Woke Feelings Are More Important Than 900 Children

The offending tiles (Palo Alto Online)

Summer camp for 900 kids was cancelled because staffers quit over two tile swastikas that are at least 109 years old. [bold added]

the resignations are linked to three tiles built into the home of the farm’s founders in 1929. Two of the tiles include a stylized version of a swastika. The 12-inch by 12-inch tiles, the letter said, were bought by Frank and Josephine Duveneck while traveling through Asia on their honeymoon in 1913.

According to the letter, the tiles bear Buddhist swastikas and a lotus and are embedded into the wall of the historic Duveneck house on the property. The swastika, believed to be more than 7,000 years old, was a sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Odinism long before it was adopted as an emblem for the Nazis in 1920, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

It's easy to take shots at the young staffers, who prioritize their feelings over the welfare of hundreds of children. This woke generation doesn't bother to look outside its bubble at other cultures or even try to understand historical contexts, accusations by the way which they freely level at the so-called dominant white culture.

We'll just close by looking at the couple who built Hidden Villa.

Born into Boston aristocracy, both Josephine Whitney and Frank Duveneck came to California to escape their "overbearing families." They bought a thousand acres ("Hidden Villa") in what is now Los Altos Hills and finished their house in 1930.

From the beginning of the Great Depression the Duvenecks opened Hidden Villa to minorities and the disadvantaged:

Hidden Villa became a center for social, educational, environmental, and humanitarian activities. It summer it was a youth camp, to which the Duvenecks brought minority and disadvantaged children, and minority counselors, which given the mostly white demographics of the San Francisco Peninsula, was particularly unusual and innovative.

It had the first youth hostel on the Pacific Slope. World War II refugees and Japanese-American victims of the World War II "relocation" - internment - were released to Hidden Villa. Gatherings included church outings, interracial parties, and fundraisings. Minority groups were welcome. The hostel accommodated a Moslem group which met to instruct children in Moslem faith and rituals. Native Americans met for dancing and feasts.

In the late 1950's Hidden Villa Camp was incorporated as a non-profit. Hidden Villa charged fees, but they were reasonable, although the Duvenecks generally paid the taxes, utilities, maintenance, and capital improvement costs.

The Duvenecks would undoubtedly weep if they knew that the Buddhist tile that symbolized the importance of Asian culture to them would cause such upset in the lives of hundreds of children this summer.

At Least In This Area Germany and the U.K. are Coming Together

For your safety, please read the instructions.

The Wall Street Journal wisely closed comments on this article:

Sex-Toy Makers Lovehoney, WOW Tech Merge in $1.2 Billion Deal as Lockdowns Spur Demand [bold added]

Germany’s WOW Tech Group is combining with Lovehoney, a U.K.-based online retailer, to offer a range of sex toys, lingerie, and lubricants to retailers and consumers. The companies officially announced the tie-up Thursday...

The deal comes as homebound consumers during pandemic-induced lockdowns spurred demand for sexual wellness products. Together, WOW Tech and Lovehoney, which will be known as the Lovehoney Group, will be profitable and expect to generate sales of more than $400 million this year. That is about double the combined 2020 level, making it the world’s largest sexual wellness company measured by revenue, they say.

The merger, which values the combined group at more than €1 billion, equivalent to $1.2 billion, represents a bet that the sector’s growth can continue even as the rollout of vaccines allows more people to leave their homes and socialize in groups.

A $1.2 billion merger is petty cash to many companies and would hardly rate a sentence, much less a headline, in the WSJ, but it's all about attracting clicks. They "made" me read it, didn't they?

So it's called "sexual wellness" now. What's the SIC Code?

That's Still Funny

One of the silver linings in the coronavirus cloud ("bad cloud", as opposed to "good cloud" like Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services) is that boredom and ennui have led to revisiting old videos.

Tosh Togo

The Three Stooges were a top-three favorite when my parents let this kindergartener watch on the old black-and-white during the '50's. I howled at the ridiculous physical comedy, complete with the sound effects of face-slapping, head-bashing, and eye-poking.

[Related: I also enjoyed watching the fake violence of pro wrestling on Saturday mornings and was later thrilled when Tosh Togo got the role of Oddjob in Goldfinger.]

But back to the Stooges, who had material for the adults, too. In 1940 they starred in one of the first anti-Hitler Hollywood films. You Nazty Spy! is filled with Nazi references such as "storm" troopers who wear raincoats while carrying umbrellas and "books" burning to erase gambling debts.

When arms dealers seek to install a puppet dictator, they entice wallpaper hanger Moe and his assistants Larry and Curly. Dialogue:

Paper-hanger Moe smears black
paint above his lip by accident.

Moe: What does a dictator do?

