Where We Are This Week
The faux-outrage of the Left and the legitimate outrage of everyone else.
‘Everybody cares, everybody understands,’ are the opening lines to Elliott Smith’s song of the same name.
When I first listened to the album, only a couple of years after his death in 2003, I noticed that the next track was titled ‘I Didn’t Understand.’ Thematically, the songs don’t have anything to do with each other, but I like to think their coupling was intentionally tongue-in-cheek.
‘Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands’ is about the ubiquitous, superficial compassion of friends and acquaintances. Smith questions the sincerity of these claims while growing increasingly agitated at the mere suggestion that they’re sincere as the song progresses.
He’s ridiculing the ‘thoughts and prayers’ social media posts long before they existed.
Never have I felt this phenomenon to be so accurate as it has been this weekend. This Saturday marks 11 months since October 7th; 11 months since Hamas displayed their barbarism and cruelty for the world to observe. 11 months since the mask was pulled off — an antisemitic zoinks if you will.
I was told that the Democratic party was the party of compassion and empathy. I was told that the Left believed all women. I was told that our President has been working tirelessly to bring the hostages home, and on hearing of the murders of the six hostages this past weekend, I was assured, once again, that they were grieving in solidarity with the parents of the victims.
Right before hitting that campaign trail, of course.
It was a truism of unquestionable merit. Everybody cares, everybody understands.
Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the actions of Hamas and then immediately called for a ceasefire (which would firmly put the terrorist organization in the driver’s seat of negotiations) after meeting with leaders of the ‘Uncommitted’ movement a few weeks ago.
‘Uncommitted’ is a group of Democratic voters largely comprised in Michigan and Minnesota who lobbied for a meeting with the VP to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (not to demand that all of the hostages be released) and for a weapons embargo on Israel — not stricter sanctions for the terror-funding regimes of Iran and Qatar. So, it’s nice to know who gets a seat at the table.
The duplicitous nature of the Democrat Party and its executive branch makes it a little difficult to call them out. On the one hand, they promise they will lean on and pressure Israel to limit their operations in Gaza and directly seek to hamper Israel’s prosecution of the war effort, but on the other, they’ll continue to say that the Jewish State has ‘the right to defend itself’ — though, increasingly, it’s said with gritted teeth.
Well, if our democratically elected leaders have lost all moral direction, that’s okay. At least we have the corporate press to keep things forthright and well-balanced! Right? Right?
The New York Times’ headline read: Discovery of 6 Dead Hostages in Gaza Spurs Protest and Division in Israel. The comments on the article mirrored the Biden Administration’s rhetoric by claiming that Israel was only making the situation worse. Yes, if only they’d asked more nicely for their hostages back.
CNN ran this headline to memorialize the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin: American-Israeli Hostage Has Died. And you’ll never believe how!
The ‘news’ organization received so much criticism for their original headline they decided to rectify their initial mistake by updating it to this: American-Israeli Hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin has died, family confirms via statement. That really clears things up. I wonder if his family knows how he died.
They’ve since updated it to reflect that he, along with his five countrymen, were murdered by their captors, but it isn’t purely an American trend.
The BBC’s headline read as follows: Israel recovers bodies of six Gaza hostages. From whom did they recover the bodies? One wonders how the former living people became just bodies in the first place. I’m sure there was no foul play involved.
Of course, we all know the truth — and by we, I mean the non-deluded, non-depraved crowd (vanishingly few though we are) — which is that after nearly a year of being kept alive in horrid conditions, subjected to god-knows-what, these six people were killed mercilessly and vindictively a day or two their rescue could be attempted.
Those poor souls suffered in vain only to be executed by the most despicable of criminals and for their cause of death to be so casually omitted by the largest media companies in the world.
Can you imagine the editors’ discussion when deliberating on how to craft the headlines? It’s got to be like a Tim Walz speechwriter. ‘Yeah, if you say you were IN Afghanistan, people will think you served. People can infer what they want!’
Or let’s put it in a more historical context. Let’s try a few out.
Ships Sink in Pearl Harbor Amidst Smokey Mess
Bostonians Steep Tea in Harbor, Revolution Ensues
Ghengis Khan Fathers Record 100,00th Child, Death Rate Mysteriously Up
Tiananmen Square Protests Quieted Without Incident
Abel’s Body Found Near Garden
Spike in Deaths at Local Auschwitz Camp
For a fun activity at home, try writing one of your own. You’ll be surprised at how hard and unnatural it is to hide the ball.
Oh, and have we mentioned where the bodies were found? In Hamas tunnels in Rafah. You know, the city in South Gaza that everyone from Kamala Harris to Antony Blinken was urging the Israeli Forces not to invade. Will they be held accountable?
I’ll answer that question with two more. Was anyone held accountable when the Biden Administration killed an Afghan family by accident? Has Kamala Harris spoken to the families of the US soldiers who lost their lives in the calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan? You know the one where she has repeatedly bragged that when the decision was made she was the ‘last one in the room.’
Sure, maybe both parties are captured but at least the Republicans aren’t captured by craven terrorists and bloodthirsty college students.
Regardless of how passionate you may feel about Israel/Gaza, the nonchalance with which the death of an American citizen has been treated is cause for riots. I remember when a nation was incensed by ISIS executions and the terror group was systematically eliminated. I don’t remember swathes of the Left engaging in ISIS apologetics at the time but I guess that’s just how progress works!
Everybody cares, everybody understands. Until they don’t — as if they ever did.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA