What Should Be Grounds for Presidential Impeachment?

The Constitution, as we know, issues a rather grand and confusing definition of the grounds for impeachment. So Article Two Section 4 begins

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Treason, according to the Constitution Article 3, Section 3, Clause 1:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

But does negotiating with a foreign power, and getting a quid quo pro amount to Treason? I doubt it.

Bribery, according to the Constutional Rights Foundation:

It takes place when a person gives an official money or gifts to influence the official’s behavior in office. For example, if defendant Smith pays federal Judge Jones $10,000 to find Smith not guilty, the crime of bribery has occurred.

In fact, several federal judges have been impeached and removed from office for bribery. But whatabout giving money to a candidate for president? I once had a boss that gave money to a politician and immediately wanted a quid quo pro. The politician was monstrously offended. Of course. A direct quid quo pro is not how the system works. Politicians help their friends, not their contributors.

What about high crmes and misdemeanors? La Wik:

Since 1386, the English parliament had used the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” to describe one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery.[9] Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not... They can be thought of as serious cases of power abuse or dereliction of duty, without a requirement for these cases to be explicitly against the law. 

Well, on those grounds, I'd say that every politician that ever lived is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, since the whole point of politics is to obtain by force what cannot be obtained by ordinary social cooperation.

So let us forget all that, and appoint ourselves philosophers and try to think what would really justsify impeaching and removing a president.

• Whatabout asking a foreign power to look into a case of corruption involving a US politician? I don't think so.

• Whatbaout conversations between a presidential candidate's staff and a foreign power? I don't think so.

• Whatabout using the intelligence community to spy on a presidential candidate's campaign? Yeah. Could be.

• Whatbaout using a foreign power to gussie up a piece of false opposition research against a presidential candidate? Hmm. Good point.

• Whatabout a nod and a wink to the IRS to slow up the process of political groups applying for non-profit status? Good idea, but impossible to prove.

• Whatabout handing out goodies to members of Congress in return for support on a major bill? Are you kidding?

• Whatabout provoking Japan in 1940-41 and then doing nothing when you know, from decoded messages that the Japanese are on their way to attack Pearl Harbor? Yeah. That's a puzzler.

The point is that I don't know if there could ever be an impeachment of a president that really committed an act worth removal from office. That's because presidents are pretty savvy guys that know what they can get away with. They know what kind of support they can expect in Congress and they know, roughly speaking what it would take to get a 2/3rd vote against them in the Senate. If they have both houses of Congress held by their party, they figure that they can get away with a bunch of stuff. If the president is the First Black President he knows that anybody opposing him can be canceled as a racist. If both houses are held by the other party the president knows to behave himself.

Hey, I know! How about making a scandal of the president's actions, riling up your supporters, and defeating him when he runs for reelection?

Truth is that three of the four presidential impeachments thus far have been on the basis of the president having the nerve, the noive, to have been elected. The other, Clinton, impeachment was really tit-for-tat: you guys removed Nixon from office, so we can play at that game too.

Only, the Clinton impeachment showed how to deal with impeachment. You rally your troops, as Al Gore did when Clinton was impeached in the House. And you win in the Senate. And hey, maybe you rally your troops enough to actually gain seats in the off-year election of the second term of the president.

The Clinton impeachment cured Republicans of the disease. I wonder if a Trump reelection and a Republican House in 2020 would cure the Dems of their impeachment fever.

I hope so.

Think of Activists as "Activistes"

In a recent article proposing to "abolish the Ivy League already" PJ Media founder Roger L. Simon wrote this about the "protest" by climate-changers at the Harvard-Yale game.

In the middle of this year's Harvard-Yale game, the great activistes spewed out onto the field to demand, what else, action on climate change—delaying the game for over an hour.

Yes! "Activiste" it is, for me. Now and forever. But, to go one better, Simon should have written "les grands activistes."

But then, I thought, what about "artist" and "artiste?" Now I had always thought that "artiste" was a bit of a sneer at people that were trying to represent themselves as creative artists but were actually just grinding it out, as in "cabaret artistes." But when I Google searched, it appears that the ironic meaning is not understood. At least not in wokish Googleland. As here.

