Suddenly the surprise attack has become cool again. When Hamas launched their incursion, on October 7th of 2023, to take hostages to exchange for Palestinians who were taken by Israel, this was portrayed as proof of their derangement. This was used as an excuse for a brutal air campaign that has turned Gaza into rubble. To this today dozens are being slaughtered, while the rest of the population of over a million souls is subjected to a starvation death. But we’re told even the babies burned head to toe are acceptable collateral damage—Israel has a right to defend itself, right?
The sucker punching lion, Israel, decided to end Trump’s nuclear talks early with what is called a preemptive strike. Netanyahu has been warning, for decades now, that Iran is just two years from a nuclear bomb. Much to his dismay, however, the US population—having been fooled once by his talk of Iraq being an imminent threat—is war weary and was not ready to make a move. So like old Thanos finally saying, “Fine, I’ll do it myself,” and executing his plan to destroy half of the life in the universe, Netanyahu gambled and surprise attacked, Pearl Harbor style, while peace attacks were ongoing and Iran was making major concessions.
Much like the Six-day War, when Israel went on an offensive before a war even started, it is the modus operandi of the IDF to hit first, to simply declare neighboring people to be an imminent threat and then attack. There is no other country in the world permitted to do this. Only Israel can and then, when they draw reprisals, portray themselves as being a victim. This notion that Iran should just surrender it’s sovereignty to Netanyahu or the US is incomprehensibly absurd. I hope this is just part of the “big ask” strategy of Trump before a deal, but all bets are off at this point where this goes.
However, Iran is not an open air prison with only small arms and home-made rockets—if the IDF hoped to send them into complete disarray with this blitzkrieg, then they failed miserably. Yes, Iran is back on its heels, yet even while being struck while having guard lowered by treachery, effectively blinded by a vicious rabbit punch, they will managed to land an effective counterpunch. The bully, accustomed to ‘winning’ against opponents that were virtually fish in a barrel, made a huge miscalculation. Israel can bleed, with parts of Tel Aviv looking like they belong in Gaza, and it ends the illusion of invincibility that has cowed other nations in the region into compliance.
Half of the power Israel has in the Middle-East and the US in the world is a notion of legitimacy, that they can’t be beat, and this is now compromised. How did Israel know where to find the leading nuclear scientists of Iran? Well, the Iranians, had been fully cooperating with the IAEA and thus by this had given the location of these men. It is treachery that won’t soon be forgotten. The US and Israel are losing their credibility on multiple fronts. Decades of reputation are being erased with each broken promise and every thunderous hypersonic impact. Even if Iran is hit with a nuke or the US hangs on to global control for another decade, there is writing of our end on the wall.
Writing on the Wall
Unlike past elective wars where Russia and China remained on the sidelines, both of these countries are signalling that they will not put up with it. In recent days two Chinese surveillance ships have arrived in the region, massive cargo planes also landing in Tehran, and Putin (while chiding the leadership in Iran) for not taking his offer of a more advanced air defense, won’t hesitate to get some payback against the imperial West. It only gets worse if the US, were to employ some tactical nukes in trying to destroy bunkers. It would only open that Pandora’s box in Ukraine. The best option would be stepping back from the brink to save face and move on. Unfortunately this better end is unlikely to happen.
Netanyahu has been arrogant and he is now overextended, Trump betrayed negotiations entered in good faith and he will never be a trusted deal maker anymore. The fallout from Israel’s audacious preemptive strike on Iran, much like the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, has reshaped the geopolitical landscape in ways that may prove irreversible. Netanyahu’s gamble, driven by a decades-long obsession with Iran’s nuclear program, has not only failed to deliver the decisive blow he envisioned but has also exposed the fragility of Israel’s perceived invincibility. The counterpunch from Iran, though delivered under duress, has left Tel Aviv scarred and the myth of an untouchable Israel in tatters. This was no mere military miscalculation—it was a strategic blunder that has eroded the legitimacy Israel and its ally, the United States, have long relied upon.
The treachery of exploiting Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA to target its nuclear scientists has shattered trust in international negotiations. Iran, far from the disarmed prisoner Gaza has become, proved resilient, landing blows that revealed Israel’s vulnerability. This betrayal, coupled with the U.S.’s complicity in undermining Trump’s own peace talks, has tarnished America’s reputation as a global mediator. Trump’s “big ask” strategy, if that was the intent, has backfired spectacularly, leaving him sidelined as a dealmaker and the U.S. further isolated on the world stage.
“This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin “Here is what these words mean: Mene : God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel : You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres : Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
(Daniel 5:25-28 NIV)
The broader consequences are dire. Israel’s modus operandi—preemptive strikes justified by vague claims of imminent threats—has long been tolerated by the West, but the world is growing weary of this exceptionalism. The rubble of Gaza, the starvation of its people, and now the reckless escalation with Iran have stripped away the moral veneer Israel once claimed. Each hypersonic missile and broken promise chips away at the credibility of both Israel and the U.S., hastening the decline of their influence. Even if tactical victories are won, the writing is on the wall: arrogance and betrayal have set the stage for a new era where their dominance is no longer assured. The question now is not whether this decline can be stopped, but how swiftly it will unfold and what new powers will rise in its wake.
The other day I saw a Facebook ad for a charity of some kind featuring a boy that was covered head to toe in burns. His body quivered, his breaths short, labored, and he is clearly in distress.
Thinking this was just some unfortunate accident being exploited for donations it was too much for me (as a father) to see. My first thought was who is putting this ad on social media? I posted a combination of my concern for the child and a question of the appropriateness of putting this video on social media.
But later someone responding to my initial comment told me the where and why—and it changed everything. This baby was not just a random victim of a kitchen accident in a third world country as I had imagined. No, this was a deliberate act. It is part of a terror and revenge campaign being waged using bombs provided by our tax dollars. It is acceptable collateral damage to those on the side of this state actor—which has kept their perpetual victimhood status due to an event before we were born.
Apparently now they have a blank check to do as they please because of the bad thing that happened to their people approaching a century ago on another continent. Never again is only about their suffering then, protecting their own, and not a call to oppose all genocides or ethnic cleansing campaigns. They would tell us that the cruelty against this baby in the social media post, and the tens of thousands like him, is all justified because of an attack over a year ago when nearly 1200 died in the chaos of a border incursion and 251 were taken hostage.
However, in the same way I had absolutely nothing to do with American slavery and have not profited from it, this young child is not responsible for what others have done and no less precious than the red-headed Bidas boys killed in the fog of war and are now used as part of a propaganda campaign to continue the bloodshed. If your outage is selective and only based on whose child is being maimed or killed, then you lack true Christian compassion.
Are You Better Than Your Ancestors?
You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started! (Matthew 23:29a-32 NIV)
There are thousands—tens of thousands—of memorials to an event we call Holocaust and more continue to be built. Presumably it is so we remember those who were killed and never repeat this horrendous slaughter ever again. In the Nazi Germany all people who belonged to various ethnic groups and categories were made collectively guilty of trying to crimes against the German people, forced behind walls of concentration camps and then secretly killed by the regime.
The Nazis, despite all their propaganda and hate, took care to hide the reality they were on an extermination campaign. From their literature, they were “resettling” the victims and that the “atrocity stories” were nothing but malicious lies. They tried to keep most Germans in the dark about what was truly taking place. Had they broadcast their genocide for all to see, a good part of German society would likely not have been okay with it—why else would they have denied?
However, there is a modern parallel where those doing the industrial scale murder are shameless. They watch and cheer as little children are shredded, limbs torn from their young bodies, shrapnel slicing horrendous gashes through their faces. But it is not just that relentless bombing of a people rounded up like cattle—it is the young boys ripped away from their families for minor infractions like throwing stones at occupying soldiers, with no due process, then raped and brutalized in military prisons.
This has been going on for decades and is openly celebrated by the perpetrators. The United States government enthusiastically supports an ongoing ethic cleansing twice as brazen as the Holocaust.
The sad part is that many reading this will know exactly what I’m talking about, aren’t able to refute a single claim I’ve made, and will choose denial. Those terrorists had it coming, they’ll convince themselves, as the next child is blow to bits as illegal settlers watch eagerly from the hills overlooking the carnage. They literally do boat tours off the coast to pick what part of the annexed land they will take. This is depravity on a whole different level, yet our propaganda blinded morons will say it is 100% morally justified because “God’s people” or October 7th.
A Century of Aggression, Conflict and Terror
The biggest propaganda lie is to say that a conflict began after the other side hit back or escalated. The fight between the settlers from Europe and people native to Palestine didn’t start on October 7th. Quibble over the semantic details, but there were inhabitants on the land pushed off through a campaign of terror and abuse, here’s a brief historical timeline provided by Grok:
1882 – First Aliyah Begins: The First Aliyah marks the start of organized Zionist immigration to Ottoman Palestine, driven by European Jewish nationalists seeking a homeland. About 25,000–35,000 Jews arrive between 1882 and 1903, often buying land from absentee Ottoman landlords. Palestinians, the indigenous Arab population (Muslim, Christian, and Druze), number around 500,000 and live as farmers, urban dwellers, and Bedouins under Ottoman rule. These early settlers, motivated by Theodor Herzl’s Zionist vision (articulated later in 1896), begin displacing Palestinian tenant farmers, though violence remains sporadic at this stage.
November 2, 1917 – Balfour Declaration: The British government issues the Balfour Declaration, promising a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This galvanizes Zionist settlement, with immigrants arriving under British protection post-World War I. Palestinians, still a majority (over 90% of the population), oppose this as it threatens their land and self-determination. No major Zionist terror acts occur yet, but tensions rise as settlers establish armed militias like Hashomer to guard settlements, clashing with locals.
