New York City Is Briefly Labeled ‘Jewtropolis’ on Snapchat and Other Apps

I thought we were beyond this.

How long until you’re considered the other.

The Reformation, the Holocaust, they were supposed to be one time things, we were supposed to now be more civilized. But to quote Talking Heads, it’s the same as it ever was.

My father telling me about anti-Semitism, believing everybody hates the Jews. Say no, but then look at this.

Yup, click on the above article, the maps for the “New York Times,” Snapchat, Citi Bike…they were all hacked so that New York City was renamed “Jewtropolis.” Actually, there were thirty changes made, but only this one slipped through. How?

They marched on Charlottesville and the first thing they told us was the Jews were not going to replace them.

An Encino man threatens the “Boston Globe.” Reporters in Maryland are shot and killed. Meanwhile we’ve got a mean, deranged man in the White House saying the press is the enemy, and Google too…run by Jews, and Facebook, that’s right, the Jews are the root of all our problems. Even though Bezos is not a member of the tribe and neither are the heads of Apple or Microsoft.

But the Jews are the enemy.

So this is where it goes. The people need a scapegoat, and the first one they always turn to is the Jews. And no one looks out for them until they too are threatened. Just wait, it’ll happen to you.

If you’re rich and fly private you think you’re immune, but you’d better live behind a gate. Because otherwise they’re coming for you.

The holier-than-thou educated too.

Wall Street got off with a pass, but not next time. The stock market may be booming, but only for the usual suspects, mom and pop have got no better lives, you think there’s not resentment?

As for the poor and ignorant themselves, they’re getting drunk and shooting each other, that’s what the lack of gun control delivers, and the NRA and the arms manufacturers are cool with it, as long as it flows to the bottom line, as long the stockholders get rich, damn the people.

So the 2016 election revealed the divisions in our nation. Hillary Clinton may have spoken to them if she got elected, but I’m unsure if she was aware of them when she ran.

Beto O’Rourke is a punk rock playing drunk driver, he can’t serve in Congress. And that monkey can’t get a gig as the Governor of Florida, just think of what will happen if we let THOSE people in the house. And he’s corrupt, ain’t he… You can’t trust those people, you’ve got to sleep with one eye open, they’ll rob and rape and kill you, you know the Jews only care about money.

Like there are no poor Jews in the world.

But now it’s the Asians agitating for their fair share, a hardworking ethnicity that focuses on education, just like the Indians. But the whites deplore them too.

As for being deplorable, THEY ARE! What other words are you gonna use? You can’t call a spade a spade in America, you can’t speak the truth, because someone might get hurt, and the right wing lets this all go and the Democrats are so busy trying to protect the feelings of special interest groups that they can’t see the forest for the trees. It always comes down to the same thing, people need jobs, people need money, and neither party is helping them out, they’re all beholden to the corporations, they’ve taken their eye off the ball, the true problems in this country.

Although you’ve got to give Trump credit for speaking his truth to his people. Bernie Sanders tried to do that and the party shut him down. He was too far out there, and a Jew to boot. You can’t elect a Jew! But the educated millennials don’t care about race or skin.

But still…there are a lot of uneducated people in America. And educated ones who are racist. Did Trump use the “N word”? I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised, this kind of language is used in the board room all the time. It’s part of being a bro. Yup, all you collegians who think you’re immune, with your fraternities and your cabals, you’re the epicenter of movements like this. You too are gangs. And members are afraid to speak up, for fear of ostracization. They may not kill anybody, unless it’s during initiation rites, but it’s not only wannabe members they haze.

This is scary.

As for Judaism, Roger Waters is an anti-Semite. How do I know? People close to him have told me about the language he uses. But he’s for Palestinians, they’ve gotten a raw deal. And maybe they have, but what are they doing to fix their situation? War. They want Israel eliminated. And I’m not saying Israel is innocent, but don’t you get it, this is a fight to the death!