Artist -- a person whose creative work shows sensitivity and imagination. 

Artiste -- a public performer (a dancer or singer).

Well, blow me down. But I still think I am right. "Artiste" is used as a dig at someone trying to push it a little. Artist is gentry. Artiste is commoner. To use the argot of Curtis Yarvin. And don't you forget it, peasant.

However, the funless meanings could still apply to activism.

Activist -- a graying lefty who genuinely believes that force can save the world. 

Activiste -- a woke college kid who is mouthing rubbish taught her by her college professor.

But never mind about the serious meanings. The whole point is to have fun with it, in a battle of Godzilla vs. Kong. Hey I know, Hollywood! How about a movie of Les Déplorables vs. Les Activistes. Gotta get a bit of French lingo in there. To show that this is an upscale blog.

Seriously, I think it is important to get the idea out that your average activiste is just a chump pretending to be changing the world. A good little girl waving her special protest sign that she created herself in art class. A pajama boy bouncing about between internships arranged by his influential deep-state parents.

Either way, we are talking about a dumb-as-a-post activiste Great Reactionary that still believes that politics can save the world, even after the 20th century with its slave states and 100 million graves has proved that politics-as-salvation is the most evil concept imaginable.

Oh did I mention my Great Reaction notion? Nothing special. It just puts forward the notion that the left is a reactionary movement, a religio moving away from the basic truth of humans, that we are social animals, towards the idea that you can solve all problems with politics and government, when

Politics is division 

Government is force

oh, and here's the short stack on the Great Reaction:

Socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism is part neo-knight-errantry and part pro-regime street-thuggery; helpless victims are neo-sacrifice, social justice is neo-plunder.

Only, I think that we need to start calling "activism" as "activisme." Little bit more of your French lingo there. Hmm. I think we better revise that:

Socialism is neo-slavery; the welfare state is neo-feudalism; identity politics is neo-tribalism; reparations is neo-vengeance; activism is part neo-knight-errantry, part pro-regime street-thuggery, and part activisme, or gentry kids putting on a play; helpless victims are neo-sacrifice, social justice is neo-plunder.

But watch it. "Protest" in French is not "proteste;" it is "protestation." And "demonstration" is "manifestation."

But activiste it is. Now and forever. And we could call activism culture "le culte d'activisme."

Think of activists as activistes and you won't go far wrong.

Being Thankful Towards the End of Life

I remember my grandfather -- my mother's father -- at the age of 72. That is, I remember him being 72, and an old man. And that he died in 1965 aged about 85 after colon surgery.

Those were the days when you didn't tell people they had cancer.

But this year, 2019, I turned 73. So that makes me an old man! Anyway, I thought this was a good year to make absolutely sure that each of my daughters had heard from me about what I thought about them. I told them both that I thought they were amazing and that it was hard for me to understand how such women could have come from a guy like me.

It was time to tell them that because, I thought, you never know. I could die tomorrow and I wouldn't want that to happen without having told my daughters how much I honored them.

So I got that one under my belt. Or off my chest.

Of course, we all think this is the worst of times. Because political division, etc. But that is rubbish.

Hey! If Dickens could start his novel about the French Revolution with the maxim: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times," then our world today in America cannot be anything but the best of times.

Let's do the full quote from A Tale of Two Cities, just to make it fair.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

What Dickens is saying, I suppose, is that we humans tend to imagine that we, at this moment, are the center of the universe: amazing and special and unique -- and also going to hell in a handbasket.

Which we obviously are not. However, each of us is at the center of our personal world and cannot help but experience our life and our world from that position.

The question is: what do we do about it? And, given that I have been reading Nietzsche over the last year, we should give him his chance to tell us what to do (The Will to Power §55)

Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this? The most moderate; those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede, but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account; those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes --  human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride.

I rather like the notion of loving "a fair amount of accidents and nonsense." Because, you know what? We are all too inclined to want everything serious and tied down and no suprises, thank you.