April 4–7, 1920 – Nebi Musa Riots: Violence erupts in Jerusalem as Palestinians protest Zionist immigration and British policy. Jewish settlers, supported by early Zionist self-defense groups, clash with Arabs, leaving 9 dead (5 Jews, 4 Arabs) and over 200 injured. This marks an early escalation, though not yet a coordinated Zionist terror campaign. Palestinians are defending their homeland; settlers are a growing minority (around 60,000 by 1920) asserting claims to the land.
May 1–7, 1921 – Jaffa Riots: Anti-Zionist unrest in Jaffa results in 47 Jews and 48 Arabs killed, with hundreds injured. Zionist settlers, now numbering about 85,000, retaliate with armed groups like the Haganah (formed 1920), targeting Palestinian communities. Palestinians, still indigenous and resisting displacement, face increasing settler militancy. These riots signal the start of organized Zionist violence, though not yet classified as terrorism.
August 23–29, 1929 – Palestine Riots: Widespread clashes over Jerusalem’s holy sites kill 133 Jews and 116 Arabs. Zionist settlers, bolstered by Haganah, fight back against Palestinian attacks on Jewish communities. The violence reflects growing settler presence (around 156,000 Jews) and Palestinian fears of losing control. While mutual, this period sees Zionist groups refining their armed capabilities, laying groundwork for later terror tactics.
1935 – Irgun Splits from Haganah: The Irgun, a Revisionist Zionist militia led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s ideology (“only Jewish armed force would ensure the Jewish state”), breaks from the more moderate Haganah. Settlers now number over 300,000, aggressively expanding. Palestinians, still a majority (around 850,000), face intensifying land loss. Irgun begins targeting British and Arab civilians, marking the onset of a deliberate Zionist terror campaign.
April 1936–1939 – Arab Revolt: Palestinians launch a revolt against British rule and Zionist immigration, killing around 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 British. Irgun escalates terror, bombing Arab markets (e.g., July 6, 1938, in Haifa, killing 18) and buses (August–September 1937). Settlers, now a militarized minority, aim to secure land; Palestinians fight to preserve their homeland. Atrocities include Irgun’s reprisal killings of civilians.
July 22, 1946 – King David Hotel Bombing: Irgun bombs the British administrative headquarters in Jerusalem, killing 91 (British, Arab, and Jewish). This high-profile attack, led by Menachem Begin, targets Mandate authorities to force withdrawal and enable Zionist statehood. Settlers (around 600,000) are a significant force; Palestinians (over 1.2 million) face displacement as Zionist militias grow bolder.
November 29, 1947 – UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181): The UN votes to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Zionist settlers (about 630,000) accept it; Palestinians (1.3 million) reject it, fearing loss of 55% of their land despite being 67% of the population. Civil war erupts, with Zionist terror intensifying—Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi launch attacks on Palestinian villages.
December 1947–May 1948 – Pre-Nakba Atrocities: Zionist militias begin ethnic cleansing before Israel’s founding. On December 18, 1947, Irgun bombs Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, killing 20 Arabs. By April 9, 1948, the Deir Yassin massacre sees Irgun and Lehi kill over 100 Palestinian villagers, including women and children, sparking mass flight. Settlers aim to clear land; Palestinians, indigenous and defenseless, lose over 300,000 people to exile before Arab armies intervene.
May 14, 1948 – Israel Declares Independence (Nakba Begins): Israel is established, and the Nakba (“catastrophe”) sees Zionist forces expel 750,000 Palestinians, destroying 530 villages. Atrocities like the Tantura massacre (May 22–23, 1948, over 200 killed) exemplify the campaign. Settlers become citizens of Israel (population 806,000, 82% Jewish); Palestinians, reduced to 150,000 within Israel, face further displacement as refugees.
July 25, 1947 – Sergeants Affair: Irgun kidnaps and hangs two British sergeants in retaliation for death sentences on its members, booby-trapping their bodies. This terror act pressures Britain to exit. Settlers solidify control; Palestinians suffer escalating violence as Zionist goals near fruition.
June 5–10, 1967 – Six-Day War: Israel launches a preemptive strike on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, occupying the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Settlers expand into these territories (e.g., Kfar Etzion reestablished in 1967); Palestinians (around 1 million in occupied areas) endure military rule and land seizures, with 280,000–360,000 more displaced.
1987–1993 – First Intifada: Palestinians in occupied territories revolt against Israeli rule, met with settler violence and IDF repression (160 Israelis, 2,162 Palestinians killed). Settlers, now numbering over 100,000 in the West Bank, attack Palestinian communities, often with impunity. This period highlights ongoing settler-Palestinian conflict.
September 28, 2000–2005 – Second Intifada: A more violent uprising sees 1,000 Israelis and 4,000 Palestinians killed. Settler extremists and IDF target Palestinian civilians; settlers (over 200,000 in West Bank) expand outposts, intensifying land theft. Palestinians resist occupation, facing collective punishment.
The Zionists did not hide their Holocaust and they never abandoned their national roots in terror either. The Irgun and other settler militias (terrorist organizations) were integrated into the new Israeli government and never held accountable. Anywhere else in the world Americans would be funding the “freedom fighters” trying to fight off the invasion and later the yoke of occupation and oppression—but, in this case, AIPAC spends millions upon millions every year to buy the support (or just the silence) of US politicians.
The American public is propagandized and Evangelicals shoveled under a pile of what amounts to theological manure to remain blinded to one side of the atrocities being committed. If your answer to any question of what the IDF does to Palestinians is “but Hamas” then you are anti-Christ. Jesus did not teach an eye for an eye, certainly not ten of their eyes plus the lives of their children, and instead taught to turn the other cheek and love our enemies. If you condone (let alone celebrate) the calculated murder of children then you have entirely destroyed your own Christian witness.
There is no morality when morality changes depending on who is doing it. If it is wrong for Hamas fighters to escape their open air prison (equivalent to concentration camps or Warsaw ghetto) to take Israeli hostages to barter for the return of their own, then it is most certainly wrong for the IDF to bomb knowing they will likely kill up to 15 civilians for one Hamas fighter. And do not feed me this “they hide behind women and children” bullshit excuse. Zionism hides behind the Holocaust rather than own up to the long list of atrocities committed in the name of a Jewish homeland.
The first Holocaust doesn’t justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza or current massacre with spectators. The IDF is not at war, in war you don’t have boat tours or field trips to watch—they are bombing fish in a barrel and then playing victim.
This clever framing of perpetual victimhood, even while they are doing worse than those they call terrorists, may work for those who are indoctrinated into Zionism or ignorant—buy it does not work for a consistent moral standard.
It is a “rules for thee, not for me” scenario where anything Israel does is blessed and anything the Palestinians do is a terrible act of terrorism. Zionists can steal land, kill or rape the rightful owners, but then be upset when the Palestinians finally caught on and started copying their terrorism. I mean, if it worked for Irgun—why not Hamas?
No More Holocaust In OUR Name!
A favorite tactic of apologists for Zionism is to deflect from current IDF atrocities to ask why equal time isn’t spent condemning the other side. But we are not funding Hamas, we are not providing them with military aid, and I am not making a mockery of my faith by claiming that God gives those who deny his son special exemption to kill for land. If God is on their side then they don’t my tax dollars to fight their fight. America-first only works when you end foreign entanglements and make no exceptions. We don’t need to invade Israel to stop them, we simply need to stop feeding their war machine. I’m not responsible for Hamas—but my money is going to continue a genocide and therefore I will make my stance clear: No more baby murder in my name!
When Aaron Bushnell stood before the Israeli Embassy on February 25, 2024, and set himself ablaze, he didn’t just die—he screamed a truth too many ignore: “I will no longer be complicit in genocide.” His final words echo the resignations of principled State Department officials like Josh Paul, who quit back in October 2023, declaring, “I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions… that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust.” Or Annelle Sheline, who left in March 2024, unable to serve under the Biden administration “that enables the atrocities in Gaza.” These true Americans—soldiers, diplomats—saw the blood on our hands and courageously they chose conscience over career.
They saw what American Zionists choose to ignore. The footage emerged of a 10-year-old, Ahmed, burned alive in December 2024 when an IDF airstrike hit a tent camp in Deir al-Balah. His screams, captured on a bystander’s phone, cut through the lies and propaganda: a boy, not a fighter, reduced to ash as the settlers watched from the gallery eager to personally gain from the slaughter of babies. You can’t be pro-life and be okay with this. You can’t represent Christ while being an apologist for murder.
We’re not funding Hamas. We’re bankrolling a machine that burns children alive, rapes boys (old as my son) in detention, and calls this defense.
Bushnell saw it.
Paul saw it.
Sheline saw it.
They acted.
Will we?
Or will we keep decorating the graves of the righteous, and pretend that our silence isn’t complicity?
I posted pictures because we must stop this—in the name of Jesus it must stop!
I have lost all of my heroes. The expression, “Never meet your heroes, because they’re sure to disappoint you,” describes the painful realization that those great people you imagined are not as special as you believed they were. It could be the letdown a friend had when he heard Matt Walsh speak. It could be a family that learned their eldest brother was cheating on his wife for many years and was not some image of virtue. For me it was a process and a very long grinding away of faith in these figures.
I was never one for human idols. I never put posters of celebrity faces on my bedroom wall and would never be as impressed with figures like Ravi Zacharias as some of my friends. It wasn’t a religious thing nor something just to be ornery. I simply didn’t have a feeling of awe about these personalities that were mid. The people I most admired tended to be local—my blue collar dad, my missionary cousin, or that perfect girl I would marry some day. But time has removed all from the pedestals.
