The Tomb of the Unknown Slur

 

There is a Yiddish word, "shvartze", that literally translates to "black" but is generally understood as a derogatory slur for Black people. In terms of offensiveness, it's not the n-word, but it's definitely completely inappropriate. Fun fact: if you encounter a person who tries to argue "but it just means 'black'!", congratulations! You've found a racist!

Anyway, I was thinking about this word earlier today, and particularly was thinking about the degree to which it is known and by whom. My sense is that even among Jews, it is fading outside of Orthodox communities that speak Yiddish.  Beyond that, it's something your racist grandpa might say, but for my generation, to say nothing of the next, it isn't part of our lexicon (even our racists have assimilated in their use of derogatory language). Given that, it wouldn't surprise me (though I don't know this) if it is not an especially well-known term among American Blacks, particularly those who live in locations where there are not many Jews.

And assuming that's true (and again, I might be off-base even on the premise here), it made me wonder if there are other examples of slurring language that is not widely known among the targeted population. Is there a derogatory term Black people have for Jews that most Jews don't know about? I can imagine this sort of situation being either incredibly common or incredibly rare, and I'm honestly not sure which I'd find more likely.

Two Queens

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Donald Trump met today, and it went ... well? For all of Trump's prior bloviating about Mamdani being a communist, he seemed quite taken with Mamdani's charisma and was pretty much all praise during the meeting.

Obviously, there is an angle on this that goes "can you imagine if Hakeem Jeffries ....!?!" Trump is (as Mamdani described him on the campaign trail) a despot and an autocrat. If pretty much any other Democrat did an Oval Office meeting with Trump and made nice-y nice, the left would have gone ballistic.

For my part, I take the opposite lesson. One does, indeed, have to recognize that Trump is a despot and an autocrat. Yet even holding that recognition, that doesn't mean the right play is always the one that most performs "resistance". There is space for maneuvering, and we should recognize that savvy actors sometimes have maneuver. Of course, that does not mean that any "maneuver" is always savvy, and sometimes one does need to dig in one's heels. But it is a good thing to give good Democrats some latitude on this -- we don't truly know what the best strategy is going to be.

So no, one does not have to go full Ryan Grim and decide that actually Trump has now revealed himself as a champion of the working class. That remains as gullible as all get out.

But one also does not have to view Mamdani as some sort of traitor for taking this meeting. The true moral here is to not treat the mere fact of a meeting like this as sufficient evidence on its own that a Democratic politician is a traitor.

Shocked To Find Antisemitism in this Establishment

The decision of the Heritage Foundation to defend platforming an unabashed and unrepentant antisemite like Nick Fuentes has caused a burbling unease over the presence of antisemitism in conservative spaces to crash into the mainstream. It is evident that what might once have been labeled "far-right" antisemitism no longer is especially "far" at all; it is wholly mainstream and incorporated into the most prominent factions of contemporary American conservatism.

We are already seeing evidence of a crackup. Heritage's leadership is thus far standing by its position, perhaps cognizant of the substantial following Fuentes and his band of neo-Nazis have amongst younger GOP apparatchiks (one conservative commentator estimated that "30 to 40 percent of DC GOP staffers under the age of 30 are Groypers."). And they've gotten backup from none other than Donald Trump himself. But others prominent conservatives have dissented, announcing their resignation from Heritage or delivering impassioned speeches criticizing the growth of antisemitism in conservative spaces.

I don't want to denigrate the persons in the latter camp. Truly, I don't. They're speaking up, and that's good. But I do wish they would recognize how the overt antisemitism they're critiquing now is downstream from the slightly more covert antisemitism these same actors had been pushing if not justifying for years.

Consider today's big news story about a wild dissent from Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith in the Texas gerrymandering case, where Judge Smith delivered lurid and histrionic conspiracy theories claiming that the entire litigation is being done at the behest of and to the benefit of George Soros. This sort of raving is simultaneously a clear antecedent of Groyper-ism and also effectively unremarkable in conservative circles save that one rarely sees it emanate from a federal judge. You push the "shadowy Jewish financiers are responsible for everything unholy and wrong in society" as your conservative-mobilization button often enough, and it just can't surprise you when the next generation of conservatives mobilizes around viewing Jews as the problem.