But the truth about life is that it is full of "accidents and nonsense" and we ought all to accept that.

And be thankful, and stop complaining!

Curtis Yarvin's Clear Pill: How To Keep the Woke Gentry Onside

What is going on with the whole progressive project? That is what Curtis Yarvin is doing in Part 2 of "The Clear Pill."

But what exactly is he saying in his 7,800 words of exegesis?

Simply, at the end, he says that he is explaining how "progressivism is a way for the ruling class to feel important by supporting the government." And don't they just, the gentry class support the government? Oh yeah.

Yarvin's purpose is to look under the hood of today's governance, and figure out how it is done, how you get all the gentry class, who might theoretically have a whole range of goals, singing from the same hymnal.

How do you get them to take their eye off the truth, and buy into an "aesthetic tilt" that sneaks in the agenda of the ruling class, and gets them all singing the same tune of power?

Obviously, he writes, you do it with anthems, "thymotic anthems," where thymos comes from the Greek with a meaning "somewhere between ambition, honor, and vanity." In other words, the job of the ruling class is to compose anthems for the gentry class that appeal to the natural ambition, honor, and vanity of gentry-type people. But... The gentry class is too educated to live a live in the shadow of such base motives. Right? Right!

The other way to rule is with political formulas, "pistoic formulas," where pistos comes from the Greek with a meaning somewhere "between loyalty, fidelity, and servility." The formula demonstrates an emotional bond of loyalty: "I pay my taxes because the money supports good works." Usually, that money supports me, of course, so what's not to like?

And of course, when we observe a loyalty bond out there that does not involve us, we see corruption. Obviously, the climate science of scientists funded by Exxon is tainted, because the Exxon-funded scientists are naturally going to study things that do not hurt Exxon's interest. Obviously.

But whatabout climate scientists funded by NOAA? Huh? They will be saying that they do climate science because it helps save the planet, a political formula that proves their loyalty to the federal government and the climate establishment.

Thus:

Here we see just how blissful the union of thymos and pistos can be. Ambition and loyalty may contrast; they do not conflict; the contrary—they fit together like burger and bun. Most anthems serve power; most formulas imply status. 

An anthem is a way to feel important. A formula is a way to support the government. Therefore, a formulaic anthem is a way to feel important by supporting the government.

Both anthems and formulas are ways to tilt reality and make people feel good about supporting the tilted power reality of the ruling class, especially our beloved gentry class of progressive liberals.

And so we wise and learned deplorables outside the Capitol of Panem can understand how the pompous idiots cavorting in the Capitol are just completely hoodwinked by the anthems and formulas of the ruling class into being proud and loyal foot-soldiers in the ruling class's power project.

What does untilted reality look like, the kind that we, that have taken the Clear Pill, experience?

Unaffected thought will be found wherever no valid thought is anthem or formula. The institution of mathematics can be politicized. The math itself cannot.

The key is that no power is involved. Once power enters in we get titled reality and we start to get anthems and formulas to make us feel good about bowing to power and going with its power project.

Of course, no power project lasts forever. There is a long period cycle that seems to rule western civ. and refreshes the fountain of power.

• The intellectual command economy rules. Public opinion is directed by a dogmatic bureaucracy, rife with pervasive error, systematically incapable of changing its mind.

• An unofficial free market for truth evolves. This market cannot be poisoned by power, because it has no power. It develops a higher-quality product than the official narrative.

• A new epistemic elite arises. The old intellectual bureaucracy, smart enough to sense its own inferiority, hands power to the new truth market. A new golden age begins.

• Dogmatic bureaucracy returns. Slowly and inevitably poisoned by power, the once-vibrant civil society slowly ossifies into a dogmatic bureaucracy, evolving more and more pretty lies until pervasive error is again the norm. 

Oh well.

This has been a monstrously shortened and truncated explanation of Yarvin's notion, which I barely understand. If you want to ponder the deep richness of what he is saying, go read the original, "A Theory of Pervasive Error." Chances are you will end up just as confused as I am.