Those women of my youth would end up as the cheating wife or more interested in status than my sincerity. My dad no longer looks like that man I remember who could carry me on his shoulders (with me hanging on for death life) up a silo ladder, and that zealousness of the ‘compassionate’ types tends to morph into a noxious ideological alignment that is really anything but they profess. They say that they want the Kingdom, but have replaced faith in God with fraudulent human institutions.
And I’m not just talking about the apologists for CAM in the wake of the Jeriah Mast and years of coverup aftermath. “Oh, but this is an organization that does such good!” What I’m talking about is something fully revealed since the DOGE ax has fallen on USAID. I grew up believing in the strict separation of church and state—that a colonial expansion of Christianity was tainted and this at completely odds with the teachings of Jesus about His kingdom not being of this world.
My views have certainly evolved—having left my religious cloister—but I’m still appalled by the thoughtlessness of people who I had once thought were smart and uncompromised.
Banality of Evil: When Ends Justify the Means
The Anabaptists, after the disaster of Münster, had committed to a quiet life of separation. It is why those in Old Order groups have refused participation in Social Security and other kinds of government benefits. Mutual aid should be voluntary and Christian charity is not obtained through coercion. Sure, the power of the state is alluring, that temptation (driven by our ego) to rule over others because we know what is best or they are undeserving of the resources they have—I have had many of those “if I were king” moments—but there is no stopping point when you fail to resist the siren song.
Left-wing politics always clothe themselves in a kind of compassion. Surely you will not oppose helping these children, right? And I am pragmatic to the extent I’m glad starving children are fed by any means. But opening the Pandora’s box of leftist means is always a slippery-slope to more use of state power and, inevitably, to leftist utopian cost-benefit analysis where everyone who opposes us is a literal Nazi and, therefore, we’re justified to stop them with violence. When coercion is allowed as a means of obtaining the ends we desire there is no stopping point.
The worst form of evil has good intentions. It is that of those who imagine themselves as the hero of their own narrative and thus allowed to bend the rules. This explains the extreme narcissism of Luigi Mangione who saw himself as a worthy judge of a father of two and a husband to a practicing physical therapist. There was no need for this leftist murderer to look inward, he had completely externalized evil and turned other men into caricature representatives of truly complex multi-faceted problems. When the ends can justify the means we’ll justify any means.
Pastor Jim Jones preaches his counterfeit Gospel before being abandoned by the US government and having to free his cult from bondage with some poison laced Kool-aid.
Seeing someone I thought was a Christian missionary lament how the United States had “abandoned” them was a reminder of how the great have fallen. There was not a shred of gratitude expressed towards the American taxpayers who financed them nor acknowledgement of the misappropriation of funds that has wearied voters to foreign aid. But more stunning to me was unholy alliance between this person of faith and agencies of US imperialism. Since when has the love of Jesus become an extension of the US regime abroad? Are they of the kingdom, as they proclaim, or agents of empire?
USAID, despite the name, is certainly not a charitable organization and was formed in 1961, at the height of the Cold War, with an aim of promoting the interests of the US political regime. That’s fine. But it has long ago gone off the rails even as far as what it was originally imagined. The Soviet Union had fallen and the Federal agency created to oppose it morphed from something most would support into a beacon of wokeness—pushing transgenderism and abortion.
Break the Yoke of Fraudulence
The reason why USAID is being dismantled is because we can’t sort the legitimate from illegitimate function of the agency. Sure, it may help people in need, but funding it also is enabling of evil and maintained through a system of coercion we call taxes. Anything good that it did can be done through other means. This functional fixedness of those who depend of government, especially on the part of those professing Christ, makes me wonder where their faith lies and what their actual mission is.
The merger of a Christian charitable cause with government doesn’t purify government—it taints the witness:
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” (2 Corinthians 6:14-17 NIV)
The accusations of “Christian nationalism” against those who want a government that performs basic functions were always just a smear by those in alliance with imperialism and Godless globalism. While I’m not a fan of God and country, at least the flag waving religious patriot knows there is a difference between their Christian mission and secular state. The left, by contrast, confuses these categories and would have social program replace true charity and community aid. In one case you have those who may tend to overreverence nation, but in the other there are those who truly represent empire and yet tell us they their only citizenship is the kingdom of heaven.
The truth is that the ‘Christian’ left is simply the left merely wearing the words of Christ as a disguise for ideological agenda. Those decrying the reduction of empire and return to responsible governance never said thank you to those funding their do-gooderism. It was, for them, all about holding those “chief seats in the synagogue” and their own glory as humanitarians. They may speak against Trump, but then have never uttered a word against the waste, fraud and abuse that has made these broad sweeping cuts popular with common people.
The true Christian spirit is that of a Federal employee who told me about the enormous amount of inefficiency and waste in his own agency and—while making no profession of faith—supports the effort of DOGE knowing it may impact his employment. That, to me, is someone who understands self-sacrifial love more than someone feeding the poor on another person’s dime and then going to social media to complain when their funds are cut. They’re grandstanding. While my Federal employee friend is a truly humble public servant who is grateful and not biting the hand that feeds him.
None of this to say this “abandoned” former hero of mine is a bad person. They clearly are using their abilities to help other people in desperate need. I applaud that. And yet their public statement betrays. There is an attitude or spirit there that is different from Christ. I would much rather they just be a secular humanist—subscribed to partisan leftist politics—and own it. They should just admit that they’ve abandoned faith in Jesus and are looking for a worldly system. Judas Iscariot is the patron saint of faithless social justice, guilt trips and envy—when you betray your calling just own it.
We cling to morality like it’s a lighthouse in the fog—steady, universal, guiding us home. But it’s a lie. It’s a battered flag, flapping in whatever wind our tribe’s blowing, stitched from the yarns we’re spun by family, faith, or flag. Raised Mennonite, I drank in peace and love for the outsider as if they were carved in my bones—until I saw they weren’t. Nature doesn’t whisper “thou shalt not kill”; it shrugs while we slit throats or swipe bread when the need hits. History’s littered with it: Biblical Israel butchered Canaanites—whole towns, babies dashed on rocks—‘cause God handed them the deed (Deuteronomy 7:1-2), and the faithful sang psalms over the ashes.
Fast-forward to 2025: Israel pounds Gaza, kids buried in rubble, and the justification’s “security”—Hamas tunnels, rockets, survival. Insiders nod; it’s moral, necessary. Morality’s no fixed star—it’s a mirror, reflecting who we’re with and what we want.Look around today, and it’s the same mess. Russia rolls tanks into Ukraine, March 2025 still grinding on, flattening Mariupol redux—schools, hospitals, grandmas in the crosshairs. Putin’s line: “denazification,” protecting Russian speakers, historical destiny. His people buy it, or enough do—state TV’s been marinating them in it for years. The West screams “war crimes!”—sanctions pile up, Zelensky’s a saint on X—but that’s the outsider’s perch. Kyiv’s got its own blood on the slate: shelling Donbas for a decade, shrugging at Russian-speaking dead. Both sides sanctify their kills; morality bends to the banner. Or take the U.S.: Trump loyalists storm Capitol Hill in ‘21, “stolen election!” on their lips, while Biden’s crew locks ‘em up, crowing “democracy!” Same act—violence for a cause—flips from treason to justice depending on the lens. It’s not universal; it’s us-versus-them, conditioned to the core.
Look around today, and it’s the same mess. Russia rolls tanks into Ukraine, March 2025 still grinding on, flattening Mariupol redux—schools, hospitals, grandmas in the crosshairs. Putin’s line: “denazification,” protecting Russian speakers, historical destiny. His people buy it, or enough do—state TV’s been marinating them in it for years. The West screams “war crimes!”—sanctions pile up, Zelensky’s a saint on X—but that’s the outsider’s perch. Kyiv’s got its own blood on the slate: shelling Donbas for a decade, shrugging at Russian-speaking dead. Both sides sanctify their kills; morality bends to the banner. Or take the U.S.: Trump loyalists storm Capitol Hill in ‘21, “stolen election!” on their lips, while Biden’s crew locks ‘em up, crowing “democracy!” Same act—violence for a cause—flips from treason to justice depending on the lens. It’s not universal; it’s us-versus-them, conditioned to the core.
Objections bubble up like clockwork. The optimists—call ‘em Pinker’s crowd (2011)—say genocide’s revulsion proves we’ve got a moral spine, empathy baked in from caveman days. Hunter-gatherers shared meat, Confucius preached kindness—see, we’re wired for good! But that’s a half-truth, and a flimsy one. Those old tribes cared for their own; strangers got the club. Same with today’s wars: Ukraine’s defenders weep for Bucha’s mass graves but gloss over their own artillery sins. Israel’s critics howl at Gaza’s death toll—over 40,000 by late 2024, per UN counts—yet Hamas rockets barely dent their outrage. Why? Fundamental attribution error: outsiders slap “evil” on the doer—Russia’s a monster, Israel’s a bully—while ignoring the stew they’re boiling in: encirclement fears, decades of tit-for-tat bombs. Insiders don’t see villainy; they see survival, righteousness, their conditioning kicking in. Evolution’s no saint—it’ll cheer cooperation or carnage, whichever keeps the clan breathing.