This isn't even the first brush the Fifth Circuit has had with antisemitic allusions in recent years -- I flagged in my "Liberal Jews and Religious Liberty" article an opinion where Judge James Ho complained that corporations have been so overtaken by "woke" ideology that they no longer care about the bottom-line, and concluded by asserting that we live in the era of "the Goldman Rule  .... The guys with the gold get to make the rules." As I noted in my article, several Jewish commentators "flagged this passage—substituting the Jewish-coded name 'Goldman' for 'Golden' to speak of wealthy elites' ability to manipulate and control the rules to the detriment of ordinary Americans—as at least raising the specter of antisemitism."

Judge Smith's opinion is, I think, far more explicitly problematic than Judge Ho's was. But the broader point is that, when I read stories about FedSoc organizing a panel of federal judges to speak out on the growing scourge of antisemitism, I need them to realize that the call is coming from inside the house.

Life is a Metaphor for Life

I had one of those deep/dumb epiphanies the other day. Raising a baby is really a commentary on the human existence and how we relate to the independent existence of other people!

Nathaniel's latest milestones are, in rapid succession, crawling and pulling himself into a standing position. And every time he hits one of these milestones, I am beside myself with joy. That's for his sake, of course -- he's learning and growing -- but also mine. He can move on his own! If he wants a toy, he can just crawl to it. If he's bored with his current vantage point, he can maneuver himself to look at something new.

And yet.

Every one of Nathaniel's new milestones carries with it new opportunities to defy my will. It was, admittedly, very nice when I could set Nathaniel down and I'd know he'd stay where I put him. If I didn't want him to move, he didn't move. Now? Things aren't so simple. I might want him to play quietly in the living room; he might have an alternative idea of booking it at top speed towards the nearest stairway. As much as I love and cherish these milestones it was, I find myself ruefully admitting, a lot easier when I could basically control his every move.

Right now (as in, over the past day or two), Nathaniel is at that lovely stage where he can pull himself into a standing position ... but can't quite sit back down. This is a problem since the standing up part is very exciting and far preferable to, say, a nap, but the standing up indefinitely part is infuriating and demanding of a response from mom or dad. One might think that after being laid back down in these circumstances -- apparently baby's most heartfelt desire -- one would not immediately roll over and pull oneself back up again, but you are not a ten month old. Nathaniel has (and objectively still is) a great sleeper, but this has been a rare moment where I've had to spend hours coaxing him down for a nap that, ironically enough, he absolutely does want to take but keeps on self-sabotaging by standing up along the crib instead.*

Anyway, much like with humans, generally, on net I'm happy that this human is learning and growing and becoming more independent (I reserve the right to change that assessment during the teenage years). But yeah, I do have newfound appreciation for why those developments sometimes engender resentment.

* Jill once spotted him on the monitor crying before he pulled himself into the standing position but nonetheless proceeding to finish standing up anyway, as if he was possessed by some infernal demon forcing him to stand against his will.

Flying Solo

I'm back from my giant transatlantic trip. The schedule was:

• Depart Portland on Monday
• Arrive in Stockholm on Tuesday
• Deliver lecture on Wednesday (read a write-up on it here!)
• Leave Stockholm and arrive in Chicago on Thursday
• Give talk in Chicago on Friday
• Attend remainder of conference on Saturday
• Fly home Monday.

Woof! That's a lot! But it was all good.

The Chicago leg of the trip was relatively normal -- my wife and baby met us there (my mother traveled with them from Portland to make it easier), and after the conference we caught up with various friends and had a nice vegetative Sunday.

The Sweden leg, by contrast, represented my first international trip by myself. Actually, I'm not a big international traveler at all -- this was just my fourth time out of the country. Of those, the first was a cruise with my family through northern Europe when I was in high school (that included Stockholm as a port of call, as it happens) and the second was a college Model UN tournament at McGill in Montreal. After that, I didn't go abroad again for almost twenty years until this summer's England trip (where my whole family came along).

This trip, by contrast, was just me, and I had plenty of time to myself. I landed at around 1 PM local time and I knew I needed to force myself to stay awake until dinner Tuesday to stay on any kind of schedule (even though that would mean having stayed up well over 24 hours). So I went to the Moderna Museet, then took a leisurely walk through Stockholm until I got back to my hotel. On Wednesday, a similar situation -- I delivered my lecture in the morning (I woke up around 4 AM), but the remainder of the conference was in Swedish, so I spent the day walking around town visiting various art galleries until dinner time.

