videogames were supposed to enhance my social circles

 

I bought 3000 Modern Magic the Gathering cards in 2020, but the game stores play standard decks and not modern decks or legacy decks. Then in October, I bought a Dungeon and Dragons Essential pack and D&D Players Guide and map for a total of $45. The Dork Den told me to buy the D&D Essentials pack worth $16. They use Dungeons and Dragons Beyond app for a Dungeon Master, spell cards, dice/

I thought for the longest time, since Pokemon on Gameboys in elementary that videogames were going to give me girlfriends, wifes, friends, huge social circles (google+ with youtube videos). Then when I brought Mario Kart Super Circuit on a purple GBA in my pocket in 12^th grade meant I was going to have friends. There were communists at Renaissance academy, because the Democratic Party was in power and they called me racist when the pledge of allegiance wasn’t sung often or started to disappear. I grew up with Sega Genesis, NES, N64, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast as a kid. Then PS2 and Xbox as high schooler. I had David Hartmon coming over a lot.

Now-a-days I thought I have a huge social circle on instagram. A lot of Facebook friends, old instagram followers were married or had a few girlfriends. I was on okcupid for 15 years looking for women with low amount of luck. I had this date in 2005 with a woman from high school and showed her pictures off playstation portable on a coffee shop. Then Amanda superliked me off okcupid and I found out with Premium.

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Who Is Going to Save America?

 

On Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) led their Harvard University alumni colleagues in a letter demanding that university President Claudine Gay condemn a statement released by 34 student organizations that blamed Israel for Hamas’ barbaric attacks.
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The letter from the lawmakers comes after Gray released a statement on Friday defending the student organizations’ statements as “freedom of expression.”

“Our university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views,” Gray claimed.

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.@Harvard continues to disgrace itself on the global stage.   Antisemitism should be condemned and NEVER defended as “free expression.” Claudine Gay should resign. https://t.co/QpRjaJWzCy — Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) October 13, 2023

In the letter, which was provided Townhall, the lawmakers pointed out that Gray did not issue a statement until days after Hamas’ attacks began. This came following public outcry. And, the university refused to denounce the student organizations’ antisemitic statement (via Congress of the United States):

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On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and began indiscriminately murdering, torturing, abducting, and raping innocent Israeli civilians. The Iran-backed terrorist organization slaughtered over 1000 people on the first day of their attack, the greatest loss of life for the Jewish community in a single day since the Holocaust. There is no justification for Hamas' barbaric behavior.   Following the indiscriminate Hamas terrorist attacks, over thirty student organizations at Harvard University released a letter stating that Israel was "entirely responsible for all unfolding violence." This should have warranted an immediate unequivocal condemnation from yourself and Harvard University leadership. Instead, you waited two days to release an initial statement that failed to even condemn the terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, much less address the antisemitism on your campus. Your original statement claims that Harvard is committed to fostering an environment of open dialogue and empathy. However, your delayed response makes it clear you are only committed to intentionally fostering an environment that allows rampant and dangerous antisemitism on Harvard's campus. Your failure to immediately repudiate the letter from the student organizations makes you and the entire Harvard University leadership complicit in creating an environment that enables antisemitism. After receiving significant public backlash for this weak statement, you released an updated statement three days later finally condemning Hamas, this is too little too late.

The letter then calls on Gray to investigate the origins of the school’s “unified hate and ignorance” towards Israel.

“The leadership at Harvard University should be ashamed,” Stefanik said in a statement. “Harvard leadership has still not denounced the students’ statement, this is morally sickening. Any voice that can defend the raping, killing, and kidnapping of innocent women and children has chosen the side of terrorism.”

“Sadly, there are few places on earth with more vicious antisemitism and hatred of Israel than American ‘elite’ universities,” Cruz added. “Harvard must decide whether it wants to be a true institution of higher learning or an incubator of bigotry and antisemitism whose students try to rationalize and justify child rape and mass murder.”

This week, Townhall identified the leaders of many of the student groups who issued the statement.

American Civics Is Dead

 

A recent Fox News survey found that 70% of voters believe there is a need for more civics education. It stands to reason as fewer than one-quarter of US eighth graders performed at or above proficiency on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam in civics. Thirteen states still need civics course requirements at the high school level, and only seven states require a full year of civics or government. 