Arms manufacturer: A dictator, why he makes love to beautiful women, drinks champagne, enjoys life, and never works. He makes speeches to the people, promising them plenty, gives them nothing, then takes everything. That's a dictator!

Curly: A parasite! That's for me.

The cinematography is obsolete, but the script is not.

Jesus: Worth a Try

The Circumcision (Rubens)

A question rarely posed: Is Jesus Good for the Jews?

(It's not the same as asking if Christians are good for/to the Jews.)

Art Lamm of Yeshiva University notes that anti-Semites periodically try to deny Jesus' Jewishness: [bold added]

In the early 20th century, the anti-Semitic and racist German-British philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain argued that while Judaism provided the religious background for Jesus, he “had not a drop of genuinely Jewish blood in his veins.” The Nazis picked up on this thread. As Hitler consolidated power, German theologians insisted that Jesus was not a Jew but an Aryan, descended from Galilean gentiles.

In the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has sought to sever Jesus’ religion from his nationality or ethnicity. In a 2014 Christmas message, Mr. Abbas called Jesus “a Palestinian messenger of love, justice and peace.” This remains a common refrain from anti-Israel activists.

Not surprisingly, Jews throughout history have defended themselves by referring to Jesus' origin, without endorsing his teachings.

Take the Spanish Rabbi Simon Duran, born in 1361 and known affectionately as “Rashbatz.” Duran’s community suffered intense Christian persecution. In attempting to counter increasingly dangerous Christian threats to Jewish religious observance, Duran and his contemporaries emphasized the Jewishness of Jesus and the apostles. Appealing to passages in Matthew, Luke and the Book of Acts, Duran argued that Jesus and his followers believed the Jewish people should continue to adhere to Jewish practice.

After citing other examples, Art Lamm concludes:

When the need arises, Jewish thinkers have not been bashful in accentuating Jesus’ Jewishness—whether in religious, ethnic or national terms. As Jews increasingly come under attack in Europe and elsewhere, they should once more be prepared, if necessary, to assert Jesus the Jew, even as they have no wish to claim Jesus the Christian.

While this aspect of Christian-Jewish history is interesting, it's easy to overlook its relevance to outsiders whose groups may find themselves in conflict. The modern defense is to call the attacker a racist, a sexist, a class-ist, or some other variation of "-ist". The idea is to condemn the opponent morally; if it works, the weight of social media and even law enforcement can be brought to bear against the attacker. Name-calling may succeed in beating down opponents, but it doesn't bring them closer.

The "Jesus-was-a-Jew" defense holds that potential. It begins by showing how much one group (the Jewish people) is like a person (Jesus) whom the other group (Christians) admires. Common ground is emphasized, not moral superiority. It's worth a try--it can't be worse than what we're doing now.

Socialism's Fruits

National Socialism, 1944: [bold added[

The Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter") in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the German-occupied part of the Netherlands, especially in the densely populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A German blockade cut off food and fuel shipments from farm areas to punish the Dutch for their reluctance to aid the Nazi war effort. Some 4.5 million were affected and survived because of soup kitchens. About 22,000 died because of the famine. Most vulnerable according to the death reports were elderly men.

Venezuelan Socialism, 2019:

(From Guardian video)

Venezuelan troops have barricaded a bridge on the country’s western border with Colombia in an apparent attempt to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid sent by opposition leaders trying to force Nicolás Maduro from power.

A starving population is a compliant population.

Happy Thanksgiving

And now for something beautiful: a flash orchestra playing Beethoven's 9th in the Omotesando Hills shopping center in Tokyo. The musicianship and acoustics are outstanding, and the sight of Japanese "shoppers" singing the Ode to Joy in the original German might have moved the master himself.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Direct Flight

Marcel Siem makes a hole-in-one on the European Tour. What makes this one special is that it flew directly into the hole. The shot also won him a Porsche.

The commentary sounds better in German, though das verstehe ich nicht.

The Evil That Man Is Capable Of

Elie Wiesel (SF Chronicle/AP photo)

71 years after the truths of the Nazi gas chambers and crematoria became known, the mind still cannot comprehend the magnitude of the evil.

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Auschwitz survivor, made it his life's work to remind the world of the Holocaust, which most of us don't think about and, frankly, would rather forget.

Dozens of people die in a terrorist attack, and the incident becomes grist for editorializing and political change. Multiply such an act of terrorism by 100,000, and we are in the neighborhood of the Holocaust (6,000,000 killed).

“Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.”

One 20th-century society made it a deliberate goal to exterminate millions of human beings; the fact is still incomprehensible. Elie Wiesel forced us to look at the evil that man is capable of. He didn't get cheers of thanks, but we give him thanks nonetheless.