You’ll support this minority and that, but if it’s the Jews, they gotta go. They’ve got enough money, they can fend for themselves, like all those gassed and burned to death during the war.

Oh, you say it can’t happen here. IT ALREADY HAS!

Do you know when the Taliban takes over a town the buses run on time, there’s more electricity? You have to sacrifice your social mores, wear the hijab, but the system works. This is what Trump is fomenting. Fixing things for those who elected him and damn the rest, damn the right to get an abortion. Oh, Kavanaugh may not want to overturn Roe vs. Wade, but let’s hear what he has to say about Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

How Abortion Rights Will Die a Death by 1,000 Cuts

But if Kavanaugh gets bounced they’ll find another just as bad.

And you were told that this was what the election was about. But you couldn’t vote for Hillary, you voted for a non-viable third party or sat out the election. Now the joke is on you. It matters to you. For the rest of my life, and probably yours, no matter how left the country goes, the Supreme Court will be right.

That’s right. It’s positively scary.

But it comes down to hearts and minds.

Trump keeps stoking the fire of his ignorant base. Fox News too. Why isn’t there uproar against Rupert Murdoch, why does he get a pass, why aren’t left-wingers hanging in front of his house and trailing his every move, because he’s rich? Come on.

It’s frightening out there. Hell, remember that guy who said there was no anti-Semitism in Germany and then wore a skullcap and was attacked? Do you want to advertise your Jewishness in public? Meanwhile, somehow the Christians have been disabled, we’ve stolen their Christmas, we don’t say prayers in school.

And the Muslim powers are as crazy as the Christians, even more so.

And once again, they’re fed by powers that won’t say no, who feed them not caring that they’re going out of control.

It happens again and again now. On a regular basis. We thought we were enlightened. But whereas the sixties music was all about living in peace and harmony through love, today’s music is solely about money and if you don’t go to number one it’s the enemy’s fault, the corporation, the competition.

And music is just a sideshow to the big show. Blows my mind how music is irrelevant in the social sphere. Oh, it’ll get some people to wear some clothes, buy some crap, but it won’t illuminate them on the issues, won’t incite change. Everybody just wants to be a rapper or Kim Kardashian, married to a rapper as a matter of fact, one who stood up for Agent Orange, imagine if Kanye was poor?

But no, he’s another megalomaniac drunk on his own power no different from the Prez or the CEOs. They think they know.

I’ve got contempt for them, many with names you do not know.

And everybody else has contempt for me.

But at least I’m not shooting people, I’m not crippling their lifestyles.

This is the story of our time, how things went horribly wrong. Blame income inequality, blame globalization, blame the starving of schools, blame the lack of opportunity for those who are not legacies.

But no, it’s easier to blame the Jews.

Ignore sunk costs

This is the best Seth Godin podcast I’ve listened to, because most people are uninformed on the topic. The question is whether you use the past to cripple your future, whether you can handle the feedback from your peers when you say you’re going in the other direction.

It’s a conundrum. No one wants to quit and everybody wants to quit. Seth says the greatest successes are quitters. Because they’re willing to walk away from that which isn’t working for them. Whereas the successes who don’t quit go through a “dip,” where they’re unsure of their progress yet soldier on and get to the other side.

I come from the a no quit background, but I’m not sure it always works for me. Sometimes you’ve got to leave it all behind. Both physical and emotional. You’ve got all the totems of the past to remind you who you were, are they really holding you back? Then again, what’s lacking in this world is perseverance, most people give up, even before the going gets tough, and everything worth achieving is fraught with a long, lonely process with sleepless nights and questioning of one’s path.

But Seth’s point here is sometimes you’ve got to abandon the path you were on, even if you invested in it. His best example is scoring the last two tickets to the Friday night movie and then running into someone who offers you great “Hamilton” tickets for free. Yes, you’re gonna blow thirty bucks, but you’re gonna end up with something worth much more, can you make the leap?

