Donald Trump: Fake News!

JFK, Trump, and Camelot

Gary North – September 23, 2017

If Trump was ever sincere, his election has proven that one person simply cannot fight this corrupt system, this horrid swamp. Trump the reformer, the unlikeliest of knights in shining armor, is gone. The renegade billionaire striking fear into the heart of the establishment lasted a brief shining moment, like Camelot. — Donald Jeffries

These are the concluding words of an article listing Donald Trump’s sellouts since January 20, 2017. There have been a lot of them.

I think he is correct about his association of Trump with Camelot. Trump is a lot more like Camelot then Jeffries imagines.

JFK AS KING ARTHUR

We associate Jack Kennedy’s presidency with the 1960 musical that was totally mythical: Camelot.

Why do we do this? What possible connection does the presidency of John F. Kennedy have to King Arthur?

We do it because Jackie Kennedy was one of the great PR masters of the 20th century. Shortly after the assassination, she saw an advantage like only one other in American political history: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln became mythic in retrospect. It was fake news at its most implausible, but it worked.

She literally designed the whole campaign to connect her husband’s presidency with a mythical King Arthur, taking advantage of the enormous popularity of the musical.

It took 50 years for this story to become public. It still is not well known, but here are some mainstream media articles that tell the story:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/how-jackie-kennedy-invented-the-camelot-legend-after-jfks-deathhttp://people.com/politics/jackie-kennedy-invented-camelot-jfk-assassination

http://nypost.com/2013/11/10/inventing-camelot-how-jackie-kennedy-shaped-her-husbands-legacy

The posthumous legend of JFK was entirely mythical. It was tacked on top of a musical that was entirely mythical. The musical was tacked on top of a book that was entirely mythical. The book that was entirely mythical was based on one of the most popular literary myths in English literature. Virtually nothing is known of Arthur.

It was myth layered upon myth that would lead anybody to believe that JFK was anything more than a superficial, verbally gifted, speed reading, James Bond loving, serial adulterer. He got us into Vietnam, and he is to blame for having done so. He led Lyndon Johnson into the big muddy, from which Johnson never emerged. Neither did Nixon.

DONALD TRUMP AS KING ARTHUR

Trump gave a good inaugural address, a lot better than most. But he began to retreat from that address within days of having delivered it.

Trump’s candidacy was fake news. He coined the phrase, and it truly applied to everything he promised. It was all fake from day one. The man is a deal-doer. Deal-doers have no principles. They just do deals. They compromise. They lie. They over-promise. They deceive. They profit by putting lipstick on pigs. They do whatever it takes to get the deal done. He campaigned as a deal-doer. I believed him. That’s why I did not vote for him. I voted for Gary Johnson. I did not want to be sullied retroactively in my own mind by the sellouts that were inevitable.

The problem we are facing is this: Trump always got out of bad deals by declaring bankruptcy of the corporation in which he was the driving force. He raised money by means of his name, but when the deal went south, he bailed out. Here is the problem: you can’t declare bankruptcy on a presidency easily. Richard Nixon did, but Trump does not want to be remembered the way Nixon is remembered.

He is not going to declare bankruptcy on his presidency. I realize there are people who predict this, but I think it’s ridiculous. His presidency is not a corporation. He is, in the language of business, the sole proprietor. He is going to attempt to cobble together his presidential legacy by a series of deals. That’s why he keeps talking about renegotiating all the things that, during the campaign, he promised were nonnegotiable. For a deal-doer, nothing is nonnegotiable.

I really do think that there has been a Camelot element to Trump’s presidency. This element, like the original, was entirely mythical. His campaign was a series of deceptions in order to seal the deal. His inaugural address was his parting shot, not his opening salvo. His inaugural address was indeed a Camelot moment. It was his version of a Broadway play. He was the star of the play. He understood this.

CONCLUSION

The play has closed. It did not have a long run. He is now starring in its sequel: Merlin. King Arthur has died. Merlin has been declared king. It is a show about hope. It is about faith in magic. The star himself is a magician. He has always been a lot more like Merlin than King Arthur. He is a master of illusion.

The play is still sold out. It will be sold out for another 3 1/2 years. It may be sold out for another 7 1/2 years. That is because Donald Trump is not simply the star of the show, he is in charge of marketing. There has not been a marketer as successful at this level since Franklin Roosevelt.

From Gary North, here.

We Owe Goyim Gratitude

Look around. Several chicken Kapparos services explicitly self-advertise (or even actually fulfill!) self-imposed strictures against Tza’ar Ba’alei Chaim. How did this happen? Who deserves credit? Rabbis? Bah! No, Goyim!

In many respects our history follows the following funny pattern:

  1. Hashem teaches us a new Mitzvah.
  2. We obey said Mitzvah, rejecting the power and influence of the Goyim.
  3. Influenced by the Goyim, this Mitzvah is obeyed less and less.
  4. We reject said Mitzvah entirely.
  5. No one keeps the Mitzvah.
  6. Goyim rediscover the Mitzvah (without – or with mistaken – lacunae) for all the wrong reasons (שלא לשמה), and begin taunting us for being worse than them in this respect. Aren’t you guys the Chosen People?! Etc.
  7. We hold out; learning the wrong is easier than learning the right (ילפי מקלקלתא).
  8. We break and begin observing the Mitzvah, as copycats.
  9. The Goyim lose their appetite fast, so it’s just us again.
  10. Rinse and repeat.