Objections bubble up like clockwork. The optimists—call ‘em Pinker’s crowd (2011)—say genocide’s revulsion proves we’ve got a moral spine, empathy baked in from caveman days. Hunter-gatherers shared meat, Confucius preached kindness—see, we’re wired for good! But that’s a half-truth, and a flimsy one. Those old tribes cared for their own; strangers got the club. Same with today’s wars: Ukraine’s defenders weep for Bucha’s mass graves but gloss over their own artillery sins. Israel’s critics howl at Gaza’s death toll—over 40,000 by late 2024, per UN counts—yet Hamas rockets barely dent their outrage. Why? Fundamental attribution error: outsiders slap “evil” on the doer—Russia’s a monster, Israel’s a bully—while ignoring the stew they’re boiling in: encirclement fears, decades of tit-for-tat bombs. Insiders don’t see villainy; they see survival, righteousness, their conditioning kicking in. Evolution’s no saint—it’ll cheer cooperation or carnage, whichever keeps the clan breathing.
Zoom out, and the pattern’s stark. Morality’s a tool, not a truth—always has been. Libertarians’ll shoot to guard their patch, Marxists’ll guillotine for the proletariat, U.S. elites’ll drone-strike weddings to keep oil flowing—all cloaked in principle, all serving their pack. Russia’s “special operation” is Ukraine’s genocide; Israel’s “self-defense” is Palestine’s ethnic cleansing. The outsider’s gasp—those viral X posts of Kyiv’s ruins or Rafah’s craters—ain’t proof of a moral bedrock; it’s just a rival script, misreading situation as sin. We’re not debating ethics to polish some eternal gem; we’re wrestling over whose story rules. Take the Houthi strikes in Yemen, 2025 heating up: U.S. bombs “terrorists,” Saudis cheer, while aid workers tally starved kids—same act, split morals. Conditioning calls the shots.
The rebuttal’s got one last kick: if morality’s so fluid, why bother refining it? They say it’s progress, not just haggling—reason taming our beastly side. But that’s wishful polish on a cracked hull. Ukraine’s Zelensky begs for NATO jets, Israel’s Netanyahu quotes scripture for settlers, Trumpers and progressives sling “fascist” like mud—reason’s just a megaphone for the tribe. Authenticity’s the only anchor: own the bias, ditch the sanctimonious dance. Russia’s generals don’t lose sleep over Bucha; Israel’s brass don’t flinch at Gaza’s toll—they’ve got their why, and it’s enough. Outsiders clutch pearls—#WarCrimes trending—because they’re not in the fight. Morality’s a fluid mess, shifting with the players, not a lighthouse. Stop pretending it’s more.
Stepping back from the fray—whether it’s Putin’s moves in Ukraine or Hamas’s salvos from Gaza—offers an authenticity that sidesteps the knee-jerk noise and stares down our own fundamental attribution error. Take Putin: some tag him as a ruthless tyrant, others see a strategist pushing back—NATO’s ring of bases and war games from Poland to the Baltics isn’t exactly a welcome mat, but Russia’s leveling cities isn’t a handshake either. Hamas gets the same split: outsiders call them terrorists, yet in Gaza—two million penned in, scrappy and stubborn—they’re fighting a chokehold, though rockets don’t win halos. My Mennonite roots nudge me to judge NATO’s chest-thumping ‘values’ or Hamas’s bloodshed, but I’ve got my own baggage—my folks kept the world at arm’s length too, just with hymns, not guns. Seeing that, owning how my lens twists the view, points a pragmatic way forward: not crowning heroes or villains, but cutting through the sanctimony—NATO’s not spotless, Gazans aren’t pawns, and I’m no referee, just a guy sorting his own slant in the mess.
I’ve frequently been appalled and dismayed by the things I see coming from my former religious peers. It is very well-meaning, but so horribly misguided. And recently I saw a post like that, and imagined an incredulous Jesus: “You are Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?”
*sigh*
What I’m talking about is the intellectuals of the conservative Mennonite cloister, those who teach the Gospel of Niceness and side with Judas and Social Justice who confuse Jesus with a political figure who is seeking to install a Marxist regime. They ride on the leftist bandwagon, believing it makes them countercultural—when they’re simply going along with the powerful elites of our time. Hypocritical elites who have mandates for us and exceptions for themselves.
The offending post was one of such glaring false equivalency that I can hardly fathom a thinking person would come up with it. The misleading commentary is that Elon Musk resharing a meme in support of his efforts to remove waste, fraud, and abuse from the government is the same as Hillary Clinton applying a nasty label to those who dared to vote against her. This is the statement:
Clinton called millions of ordinary Americans a “basket of deplorables.”
Musk called millions of ordinary Americans “the Parasite Class.”
When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)
First of all, the first part is true, Clinton did indeed call ordinary Americans a “basket of deplorables” saying that half of those who were voting against her were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.” It is to say that over thirty-one million people who got tired of the glib “We came, we saw, he died” imperial-lib establishment that she represents are just horrible people.
Not only is she punching down, attacking a bunch of ordinary people for voting against her, but the reason she is demonizing then is to terrify vulnerable people. It is a cynical divide and conquer strategy, purely for sake of securing political power for herself, and part of a campaign to turn Trump’s simple effective “Make America Great Again” into something divisive and scary rather than an inclusive unifying message.
Elon Musk, by contrast, merely reshared a post. He did not say half of the Democrat party support is parasites. What he did say is “90% of America loves @DOGE.” In other words, he is speaking for the crowd rather than against it. Furthermore, the meme is not about legitimate social programs and those who benefit. Nobody in the Trump administration is calling for slashing the rightful entitlements of Social Security or Medicare and Medicaid.
Name calling! Accusing elites of exploitation! Jesus would never do that, right?
What DOGE has taken aim at is the totally ridiculous and absurd, obviously fraudulent use of public funds, which 90% of America (if properly informed) supports. The ‘crowd’ would be fully on Musk’s side if they weren’t being lied to or blinded by partisan bias. It is compassion for those truly “harassed and helpless” that is drives the effort to increase government efficiency—and the social elites who willfully take advantage of taxpayers should be called out.
To those doing apologetics for waste, fraud and abuse, who are pushing this dishonesty take and misrepresentation: I would find it so much more tolerable if it was a forthright endorsement of sending money for far-left causes. Just come out with it and say that you want money funnelled through USAID to pay for global promotion of transgenderism and pro-imperialist propaganda—you want this, be honest.
Compassion for the Brood of Vipers?
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:33 NIV)
Jesus had compassion for the crowds, but he spoke very condemningly of social elites who used their positions of influence to put heavy burdens on the shoulders of others—while not offering a finger to help.
Jesus pretty much describes the telescopic philanthropy, the virtue-signaling and pearl-clutching of modern social justice.
Jesus did not show compassion for these moralizing frauds.
Nice Jesus is upset about mean Tweets calling out social elites. Real Jesus was killed because he wouldn’t stop insulting the people who thought they were above the ‘deplorable’ unwashed crowds. Nice Jesus only would affirm and accepts everyone without ever requiring a change. Real Jesus once compelled a tax collector (and cheat) to give back his ill-gotten gains—he greeted the promise of restoration by pronouncing salvation had come to this house.
If Jesus walked the streets of Manhattan today he would be accused of being very meanspirited, labeled as hateful, and likely cancelled by the woke elites. They would whip up the crowd by taking things he said out of context, by calling him a homophobe, sexist or racist. After all, he used the word “dog” to describe a foreign woman. That is what the critics of Jesus did, he called them out and they false accused him. He would most certainly be diagnosed as being a cult leader and narcissist for his claims.
Not saying a pair of trolling billionaires are the same as Jesus. But they certainly do take after the character of that man who was overturning the tables of the money changers and chasing out of the temple. Lest we forget, the money changers were those who took advantage of the poor who were obligated to pay the tax. This money was supposed to go to the upkeep of the temple and yet teams of grifters, offering a service, were being parasites:
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Matthew 21:12-13 NIV)
The Gospels contain differing accounts of this event, some scholars believe it may be about two separate times when Jesus went charging in on a little ‘insurrection’ rampage, but interestingly his explanation of authority to do this cleansing was later misconstrued and used at his trial.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The corporate media has taken fabricated tales and normal diplomacy with a foreign power—and they spun it into an incredible “Russian collusion” narrative. Trump talked about the “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville statue controversy, and he took great pains to qualify his statement—by very specifically condemning the white nationalists and Nazis in the crowd. But it didn’t stop the media from running the story “Trump Calls Nazis ‘Fine People'” and Joe Biden, along with many other Democrat partisans, have continued to repeat this lie.
Where Trump, and MAGA, clearly delineate between legal and illegal immigration, their detractors muddy the waters. The left takes Trump’s desire to keep America safe from the flow of Fentanyl and of unvetted foreign nationals and twists it into xenophobia and a threat to legal immigration. It is deliberate deception. The far-left wants to keep brown and black people terrified that’s how they’ve always won—by fear-mongering the crowd, they deceive the sheep and, when that does not work, they will imprison or assassinate their opponents.
Remember ‘kindness is everything’ my leftist friends, right?
Evil doesn’t like to have a light shown on it and when you see all of the screeching in response to DOGE taking a look behind the walls of bureaucracy you do really start to wonder why. Why are they treating Musk as if he’s just some Nigerian scammer trying to get our information? Is it because he’s from Africa? It is totally ridiculous. Lawmakers circle the wagons and tell us we have no right to know how our money is spent! It’s time to drive out those who have used us to enrich themselves.
There is always a spy versus spy aspect to this where accusation is met with a recrimination. Both Jesus and those elites questioning his authority claimed that their counterpart was demon possessed or of the Devil. It would require some wisdom and discernment to know which of the two sides to believe. But the religious frauds of our day still side with the elites against the crowd. They defend the status quo and the corrupted established system. It is always the beneficiaries of fraud that fight against the reform.
As I ponder my responsibilities, bringing a daughter into this world, my patriarchal protection is a given.
