I suppose it's useful if one can learn from one's sins, so although I'm repentant, I'm not remorseful. I committed one of the most common sins of the internet and social media, but I hope not to do it again, and by not doing it again, I hope my posts might be more effective. But probably not, because of another thing I learned from having sinned: there is a very selective sort of neo-talmudism that occurs on the internet.
For a long time I have been distressed that many Americans, including many of my friends, have chosen ignorance of history and ignorance of context, and have claimed the contemporary moral high ground of victimhood rather than responsibility. Let Lenin convince me that I'm the victim of the Czar and I will likely soon become the victim of Lenin. Lenin's propoganda didn't mention collecting my land and sendig me to the gulag. Propoganda's kinda like that somtimes.
So, when a friend whom I generally consider a very good person posted one lament that capitalism is not supporting families well enough and that the government should step into the gap, and followed it with a nice virtue-signal of himself in a BLM parade, ironically while living in a town where the university was shut down for a bit of re-education when it was alleged that someone on one of the Vikings sports teams had made something someone considered a racial slur on an actually rather obscure site, resulting in demands, thankfully not met, that the name of the sports teams be changed from Vikings, I sinned. I Googled BLM and families and saw an essay from an organization called The Federalist.com which outlined why the author, Auguste Mayrat, thinks the Black Lives Matters movement is opposed to families. I posted a link to the essay on my Facebook page. It seemed to me an unfortunate irony that someone who thinks families need help would expect to find it in an organization that is dedicated to disrupting families. Common to both of my friend's posts, I suppose, was a not-unusual disapproval of capitalism.
(Sorry. I can't help myself)
Mr. Mayrat's essay wasn't perfect. A friend said that it was unlike me to have shared it if I had read it. (Indeed, I had read it. I miss the pithiness of someone like Bill Buckley, perhaps, but sometimes I take what I find.) Disappointed friend said 'It's flawed in so very many ways and written with a obviously biased agenda. I'm kinda shocked.' Well duh. Of course it's written with a biased agenda, but unlike many publications (I'm looking at you, Good Gray Lady), it doesn't pretend to be unbiased. The Federalist is a conservative publication, and doesn't pretend to be otherwise. In a long telephone conversation that followed, my shocked friend went on to decry the nuclear family as a myth, to argue that one does need a village to raise a child, and to pounce on Mr. Mayrat's claim that BLM hates families, based on the actual text of the BLM website. The discussion reminded me of nothing so much as Talmudic arguments, which in this case centered around Mr. Mayrat's use of the word 'logic'. He said that the logic of the BLM website's statement suggested (I must confess that at the time of the discussion, I was sitting on a park bench and didn't have my Mishna with me, or I would have pounced on the word 'suggests'.) 'that children do better without parents and outside the home.'
Now, I realize that by openly admitting to having any conservative notions at all, and even to commit what is probably larger than a micro-agression by quoting a conservative source is enough to disallow most arguments, so I was actually honoured if a bit amused by my shocked friend's extensive discourse. I also think that his use of BLM's conception of a village to raise children (and of Mrs. Clinton's use in her book advocating passing our children over the fire of Moloch, which I did not read until after she lost the election, but which made me less unhappy that she had lost) is double speak. If the Black Lives Matter movement were concerned about families and children, we might find folks with BLM signs patrolling the neighborhoods of Chicago to provide a safe environment for children rather than burning the businesses of black women in Brooklyn or torching mattress factories in Kenosha. (I found that one hard to understand for a while. I realize that it might be argued that the sister in Brooklyn had sold out to capitalism, but mattresses? And then I realized that they're just a symbol of bourgeois luxury. Real workers, I guess, sleep on a thin mat on the floor. As I do.)
So, in the future I will be much more careful about posting anything in which I haven't counted every jot and tittle. But I would also encourage my friends who find the BLM website enticing consider that it is written by folks who claim to be Marxists, and then to consider the role Marxists give to propaganda.
And, finding myself as a sheep in the midst of wolves, I shall strive to be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
And, in this age of miracles and wonders, the Talmud is available online. But I'll let you Google it for yourself.
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