(The model is often longer with rabbis justifying rebellion ipso facto, then resisting doing Teshuvah worse than anyone, because “the Heter is real!”, “Don’t be machmir!”, etc.)

So a big thank you to the Goyim who took up our case and thank you, as well, to the renegade Jews who slavishly copied them in insisting we follow “Goyish” morals!

(There are various possible problems with Kapparos, and animal suffering is only one of them.)

On Yerushalmi-Centric, Yerushalmi-Supremacy Judaism

On the fringes of mainstream Aggadeta, we continually hear the following claim:

The sages of Talmud Yerushalmi were more attuned to true Torah than the sages of Talmud Bavli. Therefore, although in Halacha we follow (at least for now) the Bavli (though even this rule is not as firm as it is thought – Rabbi David bar Chaim), in Aggadeta we ought to prefer Yerushalmi, which is more… fill-in-the-blank (Zionist, feminist, anarchist, intuitive, applicable to our pre-Redemption generation, mystical, etc.). “Chazal” explicitly praised Israeli Chazal and their Talmud in comparison to Diaspora Chazal.

Since this site and I myself travel on the fringes of many topics (and I naturally include some of these claims), I wish to make clear my opinion on the above:

Since many of the sages would travel back and forth between the countries, differentiating between personalities is not so plausible. Rabbi Yochanan was the true leader of both schools. Also, Halacha is the real “meat” of Judaism, so why would the Halacha follow Bavli in disputes between the Talmuds, if it was inferior in even Aggadeta? (By the way, I am not yet convinced in the slightest by the aforementioned Rabbi Bar Chaim). And just because the Bavli sages may have been personally worse in some behavior (e.g., “vicious” debates, whatever that means), it does not follow their Talmud reflects their lackings, to the extent studying Bavli will make you a worse person than studying Yerushalmi.

It may very well be one can find certain points made in Yerushalmi which are more relevant to us, seeing as the Yerushalmi was written during and where… WXYZ. But from that claim to the claim that the Bavli would also wrongly disagree with those insights, the distance is far. Indeed, in Halacha, we say the opposite: Everyone then knew and /or agreed with the stricture against Pilegesh, for instance.

That is, the Yerushalmi may happen to make explicit a conclusion the Bavli omits, but a sufficiently wise scholar could deduce the same detail on his own. Or it may give factual data the Bavli deems less important. We interpret Bavli using Yerushalmi.

In general, even if many of the “Yerushalmi is better” crowd’s claims might be – even are – correct, it is my impression they have hardly begun to prove their case. And prove it they must. Many/most Yerushalmi enthusiasts explicitly rejected these ideas, including (to my memory) Radbaz, Ohr Same’ach, the Rogotchover, Gur, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, etc. Quoting Rabbi Kook once or twice doesn’t suffice. (And I don’t see the method of his Teshuvos differing (much) from classical Bavli Halacha, either.)

And when I say Yerushalmi-supremacists haven’t made their case, I am being very polite…

There’s a test, y’know: If I presented any Machlokes Bavli Yerushalmi in the opposite form, they would still say: Ah, we again see how Yerushalmi is “so much more WXYZ!” Try this for example (unless you remember the facts):

אבנט מכפר על הרהור הלב\אבנט מכפר על הגנבים…

Can you take an oath as to which opinion above was the Yerushalmi’s? I didn’t think so…

Find the answer at the end of this link.

(I delayed making this point for the longest time, hoping to make it perfect, but, spurred by a private letter, I type this up now, since something is better than nothing.)

P.S. Rabbi Maimon (father of Maimonides), quoted in Ritva Yoma 57a says Israeli sages weren’t always better, see HebrewBooks here:

משום דדיירי בארעא דחשוכה אמרי שמעתתא דחשיכן. פי’ הרמב”ם ז”ל בתשו’ שאלה דר’ ירמי’ לטעמי’ דאמר במחשכים הושיבני כמתי עולם זה תלמוד בבלי וטעמא משום דלא נהירי להון טעמי דמתנייתא כהלכה כמה דנהירי לרבנן דא”י. ור’ זירא נמי בעי דלשתכח לי’ טעמיה דבבלאי משום דלא נהירן לי’ בתר דשמע טעמא דמערבאי דמנהגא דעלמא דמדכר איניש טפי מאי דגמר ברישא. מיהו לאו בכל הדורות היו כן אלא בימי רבה ורב יוסף ואביי ורבא דהוו להו שמדות כדאיתא בהשוכר את הפועלים. ואמרי’ נמי בפרק אלו טריפות ערקו רבה ורב יוסף ור’ זירא אמר להו ערוקאי שהיו בורחין מחמת השמדות ואמר להו ר’ זירא שעם כל זאת לא ישכחו דברי התורה ואמרינן בפרק המנחות והנסכים והיו חייך תלואים לך מנגד זה הלוקח תבואה משנה לשנה ואם כך ללוקח תבואה משנה לשנה כ”ש לשמדות שיש בו סכנת נפשות וזהו טעמן של ר’ זירא ור’ ירמי’. אבל אח”כ נתגברה התורה בבבל כ”ש בימי רב אשי דאמרי’ מימות רבי ועד רב אשי לא מצינו תורה וגדולה במקום אחד ע”כ דברי רבינו ז”ל וחיים הם למוצאיהם.

So claiming his own son, the Rambam, forged a new pro-Yerushalmi Halachic method, as Rabbi Bar Chaim says, to explain various puzzling Rambams (while no one else considered this simple explanation, by the way) is now a tiny bit even less likely.