Randy Newman, Baltimore

Poor Jeb Part 2

The Yuge and the Jews

Jewish opposition to Donald Trump has been predictable and fierce. With some dissent, such as Mickey Kaus' long-running, heroic immigration criticism, the consensus seems to have been immediate: Donald Trump is bad for the Jews. Opposition would appear to have everything to do with the immigration issue first and, maybe more deeply, unease for Trump's energizing of a white American (formerly, American) reaction. But would he be so bad for the Jews, from their point of view?

Looking at Trump's ties to the Jewish community through Manhattan and marriage; his formerly warm relationship to Netanyahu (before Bibi found it advantageous to throw the Donald under the bus); his hawkish pro-Israel foreign policy; after eight years of Obama's adversarial relationship with Israel (and his progressive leftist sympathy with the Palestinians); his opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran--a Trump administration would seem to represent an immediate improvement from a pro-Israel, pro-Jewish perspective.
Yet no one seems less reconciled to Trump than the Jews. It casts in embarrassing relief just how important immigration and anti-white politics are to influential American Jews--or would, if we were allowed to talk about it.

But herein lies one more possibility inherent in Trump. Because of this combination of nationalism, pro-Israel views and Jewish ties, should he just manage to get past the Jews to the White House, Trump could be the one figure who could reconcile them, however much is possible, to policies and a culture that are at least non-hostile to white Americans, by showing to them and everyone else they don't constitute 1933 in America. And that would be yuge.

Trump will go to the Jews like Nixon went to China.

Projectionism

Psychological projection doesn't get its sociological due.
I take the liberty of applying "projection" to the broader tendency to project onto others our own motivations and desires that is a natural, unavoidable psychological adaptation to society, not the displacement of Freudian projection. We don't know anyone as we know ourselves and, while vanity may skew our opinion in our favor--no one wants to see himself as too far from normal, particularly in questions of morality--we can't help but take ourselves as our own best model of man. Any assessment of the actions of others always begins with, at the very least subconsciously, asking ourselves why would I do this? 

Projection works, to the extent its assumptions are accurate. Cultural and probably ethnic homogeneity matters. If I'm assuming you're more or less motivated by the same things I am and to the same degree, the closer I am to being right the better for me. The value of projection diminishes in concentric circles outward: self, family, community, ethnicity... Diversity would figure to wreak havoc on and through projection.

In political discourse, meanwhile, we have to pretend that we're all alike (yet somehow made vibrant through ethic diversity) and never motivated by any significant difference--polite opinion is the forcing of everyone to project onto non-whites the relatively enlightened, tolerant and altruistic worldview. There is no platitude more common and more false than the one about how we're all the same, confirmed by President Obama's newspeak assertion Paris terror attacks were an assault on "universal values".

It helps one to be aware of projection, in himself and others, for not all projection is equal. The bias that comes of it, as opposed to the sort of "bias" we're used to hearing about, is indifferent to self interest and can work against one's own self or group interest. I believe it works against whites as a crucial component of the white elite's bizarre embrace of anti-white rhetoric and action.  When two people or groups and project sometimes wildly divergent behavioral assumptions onto one another, the more trustworthy party is disadvantaged; vice becomes its own advantage and virtue a weakness.

I think this explains much of what we're currently seeing in Europe.