Curtis Yarvin's Clear Pill: The Uses of the "Political Formula"

Back in the day, smart Jewish kid and software guy Curtis Yarvin made something of a name for himself in a years-long blog odyssey as Mencius Moldbug.

What was Moldbug all about? Just trying to upend the conventional political wisdom. Nothing much.

Who is Yarvin? Let La Wik (as he called it in his Moldbug years) tell the story.

[Yarvin] is an American far-right political theorist, blogger, and computer scientist. He is known, along with fellow "neo-reactionary" thinker Nick Land, for developing the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic ideas behind the Dark Enlightenment. Yarvin and his ideas are often associated with the alt-right.

Yeah! "Far-right!" Scary!

Yarvin proved his importance by getting canceled at a 2015 StrangeLoop software conference. In 2016, his invitation to the conference "resulted in the withdrawal of five speakers, two subconferences, and several sponsors." Note the use of the passive tense.

But now he is appearing on American Mind in a five part series called "The Clear Pill." I'm going to blog about it because that's the best way for me to understand what Yarvin is trying to say.

Yarvin starts by saying that the two turn-of-the-20th-century Italian political scientists Mosca and Pareto, "taught that all states are ruled by elites who subdue their subjects with illusions."

Mosca called these illusions “political formulas.” A political formula is any narrative element which makes [the subjects] prefer actions that objectively stabilize the regime. 

But you are above all that, right? You can see through all the formulas and know the real reality.

Actually not. We all live in a fake reality dome, and we don't know what reality is. All we can do is subject all political formulas to this analysis:

Here is one way to check out any idea you don’t want to believe: assume it’s true, then build a new reality around that axiom. Once you fail, you get to say: I can’t see how this could be true.

That's the Clear Pill. If you can't find a problem with a political formula, then OK. Go with it, for the time being.

But the ideal is to be neutral, to live outside all the narratives, In the perfect case:

You will not be of any use or any harm to any particular cause. You will feel neither political anger, nor political fear. You will neither cause trouble, nor get in trouble. This vacation from politics need not last the rest of your life. But it can.

Now, Yarvin says, our present regime is not like the Hitler/Stalin/Mao regime, "with one person or a small team unilaterally directing the entire state."

Let's call the Hitler-type regime a "one-story state. Everyone has to believe one narrative—one official history of the present." Or else.

But we live in a two-story state. It's really cunning.

When people hear one story, they tend to ask: is this true? When they hear two stories, they tend to ask: which one of these is true? Isn’t this a neat trick? Maybe our whole world is built on it. Any point on which both poles concur is shared story: “uncontroversial, bipartisan consensus.”

Now maybe both stories are rubbish. Maybe the shared story in the middle is rubbish too. But because there is agreement on some things we humans are inclined to believe the shared story as true. "Stagecraft,"says Yarvin. And the benefit is that a two-story state can maintain itself with a lot less repression than the one-story state.

So how does power operate in our two-story state? According to Yarvin it has a "civic core" and a "political core." Nominally the political core is in charge, as in the voters electing the government. But actually the civic core in in control because it runs the story-making machine.

Public opinion does not direct the civic core; the civic core guides public opinion.

And the civic core is "the permanent civil service" plus "the press, academia, philanthropy, and so on."

If you weren't sure about that before you are now, what with the civic core, from the "deep state" to the MSM to lefty academia doing a 24-7 effort to bounce the peoples' choice, Donald Trump, from office.

And the civic core seems to manage to coordinate itself and its story without any actual Mr. Big in charge. How do they do it?

How does the political core work? Yarvin proposes a three people world, as I do. He calls the three classes: gentry, commoners, and clients.

The gentry are urbanites, cultivated and ambitious; the commoners are suburbanites, educated and independent; the clients are Marx’s proletariat and lumpenproletariat, uneducated and/or dependent.

Usually the gentry rules using the clients as its clients. "The natural conflict pits commoners against gentry plus clients." This is what I say, that the People of the Creative Self (gentry) combine with the People of the Subordinate Self (clients) against the People of the Responsible Self (commoners).