This is something I see too often in music. Since you were a musician, you must remain a musician. Believing if you just work hard enough you’ll make it. But oftentimes this is not true, but if you give up you’re fearful everybody will excoriate you, but at what price happiness? Figuring out who you want to be and executing on that is what makes you happy.

The people who should listen to this podcast most are those who followed in the prescribed footsteps and can’t get out of the pathway. I know a few lawyers who love what they do, but most I know don’t. But they went to law school, they paid their dues, they’re getting paid a certain amount, they can’t step out into the unknown.

Even worse are those in finance. It’s a dreary business for most, yet they cannot give up the cash. But it’s to their own personal detriment.

I guarantee you’ll listen to this podcast and contemplate your choices. Ask yourself what you can free yourself from. What you can abandon, who you can be.

It’s very short, less than half an hour. My only complaint is that’ it’s TOO short. I would love to hear Seth riff on this for an hour or two.

On Apple

Cherry: A novel

The Acknowledgements is the best part.

You’re not gonna want to read this. Our country is all optimism all the time, except when it comes to the government/political situation. Everyone’s got hope, everyone’s a winner…

But it don’t really happen that way at all.

“Cherry” is a buzz book, but there’s no buzz about it. No one telling me to read it, no one talking about it. Because it’s a hard read. Not because of lofty language, not because of density, but because of story.

I hate it when people say they hate art because there are no relatable characters. That’s what ruined art for me, when Spielberg took over and it became about artifice, when it all worked out in the end. That’s not the way it really is. One false move and you can be forgotten. Then there are those who’ve got no chance to begin with, like Arnold, the son of a hooker. Used to be we wanted to give you a leg up, now all you get is lip service. You had health care but somehow it penalized the corporations and the rights of those wanting to be free so they’re taking that away now too. You’re a grifter, ripping off the country with its food stamps and welfare payments. You need to go into the army, be a hero, make a man of yourself, stand for something.

Like Nico Walker.

A soft boy from the upper middle class, educated in a private institution, he joined the corps, he became a medic in the Army, and he’s yet to recover, to this day.

You see horrors worse than those alluded to by Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now” You think everything’s a fantasy, then you’re confronted with real life.

And it sucks.

You don’t know who to be. School seems phony, with all those overachievers trying to get a job in middle management. And those you’ve never encountered before running the world. We hate the rich, not those who inherited wealth, but the techies who started from scratch. They dropped out of Harvard, you couldn’t get in. They get to wear their street clothes like the rock stars of yore, you have to dress up to sell crap. And they write books and tell us they know everything, as if they knew anything about real life. And the media establishment lauds them, writers feed on this crap, it makes them feel important, that they’re championing winners.

But the truth is everybody’s got something to hide, even me and my monkey.

So Nico Walker survives Iraq, many of his compadres do not, and he comes back to Ohio and…

Flounders.

Does dope.

He feels dead inside, he just can’t get it together. You might have felt this way too, but you can’t admit it, unless you’re already famous and doing a mea culpa. Celebrities get to say they’re depressed, that they’ve triumphed, yet no one pays attention to those in the crowd, burdened by their troubles.

That’s what they don’t tell you growing up, you’re flawed. And you’re gonna spend your whole life either fixing those flaws or living in a deranged world of your own making where your flaws constantly get in your way. Like the person who can’t hold a job, the one who constantly gets divorced, it’s never their problem.

But it’s Nico Walker’s problem.

So I bought the book because I was going on a trip, I always load my Kindle up with books before I leave home, the worst fate in the world is to be stuck with nothing to read.

And I read “The Family Tabor” on my flights, enjoyed it, but you might not, it might be too psychological for you. What if the perfect aren’t so? That’s the question the book asks.

And when I got home I dove into “Cherry.”

I won’t tell you what that means, I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m sure, like me, you’ve got no clue.

And at first it’s hard to get into. Robbing banks. Doing dope.

And then…

He goes to Iraq.