The West has been so successful at privileging women that many women do not comprehend the risks of true equal treatment. Feminism is only possible as a part of the patriarchal duty that men feel to protect women. What it amounts to is using male power to enforce standards that are friendly to women, that allow them to walk freely in the street in all manner of dress (or undress), and ignore the reality of what has existed outside the walls of patriarchalism.
Even the idea that sexual assault is a bad thing is an extension of patriarchalism where natural desire must be restrained by structures created by men. A buck in the rut doesn’t ask permission. Hormones direct it’s behavior and only the bigger male can ward off the advances it will make on a doe. It is a hierarchy that is built only on strength. Moral conscience is built off the idea that there’s a big man up there who cares about property rights; who says that a body belongs to someone and is therefore not ours for the taking simply because we desire it.
Yes, eventually this evolved into an idea of everyone owning themselves that we now assume is simply the universal truth. However, nothing in the animal kingdom suggests this is the case. The real world is often a brutal and unforgiving place. When a new group of male lions takes over a pride they will kill the cubs of the previous males. And human morality developed in a very similar manner. This was the default, whether the Psalmist’s fantasy about bashing the heads of an enemy’s infants against rocks or the book of Deuteronomy giving some rules for the treatment of war brides:
When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God hands them over to you and you take some of them prisoner, and if you see a beautiful woman among the captives, desire her, and want to take her as your wife, you are to bring her into your house. She is to shave her head, trim her nails, remove the clothes she was wearing when she was taken prisoner, live in your house, and mourn for her father and mother a full month. After that, you may have sexual relations with her and be her husband, and she will be your wife. Then if you are not satisfied with her, you are to let her go where she wants, but you must not sell her or treat her as merchandise, because you have humiliated her.
Deuteronomy 21:10-14
To our modern ears, this is horrendous. There is no asking for permission. And, other than saying to wait a month, the men were free to rape their captive females. But the reality is that this was a radical step in the direction of protecting women from physical violation. One hopes that this delay would’ve ensured a more compassionate and gentle approach rather than some blood-soaked orgy during the heat of battle and immediately after her male relatives were slaughtered. As grotesque as this seems, it was better for her to belong to one man (with some rights after he rejects her) than to be passed around as a mere sex object in the manner of a Japanese comfort woman:
CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) A Japanese soldier got his bayonet and started peeling my father’s skin while saying, tell us the truth – your child is part of the guerrillas with the owners of that empty house.
MCCARTHY: As Claveria pleaded to let her father go, a soldier wrenched her arm. Birdlike, petite, Claveria strokes a badly set bone as she picks up the story of how she followed her mother’s screams up the stairs.
CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I saw my mother lying down with her skirt up, and there was a Japanese soldier on top of her. I ran. My two youngest siblings took little sticks and started hitting the soldiers. The Japanese soldiers then snatched away the sticks and bayoneted both of them.
MCCARTHY: They died. Claveria believes her parents were killed when the village was torched. Japanese soldiers hauled away two older sisters to a garrison and took Claveria to an infirmary for her injured arm. She does not recall how long she was there recovering, but she remembers a soldier named Terasaki. One day, he told Claveria she smelled, but she refused to take a bath, saying she had no change of clothes. Ordering her to wash, she says he gave her a uniform to put on.
CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I was to be taken to the garrison where my two sisters were. Before we reached the garrison, he raped me. I thought that I was going to die because I was in so much pain.
MCCARTHY: Terasaki would be the first of many Japanese soldiers to sexually assault Claveria, who was not even a teenager at the time. She was 12. She said her sister Meteria had been driven half mad by the trauma she’d experienced at the garrison. Claveria was shocked when she caught sight of her there.
CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) She was burned with cigarette butts and boiled sweet potatoes. When one soldier after the next raped her, she put up a fight, but my sister was not brave. She refused because she was in so much agony from all the abuse.
MCCARTHY: Claveria believes her other kidnapped sister was moved to a different garrison. She was never seen again. Historians have estimated that at least 200,000 women were forced into sexual servitude during World War II, mostly in areas occupied by Japan, prominently Korea. The women were euphemistically called comfort women, and the organized system of comfort stations to supply soldiers sexual gratification ran from Seoul to Singapore. Writer Evelina Galang has documented women captured in the Philippines.
EVELINA GALANG: And these are women as young as 16 years old – really, some of them 8, 10 years old. In the Philippines, historians estimate that there were probably about a thousand women and girls taken and put into military sex slave camps.
Men can be monsters. Worse than animals. And, in many parts of the world, immodest dress is taken to be a sign she wants it. Morality does not hold back the aggression of the rapist. No, rather it is the role of other men to restrain evil. Women are protected by their fathers, by their husbands, and by institutions that represent these men. Political structures were created by men and are defended by men. Yes, even if women were granted the right to participate. E.g. even if Kamala Harris takes the patriarchal role—she is still acting in a patriarchal manner and will need the strength of men to impose her will.
There will not be a feminist left in Europe if Islamists take over. That is not to bash Islam or say they would kill off all women who did not submit. No, it is to say that feminism cannot exist outside of the Christian West. The notion of individual rights, that people can independently make their own decisions, cannot exist only on paper or it is impotent. It requires men willing to sacrifice themselves to preserve this egalitarian ideal for their wives and children. Self-sacrificial love is not natural nor a priority in every religious patriarchal structure. Feminists cannot exist in Islam because only the respect of patriarchal institutions gives them power.
The alternative to the current patriarchy is not the absence of patriarchy, men (or those who act like men) will always rule, but the real choice is what manner of rule we wish to live under. It really is survival of the fittest outside of the walls of civilization. Chants of “down with the patriarchy” are about as meaningless as shaking your fist at the wind. It misunderstands the world. It assumes that nature will simply obey our voice because we’re angry and believe rights can exist outside of the structures that guaranteed them for us. It is only in the absence of rule by men who care about more than their own sexual gratification that the value of this benevolent form of patriarchy is known.
Social media provocateurs love to push popular controversies to generate clicks on their sites and get those heated comments sections. The question about the gender of two boxers in the female category of the competition was that perfect story. It was not straight up or settled, but generated a lot of strong opinions on both sides.
For myself, it is fairly evident that these two boxers do have a competitive advantage or they would not have won in their respective divisions. I mean, that’s not even a matter of dispute. An advantage is how anyone wins an athletic contest and it doesn’t mean they cheated. However, when not only one but two people with the same extremely rare and potentially enhanced condition—both get the gold? What are the odds?
Only one out of 500,000 people in the world go to the Olympics. But, of course, nothing is ever that simple. Those who live in small countries, like Algeria or Taiwan, have a far greater chance of representing their home countries simply because there are fewer people to fill the same spots. And then not everyone in the world is competing to be in the Olympics. Most of us don’t try out. It is sort of like my being sixth while wrestling in the Eastern National AAUs—many superior to me simply didn’t make the trip.
But to go to Paris and beat everyone? There is a reason why we give precious medals to those who do. It is one thing to be that PhD who identified as a breakdancer and ended up scoring zero, it is quite another to get on the podium. There were 124 boxers in the female category, divided into six different weight classes, and went through three qualification tournaments. This is certainly not an easy road. The champion is one out of every woman in the world who can make that weight and is into boxing.
There is speculation that those two boxers who had been disqualified from IBA fights due to failed gender tests—and masculine appearance—is they may have a disorder called Swyer syndrome. This isn’t a fact, but it would explain why they would have been declared women at birth and always identified as women. Those with this very rare condition have a male Y chromosome despite their female sexual hardware and offer no male advantage.
However, it is also possible that the two have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which impacts 2-5 out of 100,000 females, which means they would have characteristics of a female outwardly but also have male testes that are undescended. Severe AIS wouldn’t confer an athletic advantage, according to the sources I’ve read, and yet that does not tell us anything about milder cases.
Some press reports have mentioned 5alpha-reductase type 2 deficiency. This rare syndrome is best reported in the Güevedoces in the Dominican Republic. Affected XY individuals are apparently female at birth because they can’t activate sufficient testosterone to the much more potent dihydrotestosterone to masculine in utero and thus appear female (the default gender in the absence of masculinising hormones). However, they have testes in what appear to be labia. At puberty, the testes produce much more testosterone sufficient to activate receptors and masculinise the child. Such subtleties are beyond the capacity of most regulatory bodies to accommodate.
The chances of two women with these rare chromosomal disorders somehow making it to the Olympics would be incredibly low. For example, Swyer Syndrome is around 1 in 80,000 births. So multiply those odds by the chances of getting to the Olympics and then take that times two. The number is incredibly large. There is a far greater chance of being struck by lightning. If the XY chromosome is present in these two—along with higher testosterone levels—the fact they dominated the field, given what coaches have said, should be considered proof of a potential unfair advantage.
Sources Please Vs. What We See
Much of the smirking response of mid-wit “sources please” types—who simply went along with the ‘official’ International Olympic Committee (IOC) narrative—comes down to many of the slightly dimwitted “I see what I see” types misidentification of the issue as being about transgenderism. When the real issue is whether or not these athletes have intersex characteristics and thus an unfair advantage in female competition.
Yes, the right is too reactionary. However, not without cause, they know too well how the NCAA and corporate media denied that Lia Thomas had an unfair advantage as one born a man and still having a penis as well as the rest of a man’s hardware. And they correctly see that these two Olympic boxing competitors have a masculine appearance. They had incorrectly assumed that this was just another case of a man cheating his way to the top by pretending to be a woman.
However, that misunderstanding of some is being used as a strawman of the real issue, the real argument is source versus source. Specifically, the fact that these two athletes were disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for having male XY chromosomes. These laboratory tests took place in Turkey and India So, despite the attempts, by bigots, to smear the IBA as being corrupt for ties to Russia. But the reality is that no organization is totally without political ties and there’s a reason why the IOC has never banned the US for our military aggression around the world.