In a society like ours, the commoners are the majority, so it takes a fair bit of talent  -- and "Jedi mind tricks." -- to keep the commoners divided so the gentry can rule.  The trick is to keep the gentry united.

Everything can probably stay copacetic for the ruling gentry unless an outside "third story" comes along.

The most dangerous outside stories (a) are completely true, (b) aim at rogue gentry, and (c) exalt commoners and/or disparage clients. Any such narrative might be the political formula of the next regime. 

Now you see what President Trump is doing in his political rallies: he is "exalting commoners." Obviously chaps like me and Yarvin are interested in outside stories that would do exactly that. Because? Maybe because the gentry seems to be dissing us, people that actually read a book and write about it. And we don't like being dissed any more than black gangbangers in the 'hood.

Waging Permanent Ideological War

Over at The Federalist Joseph Backholm has some fun with progressive writer John Pavlovitz who writes about how he's not a radical leftist, but belongs in the "human middle."

Then Backholm goes on to show how whacko the left has become in 25 different ways, like:

They went from “coexist” bumper stickers to suing grandmothers who preferred not to decorate a same-sex wedding.

According to La Wik, "Pavlovitz is an American Christian pastor and author, known for his social and political writings from a liberal Christian perspective."

And just today, Pavlovitz has issued a rant about he who shall not be named. You see, someone asked him: “John… what happens if he wins again?” and he gave him a comfortable answer. But he was thinking:

He can’t win again.

That isn’t an option.

It simply cannot be allowed.

If he wins again, November 2016 will seem relatively uneventful; a partly cloudy day in advance of a Category 5 hurricane.

And on and on into a lefty partisan rant.

And here was I thinking that the Trump win in 2016 was just the normal "time for a change" election after 8 years of the other guys. With the innovation that Trump made a connection with the white working class that has been abandoned by the Democrats as the ruling class has pivoted away from class politics to race and gender politics. And all he did was get them to feel that "he cared about people like me." Which is Job One for every politician.

I suppose that Pavloitz belongs to the political tendency that interpreted Barack Obama's two terms as president as a "fundamental change" in American life.

And here I was thinking that Barack Obama was First Black President: been there, done that. We've elected a black president, so we can't be called racists. Now back to your regular scheduled programming. Not.

One of the interesting things about the last half-century is how giving people political rights doesn't solve anything. You abolish government-mandated race laws like Jim Crow and instead of race dropping off the radar you find that the whole of society becomes obsessed with race. The Supreme Court declares gay marriage to be a thing, and gays start running around finding deplorables to cancel and put out of business.

Couple of dozen PhDs there, in my humble estimation. Because more research is needed.

And then you have politicians that don't concede elections. I remember, back in the day, when Time magazine would have a post-election issue about how the election is over, and we are all Americans, and how we all come together after elections, and how, bless their hearts, the losers can content themselves with "wait until next time."

Here's what I think, and I think that the John Pavlovitzes should pay attention.

I think that it is a problem when 90 percent of media articles about a president are negative.

I think that it is a problem when the government schools and universities are almost uniformly Democratic, and where conservative voices get silenced and canceled.

I think it is a problem when corporations are enforcing an ideological line in response to pressure from left-wing activist groups.

I think it is a problem when there is no defence against an accusation of racist-sexist-homophobe.

In other words I think that, whatever your beliefs and certainties, it is a really good idea, from a strategic point of view, to let the other guys have their say. Hey, if nothing else, you get to see what absolute clueless idiots the other guys are. It doesn't get any better than that!

 I also think that we should understand left-wing ideological activist enthusiasms strictly as religious "great awakenings." And sometimes we should think of them as religious cults activated by "prophecy."

And then what happens when "prophecy fails?"

You can think of the leftist frenzy since 2016 as a case of a failure of prophecy. Lefties thought that the world had changed, that progressives like Obama would rule forever. And their prophecy failed.

Which, you might say, is why the Founders decided against a state church, so that prophetic cults would not get mixed up in national politics.

