -- but he told me that no, I was his first jury-pool patient).

I started to feel better Tuesday, except that I started to see some weird and painful blisters on my hands. And my feet. And maybe the back of my throat. And now today, on Nathaniel's first birthday, I think "I probably have hand foot and mouth disease." It's his birthday, but he's giving me presents. What a mensch. The bonus irony is that HFMD rarely is symptomatic in adults, but I guess I'm the reason why they hedge that a bit!

So now I'm tip-toeing around the house (not to keep quiet, but to avoid the painful spots on my heels), and thinking deep thoughts like "how does the blister decide to be on that centimeter of my finger, rather than the centimeter directly to its left?" It's not like the blisters are clustered around veins or arteries, or near parts of my body that are either especially high or low use. It all seems very arbitrary. I'm very curious about tracing the physical pathway of the virus load from when it enters my body to when it manifests in blisters in these very particular spots.

Unfortunately, the medical treatment for HFMD seems to boil down to "take a tylenol and buck up", so now it's just a matter of trying to rest and waiting to see if that ambulance ride from the courthouse to the hospital results in a $94,000 surprise medical bill. What fun.

Local Quisling Accused of Drunken Affair with Subordinate

One of the few tiny specks of light in the 2024 election was that voters in my congressional district ousted our one-term Republican incumbent, Rep. Lori Chavez-Deremer, in favor of Democratic challenger Janelle Bynum. Turns out Portland was America's last bastion of normalcy.

Chavez-Deremer parlayed that loss to fall upward into the position of Trump's Secretary of Labor. On face, it was a payoff to the Teamsters for functionally backing Trump not endorsing Harris, since Chavez-Deremer had a somewhat stronger pro-labor background than most Republicans. In reality, Chavez-Deremer has cheerily enacted Trump's agenda of gutting labor protections, thus proving the already-obvious point that even "sympathetic" Republicans are useless when push comes to shove because they'll always ultimately accommodate whatever is the alpha ideology in their party, and right now the alpha GOP ideology towards unions is "bust them up and send the workers back into peonage where they belong."

Aside from that, Chavez-Deremer's most prominent entry into the news came when she publicly backed President Trump's announced military invasion of Portland, making her quite the little quisling. But I woke up today to read reports that Chavez-Deremer is under investigation after allegedly having a drunken affair with one of her Department of Labor subordinates.

"Chavez-DeRemer, 57, has welcomed her alleged paramour at least three times to her DC apartment and twice into her hotel room while traveling, alleges a complaint filed with the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Inspector General last week, which has since begun a probe," said the report. DeRemer "is also accused of drinking in her office during the workday and committing 'travel fraud' by having her chief of staff and deputy chief of staff 'make up' official trips to destinations where Chavez-DeRemer can spend time with family or friends on the taxpayers’ dime."

Additionally, the complaint alleged, Chavez-DeRemer has abused her authority to force department aides to run personal errands for her — an issue that has gotten a number of previous Trump administration officials, like former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, in trouble as well.

Now, nobody should get their hopes up. Alcohol abuse and sexual misconduct are less "scandals" in the Trump administration and more "job requirements." One even wonders if -- her job head-faking towards a "pro-worker" Trump administration policy complete -- she might get tossed overboard to make room for a true believer to really go to town on labor.

But still, every news story that breaks about the brazen corruption, graft, and abuse that characterizes this administration, the better. So I raise my glass to you, Secretary (feel free to raise one or several of your own -- we know you've got them). I hope you've enjoyed your time in DC, because you sure as hell aren't welcome back here.

The Parent's Geiger Counter

One of the strangest aspects of parenthood that they don't really tell you about is the fear. Once you have a baby, you're always just a little bit afraid.

Usually it really is just a little bit. Barely noticeable. But it's present -- like a little Geiger counter that crackles in the background (and periodically spikes with serious danger).

We had our first trip with Nathaniel to urgent care today. That sounds more serious than it is -- his daycare sent him home because he had a rash, and we needed a doctor to check him out before he was cleared to return. Turns out, he has Hand Foot and Mouth Disease (which is what we thought it was) -- perhaps the least serious childhood ailment out there, other than it being extremely contagious. To be honest, Nathaniel barely seemed bothered by it (when is he ever?).

And yet, as we were waiting in the doctor's office and I watched Nathaniel happily crawl and climb about, I looked at the splotchy red marks on his face and thighs and a tiny part of me thought -- could it be measles? Not that I know anything about measles, other than we had eradicated it and thanks to the anti-vaxx conspiracism of the GOP it's back. But that's that little bit of fear lurking in the background.

Meanwhile, also as we were waiting, I was reading about immigration agents shooting two people in Portland, shortly after ICE agents in Minneapolis orphaned a six-year-old boy. On the Portland shooting, someone remarked that the address was right by their own child's daycare, and then glumly remarked that soon all of us will have the story of the ICE shooting or kidnapping or violence that occurred "right by where we do [X]." We always like to talk about those "little bits of human connection" like they're a good thing, but sometimes what they do is emphasize "it could've been us."

