I'll weigh in a bit on the Jewish question as a Mischling descended from a fairly wealthy family.
One important source of Jewish power that is not well understood by the public is that there are no Jewish Boomers. This disparity is a lot of what drives lopsided Jewish influence in the current period, in my opinion. That is, Boomers are lazy and spoiled because they grew up in the warm embrace of the highly prosperous post-war period. Whereas, Jews born contemporaneously grew up in the dark shadow of the Holocaust. There is therefore an enormous motivation gap between Jews and Gentiles that are at the peak of their career power today, having been born from 1946 to 1964.
Nowhere is this gap more obvious than in politics, which Boomer gentiles do not take seriously at all, in contrast to "Boomer-Aged" Jews. This is why modern Republican governments (run by Boomer gentiles) are incompetent messes (GWB, Trump), but modern Democratic governments (generally run by Boomer-Aged Jews) are competently run, even if you disagree with their politics (Clinton, Obama I, Biden*).
Looking ahead, Millennial and to a lesser extent Gen X Jews are just as spoiled as their gentile counterparts. For this reason among others, Jewish power in the United States is in my opinion likely to decline substantially over the next 10-20 years. Darren Beattie sometimes talks about the decline in leadership quality at the ADL, from Foxman to Greenblatt. Well, Foxman was born in 1940 and grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, and Greenblatt was born in 1970 and did not.
One other point is as relates to Jews and changes in American culture since 1946. What I believe happened is the following. If you are Jewish, you do not blame yourself for anti-Semitism. So, what then happened in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe? Well, gentile populations were consumed by extremist ideology that preached Fascism and anti-Semitism, leading to disaster for the Jewish people.
OK its 1951, and Jews live in the US now. They are safe. But they were safe in Germany... until they weren't. How to prevent a similar disaster? Well, of course you do what you can to influence or control ideological production and propagation in the US. It's obvious - that's what went wrong in Europe, so make sure it doesn't go wrong here. So you form NGOs, you carefully edit newspapers, you lobby for young children to be taught about the evils of racism and anti-Semitism, etc. None of this is surprising or unreasonable.
This strategy in practice turns out to have limited opposition. After all, the Americans are not anti-Semitic, so why should they stop you? In addition, Americans have weak cultural heritage (Europeans are correct on this point), so they don't notice much is changing. And then maybe you go a little bit too far with anti-WASP media narratives, with the Civil Rights Act, with Hart-Celler, etc.
* OK, the Biden administration doesn't seem too competent. But, I would point out that Blinken and Klain are both nearly Gen X.
I'll just add this. My uncle is a banker. He is not Jewish. None of my family are. But he does not have nice things to say about them, I'll put it that way. My personal experience with Jews has been the guy's on the street. Normal guys, I grew up playing football with them. They weren't ethnically conscious. Just did their traditions as I did mine in the Christian faith. But you're right, we must distinguish between the elites and the regular guys.
I'll weigh in a bit on the Jewish question as a Mischling descended from a fairly wealthy family.
One important source of Jewish power that is not well understood by the public is that there are no Jewish Boomers. This disparity is a lot of what drives lopsided Jewish influence in the current period, in my opinion. That is, Boomers are lazy and spoiled because they grew up in the warm embrace of the highly prosperous post-war period. Whereas, Jews born contemporaneously grew up in the dark shadow of the Holocaust. There is therefore an enormous motivation gap between Jews and Gentiles that are at the peak of their career power today, having been born from 1946 to 1964.
Nowhere is this gap more obvious than in politics, which Boomer gentiles do not take seriously at all, in contrast to "Boomer-Aged" Jews. This is why modern Republican governments (run by Boomer gentiles) are incompetent messes (GWB, Trump), but modern Democratic governments (generally run by Boomer-Aged Jews) are competently run, even if you disagree with their politics (Clinton, Obama I, Biden*).
Looking ahead, Millennial and to a lesser extent Gen X Jews are just as spoiled as their gentile counterparts. For this reason among others, Jewish power in the United States is in my opinion likely to decline substantially over the next 10-20 years. Darren Beattie sometimes talks about the decline in leadership quality at the ADL, from Foxman to Greenblatt. Well, Foxman was born in 1940 and grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, and Greenblatt was born in 1970 and did not.
One other point is as relates to Jews and changes in American culture since 1946. What I believe happened is the following. If you are Jewish, you do not blame yourself for anti-Semitism. So, what then happened in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe? Well, gentile populations were consumed by extremist ideology that preached Fascism and anti-Semitism, leading to disaster for the Jewish people.
OK its 1951, and Jews live in the US now. They are safe. But they were safe in Germany... until they weren't. How to prevent a similar disaster? Well, of course you do what you can to influence or control ideological production and propagation in the US. It's obvious - that's what went wrong in Europe, so make sure it doesn't go wrong here. So you form NGOs, you carefully edit newspapers, you lobby for young children to be taught about the evils of racism and anti-Semitism, etc. None of this is surprising or unreasonable.
This strategy in practice turns out to have limited opposition. After all, the Americans are not anti-Semitic, so why should they stop you? In addition, Americans have weak cultural heritage (Europeans are correct on this point), so they don't notice much is changing. And then maybe you go a little bit too far with anti-WASP media narratives, with the Civil Rights Act, with Hart-Celler, etc.
* OK, the Biden administration doesn't seem too competent. But, I would point out that Blinken and Klain are both nearly Gen X.
I'll just add this. My uncle is a banker. He is not Jewish. None of my family are. But he does not have nice things to say about them, I'll put it that way. My personal experience with Jews has been the guy's on the street. Normal guys, I grew up playing football with them. They weren't ethnically conscious. Just did their traditions as I did mine in the Christian faith. But you're right, we must distinguish between the elites and the regular guys.
As always, very good chap.
Your writing is even clear than your video essays.
Hope to join you on here one day.
I would like to understand how you are using the terms Universalist/True Believers. Any help?
Thank you.
Very deep and nuanced analysis as always, looking forward to more of this
I have to say, I'm struggling with the arguments against the boomer con frame. If MM wasn't a crazy warmonger, then who is?
Great as always!
Lucid and properly nuanced.