A Sickness That Now Has A Name

(pinterest image)

Despite its long-comings, the German language has words that describe some concepts perfectly.

Schadenfreude ("a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people") is used so often that it has become cliché.

Gestalt - in psychology, "something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts"; in broad terms, "the general quality or character of something."

Another valuable entry, sure to gain currency, is witzelsucht:

Witzelsucht (from the German witzeln, meaning to joke or wisecrack, and sucht, meaning addiction or yearning) is a set of rare neurological symptoms characterized by a tendency to make puns, or tell inappropriate jokes or pointless stories in socially inappropriate situations.

My affection for (obsession with?) Airplane! and Naked Gun movies can now be explained.

Witzelsucht "can be an early indicator of dementia" (Surely, you jest--no, and don't call me Shirley!), so I suppose I should see a doctor (if I don't, I need some new glasses).

But not before I check out TBS' Angie Tribeca series:

when Tribeca does work, it nudges awake a certain eighth-grade sensibility that delights in nothing more than seeing a knowingly asinine idea treated with staunchly serious commitment...Tribeca revels in fiendishly devised, fast-and-furious quips.

Time's Person of the Year: Merkelvellian

The Chancellor of Germany, given the importance of the country, is always influential, but each century there's at least one Chancellor who changes the course of history.

19th Century - Otto von Bismarck

20th Century - You Know Who

21st Century - Angela Merkel, Time's Person of the Year. [bold added]

Her political style was not to have one; no flair, no flourishes, no charisma, just a survivor’s sharp sense of power and a scientist’s devotion to data. Even after Merkel became Germany’s Chancellor in 2005, and then commanded the world’s fourth largest economy, she remained resolutely dull—the better to be underestimated time and again. German pundits called her Merkelvellian when she outsmarted, isolated or just outlasted anyone who might mount a challenge to her.

Save Us From the Time of Trial

Iraq today (CNN)

NY Times: Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East?

ISIS scanned the separate groups of men and women. ‘‘You’’ and ‘‘you,’’ they pointed. Some of the captives realized what ISIS was doing, survivors told me later, dividing the young and healthy from the older and weak....No one was sure where either bus was going.

At the Nazi killing centers:

After deportation trains arrived at the killing centers, guards ordered the deportees to get out and form a line. The victims then went through a selection process. Men were separated from women and children. A Nazi, usually an SS physician, looked quickly at each person to decide if he or she was healthy and strong enough for forced labor. This SS officer then pointed to the left or the right; victims did not know that individuals were being selected to live or die.

For centuries the men with the guns, drunk with power and certitude, have decided who lives and who dies. On rare occasions victims are spared if they renounce their faith.

May Christians in the very safe United States of America never be put to this test.

That Can Won't Roll Very Far

(From Vivify Change Catalyst)

So Greece "won" by negotiating a third bailout of Greek banks:

Eurozone finance ministers agreed “in principle” Thursday to grant Greece an expensive third bailout designed to keep it in the euro. But the likelihood that the prospective three-year deal will fail—possibly before it even starts, let alone is completed—is now estimated at higher than 50% by some senior officials in Europe.

No politician on either side wants to be responsible for the write-offs, economic contraction, impoverishment, and even riots that will occur if Greece reneges on its Euro debts and departs the European Union. Better to lend a few more Euros and let the next man or woman deal with fixing a bigger problem.

Yes, the Greeks "won," but in the end they got worse repayment terms:

the radical-left party led by Alexis Tsipras played a reckless game of brinkmanship with the rest of the euro area, and in particular with Germany. Though the aim was to secure a better deal for Greece, the negotiations simply further injured the economy. The game of bluff culminated in a far worse deal on July 13th following bitter negotiations in Brussels last weekend between Mr Tsipras and other euro-zone leaders.

That kicked can has so many dents that it hardly rolls very far.

Borrowing Is Easy, Repayment Is Hard

Anglican priest and Guardian columnist Giles Fraser says the current Greek-German-euro crisis harks back to different perspectives on the Crucifixion(!) [bold added].

As Mr Fraser recalled, traditional Protestant and Catholic teaching has presented the self-sacrifice of Christ as the payment of a debt to God the Father. In this view, human sinfulness created a debt which simply had to be settled, but could not be repaid by humanity because of its fallen state; so the Son of God stepped in and took care of that vast obligation. For Orthodox theologians, this wrongly portrays God the Father as a sort of heavenly debt-collector who is himself constrained by some iron necessity; they prefer to see the passion story as an act of mercy by a God who is free.

The Greeks, obviously steeped in the Orthodox notion of a merciful God, had over 15 years of fun in the Mediterranean sun at the expense of those dyspeptic German bankers. C'mon, Angela, forgive us our debts and we'll try real hard to pay you back next time.