I'm not unreasonable; I know the Geiger counter of fear would have always been there; it isn't an artifact of this administration. But it certainly is the case that the counter is crackled louder than it otherwise would, because our own government is intent on terrorizing the citizenry.

Care Day

Nathaniel had his first day of daycare today!

As is typical of these things, it was harder on mom and dad (mostly dad) than baby. Nathaniel was happy when we left him, and happy when we picked him up, and the daycare center sent some adorable photos of him playing and napping (sidebar: I cannot imagine how big a change the job of early childhood daycare provider has gone through since the dawn of the app era). Dad held it together during drop off but was sobbing in the car ride home, and then started tearing up again upon pick up once I saw that he had done well (I cry from relief).

Tears aside, though, this is good for everyone. It's good for Nathaniel to socialize with other kids, and it's good for us to have a bit more freedom during the day (it's terrible for our bank account, but there's not much to be done on that). Indeed, my main thought was to wonder, once again, how universal childcare isn't the #1 top voting priority of every American who has ever been a parent.

Today was just a half day -- tomorrow he stays through the afternoon. But for the time being, it's looking like an A+ adjustment from an A+ baby. I couldn't be prouder of the little guy.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXVII: The Maduro Abduction

It's 2026, and I can't think of a better way to ring in the new year than a fresh edition of "Things People Blame the Jews For."

Today's entrant comes from Venezuela, still reeling after America unlawfully abducted President Nicolas Maduro. At one level, it's understandable that people are trying to figure out exactly what happened. On another level, it's really obvious what happened: America unlawfully abducted President Nicolas Maduro.  Nobody is hiding the ball. There aren't a ton of layers to unpack here.

But if you're the new acting Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, is it enough to state the obvious: America unlawfully abducted Nicolas Maduro? No -- there's got to be another angle:

“The governments of the world are simply shocked that it is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela which is the victim and subject of an attack of this nature, which has, without a doubt, a Zionist tint,” said Rodriguez in a televised speech, according to the Mexican public broadcaster.

[...]

There was no evidence to suggest Israel had any role or even knowledge of the American plan to capture Maduro.

Unsurprisingly, it is Venezuela's beleaguered Jewish community that is going to bear the brunt of this, and they're already bracing for the worst:

Jewish community leaders ... reported that all Jewish institutions, including synagogues, had been ordered closed, and Jewish people were instructed to remain at home. Additionally, security around Jewish institutions had been heightened.

(The copy here is ambiguous as to whether the "order" came from the government or from Jewish community leaders as a safety precaution. Either way is bad; the former obviously would be much, much worse).

It's a little difficult to write about this, since it feels like such a side issue against the far greater problem that America invaded a sovereign nation to unlawfully abduct its head of state. Of course, there's little question that Maduro is a schmuck, and Venezuela would be better off without him at the helm. But speaking as the resident of a county currently led by a schmuck and which would be far better off without him at the helm, this doesn't license random foreign nations going in and unlawfully abducting the head of state. And one reason why doing that is bad is that the knock-on effects -- even for populations which may have very good reason to detest said head of state -- are very hard to predict and do not tend to redound well either to occupier or occupied. The United States, of all countries, should know that by now.

New Year's Resolutions 2026

Okay gang, it's time for New Year's Resolutions!

As is tradition, we start by reviewing the previous year:

Met: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15

Missed: 7

Pick 'em: 9 ("most" probably is fair, but I have good chunk of unframed prints in my basement), 11 (I was pretty good by the end, but no master)

Hey, that's pretty good! I need to be more ambitious!

(1) Get tenure.

(2) Write a new law review article.

(3) Have a new course approved by the curriculum committee.

(4) Host a great Super Bowl/40th birthday/1st birthday party.

(5) Visit a museum in France.

(6) Acquire a significant (for me) piece of art.

(7) Adjust to Nathaniel being in daycare.

(8) Travel somewhere between France (in June) and the Loyola conference (in November).

(9) Do an event with the Portland Art Museum's Graphic Arts Council.

(10) Finish the year with a Chess ELO of over 1300 (blitz).

(11) Write more blog posts in 2026 than I did in 2025 (138).

(12) Do a formal "activity" with Nathaniel (e.g., swimming lessons or music classes).

(13) Purchase a flight or hotel with credit card points.

(14) Submit "Power, Vulnerability, and Impunity" to a journal.

(15) Read at least five books on art.

Out/In: 2025-26

At the risk of sacrilege, I actually think I enjoy doing the annual out/in list more than the New Year's Resolutions (don't worry, they're coming!).

Out                                                                 In

Daddy daycare                                          Daycare

Nobel Peace Prize                                      FIFA Peace Prize

ADL                                                           Nexus

GOP pretends to fight antisemitism          Open GOP antisemitism

SCOTUS balls and strikes                 Not engaged in a legal enterprise

Law and order                                           Pay-to-play pardons

"My daddy was in the Klan"                    "I'm a 'heritage American'"

Border security                                         ICE human trafficking

Price of eggs                                             Price of dolls

Summer in London                                   Summer in Paris

National Guard invasion                          Frog revolution

60 Minutes                                                White House stenography

Wall Street                                                Mamdani

Original public meaning                          Roman law

Elder Scrolls VI                                        Tamriel Rebuilt

Pre-tenure                                                 Tenure(?)