So it really comes down to who we want to believe. The IOC rests its entire claim of gender, on legal documents, passports, and birth certificates, provided by the country of origin, and says this gender assignment makes the boxers women. By contrast, the IBA cites biological science and test results and tells us these two ‘women’ have XY chromosomes. Right off the bat, the criteria of the IBA are science and laboratories whereas the IOC is relying on political entities. Should we follow the science or believe those appealing to non-scientific evidence?
At this point, the mid-wits completely lose the plot and rely on their confirmation bias rather than logical deduction. They’ll simply refuse to acknowledge the obvious, that the official IOC criteria to determine eligibility is entirely inadequate for solving this riddle; that the IBA at least has what appears to be scientific evidence, and thus this is a question to be answered in the lab rather than the court of public opinion—so they double down on their insults trying to deflect from the real issue.
But, in the end, this isn’t about science, what we see, statistics, or sources. No, it is about partisan politics that blind many somewhat intelligent adults to what even a child could see. It exposes those “sources please” mid-wits as just another level of ignorance. And social conservatives could help themselves a whole lot by not jumping the gun and not oversimplifying complex issues. Both sides are guilty of false dichotomies and believing misinformation. Lastly, those who are suggesting that I-man Khelif is representative of Algerian femininity are guilty of the bigotry of low expectations.
As someone who prefers getting news from non-Western sources, I occasionally read Al Jazeera for some perspective, and that is how I came across an article, “Imane Khelif and Western delusions of white innocence” and had to hit back. For the remainder of this blog, I will identify as a minority woman to obtain maximum victim points, and so I don’t need to pull my punches.
Editorials are often wild swings, some are so off-balance and contrived that they invite a counterpunch. I had no idea who Ruby Hamad was. But her profile reveals a Syrian-Lebanese woman obsessed with ‘white’ European women and how they are loved more than her. She has made her name through her racist and misogynistic attacks on ‘white’ feminists. It’s a little bit weird given how white she is. But hatred is not always rational—she only has a platform because she helps ‘woke’ white leftists with their self-loathing.
In response to the recent outcry, about the two Olympic boxers who had previously failed their gender eligibility test, Hamad politicizes. She rides on her favorite hobby horse—that being ‘white’ women—and she tries to reframe the discussion as being about the protection of ‘white’ women rather than a matter of maintaining integrity and fairness in the competition.
Now typically I’m sympathetic to those trying to break free of US hegemony and who are tired of their national stability and desire to self-govern being constantly undermined by US-led Western powers. European colonizers are responsible for the current disorder in many parts of the world. And, I also believe the Palestinian voice should be heard and that their innocent population should be protected by international law like any other occupied nation, and the killing of children and non-combatants in Gaza is horrendous.
Victims aren’t just Israeli — nor are ‘people of color’ the only ones who suffer injustice.
However, Hamad does exactly what those on the Zionist side do to Palestinians—with a broad swipe she tries to make all people in a place share guilt for what governments have done. In essence, she has exactly the same attitude as Israeli spokespeople who claim that all in Gaza share in the blame for the Hamas incursion and—outraged that we care that Palestinian babies die—then turn the attention back to the suffering of their own people on October 7th.
It is a whataboutism. A deflection. And doesn’t deal with the actual issue.
This does highlight one aspect of the controversy, that being the solidarity with the two athletes centers on racial or religious identity rather than their gender. Those who most vehemently deny the complexity of the gender question are Arabs (or Taiwanese, in the case of Lin Yu-ting), which suggests their political partisanship and that the racial motivation is a projection that is entirely their own Hamad believes that it must be about white women because this is how she thinks. But it is really about how gender is defined to keep competition fair.
I guess Istanbul is now white?
Hamad flails in her attack. She makes the row about the Italian boxer crying—which totally reinvents the chronology and ignores the reality of where it all started. People had already been talking about the disqualifications of Khelif and Yu-ting, by the International Boxing Association because of failed gender tests. It had nothing to do with how they looked, where they came from, or the race of the women pounded by them. It is, rather, everything to do with alleged XY chromosomes and higher testosterone levels, and fairness to female athletes.
Guess which one is a woman of color?
But the truth does not need to line up with her narrative. An Italian woman, who has a darker complexion than Haman, is now made into the token example of “white woman tears” for being upset after a disappointing loss to a physically superior opponent. Imagine that, someone who put an enormous amount of time into their sport, then forced to quit the fight after 46 seconds due to the strength of the blows that were landing, having very strong emotions…
Scandalous whiteness!
Had silly Hamad spent 46 seconds thinking instead of trying to force the evidence to fit her own toxic ideology, you would have missed this rhetorical beat-down.
The biggest irony of this all is that Hamad is in complete alignment with the old imperial left—who, by far, are the most meddlesome of the political elements of the West both in the world and domestically with a constant barrage of moralizing emotive nonsense. Like concern over ‘misgendering’ a trans ‘man’ who is competing as a woman and is born a woman at the same time they tell us we can’t question the gender on birth certificates or passports.
The self-loathing face of white privilege.
It is truly only the privileged people who have the time to virtue signal and stir up division between people, the rest of us need to work and provide for our families—hoping these lunatics don’t start another war.
What makes this personal is I have a good friend who is Algerian and is one of the most beautifully feminine women I’ve ever met. Had she not been a devout Muslim (who, unlike Khelif, wore the traditional dress which always included a Hajab) there may have been been good chance of a romantic relationship between us. So this notion that European femininity is somehow different or more vulnerable is plain ridiculous. Khelif is no more representative of Algerian or Arab femininity than I am Britney Spears.
Stunning and brave!
Ultimately this is all political. Hamad does not care about boxing, certainly not things like safety or fairness. She is just another myopic and mean-spirited partisan who only cares about injustice when it comes to her people. She’ll never write an article about the Arab abuse of their foreign help (many of them vulnerable women of color) nor is she intellectually curious enough to know about the slave trade of Europeans (yes, many women) by Muslim Arabs who raided shipping and became enshrined in the anthem of the US Marine Corps: “To the shores of Tripoli.”
Incidentally, the ‘Barbary’ pirates capturing US sailors for ransom led to the re-establishment of the Marines. At the time, the US was not oriented towards global dominance and only started along that path of being a sea power because of this provocation.
Muslim Arabs, before they were conquered themselves, pillaged the Christian Middle East and subjugated all in their path. No, this is to villainize them or say that ‘white’ is better. What it is to say is that conquest is human and we’re all guilty of the best and the worst parts. The only real difference between myself and the Hamad types is that I want to escape the tribalism of the past while she thrives on it. I envision a world where everyone wins whereas she can only be happy when those who she declares “not white” rule. She’s not truly anti-colonial, she is simply enraged that her own tribe lost the civilizational struggle to those she believes are inferiors.
In addition to this, she is like the angry PhD candidate, also from a Syrian background as I recall, and as vile as Hamad, who—despite a progressive feminist lean—was very racially prejudiced and to the point that she scorned me for my once having a black fiance—told me she would never go with a man who had been with a black woman. This is what makes me amused when Hamad gestures towards the African American grievance. Blacks may have been second class in the US, but they would be far worse off in the Arab world she represents.
The truth is that men beating women is as acceptable in Algeria as it is across Arab and Muslim regions. I believe this is why intelligent women from these places have such cognitive dissonance. They believe, on the one hand, this religious cultural identity makes them better. But then, on the other hand, they’re also battered and afraid of the men in their own places. They’re resentful. They would love to be treated as a Western woman and protected. This is why they want to see the women they envy to be hurt. It is displaced aggression:
Displaced aggression is a statistically robust psychological phenomenon. It involves a specific form of attack prompted by rumination on anger-inducing experiences and/or revenge-related thoughts, which might lead to the expression of anger on innocent people. Often, victims of aggression will not seek to confront the actual source of aggression (the original provocateur), and instead bully subordinates in an effort to relieve themselves of the stress that they carry.
Incidentally, in a conversation with a black female neighbor, she described the toxic reality of the community she left and how much she loves to live amongst us ‘white’ rural people who encouraged her rather than trying to tear her down and ruthlessly compete. Her mother, an alcoholic, used to deride her with the slur that she was ‘white’ for showing a little bit of ambition and self-respect. This black woman wisely chose to bring her children to the safety of a community still governed by a culture of self-restraint and looking out for the vulnerable.
White women are targets of jealous rage. Hamad would be better to acknowledge the true origin of her self-loathing and challenge the framing that makes her only care about the tears of those who look like her.
Hamad’s book “White Tears Brown Scars” is an attack on feminism and the West’s culture of protecting women. She popularized the phrase “white women’s tears” as a way to downplay and dismiss the suffering and display of emotions by white women. It is dehumanization. Making her sexual rivals into manipulative animals that do not deserve our empathy or concern. A license for calloused and cruel disregard in response to actual injustice. What it really amounts to is an attempt to normalize the abuse of women who step out of line—which is allowed in the Islamic culture that produced Hamad.
Ruby Hamad should clean up her own side of the street first before commenting on ours.
But I reject her, with her displaced aggression, because it is not okay for men to beat women—despite what her Syrian–Lebanese culture or the Quran says:
Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance – [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.
This is key to understanding the big difference in attitudes between Christian and Islamic traditions, I know the Old Testament treats women more as property of men—like the Quran—but the Gospel radically changed the conversation. St Paul tells husbands to sacrifice themselves for their wives like Christ died for the Church.
