The Way It Iz

January 6, 2021, was one of the most surreal days in my lifetime. There are not many “where were you” moments coming out anymore, but when a group of irate supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building following a rally, we all knew that this would have a lasting impact on the nation, and few of us will forget where they were when they first saw the images of people scaling the walls surrounding the Capitol in what seemed to be riot gear.

Two events occurred last week that were so monumental, so significant, so life-altering, that they were able to distract Americans from the fact that there is a war going on in Europe. What were these two earth-shattering events that distracted the country from all-out war? Disney lost its right to self-governance in Florida, and Elon Musk bought Twitter. Honestly, neither of these events should be significant enough to overtake the headlines from Ukraine and Russia, but it seems that Americans have grown bored of talking about the war at this stage, and are looking for other topics to occupy their time.

Well, it’s official: Jews are a minority again. If you’re unfamiliar with what determines whether or not Jews get minority status, it generally depends on how we are used in a political argument. If it’s an economic or representation discussion, we’re white. If it’s antisemitism, we’re a minority. Well, we’re not always a minority. It depends on who is committing the antisemitism. If the perpetrators are more of a minority than we are, we’re white. If the perpetrators are white, we’re a minority.

What is hate? It’s a word that is thrown around a lot these days in slogans produced by the most radicalized among us. There is hate directed towards race, political affiliation, religion, gender, gender identity, wealth status, profession. Every group of people seems to be able to claim some sort of victimhood status based on the fact that there are some people out there who they claim hate them. And of course, there are those out there who do absolutely hate others for any of the reasons listed above, and definitely others. Hate exists in our world and always will.

Last week, Lufthansa Flight 401 from JFK to Budapest became quite the story when a large group of Chasidic Jews were unable to board the plane after the first leg of the flight to Frankfurt. According to an extremely detailed report from Daniel Elef of DansDeals, it seems as though a small number of passengers were charged with not wearing their masks during the first leg of the flight. This caused major outrage that oddly united both the Right and Left wings of Judaism (antisemitism tends to do that).

Strawman arguments are funny things. Sometimes they have the power to shift an entire argument and other times they are undeniably self-defeating. To illustrate this, we are going to look at the current ongoing example, which just so happens to be the largest scaled strawman argument of my lifetime. The definition of “strawman argument” we will be working with for purposes of this discussion is “an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument.”