This ain’t the movie war. Nothing really happens, nothing is really achieved. You work outside your purview and don’t get to say no and your superiors are lying and you’re running on empty, but you could get your ass shot off, your whole body blown up, your latex gloves could melt as you’re picking up the pieces, this really happened.

And then I couldn’t put the book down. Tried not to stay up all night reading it. Until…

He came home.

You knew he was gonna, otherwise the Prologue made no sense.

But then you’re just at the middle of the book, and from there…

Nico and Emily do drugs. She’s in graduate school, he’s trying to stay in school. And they’ll do anything they can get their hands on and they run out of money and they run out of dope but there’s no redemption, Nico’s hollow inside, he’s a prick. An admitted one.

He treats women badly, is dishonest, but he’s not famous so no one is outing him, he gets away with his behavior, but as much as people hate him, he hates himself more.

And the dope culture is peopled with incompetents, who are screwing up when they’re not ripping you off.

But this is the life you chose.

And it’s this life that is real.

That’s what the Acknowledgements are all about, where Nico tells the story of how “Cherry” came to be. He was in jail, corresponding with someone who turned out to be a publisher who ultimately sold the rights to Knopf.

And you don’t always know what’s going on, but you do.

This is what rock and roll used to be. When the musicians were on their own path and didn’t care about mainstream society, never mind corporations and money. Today it’s all about giving people what they want, and if you’re not a winner, you’re a loser and you’re ignored, so people fake it. They buy the clothes, go to Vegas, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

But on the inside…

P.S. You know every word of this book is true, that he’s tangled up in blue, they call it a novel, but…

This is kind of hysterical. The pussy-grabber in chief rapes and pillages our nation and its relationships, yet a comedian is unable to pursue his career. Have we lost perspective?

And isn’t it interesting that not a single male has weighed in on the Louis C.K. comeback, because they’re all afraid of what the women might say. Are the women winning here? I’m not sure they are, because I will tell you the #MeToo movement has had little to no impact on male conversation, it’s only forced the behavior underground, which begs the question, are you winning the battle and losing the war?

Louis C.K. needs to be able to come back. When? I’m not sure. But he’s an independent contractor, not given a fat deal by Fox or NBC or CBS… It’s right to set rules for those corporations publicly traded, but an individual?

And let’s not forget, Louis C.K. is the only one who apologized and went away immediately, even Harvey Weinstein is fighting the fact he did it, never mind those who followed in his wake. Does Louis C.K. get no credit for being a mensch after being outed?

That’s another question.

America hates sliding scales. America hates gray. It wants all its public figures to be squeaky clean, even though those paying attention to them are not.

I have no idea what went through Louis C.K.’s head when he masturbated in front of women. I can’t conceive of it. And I would never force myself upon a woman, if anything I’m waiting for a clear signal before I take action, this whole #MeToo thing has me reevaluating my behavior, am I the only man in America who’s a wimp?

Furthermore, we all have our quirks, our peculiarities, our fetishes. What do they say? Want someone to come to the table, just threaten them with outing their Google search history, no one wants that public.

However, those wanting to keep things from being public, paying for this “privilege,” are now learning the truth outs, not only Trump but Asia Argento. For all you Kennedy conspiracists out there, if we can’t even keep secrets re sex, what are the odds no one in the government has ever spoken… NIL! People love to talk, and the truth always outs, especially in this internet era.

So what was Louis C.K. supposed to do to earn his return?

Maybe it is too soon.

But we have no criminal code for his behavior, he was not sued, we have no established penalties, what are they?

Kinda like Jackson Browne, he was accused of hurting Daryl Hannah and for years his career was hobbled, a good portion of his core audience wanted nothing to do with him, but now that time is past. But Jackson worked during the crisis. Furthermore, he denies the behavior took place. Did it? Damned if I know.

Same deal with Dr. Luke, in the news this week when it was revealed he never raped Katy Perry. How long do we banish Luke from the landscape? I’m not saying Luke is warm and fuzzy, but he’s now a pariah in the music business, and for how long? Once again, Luke has denied the behavior, and I’ve heard a lot but I don’t know the truth here either. All I know is his career has been ruined. And forget Dr. Luke, what about everybody else?