This may seem cheesy, but I'm actually pretty proud of myself. To be sure, "took a solo trip to a foreign country" feels like a milestone one is supposed to hit at around 23, not once one is nearly 40. But I have a strange relationship with travel -- as a young person, I was a great traveler (I jet-setted across the country in high school going to debate tournaments without a care in the world), and then starting around when I graduated college I grew to become an incredibly anxious traveler. I've gotten a little better, but even today I greatly, greatly prefer to travel with my wife.

Unfortunately, with a nine month old baby, it really wasn't feasible for her to come all the way out to Sweden with me (success of our England trip notwithstanding). And ... I did fine! I managed jet lag well, I was able to get around town and see the sights fine, I even was able to navigate the train at Arlanda airport when my taxi driver dropped me off at the wrong terminal. Does it help that everyone in Sweden speaks English perfectly? Of course -- but it's still a big deal to me.

Lingua Angla

Everyone in Sweden speaks English.

This is not an exaggeration -- English is part of the school curriculum in Sweden, so essentially everyone learns English (and can speak it flawlessly).

As an American tourist, this is actually a little awkward, because it feels like the height of entitled American-ness to be in a country where English is not the primary language and just assume everyone speaks English. But I'm here for a conference, and that was exactly what I was instructed to do! Cab driver, hotel receptionist, shopkeeper -- just start speaking in English! The keynote lecture I'm giving? Also in English. No translation, no nothing. Just straight English.

Sweden is an extreme case. But I don't think Americans quite realize just what a ridiculous privilege it is that English is the closest thing to a global lingua franca right now. I was walking through the Amsterdam airport for my connection to Stockholm, and the signs were all in English, and the various airport employees just naturally spoke to people in English. It's incredible, and utterly taken for granted.

I wonder, as American hegemony recedes (due to our own stupidity, mostly) whether this will stop being the case in my lifetime. If so, it will be a tremendous loss for Americans and other English speakers (obviously, there is no injustice in something replacing English as the global common language, but from a purely selfish standpoint it's still a loss).

Anyway, Sweden is quite lovely, even though my travel schedule is brutal -- I left for Stockholm on Monday, did not arrive until Tuesday afternoon, had my conference today, then leave for Chicago tomorrow morning for another conference Friday and Saturday before finally going home on Monday. But crippling jet lag has not dimmed my appreciation for this city or its wonderful people one bit. Yay Sweden!

The Enthusiasm of a Man Child

As I approach forty years old, it is natural to reflect on what one gains, and loses, by aging. It is, of course, cliche for a forty-something to look back longingly on their bygone youth, and I'm not immune to the impulse. Luckily, my nostalgia doesn't really take the form of wanting a fast car and or a ponytail. In general, I remain quite comfortable in my own skin.

But there is one thing recently that struck me as a genuine loss and that I genuinely mourn -- enthusiasm. Not having it, but how it is received.

I like liking things. And I like getting excited about things. It is fun to discover a new thing, and to be excited about it, and for people "in the know" on that thing to respond positively to that excitement. As a kid, if you're excited to -- to pick a random example -- learn about airplanes, and you project that excitement next to a pilot, they'll be delighted and they'll usually gladly take you aside and explain some neat facts or give you an opportunity to check out a cockpit. If you're excited about cooking, and you meet a chef, they might let you watch them in the kitchen or give you some pointers on how to prep a meal. Enthusiasm is met with enthusiasm. It's nice.

As an adult, unbridled enthusiasm isn't met the same way. It's not (usually) looked down upon. But it isn't (usually) met with the same reflection back. To be clear, I don't begrudge anyone for this. The sort of investment we might give a single child as a reward for their enthusiasm isn't scalable; we couldn't give it to everyone.

Nonetheless, I can say with full honesty that I genuinely miss this response, because I actually do still try to relate to things that excite me with a sort of unguarded, exuberant, childish enthusiasm. Why wouldn't I? It's joyous, and why would I want to train myself to feel less joy just because I'm older and greyer? But this sort of enthusiasm, from a middle-aged man, understandably isn't met with the same affective glee from those in its path as it did when I was a kid. And I miss that, because it would still be cool to get the equivalent of the tour of the cockpit, and for the most part the days of getting that just because I'm excited about something are pretty well behind me.

Again, this isn't a claim of injustice or a call for something in the world to change. It is just a reflection, thinking about my own personality and my own (I'm realizing this more and more) determination not to let go of the things and practices that bring me joy just because I've gotten older.