Wishing you a very "in" 2026!

Collaborating With the Trump Administration's Xenophobia Was Worse Than a Crime ....

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from the statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, who reportedly remarked after Napoleon's execution of the Duke of Enghien "It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder!" It is useful any time someone takes an action whose obvious moral bankruptcy is somehow eclipsed by its naked strategic idiocy.

For example, few can forget the ADL's fulsome praise when the Trump administration unlawfully seized pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Kahlil and tried to place him in a lawless pit. In terms of values, it was transparently appalling. And yet, as pure, cold-hearted tactical thinking, it was somehow even worse. At a time where antisemitism is at a historic ascendence, the ADL's bold strategic pivot is to cut itself off from its historic allies, abandon its longstanding principles, and proudly declare it's every man for themselves. Can anyone guess why that might not be a winning play for a minority community representing less than 3% of the American population?

The underlying assumption, incredibly, seems to be that the Trump administration will be a reliable and steadfast force against antisemitism (remember: Jonathan Greenblatt fundamentally trusts Donald Trump). Anyone with a pulse could have told you this was a sucker's bet, but somehow the American Jewish community's premier advocacy org went all in on it.

And lo and behold: as explicit right-wing antisemitism continues its rise to dominate mainstream conservative institutions, the brief period where the Trump administration even pretends to care about "fighting antisemitism" is snapping shut in favor of stepping up the xenophobic racism even further. The latest development here is the decision to place travel sanctions on several European-based media monitors combatting hate and misinformation, many of whom cut their teeth fighting antisemitism in cyberspace. Indeed, one of the targets, Imran Ahmed (who actually is an American permanent resident), was most well known for trying to flag instances of left-wing antisemitism. Ironically enough, his lawyers are comparing his case to that of Kahlil -- both unified by the Trump administration targeting immigrants for arbitrary arrest, detention, and deportation on the basis of their speech.

In their complaint, Mr. Ahmed’s lawyers likened his case to those of other foreign nationals who have been targeted, such as Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident whom the Trump administration has sought to deport over his pro-Palestinian comments and activism that the administration equated with “antisemitic hate.”

For his part, Mr. Ahmed has said his organization was founded to look into the growth of antisemitism on the political left. He was among the activists who spoke about how to combat online antisemitism at a 2020 State Department conference during the first Trump administration. 

Who could have predicted that an administration dedicated to empowering racists and bigots of all stripes would use its claimed powers of arbitrary arrest and detention to help racists and bigots? (Everyone. Everyone could). 

And while there is some irony in Ahmed tying his case to Kahlil, the comparison between the two is an apt one. If nothing else it demonstrates that the bedrock motivator for the Trump administration is clearly and obviously not "fighting antisemitism" (or even a highly stipulated and partial "antisemitism" found only among the political left). The unifying thread is a desire to terrorize immigrants and create an open space for racism and White nationalism to spread. There was a brief window where the administration found "antisemitism" a useful fig leaf for its fascism, but that period is most certainly closed, and anyone who was gullible enough to believe it genuine in the first place should have the dignity to hide in shame forever.

Sick Baby

Nathaniel is feeling under the weather.

He has a cough, which he caught from me, and before I go any further, he's fine. In fact, he's mostly been handling it like a champ. This really is the first time he's been truly sick-sick (he's had runny noses and such before, but he's frankly scarcely noticed them), and by and large he's being a real trooper.

But last night he got caught in a bit of a spiral where he coughed himself awake, and found that a bit scary and starting crying, which made it a bit harder to catch his breath, which exacerbated the cough ... and all of the sudden, it's a full meltdown. About an hour of screaming and sobbing and coughing, all while he's clearly exhausted. No fun.

Again, to reiterate, he is (and was) fine. We kept a close eye on him to make sure he wasn't actually struggling to breathe or anything like that, and there were no issues there. He was just (understandably) upset, and miserable, and honestly a bit scared, and obviously as a parent you hate seeing your kiddo like that.

As sicknesses go, this really is about as basic as you can get. But even still, as a parent, it's miserable. Nathaniel is a baby. He doesn't understand what's going on. He just knows he's in this bad situation and he's looking to you to help him, and there's really not all that much you can do other than give him cuddles and comfort. (The saddest part for me was that whenever one of us would hold him, he'd reach for the other parent, as if to say "surely, one of you can help me!").

This sort of thing happens to every baby and every parent. That doesn't make it easier; in fact, I suspect most parents would categorize times like this as among the toughest parts of being a parent.

But as I was cuddling him last night, watching him sob uncontrollably and feeling absolutely helpless in the face of his misery, my mind kept drifting to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Because as terrible as this experience was for a normal, non-dangerous childhood cough, I cannot fathom how I would feel grappling with this feeling of helpless impotence in the face of my baby's confused misery if it were a serious illness. Measles. Pertussis. Mumps. Things that could put him in the hospital. Things that could endanger his life.

Take this awful feeling I had last night, and magnify it to an incalculable degree. That is what Kennedy -- and all those who enabled him, a cadre that includes Donald Trump, most Republican Senators, and every one of their voters -- is unleashing on America. That my mind associates last night with that experience is testament to just how little I can comprehend -- am willing to comprehend -- what going through that hell would actually be like.

Having a sick baby should be the flip side of my vaccine post: you want to know what's way worse than the feeling of impotent helplessness watching your baby suffer from a cough? The feeling of impotent helplessness watching your baby hospitalized with the measles. The former is inevitable. The latter is eminently avoidable, and it is infuriating that this conspiratorial maniac is endangering my baby -- all of our babies -- by trying to put safe vaccines out of reach and facilitate the spread of dangerous diseases.

There are so many reasons why we as Americans should be ashamed of the choices we've made as a polity over the past few years. But amidst stiff competition, Robert Kennedy has to be very, very high on the list.

Rats Flee Floating Ship

You might have heard the story break that the Heritage Foundation, America's leading right wing "think tank", has just been hit with a rush of high-level resignations across several key programs. The resignations were precipitated by Heritage's president, Kevin Roberts, legitimizing the rise in antisemitism explicit antisemitism even more explicit antisemitism on the mainstream right by ostentatiously defending Tucker Carlson friendly interview with neo-Nazi extremist Nick Fuentes.

(Among those resigning is Josh Blackman, and I have to say, caring about other Jews makes a nice change of pace for him).

The scope of the resignations has understandably led folks to frame the events as "turmoil" at Heritage, and there's no doubt they're losing a lot of big names who have decided that Heritage's increasingly open embrace of open nativism and ethnic supremacy is too much for them. And the natural thing to conclude in the wake of such turmoil and disarray is that Roberts has made a major strategic error; failing to recognize that even now there are some things that are still "too far" for even the most hardened conservative loyalist.

But l disagree with that take. To the contrary, I think Roberts is right. This was no blunder, this was strategy, and Roberts is absolutely going to be vindicated in the end.

Now, obviously, when I say Roberts is right -- he's not morally right. He's morally abominable; his positions, reprehensible. But that goes without saying; if he was morally upstanding, he wouldn't be leading the Heritage Foundation.

No, what I mean is, Roberts is right in his assessment of where the conservative movement is going and what it wants. No matter how august their titles and pedigrees, the people departing are not going to cripple Heritage; they will not dim its star in the least. Heritage will be able to replenish it ranks just fine (it helps that mediocrity is not a barrier to success there), and its influence in the halls of conservative power will not wane.

Roberts has calculated that open embrace of White nationalism and nativism is the ticket to success in the contemporary conservative movement. I think he is right in that wager. It is the same calculation made by J.D. Vance -- a man whose completely venal lack of principles makes him, if nothing else, a useful barometer of how the right-wing winds are blowing -- when he jumps all in on White supremacist bullhorns. Roberts knows full well what young Republicans truly think, and what they truly think is that they hate Jews, think Hitler is underrated, revel in being called racist, believe women should get back in the kitchen, and think anyone who isn't a "heritage American" has no rights the white man is bound to respect. These people -- the new GOP base -- will not follow their elders in fleeing Heritage. To the contrary, they will be even more excited to join forces with it.

This is the Republican Party's present and future, and Roberts is making a calculated decision to get out in front of it. It's not surprise that one of the staffers rising to fill the power vacuum after all this is E.J. Antoni, he of the creepy love affair for an iconic Nazi battleship. Antoni's Nazi fascination is exactly what Roberts is looking for, because it's exactly what contemporary conservatism is looking for. The people who don't like it? They're yesterday's conservatives. Their departures mean nothing.

So I suspect that the Heritage refugees will find that, their years of slavish service to the conservative cause notwithstanding, they are now functional irrelevancies. They're not going to pull a Bill Kristol and have a late-stage redemption arc. They're not going to have meaningful influence or clout in contemporary conservative circles either, as they no doubt fantasize. They'll be nobodies. Some will rage impotently against the dying of the light, some will quietly choose to fade away. Some number will, if past history is any guide, come sheepishly crawling back into the fold -- the fate of many a "NeverTrumper" whose "principled" opposition was actually pure opportunism that sadly misread the prevailing political winds. None of them will do much of anything to alter or even ameliorate the tsunami of racist, nativist, antisemitic, and misogynist antagonism that is the sole driving force of the modern conservative movement.

So yeah -- don't see this as the Heritage Foundation being torn asunder. This is the Heritage Foundation perceiving the new conservative normal -- a normal of unapologetic authoritarianism, atavistic ethnic hatred, gutter racism, smirking antisemitism, and vicious nativism -- and deciding it wants to be at the vanguard.

Solidarity Shouldn't Look Like This

Like many of you, I woke up this morning to the horrible news of a mass shooting at a Channukah celebration in Sydney, Australia.

Like many of you, I also quickly saw footage of a man who threw himself at one of the gunmen and successfully disarmed him, saving countless lives.

I've seen countless posts lauding this man, Ahmed al Ahmed, as a hero and a model for what solidarity should look like between Jews and Muslims or Arabs.

Ahmed is absolutely a hero. But he is most certainly not my model for what solidarity should look like.

Solidarity should not look like men throwing themselves at active shooters.