Of course, there is no way to keep prophecy out of it. But you can at least put in roadblocks, to make it hard for prophetic groups to grab a hold of the political power, the way that the Bolsheviks and the Maoists did.

And there is nothing like repeated failure at the ballot box to bring the prophetic urge down to Earth.

That's what happened with the Sixties. The Democrats thought they were going to rule forever. Then they lost four out of five presidential elections in a row, and finally, the New Democrat Bill Clinton got elected as a moderate.

But then, as the Bible says, there came a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph, a rising generation of lefty progressives that did not live through the aftermath of the Sixties.

And so it looks like they will have to learn about politics and ordinary lunch-bucket voters the hard way.

Yeah. Because the guys that wage what seems like permanent ideological war are usually rich kids, scions of the ruling class.

But most ordinary people just want to live their lives and wive and thrive without being jerked around by ruling-class jerks.

I wonder what they mean by that?

Conspiracy Theory and Cancel Culture

One of the things that is clear in the effort to get President Trump is that partisans believe the propaganda that their side is putting out. Did President Trump collude with the Russians in 2016? Or did President Obama direct the intelligence community to spy on the Trump campaign? Did the Obama administration put pressure on Ukraine to dismiss a prosecutor that was looking at natural gas company Burisma? Or did President Trump get Ukraine to look into corruption as a quid quo pro for getting military aid? Depends whose side you are on.

But right now at least both sides get to put out their propaganda without being canceled.

Then there are the things you are not allowed to say. Michelle Malkin is having a bit of a problem because her visits to college campi to discuss immigration keep getting canceled. And Conservatism Inc. is going after her and 21-year-old far right YouTuber Nick Fuentes.

Now that gay marriage is a thing you are not allowed to fund Christian organizations like the Salvation Army. Because homophobia.

Anyone that doubts the narrative of the Holocaust and 6 million Jews murdered in the camps gets their book shredded and their academic career ruined. And in 1940 a ton of Americans got canceled for opposing FDR's move towards war.

Interested in a canceled and pulped book? Ron Unz at unz.com has put a raft of canceled books online on his HTML Books feature. Also 88 books by G.A. Henty: and to think I only read three of them!

Here's my info on Jews and Nazis, obtained from Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk. Wittgenstein the gay philosopher, author of Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations was Jewish from a very wealthy family in Vienna. He was in England in the 1930s, but his sisters were still in Vienna as the Nazis took over Europe. In 1938 they got fake Yugoslav passports and visas to go to Switzerland but were prosecuted by the Nazis. But, "All four were cleared of the charges brought against them." Then, it turned out that the Wittgenstein family had a lot of foreign currency. After lengthy negotiations -- that included Wittgenstein -- the sisters transferred a ton of Wittgenstein wealth from Switzerland to the Nazi Reichbank, and "Hermione and Helene were able to survive the war relatively untroubled." (p.400) So what's that all about?

We all know about the Overton Window, "range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time," the things that politicians are allowed to propose versus the crazy stuff that everyone agrees is beyong the Pale.

I suppose this suppression of radical ideas is a basic part of humans as social animals. For social cooperation to work everyone has to be on the same page, or nearly so.

But what makes Jewish groups so determined to cancel Holocaust Denial? Or gays so quick to cancel Christians? Or the climate community so quick to brand skeptics as "climate deniers?" Or Sen. McCarthy to winkle Commies out of the State Department? Or priests to winkle out heretics?

One thing I read recently, regarding Jews, is that when you are a small group, as Jews have tended to be, your survival depends on culture of innocence backed up by eternal watchfulness. Put it this way, for Jews to have survived as a tribe and a religion for the 2,000 years of Christianity is beyond remarkable. There must be something about Jewish culture and practice that maintains the Jewish identity through thick and thin.

Obviously, there must be something in humans as social animals that makes it beneficial to name and shame and cancel people that cause trouble. And it makes sense that people with crazy ideas could cause the demolition of the community in which they live.

But I just think it is sick and wrong for me to be named and shamed and canceled.