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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15598 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Menorahs on Public Lands

The Windows OS has a new feature that displays a small icon in the Desktop search bar. The icon rotates every few days based on the calendar, similar to Google's tradition of customizing their search page. I never paid attention to it until I noticed a Menorah displayed on my Desktop. Presumably subsequent icons would show presents or a Christmas Tree. Certainly, though, it will never display a Nativity or Christian Cross.

I learned recently that Allegheny v. ACLU ruled that a Nativity on public land, as a religious symbol, violates the Establishment Clause but a Menorah on public land does not. According to the logic of the ruling, the Menorah and Christmas Tree are secular symbols of the winter holidays and do not constitute the endorsement of a religion while the Nativity does so. The logic is on its face patently absurd as the Menorah is not a secular symbol in any sense. It is a sacred symbol honoring a miracle upon the successful Jewish revolt against the Hellenists. Reading various opinions from Jewish publications, it is clear that many Jews continue to interpret the public lighting of the Menorah from an adversarial perspective:

The policy argument against public menorah lightings is that we, as Jews, are a tiny minority, surrounded by a dominant religion with a missionary agenda. If the majority religion were given free reign to display its symbols publicly, the results could be disastrous. At best, we would be made to feel like outsiders, a tolerated minority. At worst, we would find ourselves victims of overt proselytization or even anti-semitic attacks...

The dominant religion surrounds us with its symbols anyway. Our children see it and are inevitably affected. The gentile "holiday spirit" touches almost every Jew's life.

We, as Jews, can react one of two ways. We can ignore it, hoping that this yearly bombardment goes away. Or we can affirmatively counter in a positive, Jewish manner. Public menorahs are the Jewish answer to the gap felt by many Jews during the holiday season. The dominant religion will display its decorations anyway, whether we light our menorahs or not. Why not give a Jewish child the opportunity to feel some pride about his or her holiday, when his Gentile friends are doing the same?

The Establishment of Religion Takes Many Forms

The concept of the Establishment of Religion is tenuous and arbitrary. What is religion except for a unique collection of symbols, rituals, and myths that have an, often consciously-designed, psychological effect on intended flocks? That psychological effect influences our behavior: it affects our loyalties and our behavior towards the ingroup/outgroup, our code of conduct in society, our mate selection and reproductive behaviors, our politics, our community rituals, and much more.

Myth, Religion, art, politics, and culture all belong under the same umbrella. Religion is everywhere and most people today do not consume their religious messaging through a church but through mass media. Many here have interpreted the BLM movement and protests as a Religious movement, often with the intent to dismiss it or ridicule it. This power of mass media was envisioned by Richard Wagner:

The text is fed into the throat of a singer; the output of this throat is fed into an amplifier named orchestra, the output of this orchestra is fed into a light show, and the whole thing, finally, is fed into the nervous system of the audience.

In other words, Wagner's acoustics is posited as a media invention that employed a large, yet hidden orchestra to produce "acoustic hallucinations" and immerse the audience in a reverberant sound. This account thus determines a "total world" of hearing in the vocal and musical content of Wagnerian music-drama... its sensory overwhelming created an aesthetic experience that we may now see as a "prehistory" for present-day cinema.

Wagner's conception of proto mass-media as Gesamtkunstwerk was preempted by Plato, who two thousand years earlier envisioned the psychological power of the cinematic projection of light. Today, our consumption of Myth: those projections which intelligently orient our view of the world in understanding right and wrong, heroes and villain, are increasingly delivered through mass media rather than traditional religious institutions.

Earlier this week at the lighting of the Menorah inside the White House, not to be confused with the giant Menorah on the White House Lawn, President Biden remarked "Together, we must stand up against the disturbing rise in antisemitism" while touting the December 12th formation of the Inter-Agency Group to Counter Antisemitism, which will be "led by Domestic Policy Council staff and National Security Council staff to increase and better coordinate U.S. Government efforts to counter antisemitism":

The President has tasked the inter-agency group, as its first order of business, to develop a national strategy to counter antisemitism. This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antisemitic harassment and abuse both online and offline, seek to prevent antisemitic attacks and incidents, and encourage whole-of-society efforts to counter antisemitism and build a more inclusive nation.

