Antisemitism in America: A Solution

Before I start, I must declare my bias.  I am biased against stupid human beings.  But by that pejorative term, I do NOT mean low IQ persons, I mean people who are ignorant (in one field or another) and have no interest in fixing that ignorance with facts and history.  Another qualification is needed: none of us can have an interest in every field, and that is fine.  But if someone has a need to share his opinions on a subject, despite his ignorance of the facts and the history of that field, he qualifies as STUPID in my mind.  And, potentially dangerously stupid, too.

OK, please show us examples of stupid people, stupid Americans.  Americans who do not care about facts or history.

If you were to research the question: how many books does the typical (median, NOT average) American read per year, you would discover the answer is four.  But I have three quibbles with that figure.  1) When you research that question, you will find hundreds of commentators swearing that the real answer is closer to 0 – 1 for the typical American.  2) Americans read much, much more fiction than non-fiction books.  3) The typical American who reads books is … a woman.

But we men DO read, just not books.

Sorry, blinky, but there is a natural hierarchy of sources of information that deal with facts and history, and that hierarchy is: books, professional (peer-reviewed) journals, magazines, newspapers, TV news, internet and, at the bottom, social media.  The determinative factor for this hierarchy is time: (non-fiction) books are always about the past, with the perspective that goes with that distance; social media’s perspective is the moment, no time to consider the reliability of whatever is being communicated, whether any comment on social media is indeed factual or meaningful is just dumb luck.

So, yes, I am biased against most Americans, because facts and history ain’t their thing!

But aren’t you forgetting what this essay is about, antisemitism in America and how to solve it?

Hadn’t forgotten, I just had to lay the groundwork.

Antisemitism is exploding in America, especially – if only – among the young.  And what have the young in common?  Ignorance, specifically ignorance of what has happened in the world before they became interested in what is happening in the world, let’s say when they reached fifteen years of age or maybe nineteen.  Some, never.  I don’t give a rat’s ass if you are ignorant about anything, just keep your uninformed opinions to yourself, no harm done.  If you have a strong opinion about a subject that you are not well-informed about, and a need to share it with the world, you are – according to my definition – stupid.  And this kind of stupid – which is repairable through interest and study – should have consequences.

Many Americans enter the voting booth without knowing a thing about American history and that is a large problem.  When an American History professor at an elite college gets the same vote as the typical ignorant American jerkass, that is a HUGE problem.   And when idealistic young and ignorant American jerkasses mouth off about a subject that they know nothing about – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that is a huge problem.   I bet they will say, “but I know enough.”  If you were to suggest that they prove it by acing a test, they will decline, with as much self-righteousness as a young and ignorant young person can muster.

By now, dear reader, you should have guessed what my “solution” is: require that young (or all) protesters know the facts about the subject before joining a mob and making noise.  Standardized tests can be created by experts in the field on both sides of the controversy.  And elite colleges can require that all freshmen take a one year course about such controversies.

What kind of controversies?

Those that engender hatred among people.  Like politics, like religion, like race, like nationality.  The more you know about both sides of a controversy, the less likely you will surrender to hatred of “the other.”

Where does the Israeli-Palestinian controversy fit in?  Religion?

No.  One might think that this controversy is about religion.  Or all four factors that I mentioned.  But this one is special.  The Israeli-Palestinian controversy, in America, is about antisemitism.  But we need to engage our college freshmen on both sides of this … conflict, as so many deny it is about antisemitism.  Let facts and history take these young minds where they will.

Education is the answer to so many of our ills, our human ills.  Indeed, if we fail to educate “the masses” adequately, they will be replaced by robots and sooner than you think.

So, who gets to define education, or what should be taught?  Voters?

Hell, NO!  Only educators – those men and women who have dedicated their lives to lifting up their fellow men and women – will decide.   And I do NOT mean whom the president – especially one as verifiably stupid as our current president – chooses as his Secretary of Education.  No, I mean boots-on-the-ground educators.

One last word, borrowed from my blog post, The Price of Protest: An Open Letter to America’s Children.  

Freedom of speech (whether ignorant or fact-based) only protects you from government prosecution, it does NOT provide you a platform for your speech nor does it protect you from the consequences of your speech, like being refused an interview at the law firm of your choice or being fired by your private employer.  Similarly, the freedom to peaceably assemble protects your right to assemble, as long as you are assembling on government property; it does NOT protect your right to assemble on anyone’s private property.  So, when a private college or university loses patience with your freedom to assemble on their grounds and tells you to depart, that is the end of your right to peaceably assemble; from that moment on, you are not peaceably assembling, you are trespassing.  And freedom to assemble surely does not protect you from legal consequences when you take over a building that does not belong to you, whether or not you damage it.

Any questions?