My wife tells me you couldn’t walk around in her home country like American women do, go out in revealing clothes, alone. She claims men where she lives would take it as being an invitation for assault and they would likely find your body in the ditch. If it is ‘white privilege’ or some form of imperialism for women to be able to stroll safely through their own community, then so be it. I’m not going to apologize for valuing the tears of my wife, the woman I love, over Hamad’s bitterness about not being able to find a man like me. I’m quite alright with a daughter who cries.
The other day I looked across the gym and saw a familiar grin.
Oh, Ydran decided to pump iron!
My son, still twelve years old, isn’t the most committed to strength training or conditioning and prefers to spend his time lounging at the pool. But with Junior High football being right around the corner he (completely of his own volition) was putting some work in. I gave a salute and then we both continued with our respective workouts.
However, what really impressed me was the weight he had on the bar. His bench is right around 100 lbs, for reps. And this brought me back to when I started lifting weights. I can recall doing the same weight, except in my Junior year of high school! And also how some of the football players would curl my bench weight, as in literally take what I had on the rack and use it to curl. But it was not totally embarrassing for me I only weighed 112 lbs as a Senior. It shows what a difference his genetics make. With a bit of work ethic, he’ll be an athletic freak—while I never was going to be great.
As for myself since school?
I’ve put on enough mass to make up for the sunken chest (which was a consequence of my traumatic birth) and am above average in terms of bench strength—even after being effectively reduced to zero twice due to my neck injury and having to rebuild. With my current body weight around 180 lbs, I have recently broken a personal record with six solid reps of 225 lbs. Which is more than most men will ever do and a result of discipline. I was determined to overcome my limitations.
Still, given where he is now, with a little bit of effort and a few more years, he will do more than what I’ve ever done. He’s just athletically gifted, has very good hand-eye coordination, and is already big and strong enough to give some serious competition. It is only a matter of time until I won’t have any advantage. Fair or not he will be better than me at everything he wants to do and probably with less overall struggle. So long as he will remain healthy he is destined to crush me in any competition.
There is no such thing as an even playing field in sports and competition. If we were all built the same, with the same opportunities or abilities, every contest would end in a tie—there couldn’t be winners or losers. But we do have differences in size, speed, endurance, and even in motivation and desire. Some had parents who pushed them, gave them more opportunities, and made sure they had the best nutrition and coaching, and that’s what gave them their edge.
So what is fair or not fair?
PIAA vs Aliquippa vs Southern Columbia
Pennsylvania has some hard-nosed smash-mouth high school football. In particular, the towns of the coal region have produced dominant players and programs. The Red Tornados, of Mount Carmel, is the storied winningest team in the state (6th in the nation) with a total of 899 wins. But, have taken a step back, it is their neighbors to the North that are setting records today, and that being the Tigers of Southern Columbia with six consecutive State Championships.
However, on the complete opposite side of the state, in a Pittsburgh suburb, they have another team with an incredible tradition of winning, the Aliquippa Quips.
Southern and Aliquippa started in the class A, small school category, they’ve battled in the State Championship game and online it is clear there is some bad blood on the side of the Quips, being humiliated 49-14 in the final back in 2015. But what has really been grinding their gears is that—as the result of new PIAA rules intended to help maintain a competitive balance—they’ve been bumped up multiple classifications (the Tigers only going up one) due to transfers and success in the post-season.
The same exact rules apply to both teams and yet have impacted the Quips more dramatically and this has led to cries of foul—and a big whataboutism.
Their player safety is the first reason they’ve argued. Despite Aliquippa having walloped an undefeated Selinsgrove Seals team, in the AAAA championship, earning them their latest bump in classification, and despite their having a roster with quite a bit of D1-destined talent for a typical small school—the Quips’ loyal fan base has been viciously accusing the PIAA organization of favoritism and their cross-state rivals of being a cheater for avoiding reclassification. But there is zero evidence for either charge. It seems that the reality, under all this bluster about player safety or fairness, is that they want to keep beating on a weaker field year after year.
They’ve taken it to court and have won their first appeal. But the PIAA is fighting against this decision with their own appeal and who knows where it will go. What I do know is it will likely be a matter of prejudice, not merit or metric, that decides the case.
Racial overtones hang over this, as well as the fact that this is East versus West, the Tigers with their rural population while the Quips come from an urban community. Southern Columbia sits in a cornfield, near the beautiful Knoebels amusement park and resort, representing a vibrant community of Elysburg and on the edge of the economically depressed coal region. While jobs and a better place to live is a big enough draw—there is very little doubt that a few parents do move into the school district only for the sake of their child’s athletic future. However, being on the edge of a big city like Pittsburgh is a massive advantage for Aliquippa.
There is talk now of a new “Southern Columbia rule” which effectively will target the Tigers specifically for their unprecedented success within the current regime. Is it sour grapes or retaliatory rules? Who knows. But both of these powerhouses insist that the work they put in is what makes the difference. It is true to an extent. The Tigers, under the tutelage of Jim Roth, went from basement dwelling to the point of nearly eliminating the football team to totally mauling their local schedule and stacking up trophies for decades—coaching with discipline got the ball rolling before it became a dynasty that creates its own weather.
But the sore losers do have a point, talent does gravitate towards Southern like bees to honey. One example is that outstanding quarterback prospect from my hometown who ended up there, with rumors swirling that his dad rented an apartment in Elysburg so he could play and that this kid (who ended up going to Alabama) was still spending most of his time away from Tiger territory. And yet, with the very high level of scrutiny the program has faced I am fairly certain all is done within the rules.
The point is that there is no perfect formula and thus never a fair competition. Yes, they all need to suit the same amount of players to play, scoring rules should apply equally to all teams, and officials should have no bias, but there are a myriad of factors that can’t be controlled or properly accounted for. No two communities in the state of Pennsylvania are exactly the same, some schools are advantaged in ways that others are not, so there will never be a perfect competitive balance.
My initial knee-jerk reaction was outrage. It was wrong that this woman would have to face this obviously masculine figure. And yet, when I started to dig, it turns out the “That’s a man!” reaction is a little bit of an oversimplification. Khelif has always identified as a woman. And that is because ‘she’ was assigned to the female category at birth. Why? Well, it’s because, no fault of anyone, they were born without the male organ. They are one of those very rare cases of being intersex. In other words, the ‘down there’ expression doesn’t match the chromosomal gender rule.
So the “Well Ackshully” mid-wits, armed with this little knowledge, proudly noting that Algeria (Muslim) is a conservative country, dunked on their dimwitted counterparts who saw what they saw. They’re right in that Khelif is officially female because of ‘her’ female genitals. But the weird part is how these same people who believe stuff like “misgendered” despite male anatomy suddenly can’t see the controversy when this competitor is also chromosomally a male and they’ve visibly benefitted from male hormones. The real question is whether or not it is fair they’re allowed to be in the female category so far as boxing is concerned, not if they had been described as female on a birth certificate.
A controversial Taiwanese ‘female’ competitor.
The reason that there are two categories—one for men and another for women—it is a clear advantage to being a male when it comes to high-level competition. Caitlin Clark, as phenomenal as she is against other women, wouldn’t make an NBA roster. That’s not at all sexist, it is just reality in the same way I won’t post up with LeBron James. And to deny this is on par with Flat-Earthism, they can say gender is a social construct (some of the expression is cultural), and yet there’s also overwhelming hard evidence that men have a distinct physical advantage, according to The Trans Athlete Debate “Dilemma”:
Even before puberty, when the differences effectuated by the influence of sex hormones sets in, from a purely genetic perspective, biological males are significantly advantaged.
Case in point, one study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine extensively researched peer-reviewed studies on the health-related fitness data of 85,000 Australian children aged 9-17. It found that when “compared with 9-year-old females, 9-year-old males were faster over short sprints (9.8%) and 1 mile (16.6%), could jump 9.5% further from a standing start (a test of explosive power), could complete 33% more push-ups in 30 seconds and had 13.8% stronger grip.”
Another study of Greek children, published in the European Journal of Sports Science compared 6-year-old females and 6-year-old. Researchers found that the “boys completed 16.6% more shuttle runs in a given time and could jump 9.7% further from a standing position. In terms of aerobic capacity, 6- to 7-year-old boys showed a higher absolute and relative (to body mass) VO2max than 6- to 7-year-old females”
If this weren’t the case, if women were equal to men, why not eliminate classification based on gender and let the best athletes of every country—male or female—compete for one gold medal in each event?
No, the reality is, if women had to compete with men, no woman would ever get to the Olympics—let alone stand on the podium.
It has little to do with work ethic or desire.
There is no point even having a separate female category if some with an XY chromosome and higher levels of testosterone are allowed in the competition. While athletic competition has roots in male versus male combat—I am not right-wing and want my daughter to have the opportunity to participate in sports. I believe there needs to be a return to rationality, fairness, and safe competition.
Khelif doesn’t belong in a ring against a normal woman any more than I do. Get real.
High-level Competition Is Not a Right
The progressive left has got all tied up in a knot over the idea that the difference between genders is a myth—merely a social construct.
It is a feminist fantasy that a woman is capable of everything a man can do and that the only reason women are not equally represented is because of injustice.
We hear complaints all of the time from female athletes who believe they deserve equal pay to men who a) produce far more revenue given they are the very best competitors and b) would no doubt humiliate any female challenger.
Note, for the purpose of this discussion, I’m talking only about athletic events, not about intellectual or other capabilities. The other differences in ability based on gender can be a topic for another day, women have distinct advantages and superior abilities in other areas. But my commentary here is strictly about physical strength, speed, and size—where men are gifted.
