Why do the willfully ignorant mutate into the most intransigent ideologues? Obscurantism

"All the rationale in the universe is wasted on such people. Their favored response when confronted with facts and logic is this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon: Obscurantism (ob*scu*ran*tism/ ob-skyoo-RAN-tiz-uhm) | noun.  The practice of deliberately employing vague and unintelligible arguments as a conscious strategy to obscure what is true."

 Rabbi Yonason Goldson 

"Why do the willfully ignorant mutate into the most intransigent ideologues? Because their ignorance makes them insecure and their insecurity drives them to lash out at any ideas that threaten to puncture the superficiality of their worldview."

"There's no place on earth like Israel: The history, the diversity, the tension of a culture divided by religion and regional culture while simultaneously unified by common ancestry and the threat of violence from a host of inimical neighbors.

This past Sabbath morning, I attended services held by a group of Chassidim who trace their traditions back to the Polish town of Bobov. I don't look like them, dress like them or speak their preferred language of Yiddish. Even so, they welcomed me warmly into their congregation. The majesty of their music and intensity of their prayers infused my own Sabbath experience with a feeling of spiritual transcendence.

All of which evaporated the moment I returned to my apartment.

A group of religious zealots, most of them teenagers, instigated a furious protest against a local cafe doing business on the Sabbath in violation of Torah law. Considering that half of Israelis claim little or no religious affiliation, most observant Jews quietly lament their brothers' and sisters' lack of spiritual awareness while directing their attention elsewhere.

But not these self-appointed guardians of the faith. They amassed in the adjacent courtyard, relentlessly spewing vitriol, accosting passersby and disturbing both the residents of the surrounding apartments and the peace of the Sabbath day.

The police — some religious, some secular — showed exemplary restraint trying to disperse the miscreants. After more than an hour of abuse, they finally got aggressive (although never violent) and dragged the ringleaders out of the area, only to have them regroup to continue their mindless remonstrations a few yards farther away.

A few people, including some deeply religious, tried to dissuade the protestors, explaining that they were accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they intended. Harassing the irreligious produces nothing but animosity toward the entire religious community.

Unsurprisingly, these arguments went unheeded. After all, what is a fanatic but someone doing what G od would want done if only G od understood as well as they do?

All the rationale in the universe is wasted on such people. Their favored response when confronted with facts and logic is this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:" . . .More...

The World Cup of Ink

 The American Conservative 

"If Alexander Pope were alive today, he would not write that the proper study of mankind is man; he would write that the proper study of man is tattoo. And in mankind, I include (for those who object to the word) womankind, for in one of the strange reversals of our time, more women are now tattooed than men."

"My interest in professional sport these days ranges from minimal to nil, but even I could not altogether avoid or evade the hysteria over the recent World Cup, which recurs every four years. It would have been easier to miss the outbreak of the Third (or would it be the Fourth?) World War. 

"As everyone now knows, Spain beat Argentina in the final, in a match more remarkable for its non-sporting qualities than for its display of skill. There was something of a brawl afterwards. The Spanish were clearly the better side, and while they played a clean game (or one as clean, at least, as can be expected from a professional soccer team), the Argentinians played dirty. 

"But I noticed another very important difference between the teams: The Argentinians were far more heavily tattooed than the Spanish. Indeed, desultory research revealed that, of the 26 players in the Argentinian squad of players, 20 were tattooed. Could this explain the inferiority of the Argentinians to the Spanish? 

"I had already observed that when the Germans last won the World Cup, their team was much less tattooed than their opponents. Could it be that, in the modern world, the prevalence of tattooing is inversely proportional to intelligence, and that, though skill at soccer is principally one of physical coordination, higher intelligence is nevertheless an advantage in any match? "Those who write on soccer often refer to “footballing intelligence,” as if it were a faculty of its own; but perhaps it is related positively to general intelligence as, say, musical ability is related to it, notwithstanding the populist demagoguery of Amadeus (the misleading film adaptation of the play of the same name).

"Despite the expansion in the proportion of the population that is tattooed, one would still expect, where a brawl breaks out as it did after the end of the World Cup final, that the tattooed were more likely to be the originators of it than the untattooed. And so it was in this case. 

"Of course, one would also not expect there to be a one-to-one correspondence between tattooing on the one hand and low intelligence and bad behaviour on the other. Perhaps the greatest player in the history of the sport—certainly one of the greatest—is the Argentinian, Lionel Messi, and he has a hideously, totally tattooed forearm, but is neither stupid nor badly behaved. But generalizations may hold while individual instances seem to contradict them. 

"I was somewhat alarmed, therefore, to see that several of the winning Spanish team had either had promised or resolved to have the face of their trainer tattooed on themselves if they won the cup. This, I surmised, would be the beginning of the end of the predominance of the Spanish in world soccer, not having lost in their last 38 games in international competitions. If I were their trainer, I would strongly advise them not to have themselves tattooed, and this quite independently of aesthetic considerations (what is called body art is really, and invariably, body kitsch)." . . . More...

Mamdani’s reparations logic does not add up

 Washington Examiner

"New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani floated cutting checks to black New Yorkers to atone for the city’s involvement in slavery. But transforming the descendants of immigrants into historical perpetrators, and millions of black New Yorkers into victims, would be historically incoherent and legally perilous.

When asked whether he would support cash reparations for those affected by slavery if recommended by the New York City Commission on Racial Equity, Mamdani said New York was “very complicit” and that he looked forward to the commission’s “critically important” findings.

It has become a rite of passage for progressive public officials to establish racial-reckoning commissions. They propose relief for black people, whom they view as victims of systemic racism, often in the form of cash payments or housing grants.

California was the first state to form an official reparations task force. The body released a 500-page report charging the state with systemic racism, as demonstrated by disparate outcomes between white and black Californians. Illinois, Maryland, and New York state have done the same, with little follow-through.

Evanston, Illinois, was the first municipality to follow through on reparations promises. Black residents and their descendants who faced housing discrimination between 1919 and 1969 can receive $25,000 in unrestricted cash payments.

New York had the largest enslaved population among northern states in 1790, and 42% of the state’s households enslaved at least one person in 1703 — a rate second only to Charleston, South Carolina. The Empire State’s outsize figures were perhaps a consequence of the government-sanctioned slave market New York City established near Wall Street in 1711, as Mamdani mentioned in the interview.

Unsurprisingly, Southern states eclipsed New York’s enslaved population of 21,324 in 1790. Enslaved people accounted for 43% of the population in South Carolina, 39% in Virginia, and 35% in Georgia, compared with 6% in New York." . . .  More...