Solidarity should not look like people putting their bodies in front of government thugs trying to impose a racist ban on a minority religion or ethnicity.

Solidarity should not look like synagogues and mosques swapping strategies regarding how to "harden the target".

Solidarity should not look like a taxi driver evacuating terrified survivors from the scene of an ongoing massacre.

Solidarity should not look like desperately working the phones to try and rescue a family buried under the rubble of their own house after it was hit by a tank shell.

Solidarity shouldn't look like that, because none of those things should happen.

You want to know what my model of solidarity is?

It's a new arrival in town asking where they can find Halal food, and being pointed to the excellent Kosher market down the street.

It's two neighbors snickering over the well-meaning lady next door who somehow gives a different wrong pronunciation of both of their names, every time.

It's the synagogue and the mosque sharing a parking lot.

It's bonding over the common elements of shared cuisine, and bonding over trying unfamiliar elements of different cuisine.

I understand why, in the wake of unfathomable tragedy, a story like Ahmed's provides a flicker of hope in a dark time. And make no mistake - he is a hero. But I don't want more Ahmed al Ahmeds because I don't want more situations where that sort of heroism is required. It is a tragedy that our vision of solidarity -- of ideal solidarity -- is tempered through atrocities that never should happen in the first place. That should be a depressing thought. The subtext -- elevating Ahmed's story and the narrative of solidarity as a hedge against those who wish to inspire an Islamophobic and racist backlash -- is also depressing. I'm not saying it isn't necessary or it's wrong -- I'm saying it's depressing, and our model of solidarity should envision something that is greater precisely because it is more mundane.

The solidarity we should aspire to is not the extraordinary work of extraordinary individuals in times of crisis. It is rather the ordinary, everyday work of making friends, creating love, building connections, being neighborly. No crisis, just communities enmeshed in bonds of caring.

That's what solidarity should look like.

Anti-DEI's "What About the Men!" Problem

There's a WaPo article going around titled "Trump’s attack on DEI may hurt college men, particularly White men" The basic thrust of it is that women are considerably more likely to apply to (elite) colleges than men, and moreover women have for some time now outperformed men on the "traditional" metrics of collegiate qualification (grades and standardized test scores). Anybody in the know knows that colleges seeking to maintain some measure of gender parity in their admitted classes have put their thumbs on the scale in pursuit of qualified men. But the Trump anti-DEI initiatives nominally prohibit such behavior, meaning that if "meritocratic" admissions policies yield overwhelmingly female classes, well, that's the way it'll have to be.

This headline, unsurprisingly, has yielded no small amount of schadenfreude among liberal observers -- once again, Trump's leopards eat the faces of his loyal supporters. But to that there's been another response from more conservative voices challenging the framing: if Trump's anti-DEI measures "hurt men", then it must mean that the prior pro-DEI measures "hurt women". As a colleague at another school put it after making this point: "Everyone fine with that?"

That was a rhetorical question, of course. But I think answering it earnestly might yield some insight.

Assume we buy the basic premise here: DEI helps men and hurts women; anti-DEI hurts men and helps women. The punch of the Post's article stems, I think, from two following observations:

1. Many conservative initiatives aimed at propping up men who are underperforming on traditional metrics do not, on face, comport with "anti-DEI" principles (and their conservative proponents don't seem to realize this); and
2. Many feminists and women who support DEI initiatives do so notwithstanding the fact that men may be among their primary beneficiaries.

Both of these observations deserve a deeper dive.

Start with the first. Again, it is an open secret that colleges have been putting their thumbs on the scale to help bring in more male applicants and matriculants. Sometimes their rationales are pure sexism -- Chris Rufo, for instance, admitted that many of his "reforms" at the New College were expressly designed to reduce the number of women who enrolled (comments which, I'll repeat, really should be smoking gun evidence of sex discrimination in the event of a lawsuit). More broadly, there is a cottage industry of conservative pundits pushing the line that society discriminates against men, is structured to disadvantage men, does not adequately value the contributions of men, and these injustices are what explains men's seeming underperformance. The "thumb on the scale" is actually a mechanism to compensate for these deeper inequalities. 

Now, sometimes these accounts are, as in the Rufo case, simple misogyny. But I don't want to say it's always wrong to look at gendered barriers men might face and think of ways to counteract or ameliorate them. The problem, though, is that these narratives of male disenfranchisement and the earnest efforts to reverse them are no different in form from the "DEI" logic conservatives claim to abhor -- problematizing disparities in outcomes that, on a superficial level, appear explainable by "merit" and instead treating the disparity itself as a problem needing remediation. A few weeks ago, I saw a Facebook post where the University of Chicago announced that all the EiCs of its law journals were women. An alum replied angrily that this outcome must be the product of DEI and "wokeness", because statistically what are the odds that women would occupy all the top journal roles? I snickered at this, because her jeremiad was actually a cry for proportional representation; the hitherto conservative boogeyman roundly mocked when it is used to demonstrate bias against women or minorities. But of course when it's men who fall on the wrong side of the line, then statistical underrepresentation is smoking gun proof of a Capital-P Problem. The inconsistency is glaring.

