This sympathy post goes out to all the Jews of the world who said an instant-prayer the moment they heard that a man stole $50 billion dollars. They want him not to be Jewish, because they know how their entire group is typically tarnished by the notable acts of a few. But their prayers were not answered. Arrested investment guru Bernard L. Madoff is not only a Jew, but one of stature once great, and now rotting at light-speed.The real story is not how one man succumbs to temptation and tarnishes himself and his people, but rather how an entire culture - American culture - falls prey. While Madoff is a modified Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the rich, including himself, he is only one. It took thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of greedy people for him to work his criminal magic. Their lust for material wealth had them continuously looking the other way when he promised and delivered profits that were unheard of in consistency, over-top a volatile world. The story is of human greed.
To be clear, there are an untold number of Jews among the victims of Madoff, as well. But just as law abiding blacks cringe and pray when the newscasters announce fresh rounds of urban violence and death tolls (with not a white in sight), millions of law abiding Jews are shifting uncomfortably in their chairs over Madoff's billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
But a word of warning too, this post announces no holiday on this blog's policy of rejecting anti-Semitic vitriol. But if the future is like the past, the Jew-bashers will come out anyway and I will do what I always do - delete.
James C. Collier
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So what if the Jewish thing is an aspect of Jewish culture (not race or religion)--a culture that creates self-obsessed, spoiled people who believe they're entitled to more than others due to both their inflated sense of their group's importance and their inflated sense of their own personal worth ...?
ReplyDeleteThat isn't to say all Jews fit this profile, but what if their culture produces an inordinate number of ego-maniacal, obnoxious individuals?
Seems pretty straightforward. Is it anti-Semitic to point out that someone can be conditioned from birth to be an asshole, and that Jewish culture is, by all indicators, a veritable asshole factory?
Anon 8:56, not so straight-forward to me. Jews seem no more ego-manical or obnoxious than anyone else. What science supports this statement? Rather, the leverage they gain in society from educational over-acheivement (against the norm) places them in decision-making roles and holds them out for more critical review and bitter envy.
ReplyDeleteThe above statements can probably be very plausibly supported by the science of psychology ... I'm sure we can agree that people come in psychological types, largely influenced by their culture, yes? We can agree that Mormons come from a culture, of which their religion is the foundation, that creates very generally a certain type of individual--exceedingly god-fearing, (often abjectly superstitious), family-oriented, community minded, humble, "clean cut" ... This of course is, like I said, a generalization. But, taking averages, People from a Mormon background are more likely than people from, say, a standard middle-class American background to match this description. It's a question of conditioning from early childhood and the culture shaping the personality.
ReplyDeleteLikewise with Jews. The basis of their religion is that god prefers them above all others and is intensely interested in every detail of their lives. Whether or not they believe this fantasy on an individual basis, it is the foundation of their culture--a people who believe they have a separate and superior destiny. It is also the basis for their child-rearing strategy. As members of a group that is convinced of its superiority, the children are indulged and worshiped--look it up. Add to all this that children are very often born into privilege and therefore have little actual sympathy for those who must struggle (or anyone outside their group who is, remember, by implication, inferior) and you have the ingredients for creating obnoxious individuals.
Understand: exactly these same ingredients create obnoxious, egotistical WASPs--economic advantages, belief in their group's superiority, being indulged and sheltered and presented with opportunities from birth to adulthood, etc., etc. But the WASP culture is pretty vast and varied, so this is just one facet of it.
The argument being made is that the elements that make some WASPs into complete assholes are pretty much universally present throughout Jewish culture--so you have a much higher instance of asshole-ism. I think, taking all of these factors into account, widespread asshole-ism among Jews is a mathematical fact.
Anon 9:17, as a protestant, educated by Jesuits, I feel safe saying I have yet to meet an organized religion (western) that did not aim to make its members feel a cut-above the rest.
ReplyDeleteI would claim, and agree, that education (in anyone) begets economic advantage, accompanied by feelings of superiority (and real/perceived obnoxiousness).
Your belief in the disproportioned attitude/behavior of Jews (your unsubstantiated 'mathematical fact'), however, might reasonably result from a disproportioned average intelligence (compared to Wasp's) of the group that is a 'whopping' one standard deviation to the right. Scientific study does indeed support this Ashkenazim difference and has postulated its physiological origins to genetic mutations affecting the brain and cousin to sphingolipid-type disorders (Tay Sachs) found in long culturally-isolated European Jews.
You can try to delete the truth but if the US truly goes down there are many lone wolves ready. You have no idea no doubt as you sit in your nice house in a safe neighbourhood. Hate rolls across this land...you can feel it everywhere. 2009 is going to be explosive.
ReplyDeleteStereotypes are not as reliable as scientific knowledge is, but they have their use.. In any case, Just like we just know it's gonna be a black guy when you hear about youths shooting in public, we pretty much all knew it was gonna be a jew in this case. It's not always true, but it's true often enough.
ReplyDeleteNo, anybody taking a much broader view has to reject the idea that Jews are just smarter ... See the 5th comment down. Even with a higher average of high IQs, Jews are vastly outnumbered by as smart and smarter people in the world and in the US. The role they tend to play in societies grows from cultural practices and attitudes ... The theory of war says that a force that knows its objective has a distinct advantage over forces that don't. The objective of Jewish culture, and individuals who are conditioned in it, is, in a nutshell, self-aggrandizement. On almost equal terms with this seems to be wealth and material comfort.
ReplyDeleteI think the overwhelming majority of significant contributions to human progress throughout history have come to us from non-jews. It is only recently--when they have indeed taken over the nerve centers of society--that the myth of high IQs being the sole cause of Jewish success has been handed down to us--from the Jews themselves, don't forget. Lack of moral restraints, nepotism and rampant egotism play larger roles in their success than mere IQ points.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/18/AR2008121800196.html
ReplyDeleteMadoff scheme hits Palm Beach country club hard
http://www.jpost.com/
FBI agents shifted from terror work to Madoff
Dec. 22, 2008
The FBI has had to shift agents from terror and other crime work to Wall Street investigations including the alleged Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, according to David Cardona, head of the New York office's criminal division.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had to engage in "triage" in responding to successive frauds involving subprime mortgages, auction-rate securities and Madoff, who prosecutors said confessed this month to bilking investors out of $50 billion, Cardona said in an interview over the weekend.
"We have to work those cases which we think pose the greatest threat," he said. "In this case, it's a threat to the financial system and Wall Street. It's the same with mortgage fraud. I'm ramping these squads up."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/celebrity/la-oe-stein19-2008dec19,0,2313474.column