At the ceremony, also emphasized was "securing the largest-ever increase in federal funding for the physical security of nonprofits, including synagogues and Jewish Community Centers".

Likewise, in the recently passed 2023 budget, in addition to at least $4 billion for Israel, over $65 million in federal funds was allocated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum which, combined with the abundant support from private funds, amounted to a whopping $245 million in support for that museum in 2022. That makes it apparently, and by far, the most well-funded museum in the Nation's capital with well over 3x the funding of the National WWII Museum.

In contrast, the National Museum of American History had a 2018 budget of $40 million despite the fact it received 3.8M visitors in 2016, in comparison to the Holocaust Museum's 1.6 million for that year.

Which of the above should be considered the establishment of religion? All of it.

Christmas is Never Secular

In the same vein, Christmas is fundamentally a Religious festival even in its most non-Christian expression. It's the time of year where the masses practice a form of religious observance that is more comparable to a pagan, pre-Christian form of worship.

We ritualistically build our household lararium next to the hearth. We set out milk and cookies as an offering to a benevolent god who lives in a mystical Hyperborean realm, judges our behavior, and leaves us gifts. We honor his image in our films, songs, and Myth, especially to the delight of women and children. We carry on quirky household traditions which are transmitted ancestrally. Our celebration of Christmas and observance of Santa Claus would be more similar to the way the Romans, for example, worshipped their ancestral or household gods.

In this sense a "secular Christmas symbol" is an oxymoron. There is no such thing, which is acknowledged by the Jewish perspective which remarked on the foreignness and inescapability of the gentile "Holiday Spirit". The reality is that both the Menorah and Christmas Tree are religious symbols, and the government is constructively establishing religion with its display of both.

The "War on Christmas"

The Christians, in a way, get the short end of the stick for not being allowed to display their sacred symbols on public land. But who do they have to blame for that? They have allowed, without much protest, the designation of their own religion as second-class to the financial and legal privileges granted to Judaism. Christians tilt at windmills while sacred symbols of Jewish Victory tower over them during the Christmas holiday at the White House and Central Park, while their own sacred symbols are outlawed on the same land.

To reverse course, Christians would need to adopt the adversarial perspective that motivates Jews to light the Menorahs in these spaces. But given Christian doctrine it is not clear that the religion is capable of asserting itself in that way.

At the ceremony, also emphasized was "securing the largest-ever increase in federal funding for the physical security of nonprofits, including synagogues and Jewish Community Centers".

Likewise, in the recently passed 2023 budget, in addition to at least $4 billion for Israel, over $65 million in federal funds was allocated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum which, combined with the abundant support from private funds, amounted to a whopping $245 million in support for that museum in 2022. That makes it apparently, and by far, the most well-funded museum in the Nation's capital with well over 3x the funding of the National WWII Museum.

In contrast, the National Museum of American History had a 2018 budget of $40 million despite the fact it received 3.8M visitors in 2016, in comparison to the Holocaust Museum's 1.6 million for that year.

Which of the above should be considered the establishment of religion? All of it.

None of it.

So this is a typical example of how you try to sneak a lot of assertions past hoping people won't examine them too closely.

First of all, support for Israel is certainly a topic of foreign policy worthy of discussion and debate, but it is not de facto "establishment of religion." Israel and Judaism may be closely coupled, but the U.S. has vested interests in Israel that go far beyond an affection for Jews. We aren't supporting Israel to support Judaism, any more than we are supporting Egypt to support Islam.

Moving on to another little factoid you tried to trot past us without scrutiny: yes, the Holocaust Memorial Museum has a larger total budget than the National Museum of American History. However, the National Museum of American History is one of sixteen Smithsonian museums. Comparing the budget of 1/16 of the Smithsonian with the budget of a single non-Smithsonian museum is disingenuous.

