https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/11/23/how-trump-plays-the-victim-card-00070763
If it has, the designation of victim won’t be so appealing anymore; in fact, being a victim will regain its old association with seeming whiny and weak. This is certainly what Mike Pompeo was counting on when he tweeted the day after Trump’s announcement, “We need more seriousness, less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood.”
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-white-victimhood-fuels-republican-politics/
What could be fueling an increase in these views? Following Trump’s loss in 2020, the Republican Party leaned further into messages that paint Republicans and white people as victims of an overzealous movement for racial justice. For example, Fox News coverage of critical race theory — a decades-old framework for legal scholarship — surged during the Virginia gubernatorial campaign, according to a Newsweek analysis, only to quickly and starkly dip following Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win. And several pundits pointed to education and critical race theory as reasons for his success. Republicans have also found a seemingly successful political strategy in attacking and amplifying race-related buzzwords, such as “woke,” once used in activist circles. And as FiveThirtyEight contributors Hakeem Jefferson and Victor Ray pointed out on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, the current narratives of victimization and the associated backlash to racial progress are some white people’s way of reckoning with the changing times.
Ironically, Republicans and Democrats are converging. Maybe no one likes a sore loser, but it seems everyone likes being one. Wallowing in this shared victimhood narrative may soothe the sting of defeat, but it’s poison to the rule of law. Republicans were in prime position to reject identity politics, including the game of identifying as a victim, but instead we used stolen election stories as a backdoor to embracing our own victim identity, pursuing the easy path to power. Fighting fire with fire might sound appealing, but water’s actually the better choice.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/364214
Speaking at a real estate conference in Eilat, Meir Deutsch, director of the Regavim organization, discussed the phenomenon of paying protection money to criminal groups in Israel, and the effect this is having on society in general.
"This is a problem that is entirely different from how people envision it," Deutsch told Israel National News. "It has reached the stage where it threatens the personal security of regular Israeli citizens, and I don't mean just in the Negev. 85 percent of Israel's building contractors across the country are paying protection money. This drives house prices up, and it also affects agriculture, businesses, and service providers.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/12/07/americas-new-challenge-the-gender-reassignment-industry/
"The figure who formulated the sixties' theory that a person's biology – his body and his chromosomes – are completely separate from his subjective feeling as to whether he is male or female, was a professor of medical psychology named John Money. His research was eventually shown to be a failure and it was scientifically proven that the opposite was true. Nevertheless, the ideas of Money – who was later deemed to have sexually abused children – were adopted by the worlds of medicine, mental health, and psychiatry in the USA, and later on the education system too. Today, from kindergarten age, children already learn that their body might not necessarily reflect their gender." She is quoting a survey published in the New York Times, according to which more than 60% of those questioned in the 30-plus category said they believe that a person's sex is defined by his biological sex at birth. In contrast, 61% of those questioned in the 18-29 age group said they believe that their gender identity is separate from their biological sex.
Former US president Donald Trump on Friday tore into “Jewish leaders” who he claims have forgotten the steps he took for Israel while in the White House, amid growing calls for him to condemn antisemites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West after hosting the pair at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month.
Trump shared a blog post on his Truth Social platform from far-right pundit and conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root who wrote that the former president “did more for the state of Israel and the Jewish people than anyone in history.”
Root rejected the criticism of Trump for dining with West and Fuentes, calling the former “mentally disturbed” and the latter a “stranger” who the ex-president had no idea would be coming to the Mar-a-Lago dinner with the disgraced rapper.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/myocarditis-covid-vaccine-teens-study-rcna60118
The incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis after Covid vaccination is low and most patients make a full recovery, a large international study from Nationwide Children’s Hospital found.
Most of the cases occurred in male teens and young adults and usually after the second dose of a primary series of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, according to the study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
Although a majority of the people recovered quickly, 93% of the cases required hospitalization and 23% of the cases were serious enough to require admission to the intensive care unit. No deaths were observed.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2207270
Our study indicates that BNT162b2 vaccine–induced myocarditis in adolescents appears to be a rare adverse event that occurs predominantly in males after the second vaccine dose. The clinical course appears to be mild and benign over a follow-up period of 6 months, and cardiac imaging findings suggest a favorable long-term prognosis.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/364206
Avi Ciment’s recent series in The Jewish Press, The Modern Orthodox Conundrum (Part I, Part II and Part III), is an absolute must-read. The author rivetingly lays forth the issues facing Modern Orthodoxy and suggests solutions, with great detail and plenty of personal and third-person narrative, making the topic come alive and demonstrating just how serious and compelling the matter is.
Mishpacha has been running articles about The problem - for last two weeks it was the failure of family
Before that was the Internet - but we all now know never to criticize or discipline a child
But now they are saying we are failing for not telling our daughters to go to sleep instead of spending hours talking to friends on their kosher phones. Just when you thought and accepted the blame they publish a new explanation - it is the fault of the yeshivas - contrary to what was stated in the Jewish Observer
https://mishpacha.com/growing-together/
Some of us might remember the famous 1999 “Kids on the Fringe” issue of the Jewish Observer, including articles by Rabbi Russell, Dr. Norman Blumenthal, Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, and Dr. David Pelcovitz. For the first time, the phenomenon was being discussed in an honest and fearless way, but that issue — the magazine’s all-time biggest seller — was actually a response to the previous volume, in which a well-respected mechanech wrote that the overwhelming consensus of Orthodox mental health professionals is that struggling children are the product of dysfunctional families.
“I knew it wasn’t true,” he says emphatically. “But I also knew one other thing: that if you have kids going off, and you’re willing to take the plunge, in relation to the normal functioning of a Torah family, you actually will have to allow your family a level of ‘dysfunction’ in order to save your child. It will most likely mean having someone in your house who isn’t dressed like the others and who isn’t keeping Shabbos.”
Liz Crokin, a former journalist and celebrity gossip writer now associated with far-right conspiracy theories, spoke at a fundraiser intended to combat child trafficking, according to posts on her Telegram account.
At the event, Crokin said she discussed Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary and Bill Clinton and other political elites run a child sex trafficking ring at a pizza shop in Washington.
https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32WY6M8
Health authorities around the world say the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccines far outweigh the known risks, but a pathologist from the US state of Idaho claims in a series of interviews shared on social media that the shots are linked to an uptick in cancer. This is false, according to medical experts and a leading cancer treatment hospital.