So the first observation really does just boil down to sexism -- though sometimes with a few extra steps. What of the second? The logic that, if you're giving a leg up to men for scarce admissions slots there are some marginal women who would be admitted but now will not be, certainly has purchase. And so one could understand if women, or feminist advocates, reacted strongly against such programs as tantamount to sex discrimination against women. Yet observationally, this doesn't seem to be the case. Some women, no doubt, oppose these initiatives, but it does not seem like women or feminists by and large are opposed to collegiate initiatives aimed at propping up the number of male students in attendance. What do we derive from that?

It seems that, contra the bald assertion that DEI programs must inherently be understood as injuring the class that is not the direct beneficiary, in at least some cases the overrepresented group does not perceive such programs as harmful or injurious to their interests. Perhaps they, too, take on a broader view of how colleges ought to assess "merit" than just grades and test scores. Perhaps they think the various programs targeted at men genuinely are ameliorating gendered blind spots in who and what we value as a society. Or perhaps they simply don't prefer to attend colleges that are overwhelmingly homogenous, even (or especially) when they're the in-group (one can certainly understand why at least some women -- at least those enrolling in coeducational institutions -- might not prefer a university student body that's 66%+ female). Whatever the reason, it seems that many women do not see the issue the way conservatives believe they should (or must).

Here, I'm reminded of a post I wrote in 2018 about Gail Heriot, who was arguing that feminists should oppose the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Heriot's contention was that feminists support many sex-conscious programs, but the ERA -- if interpreted in parallel with the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to demand a "sex-blind" constitution -- would strike most of these programs down. From this, she saw only two possibilities: either feminists don't actually support the ERA, or they don't actually care if these sex-conscious programs survive. I pointed out that Heriot seemed to entirely miss Door #3: feminists don't understand the meaning of "equality" in the ERA's text to preclude all sex-conscious programs. If the same people who support the ERA also support sex-conscious initiatives, that's strong evidence that the apparent public meaning of the ERA's "equality" language is not sex-blindness. Yet Heriot seemingly just could not process that the people might understand "equality" different from the prevailing conservative ideological predilections -- a pretty searing indictment of originalism in practice, when you think about it.

So to answer my colleague's question earnestly: while no, not everyone is "fine" with colleges making conscious efforts to try and bring in more men, many people are, including many women and many feminist advocates. They are fine with it for many reasons, ranging from their own desire to attend schools that are relatively sex-balanced, to an earnest belief that there might be certain gendered barriers to men (or certain men) pursuing higher education that a college can justly try to mitigate. I'm not saying this view is necessarily correct, but we have to take seriously that it seems to be one many people hold, even if it doesn't comport with a particular, conservative vision of how we all "should" understand equality, meritocracy, and the virtues or vices of "DEI" programs.

Defeating Your Baby By Submission

I've sometimes joked that parenting a baby is basically a cargo cult. They take one extra-long nap with their arms grasping the crib bars and forevermore you're putting their arms against the crib bars because "that's how they sleep".

But lately, I've been analogizing parenting Nathaniel more to an MMA match.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Nathaniel has always been a great sleeper, but lately he's been going through what I'd term his first real sleep regression. Whereas until recently Nathaniel easily fell asleep on his own at around 7 PM and stay down straight on till morning, over the past few days he's been waking up several times each evening, pulling himself standing on the side of the crib and wailing (typically earlier in the evening -- once he's asleep past midnight, he tends to stay down). That may not sound too terrible, and I expect no pity, but I cannot stress enough how abnormal it is for him to be struggling here. Indeed, arguably "regression" does Nathaniel dirty because it implies reverting to a previous state, but this is actually the first time that he's had substantial trouble sleeping at night since he was a newborn.

Having not had to deal with this before, we never actually did any "sleep training". So we're playing this whole thing by ear. We already had a steady pre-sleep routine, and we've adjusted his bedtime to be later in order to respond to his sleep cues. We also do try to let him cry for a little bit because we don't want to develop bad habits and we know he's capable of putting himself to sleep. That said, precisely because we know he can normally settle himself, it feels like when he won't stop crying its indicative of a genuine need for parental intervention. So what do we do when we do step in?

Sometimes, we pick him up and rock him for awhile. There's no doubt he is tired -- he falls asleep instantly in our arms -- but the problem is it often doesn't take: even as he's asleep in our arms, the moment we put him down in the crib he immediately rolls over, pulls himself back standing, and starts crying again.

So that brings us to strategy number two: holding him down in the crib. Much of this regression started around when he could start pulling himself up. I hypothesize that before when Nathaniel stirred or woke up, he couldn't actually get up, and since he was stuck lying down anyway he was able to get himself back to sleep without too much trouble. Now, though, he can stand, and it's much harder for him to fall back asleep once he's gotten himself on his feet. You'd think that, given that it brings him nothing but sadness, he might try just not standing in the crib post-bedtime, but as Jill puts it "it's like a demon possesses him" -- he doesn't even look happy standing up, he acts like some malign force is compelling him to do it in spite of how immiserating it is.

But I digress. If standing up is what keeps him up, and what happens if you just put a hand on his stomach or back and prevent him from standing? He has to fall asleep eventually if you just keep him roughly horizontal, right? And it turns out that's ... basically true: for awhile he struggles against you as the stand-up demon exerts itself, but eventually he (usually) gives up and passes out. It is a literal victory by submission, and I'll take it. (The main risk is that he is absolutely willing to play possum -- sedately lying with his eyes closed, and then the instant I remove my hand from his torso rolling to the end of the crib and making a grab for the bars).

Anyway, tonight was another tough one for Nathaniel, and we've employed all of the above strategies. We had the regular bedtime routine, after which he slept for an hour before the crying jag began. Then Jill rocked him to sleep, which bought us another hour of sleep. Then I tried the submission technique, which gave us another hour. And then in the most recent run (about a half hour ago as of this writing), he cried but managed to get himself back to sleep (hurray!).

The Tomb of the Unknown Slur

 

There is a Yiddish word, "shvartze", that literally translates to "black" but is generally understood as a derogatory slur for Black people. In terms of offensiveness, it's not the n-word, but it's definitely completely inappropriate. Fun fact: if you encounter a person who tries to argue "but it just means 'black'!", congratulations! You've found a racist!

Anyway, I was thinking about this word earlier today, and particularly was thinking about the degree to which it is known and by whom. My sense is that even among Jews, it is fading outside of Orthodox communities that speak Yiddish.  Beyond that, it's something your racist grandpa might say, but for my generation, to say nothing of the next, it isn't part of our lexicon (even our racists have assimilated in their use of derogatory language). Given that, it wouldn't surprise me (though I don't know this) if it is not an especially well-known term among American Blacks, particularly those who live in locations where there are not many Jews.

And assuming that's true (and again, I might be off-base even on the premise here), it made me wonder if there are other examples of slurring language that is not widely known among the targeted population. Is there a derogatory term Black people have for Jews that most Jews don't know about? I can imagine this sort of situation being either incredibly common or incredibly rare, and I'm honestly not sure which I'd find more likely.

Two Queens

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump met today, and it went ... well? For all of Trump's prior bloviating about Mamdani being a communist, he seemed quite taken with Mamdani's charisma and was pretty much all praise during the meeting.

Obviously, there is an angle on this that goes "can you imagine if Hakeem Jeffries ....!?!" Trump is (as Mamdani described him on the campaign trail) a despot and an autocrat. If pretty much any other Democrat did an Oval Office meeting with Trump and made nice-y nice, the left would have gone ballistic.

For my part, I take the opposite lesson. One does, indeed, have to recognize that Trump is a despot and an autocrat. Yet even holding that recognition, that doesn't mean the right play is always the one that most performs "resistance". There is space for maneuvering, and we should recognize that savvy actors sometimes have maneuver. Of course, that does not mean that any "maneuver" is always savvy, and sometimes one does need to dig in one's heels. But it is a good thing to give good Democrats some latitude on this -- we don't truly know what the best strategy is going to be.

So no, one does not have to go full Ryan Grim and decide that actually Trump has now revealed himself as a champion of the working class. That remains as gullible as all get out.

But one also does not have to view Mamdani as some sort of traitor for taking this meeting. The true moral here is to not treat the mere fact of a meeting like this as sufficient evidence on its own that a Democratic politician is a traitor.

Shocked To Find Antisemitism in this Establishment

The decision of the Heritage Foundation to defend platforming an unabashed and unrepentant antisemite like Nick Fuentes has caused a burbling unease over the presence of antisemitism in conservative spaces to crash into the mainstream. It is evident that what might once have been labeled "far-right" antisemitism no longer is especially "far" at all; it is wholly mainstream and incorporated into the most prominent factions of contemporary American conservatism.

We are already seeing evidence of a crackup. Heritage's leadership is thus far standing by its position, perhaps cognizant of the substantial following Fuentes and his band of neo-Nazis have amongst younger GOP apparatchiks (one conservative commentator estimated that "30 to 40 percent of DC GOP staffers under the age of 30 are Groypers."). And they've gotten backup from none other than Donald Trump himself. But others prominent conservatives have dissented, announcing their resignation from Heritage or delivering impassioned speeches criticizing the growth of antisemitism in conservative spaces.

I don't want to denigrate the persons in the latter camp. Truly, I don't. They're speaking up, and that's good. But I do wish they would recognize how the overt antisemitism they're critiquing now is downstream from the slightly more covert antisemitism these same actors had been pushing if not justifying for years.

Consider today's big news story about a wild dissent from Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith in the Texas gerrymandering case, where Judge Smith delivered lurid and histrionic conspiracy theories claiming that the entire litigation is being done at the behest of and to the benefit of George Soros. This sort of raving is simultaneously a clear antecedent of Groyper-ism and also effectively unremarkable in conservative circles save that one rarely sees it emanate from a federal judge. You push the "shadowy Jewish financiers are responsible for everything unholy and wrong in society" as your conservative-mobilization button often enough, and it just can't surprise you when the next generation of conservatives mobilizes around viewing Jews as the problem.

