Gordis's article is consistent with the idea that American Jews' divergence of worldviews from Israeli Jews stems from a divergence of experience. The US has also fought wars for ideas, and they have often as not been universalist ones: the abolition of slavery, the victory of democracy over fascism. And Jews in America have been safe-- not perfectly safe, but there is no perfect safety in this world-- for many generations without ever being anywhere close to politically or culturally dominant: the very combination Gordis says is "invariably" doomed.
You may say that it is shortsighted to depend on this safety and universalism, that it won't last. You may also say that it is irreducibly exceptional, that the US model cannot be replicated anywhere else. But in any case it is a lived experience very different from that of the founders of Israel or most of the subsequent waves of immigrants there.
Imperial Germany was pretty accommodating of the Jews. Then, all of a sudden, you’re getting genocided.
If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere.
So there are two ways to respond.
1) the minority strategy of promoting universalism and hoping that’s enough to keep the majority from wanting to exterminate the Jews
2) become a majority somewhere and defend that majority against external threats
Obviously, western Jews and Israel took opposite strategies to this problem.
There is also a more subtle problem, which is that #1 is slowly resulting in a kind of soft genocided of Judaism. That is western Jews have high out marriage rates, low fertility, and little attachment to their Judaism. Universalism won’t allow for anything uniquely Jewish, just more universalist consumer units.
Baker's piece is quite bad, and I dislike crypto! Statements like 'Crypto is opaque and overleveraged' are laughable considering that BTC was developed to be transparent and unleveraged as a response the the opaque and overleveraged financial system, and as a skeptic I'll even add 'successfully developed' to that point. The issue with crypto isn't that it behaves differently from the financial system it is that it started to behave exactly like the financial system! Crypto's rise and fall has simply been an amplified version of financial assets like bonds over the past few years, and that is the issue. It isn't money- but neither are bank reserves.
"Hanania says that politics has become an arena of entertainment. I think that this is harmful, because it attracts people with Dark Triad traits to politics."
These types of people have been attracted and inserted into every level of government for at least the last 100 years. I'm tempted to ask where y'all been.
"We have turned elections into a sort of Super Bowl, and that reinforces government expansion."
Yes, if winning the Super Bowl gave you the ability to initiate deadly force and appropriate the property of your enemies, and those too weak to defend themselves.
To say you are vastly underestimating the danger of our present day is a huge understatement. We've seen this movie before, and it's not farce: It's horror. The people in power (and those seeking it), given the first available opportunity will happily stick a gun in you and your family's back and force you onto a train car. If you think that's hyperbole, look at the iconography of who they support in the US, and in Ukraine.
Gordis's article is consistent with the idea that American Jews' divergence of worldviews from Israeli Jews stems from a divergence of experience. The US has also fought wars for ideas, and they have often as not been universalist ones: the abolition of slavery, the victory of democracy over fascism. And Jews in America have been safe-- not perfectly safe, but there is no perfect safety in this world-- for many generations without ever being anywhere close to politically or culturally dominant: the very combination Gordis says is "invariably" doomed.
You may say that it is shortsighted to depend on this safety and universalism, that it won't last. You may also say that it is irreducibly exceptional, that the US model cannot be replicated anywhere else. But in any case it is a lived experience very different from that of the founders of Israel or most of the subsequent waves of immigrants there.
Imperial Germany was pretty accommodating of the Jews. Then, all of a sudden, you’re getting genocided.
If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere.
So there are two ways to respond.
1) the minority strategy of promoting universalism and hoping that’s enough to keep the majority from wanting to exterminate the Jews
2) become a majority somewhere and defend that majority against external threats
Obviously, western Jews and Israel took opposite strategies to this problem.
There is also a more subtle problem, which is that #1 is slowly resulting in a kind of soft genocided of Judaism. That is western Jews have high out marriage rates, low fertility, and little attachment to their Judaism. Universalism won’t allow for anything uniquely Jewish, just more universalist consumer units.
I had some thoughts on that podcast with Hanania: https://twitter.com/DainFitzgerald/status/1606354176602054656?t=95SjvcwV3Dv0Hw0yyOzqpw&s=19
Gordis: Yes
Friedman: Yes
Baker's piece is quite bad, and I dislike crypto! Statements like 'Crypto is opaque and overleveraged' are laughable considering that BTC was developed to be transparent and unleveraged as a response the the opaque and overleveraged financial system, and as a skeptic I'll even add 'successfully developed' to that point. The issue with crypto isn't that it behaves differently from the financial system it is that it started to behave exactly like the financial system! Crypto's rise and fall has simply been an amplified version of financial assets like bonds over the past few years, and that is the issue. It isn't money- but neither are bank reserves.
Dr Kling, are you afraid of other’s liberty to trade in crypto assets?
Not wanting to regulate them would seem to answer your question.
"Hanania says that politics has become an arena of entertainment. I think that this is harmful, because it attracts people with Dark Triad traits to politics."
These types of people have been attracted and inserted into every level of government for at least the last 100 years. I'm tempted to ask where y'all been.
"We have turned elections into a sort of Super Bowl, and that reinforces government expansion."
Yes, if winning the Super Bowl gave you the ability to initiate deadly force and appropriate the property of your enemies, and those too weak to defend themselves.
To say you are vastly underestimating the danger of our present day is a huge understatement. We've seen this movie before, and it's not farce: It's horror. The people in power (and those seeking it), given the first available opportunity will happily stick a gun in you and your family's back and force you onto a train car. If you think that's hyperbole, look at the iconography of who they support in the US, and in Ukraine.