Yes, rape someone and get convicted and you’re going up the river possibly for the rest of your life.

And most rapes go unpunished. And for far too long men didn’t listen to women. But now that we’ve accused these perps, how do we decide how long they have to sit out?

The Stanford rapist got too brief a sentence, but the judge in that case lost his job, the public voted him out. You can vote against Louis C.K. by not seeing him, and maybe that’ll be the case, maybe no one will want to go see him. But should we let him find out?

What’s happening here is marriage replicated. That’s right, in most marriages, the women wear the pants. The men are boisterous out with their friends, if they’re permitted to leave the house, but the women set the rules.

Do only women get to set the rules for when #MeToo perps can re-enter the public space?

It’s too early for O’Reilly. And Lauer and Charlie Rose. Unless they want to build it on their own, then we get to decide whether we want to pay attention or not. So far, O’Reilly is losing this war. The other two have yet to play, but the truth is all three have not owned up to their behavior, they’re still fighting the facts, does Louis C.K. get a shorter sentence for owning his behavior and staying out of the public eye?

No one is gonna forget his behavior, he’s gonna be tarred with it for the rest of his life. But unlike weasels like Trump, at least he told the truth, isn’t that worth something?

We’re not gonna solve this problem without men involved. Isn’t that what Dave Chappelle said? Women have to bring men in. And right now men are afraid. If they talk at all, they play to the other sex.

And I’m not saying everything the women are saying isn’t true, that they haven’t gotten the short end of the stick, that they haven’t been sexually abused and held down. Now what? Sure, having women on boards is a good step, but when you prevent a man from pursuing his livelihood, you end up with a very angry man, because males’ self-image is based on their work.

Then again, they bar attorneys.

But at least they can find other work.

Women are at risk here of losing the narrative. Being accused of being strident just like they were in the seventies. Sure, progress was made, but one always has to evaluate strategy. Hell, I’ll step in a hole here, lesbians have weighed in on Louis C.K.’s return, and they’re entitled to their voice, but I’m telling you now the average male is wincing, wondering whether we should take our heterosexual clues from gay people.

Oh, don’t unsubscribe because I told the truth. Or maybe you should, because you can’t handle it.

This is how we got into the Trump jam to begin with. The supposedly brighter, more educated and richer, ignored a whole segment of the public to their detriment, furthermore, they scorned them. They had no sympathy for the dope-doers in Ohio and Kentucky. They worked hard, you should too. That’s right, the rich don’t like affirmative action because that lowers the odds their kids will get into the Ivies. The truth hurts.

So are women now so “knowledgeable” that they’re going to alienate fifty percent of the population?

Men are entitled to a voice here.

And their voices may be wrong. Maybe they can be convinced their opinions are wrong. Only in politics are you unable to change your mind. Don’t we give kudos to those who do? Who become enlightened?

But put people down and allow them no traction and they’re going to react.

And that’s what’s gonna happen with this Louis C.K. thing.

Hell, a Comedy Cellar customer complained the owner didn’t warn him in advance that Louis C.K. was gonna appear. But the owner didn’t know and is this any different from “trigger warnings” in college?

I’m further left on the political spectrum than the Democratic party, but I do know progress is based on communication, knowledge and compromise. Hell, that’s why we all hate the government, there is no compromise.

We’re not gonna come up with a solution that’s gonna please everybody.

But Louis C.K. should be able to work again. He can’t be banished forever. The death penalty for whipping out your dick? If he can’t work, that’s what it’s like, just ask any male when they lose their job, they run out of cash and their wives divorce them.

There’s a lot of power in the pussy.

Oh, did that offend you? Then why were you so proud to wear the pussy hat to Washington?

We are in this together. Let’s get it together. Let’s know there is no perfect solution. And that unless we get males involved in the solution, there will be no true progress, it will just force their take underground, where it will flourish.