This isn't even the first brush the Fifth Circuit has had with antisemitic allusions in recent years -- I flagged in my "Liberal Jews and Religious Liberty" article an opinion where Judge James Ho complained that corporations have been so overtaken by "woke" ideology that they no longer care about the bottom-line, and concluded by asserting that we live in the era of "the Goldman Rule  .... The guys with the gold get to make the rules." As I noted in my article, several Jewish commentators "flagged this passage—substituting the Jewish-coded name 'Goldman' for 'Golden' to speak of wealthy elites' ability to manipulate and control the rules to the detriment of ordinary Americans—as at least raising the specter of antisemitism."

Judge Smith's opinion is, I think, far more explicitly problematic than Judge Ho's was. But the broader point is that, when I read stories about FedSoc organizing a panel of federal judges to speak out on the growing scourge of antisemitism, I need them to realize that the call is coming from inside the house.

Life is a Metaphor for Life

I had one of those deep/dumb epiphanies the other day. Raising a baby is really a commentary on the human existence and how we relate to the independent existence of other people!

Nathaniel's latest milestones are, in rapid succession, crawling and pulling himself into a standing position. And every time he hits one of these milestones, I am beside myself with joy. That's for his sake, of course -- he's learning and growing -- but also mine. He can move on his own! If he wants a toy, he can just crawl to it. If he's bored with his current vantage point, he can maneuver himself to look at something new.

And yet.

Every one of Nathaniel's new milestones carries with it new opportunities to defy my will. It was, admittedly, very nice when I could set Nathaniel down and I'd know he'd stay where I put him. If I didn't want him to move, he didn't move. Now? Things aren't so simple. I might want him to play quietly in the living room; he might have an alternative idea of booking it at top speed towards the nearest stairway. As much as I love and cherish these milestones it was, I find myself ruefully admitting, a lot easier when I could basically control his every move.

Right now (as in, over the past day or two), Nathaniel is at that lovely stage where he can pull himself into a standing position ... but can't quite sit back down. This is a problem since the standing up part is very exciting and far preferable to, say, a nap, but the standing up indefinitely part is infuriating and demanding of a response from mom or dad. One might think that after being laid back down in these circumstances -- apparently baby's most heartfelt desire -- one would not immediately roll over and pull oneself back up again, but you are not a ten month old. Nathaniel has (and objectively still is) a great sleeper, but this has been a rare moment where I've had to spend hours coaxing him down for a nap that, ironically enough, he absolutely does want to take but keeps on self-sabotaging by standing up along the crib instead.*

Anyway, much like with humans, generally, on net I'm happy that this human is learning and growing and becoming more independent (I reserve the right to change that assessment during the teenage years). But yeah, I do have newfound appreciation for why those developments sometimes engender resentment.

* Jill once spotted him on the monitor crying before he pulled himself into the standing position but nonetheless proceeding to finish standing up anyway, as if he was possessed by some infernal demon forcing him to stand against his will.

Flying Solo

I'm back from my giant transatlantic trip. The schedule was:

• Depart Portland on Monday
• Arrive in Stockholm on Tuesday
• Deliver lecture on Wednesday (read a write-up on it here!)
• Leave Stockholm and arrive in Chicago on Thursday
• Give talk in Chicago on Friday
• Attend remainder of conference on Saturday
• Fly home Monday.

Woof! That's a lot! But it was all good.

The Chicago leg of the trip was relatively normal -- my wife and baby met us there (my mother traveled with them from Portland to make it easier), and after the conference we caught up with various friends and had a nice vegetative Sunday.

The Sweden leg, by contrast, represented my first international trip by myself. Actually, I'm not a big international traveler at all -- this was just my fourth time out of the country. Of those, the first was a cruise with my family through northern Europe when I was in high school (that included Stockholm as a port of call, as it happens) and the second was a college Model UN tournament at McGill in Montreal. After that, I didn't go abroad again for almost twenty years until this summer's England trip (where my whole family came along).

This trip, by contrast, was just me, and I had plenty of time to myself. I landed at around 1 PM local time and I knew I needed to force myself to stay awake until dinner Tuesday to stay on any kind of schedule (even though that would mean having stayed up well over 24 hours). So I went to the Moderna Museet, then took a leisurely walk through Stockholm until I got back to my hotel. On Wednesday, a similar situation -- I delivered my lecture in the morning (I woke up around 4 AM), but the remainder of the conference was in Swedish, so I spent the day walking around town visiting various art galleries until dinner time.

This may seem cheesy, but I'm actually pretty proud of myself. To be sure, "took a solo trip to a foreign country" feels like a milestone one is supposed to hit at around 23, not once one is nearly 40. But I have a strange relationship with travel -- as a young person, I was a great traveler (I jet-setted across the country in high school going to debate tournaments without a care in the world), and then starting around when I graduated college I grew to become an incredibly anxious traveler. I've gotten a little better, but even today I greatly, greatly prefer to travel with my wife.

Unfortunately, with a nine month old baby, it really wasn't feasible for her to come all the way out to Sweden with me (success of our England trip notwithstanding). And ... I did fine! I managed jet lag well, I was able to get around town and see the sights fine, I even was able to navigate the train at Arlanda airport when my taxi driver dropped me off at the wrong terminal. Does it help that everyone in Sweden speaks English perfectly? Of course -- but it's still a big deal to me.