Given that you don't think the National Holocaust Museum should exist at all, I can see why it wouldn't be a compelling argument if you drilled down to the details and just complained about the National Holocaust Museum getting $65M in federal funds vs. $25M for the National Museum of American History, $20M for the American Museum of Natural History, $136M (!!) for the National Art Gallery, $54M for the National Portrait Gallery, $43M for the Air and Space Museum, etc. Likewise, arguing that the Holocaust Museum shouldn't exist because the Holocaust didn't happen obviously wouldn't get you much traction except among fellow true believers. But for the majority of people who believe that the Holocaust (a) happened and (b) was bad enough to warrant commemorating with a museum, calling it a "religious establishment" is a ridiculous argument. It's commemorated because people actually believe the Holocaust happened and should be remembered, not because Jews Jews Jews. You can of course try (as you do) to persuade people that the Holocaust was fake, but "recognizing the Holocaust violates the Establishment Clause" is sophistry. Even if the Holocaust were fake and we're all commemorating a hoax, the Holocaust Museum should be defunded on that basis, not on the basis that it's a Jewish religious institution, which it is not.

Given that you don't think the National Holocaust Museum should exist at all

Woah there, that's an extremely uncharitable assertion. SS might be perfectly supportive of the museum existing, just with some of the numbers changed. Or the dates.

Woah there, that's an extremely uncharitable assertion. SS might be perfectly supportive of the museum existing, just with some of the numbers changed. Or the dates.

Given that SS's history has made his position on the Holocaust and Jews very clear, I don't think it's uncharitable to conclude that he does not think the National Holocaust Museum should exist. That seems to be the thrust, in fact, of the post I responded to. But if this is not true, I'll accept correction and would be fascinated to hear what form he believes the National Holocaust Museum should take.

The USHMM should exist if it presents an accurate historical account, to the best of its abilities, of what transpired, and it should not exist if it does not do so due to malice and gross negligence. It should exist if it is trying to preserve and present history, it should not exist for the primary purpose of psychologically influencing the American public for the benefit of international Jewry. Do you think that's a fair position?

But the purpose of my post was not to argue whether the museum should or should not exist. My point was that the massive level of funding available to that USHMM from both public and private sources, which stands head and shoulders above all other museums, indicates a level of prioritization in the subject matter we consider sacred. To call this "secular" is just absurd. Being a "Holocaust Denier" is an infinitely more grave charge than being called an infidel or atheist. That is a Religious phenomenon.

"Religion" is not just what you hear when you go to church. It's transmitted through the symbols we display on public land, the museums we build and provide the most funding for, and the esoteric messaging that is embedded in mass media. Symbols matter, this is deeply understood by Jews themselves who have worked very hard to achieve the prevailing status quo. Meanwhile, Christians are not even operating in the same arena and it's not clear if they are able to do so.

The USHMM should exist if it presents an accurate historical account, to the best of its abilities, of what transpired, and it should not exist if it does not do so due to malice and gross negligence. It should exist if it is trying to preserve and present history, it should not exist for the primary purpose of psychologically influencing the American public for the benefit of international Jewry. Do you think that's a fair position?

Sure. Of course that's kind of like saying "The Air and Space Museum should not exist if its purpose is to perpetuate the hoax of NASA's faked moon landings." And "the Museum of Natural History should not exist if its purpose is for atheists to psychologically influence the American public to turn them away from God and the reality of Biblical creation."

But the purpose of my post was not to argue whether the museum should or should not exist. My point was that the massive level of funding available to that USHMM from both public and private sources, which stands head and shoulders above all other museums,

I gave a list of funding for other museums. The USHMM is arguably above average, but hardly "head and shoulders" above all other museums. Complain about them getting too much money if you wish, but they're still just one of many museums that receives federal funding and their level of funding is not so much greater as you claim.

To call this "secular" is just absurd. Being a "Holocaust Denier" is an infinitely more grave charge than being called an infidel or atheist. That is a Religious phenomenon.

You believing this does not make it true. There are also deniers of other atrocities, such as the Armenian genocides and the Rape of Nanking. Is it a "religious" phenomenon to believe those events happen, or only if you happen to disagree about whether they did?

Religion" is not just what you hear when you go to church. Its transmitted through the symbols we display on public land, the museums we build and provide the most funding for, and the esoteric messaging that is embedded in mass media. Symbols matter, this is deeply understood by Jews themselves who have worked very hard to achieve the prevailing status quo.

Again, accepting your premises, yes, the Elders of Zion have created a religion and indoctrinated us all in its arcane symbols and articles of faith.

But that requires accepting your premises. If one doesn't accept your premises, your argument is nonsense.

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