When we talk civics, many assume it means a K-12 curriculum that educates young minds and hearts on the establishment of our country as a constitutional republic, not a straight-up democracy; the significance of the principles of liberty penned in the Declaration of Independence; the unique nature of self-governance and the checks and balances through our three branches of government that is of the people and by the people.  And that this first-of-its-kind system of government that became a major superpower requires citizen engagement for it to survive and succeed. 

Founding figures like Jefferson, Madison, and Adams vociferously advocated for widespread education to preserve liberty and empower citizens to self-govern effectively.  Stripping statues reminiscent of these men and others in our history who modeled the preservation of our republic sent a loud message to the next generation that these noble albeit imperfect figures are worth diddly-squat. 

According to the 2022 Constitution Day Survey, fewer than half of Americans could name all three branches of government, while only one in four could not name any. There were sharp declines in the ability of respondents to name freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. The time-honored American tradition of teaching classic civics hasn’t just been tossed; it appears to have been substituted with a cheap, radicalized, anti-American counterfeit.   That’s right.  You need to check in on what is being taught in civics classes in your local schools.   

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According to the Pioneer Institute’s early 2022 study, there are a few civics programs out there breathing life into homeschoolers and some charter schools that are true to the founding, including pedagogies from Hillsdale’s 1776, the Bill of Rights Institute, Teaching American History from the Ashbrook Center, and Florida’s proposed K-12 Civics and Government Standards. On the other hand, many public schools have been manipulated and infiltrated by the US Dept of Ed-funded non-government organizations that spread radical social-justice style activism under the guise of civics.  The pack leader is Educating for American Democracy (EAD), which conveniently slipped into schools nationwide in 2021, masquerading as civics.  It is routinely introduced to state boards of education as a framework to inform state standards, forcing all lessons and textbooks to conform to its outline for curricula.  

Though touted as a bi-partisan effort to revive civics for the 21st century, Educating for Democracy priorities for students are far-afield to teaching good citizenship and a true understanding of the Republic. Instead, it promotes radicalizing the next generation to “create student opportunities to engage with real-world events and problem-solving about issues in their communities, taking informed action to create a more perfect union.”  (Just one example of EAD’s doublespeak: the phrase “to create a more perfect union” does not comport with what our Founders intended.)

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EAD urges teachers “to affirm diverse identities and provide inclusive instruction and examples.”  If that meant respecting one another equally, that would make sense, but we know by now this isn’t the meaning of those words. Its website links to Activism Online, which directs kids to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Learning for Justice, which supposedly tackles systemic injustice. But SPLC has shown its true colors through numerous actions against founding freedom principles and is anything but a harbinger of justice for all.

Students are also encouraged to participate in student government and committees, meet with local political leaders, and engage in their community.  That all sounds good if their participation and activities are around supporting the principles of liberty, not actions that seek to divide us.  

The bottom line? Educating for America’s Roadmap has distilled the traditional civics curriculum to just one of seven themes: “Theme 4: A New Government and Constitution.” This theme delves into the United States’ institutional history and the constitutional design’s theoretical foundations.  Let’s face it: omitting six of seven components of a conventional civics curriculum is hardly educational.

Back to EAD’s activist bent.  Take, for example, protesting gun violence. It is a well-recognized – if not often ignored – fact that guns don’t kill people; people do.  None of us condone gun violence; however, if we violate the Second Amendment and take guns away from all people, bad people will still get guns illegally, and people will still be harmed or killed. Unless good guys have guns to protect and defend, we are in worse trouble than we are now.  Still, protests after school shootings carry an anti-second amendment sentiment.  This leads us to a misguided example of student activism in response to Uvalde when 200 schools in 34 states, from California’s shores to the peaks of Vermont, including the District of Columbia, staged walkouts in response to the tragedy.   In Rhode Island, a teacher took things further when she piled young students in vehicles, trotted them off to the state capitol without parental permission, and told them to lay down on the floor of the capitol dome in protest of guns after Uvalde. 

Educating for Democracy’s idea of “activism” is of this ilk. Pioneer Institute further explains that emphasizing political action enables the next generation to become adept in administrative tactics and evasion. Still, it compromises the values of a free republic. They envision “democracy” and fairness enforced and upheld by the maneuvers of lifelong bureaucrats. This trend will not provide us with an America led by devoted citizens committed to the principles of liberty enshrined in our founding documents.

Above all, parents and liberty-honoring school board majorities must be aware that this counterfeit civics allows for a radicalization that impairs future leaders from understanding what made America great, including individual liberty, free markets, private property rights, limited government, and the ability to pursue your dreams.  If we aren’t outspoken now, future generations will be punished for using their voices at all.