Also, my wife and I are equally valuable to each other and the family, she works as hard as I do (or harder) and both of us play important roles in our home and the local community, and yet this doesn’t change the fact I could physically dominate her—or that even her own twelve-year-old son is taller and heavier than she is.
Truly, if I completed in the female category of power-lifting I would have elite strength and a chance for gold—as a slightly above-average male weight-lifter.
If it is a right to be an elite athlete, and if all women deserve a special category so they can have a chance to be recognized, is it fair that short and unathletic men are not represented? Should we keep expanding professional leagues so that all can be champions? Or is the point of these kinds of events to have only the best reach the top for the entertainment of those of us who know that we don’t belong there?
Female athletes, instead of griping about unequal pay, should be grateful that they are privileged with a second-tier category that has given women an opportunity to compete.
No two people are equal. There is no such thing as a fair competition. But if there is a category for females, to accommodate their biological differences from men, then those with a clear competitive advantage because of male hormones or chromosomes should be excluded and how they identify or what is down there doesn’t matter. Sure, the right gets things wrong for not understanding that exceptions do exist, but the left does worse and fails to comprehend that women need protection from those who are physically bigger and stronger. The entire reason for separate categories for men and women is to protect women.
This is why we need to have criteria that go beyond the “identifies as a woman” leftist minimum. We need a standard that also considers the level of testosterone or chromosomal pairs. If those who have very rare intersex characteristics don’t have a huge advantage, then how did two of them beat the odds to end up in the Olympics? Why even have a women’s division at all? This is about fairness for all competitors, not about one individual. Our participation in a competition is a privilege, not a right, and can’t be granted to all or it becomes worthless. In the end, it is always a little arbitrary who is allowed or disallowed.
After reading a review of Gran Torino, a Clint Eastwood movie from 2008, that dismissed it as shallow in its exploration of racism, I’ve decided to explore some of the depth of the movie that was missed. It was a great story about finding common ground, that takes a bit of twist at the end from the typical Clint Eastwood film. My family (mixed race and culture) could appreciate the themes more than the average viewer—yet is a beautiful redemption story that all people can enjoy as well.
“Get off my lawn!'”
The story is about an angry old man who is not dealing well with change. Walter ‘Walt’ Kowalski, a Polish-American retired auto worker, Korean War veteran, and recent widower—his beloved wife passing right before the start of the narrative.
In the opening frame, he fits a stereotype of an elderly homeowner defending their patch of turf from an encroaching world. It seems every small town has one. That guy who trims his front lawn with scissors and does not deal well with the trespasses of the younger generation, the snarling “get off my lawn” line from the movie became an instant meme.
Why?
It is just too familiar.
The expression captures the essence of a fading dream. The American middle class values property ownership. A lawn, once a complete luxury and exclusively for wealthy estates, had become the mark of post-WW2 affluence. Walt was the beneficiary of this period of economic growth. He had lived a quintessential suburban life.
But now it had become a nightmare. It is not the same neighborhood anymore. The once tidy little homes, owned by people like him, had fallen into disrepair as a new group of immigrants took over. The woman who he built a home with was gone. His sons bought foreign brand vehicles and betrayed the legacy their father had built working at Ford. The world Walt had known was falling apart and he was bitter.
That patch of land, other than the ghosts of his past, was all Walt really had left. To set foot on it was to violate his sacred space. It was a shrine. And his 1972 Gran Torino in the garage likely represented the pinnacle of his productive career. Since the Korean War ended in 1953, this would put this car purchase around two decades into civilian life with a young family and point when the future looked bright. So he was clinging to what was left of his identity and willing to defend it with deadly force.
Demons of the Past
Early on we see Walt, the tough guy, who is playing a part. His racist language is a part of the facade—a barrier he puts up—because the alternative is to be vulnerable—or a victim. He is still haunted by his war experience, in the beginning using it as a threat, saying he could kill without remorse:
“Yeah? I blow a hole in your face and then I go in the house… and I sleep like a baby. You can count on that. We used to stack fucks like you five feet high in Korea… use ya for sandbags.”
However, later, when it comes to stopping the neighbor boy from taking revenge, we see the reality under the surface:
“You wanna know what it’s like to kill a man? Well, it’s goddamn awful, that’s what it is. The only thing worse is getting a medal… for killing some poor kid that wanted to just give up, that’s all. Yeah, some scared little gook just like you. I shot him in the face with that rifle you were holding in there a while ago. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it, and you don’t want that on your soul.“
Just like today, where Russians are called “Orcs” and portrayed as subhuman by propagandists, racial and ethnic slurs were used against various Asian enemies of US policy in the region. But for Walt, he knew better, he knew that it was not a demon at the receiving end of his rifle. He had murdered a human child and he felt immense regret. Note how he says “poor kid” rather than all of the racist terms he used freely throughout his conversations. It is almost as if, up to this point, he had to reinforce the dehumanizing descriptions to keep ahead of his shame. The truth is Walt didn’t sleep like a baby. No, he was running his sins his entire life and exhausted.
War propaganda then and now. Enemies are always portrayed as evil and subhuman.
Walt’s racism was part of his pretty much equal-opportunity disdain for other people, including the young parish priest, and his own family. He was a broken and hurting man, who had driven away his children and was hiding his own terminal illness. What he needed was some compassion, a safe place where he could finally let his guard down, and it was the persistent effort of a young Hmong neighbor that finally broke through his wall of insults.
Finding Common Ground
The review, that sparked my response, tried to overlay a “white savior” trope on the story and completely missed that it was Walt who was being saved!
*spoiler alert*
Yes, ultimately, Walt sacrificed himself for the sake of the Asian family next door. But this only after Sue, played by an actual Hmong actress (some critics panned the amateurism, others praised), went above and beyond to disrupt his dismal world.
She was his savior.
It was by her effort that he would face the demons of his past and could be at peace with his Creator. It was a redemption story, a story of an old man who had lost his wife, lost his children, lost his religion and even lost his neighborhood, but finds life again by learning to love his enemies.
I can feel this character. My own life didn’t go as planned. I had to leave the religious culture where my hopes had been built. I had a beautiful Asian woman who was patient with me while I was still lost in delusion and did not give up when times were difficult. Now we have a blended-culture home. Yes, my Filipino wife and son are different from me in many regards. However, after seven years of knowing each other and now over a year of being married, our love has only continued to grow. Some of my happiest moments were with her family in the Philippines and recently while visiting her relatives in Canada.
I am Walt.
My ‘Sue’ did save me.
The real story of Gran Torino is an old man who finds more common ground with those he had thought were strange than he does with his own children. Once Walt had got past the superficial differences he realized he had more connection to these Hmong people than many who looked like him. Unlike the war, he was now defending real people and not political ideologies. He was fighting for the local community, against those within who are destroying it, and not gunning down random boys thrown into a conflict not truly their own. The storyline is a comparison between perspectives and shows us what really matters in the end.
It is about relationships, not race.
It is about building bridges.
The ongoing dialogue between Walt and his priest demonstrates this. The priest, who is of European descent based on appearance, is at first scoffed at by the grizzled military veteran for his youthfulness. The baby-faced “Padre” is bluntly rejected by him:
“I think you’re an overeducated 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies and promise them everlasting life.“
But, despite this insult, Father Janovich will not go away. And eventually, with his persistence, he does earn the respect of Walt. The bond, built over a few beers, culminates with Confession and Walt is finally able to have the guilt that had plagued him since Korea absolved. Now he is free and at peace, ready for a last act that goes contrary to expectations and confirms the redemptive arc.
It was faith that saved Walt, both that of the young woman who withheld judgment and didn’t allow his wall of nastiness to stop her and finally of the persistent outreach of the Church. And it is only because of this concerted effort that we get to see the protagonist do what is right. By the end of the film, Walt has overcome those demons driving his anti-social behavior and also has gained a son worthy of his prized Gran Torino.
Now To Review the Reviewer…
Why did the critic miss the obvious?
The reviewer who inspired me to write my own was projecting their own worldview onto the script. Eastwood is a rare conservative Hollywood producer. In fact, so conservative he spoke at a Republican National Convention and gave a mock interview with an empty chair, used to represent Obama, and he calls Biden “a grin with a body behind it.” Perhaps it is this that the review is responding to? But I think it goes a bit deeper than that.
The Marxist left sees the world as being a zero-sum game, or that for some people to gain others must lose, and thus everything is a competition for power. But, not only this, but everything is divided up into strictly bounded categories based on their skin color, financial status, or sexual classification. If someone cooperates across these lines then they are an “Uncle Tom” or traitor. So the themes of Gran Torino just do not compute. Asians are collaborators. Walt is an irredeemable privileged white man, he needs to be canceled—not humanized.
So, since we can’t have everyone come out as a winner, the only thing the woke reviewer has left is to hallucinate something color-coded and negative. Thus they see a movie that tells us to reach across lines of age, culture, and race as just another “white savior” trope. It is bizarre, such a narrow and distorted perspective, to entirely miss everything and then to insert what is not actually there. Yes, Walt saves, but in the context of others saving him, and that’s not even the point. The point of is that color (or age) doesn’t matter, finding our common ground and community does.
Gran Torino isn’t a perfect movie. It may go a bit overboard with ethnic slurs at times. But, then again, the comedic relief of the barber and Walt exchanging these insults as terms of endearment is also great commentary. Why do we let words be “violence” when the same utterances can be laughed at in another context? It is because these words have the power we give them. What this is suggesting is that we can go further when we reframe the conversation.
The left wants to believe that our behavior is determined by what others have done to us—Eastwood says we can be free to live above their rules.
Politics may be all about power, in-group and out-group, but love overcomes all.
Irregular Ideation 