American civics may be dead in many public schools, but we can work together to resurrect it.

Now Do You Understand Why Jews Are Paranoid?

 

Today’s attack reinforces a feeling that permeates Israeli society: the country and the Jewish people are one mistake away from total destruction.

I took a class at Harvard on Modern Jewish History in 1986. The class was sparsely populated with all Jewish guys except for one woman who was in the process of converting to Judaism. On the first day of class, Professor Cooperman asked out of the blue, “How many of you think that it could happen here?” Being Harvard-types, we asked what “it” was. He refused to define it but asked the question again. Every hand went up. He was shocked. These were American Jews forty years after the Holocaust in the most Jewish-tolerant country in history. Yet, every hand went up. A sunny day today does not mean that there won’t be thunderstorms tomorrow.

Today’s Hamas attack against southern Israel was a shocker, apparently to the intelligence and military leaders of Israel as well. I was at prayers with my sons this morning. We started around 6 in the morning, and around 8, just before finishing up, there was an air raid siren. I remember the air raid siren back in Wilmette, Illinois—every Wednesday at noon it would go off, so as to make sure that we were prepared for some future Soviet attack. My wife, who had served in the IDF, taught me that an “up and down” air raid siren was a sign of war. And this was an up and down siren that went on for some time. Before the Sabbath/Holiday, there had been no suggestion of an attack, or escalating violence around Gaza. But after the first siren, warning sirens went off that meant that rockets were on their way to Jerusalem. A few minutes after each siren, one heard the explosions of the Iron Dome missiles sent to take out the attacking projectile. These warning sirens went off all morning and there were not many people in the street. As of this writing, missiles continue to fall on all parts of Israel.

Thirty years ago, Secretary of State James Baker had the gall to tell Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir that when Israel would get serious about peace, he should call the State Department switchboard, kindly providing the telephone number in a televised speech before Congress. Before Baker, Henry Kissinger famously slowed down weapons deliveries during the Yom Kippur War until Golda Meir threatened use of nuclear weapons, to which Richard Nixon responded by sending loaded C130 planes to Israel every half hour. Barack Obama liked to talk about Israel taking “risks for peace” and notably stopping the flow of Hellfire missiles in the middle of a flare-up between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Israelis were horrified by this move, but Obama tended to see Israel as a very strong military power and thus felt he could tweak its weapons inventory.

So why have august American leaders seen Israel as being slow to take risks or unwilling to make peace? The short answer is that Israelis are paranoid and rightly so. When little Hamas men started popping up in Israeli wheat fields in the 2014 war, Israelis were suddenly introduced to cross-border terror tunnels that no one had ever discussed before. Israelis are not interested in mass-suicide and Abba Eben described the 1948 borders to which a peace deal was supposed to require as “the Auschwitz borders.” Israelis fear for attacks like the one performed by Hamas today. At the time of writing, there are 150 dead, 1,000 wounded and tens of Israelis held prisoner in Gaza. What good are F-35’s, probable nuclear weapons, advanced submarines, tanks and the like when such an attack can take place? Where was the intelligence? Israel has hundreds or maybe thousands of Palestinians on the payroll in Gaza. When a terror leader is killed in his apartment, this generally happens after someone has informed the Israelis of his location. Why was there no intelligence on a coordinated attack involving dozens or hundreds of armed terrorists?

The situation in Gaza is enough to justify Kafka’s collected writings being kept in Israel. I remember when Hamas won the local elections nearly 20 years ago. Trucks filled with Israeli produce stood idle outside of Gaza’s gates. The head of the Kibbutz organization was terribly concerned with fruit spoiling by not being let into the strip. Israeli companies provide gasoline as well as heating oil to the residents of Gaza, including its terrorists. Israel provides water and electricity. My lawyers once sued Israel to stop the Israeli post office from exchanging bills from Gaza: when the Israeli shekel-denominated bills became worn out, Israel would send a Brinks-type truck filled with new bills to replace the old ones. Israeli companies and the state are making billions of dollars on Gaza. Do you know of any other country in the world that allows rockets to be shot at its citizens and does not wipe out the threat? Israel is a country of geniuses but does not have a clue on how to deal with an enemy as those before us did. General Curtis LeMay tried daylight target-specific bombing in Japan and quickly learned that it did not work. He moved to nighttime area destruction and brought Japan to its knees. If Israel cannot muster the will to crush and destroy the terrorists in Gaza, firstly they will act again as soon as they are back up to strength and Hezbollah and other organizations will learn that Israel can be attacked.

So please understand why Israel does not jump head-first into some peace agreement with the Palestinians. The latter were offered twice peace deals that they rejected. Israelis are paranoid that the army and the leadership will screw up, and today proves that they are not wrong. We should know real peace and G-d willing, soon.

Our Establishment’s Alternate Realities

 

One common denominator that explains why previously successful societies implode is their descent into fantasies. A collective denial prevents even discussion of existential threats and their solutions.

Something like that is happening in the United States. Eight million illegal immigrants have entered the United States by the deliberate erasure of the southern border.

Apparently, the Biden Administration sees some unstated advantage in destroying U.S. immigration law and welcoming in would-be new constituents.

Yet, the more the millions arrive, the more President Joe Biden and his Homeland Security director Alejandro Mayorkas flat-out lie that “the border is secure.”

They both live in a world of make-believe, passed off to the American people as reality.

And the more the Americans are lied to that the border is secure, the more they poll –currently 77 percent — that it is not.

Biden apparently has reversed course and begun using the former pejorative “Bidenomics” as a term of pride.

He now praises this three-year effort to borrow $6-7 trillion and spike interest rates threefold to 7% on home mortgages — even as prices on essentials like food and fuel have spiked 25-30% since he entered office.

The more that Biden brags about what he did to the economy, the more people poll –over 60% — dissatisfaction with his alternate reality of “Bidenomics.”

Do we remember the humiliation in August 2021 in Afghanistan?

The more retired Gen. Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Biden assured that the American military presence was stable, the more swiftly it crumbled and descended into the worst mass flight of an American army since Vietnam.

Consider natural gas and oil. The Biden administration waged war on both by canceling pipelines, drilling on federal lands, and entire oil fields.

When the price soared, and the 2022 midterms neared, Biden suddenly begged formerly shunned illiberal regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela to pump all the hated oil they could to lower the price.

A desperate Biden drained much of the strategic petroleum reserve — he has yet to refill it — simply to lower the price of gasoline and thus win voters back to the Democratic Party.

When the midterms passed, Biden resumed his attack on once bad, then good, and now bad again fossil fuels until the 2024 election.

Stranger still is the denial of the current crime wave in our major cities. Predators and thugs have turned once iconic downtowns into either war zones, ghost towns, or both.

Smash-and-grab swarming of stores and matter-of-fact shoplifting are destroying commerce in our major cities.

Unsustainable stores either leave or shut down. Communities who vote for politicians who defund the police blame the stores for leaving — but not the criminals whose brazen thefts made it impossible to do business in the inner city.

Now, modern-day pirates with impunity storm, sink, and rob boats of all kinds in the Oakland marina and estuary.

Leftwing journalists and activists, and even Democratic politicians, who all supported defunding the police, now cannot escape the resulting street violence and unleashed murderous predations.

Everyone knows the culprit is the post-George Floyd effort — with Biden administration complicity — to defund the police, end cash bail, institutionalize catch-and-release of criminals, and show more sympathy toward victimizers than victims.

Yet neither state nor local officials nor Biden himself even admits to a crime wave. The more the public is attacked and avoids major downtowns, the more it polls furor over the crime wave.

The more our officials, in gaslighting style, claim such alarm is all in our collective heads, the more they themselves are attacked by the very criminals their policies empowered.

Sometimes, the fantasies extend to the trivial. For months, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn, has dressed like an utter slob while on the Senate floor. As a gesture of approval, Democrats junked the dress code so he could wear his sloppy cut-offs and hoodie.

Americans were to assume his slovenly costume was normal apparel — and they were hypercritical for thinking otherwise.

Recently, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-NY, pulled a Senate fire alarm to disrupt and delay a vote on continuing the funding of the government. But he got caught on a Capitol surveillance video committing the crime.

Bowman whined that he got confused. He preposterously claimed by pulling the alarm, he thought he was opening a door to go vote.

All of that was pure fantasy. The alarm was clearly marked. A sign in front of the door warned not to enter. And the door itself was placarded with cautions that any attempt to open it would set off emergency alarms.

No matter. Bowman assumed by calling his critics “Nazis” and using the race card, he could invent a virtual reality.

Despite our epidemic of fantasy, there remains reality.

And we will soon rediscover it all too soon.