Wednesday Potpourri

First, vive la France!! Given the opportunity to show itself off to an international audience at the Olympic games, the great minds of France decided to open the ceremonies with a tableau vivant, representing a mockery of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. In drag… if you will. Or even, if you won't.

No one missed the point. A parody of one of the most famous paintings in Western civilization, recounting one of the most important moments in the New Testament, fooled no one.

When the organizers-- shocked to the roots of their being-- stepped forth to explain that the tableau really depicted a Roman Bacchanalia, no one was fooled.

So, the organizers apologized for offending billions of people. Except that they did not apologize. They declared that they were sorry, not for what they had done, but if anyone had taken offense.

Such an apology is not an apology. 

When the organizers hid behind sanctimonious statements about their good intentions-- as though the road to Hell was paved with something else-- no one was fooled. 

The idiot organizer of the tableau declared that he was trying to celebrate French gastronomy. French gastronomy has seen better days. 

And, then they declared that the presentation was designed to celebrate diversity. You have to be kidding!

And the French nation managed to diminish itself. An unforced error, I would say. Compounded by a non-apology. A national embarrassment, for certain.

Second, everyone has said it, but it is still worth repeating. If the opening tableau had made a mockery of Islam, the fires would still be burning.

Third, for some reason the Kamala cheerleading squad has ignored the fact that she is impossible to work for.

The Daily Mail has the story:

For, behind the recent public self-branding of Harris as a kindly, jovial 'Momala', she has earned a nasty reputation as an alleged 'soul-destroying' workplace 'bully'.

Only four of the initial 71 staffers hired by Harris during her first year in office still remain in a job. The rest either quit or were fired, according to analysis by non-partisan watchdog Open The Books.

Fourth, and then there is the poignant case of New Yorker writer, Emily Witt.

The story appeared in The Daily Mail recently. It dates to 2020.

At the time of the George Floyd riots, Witt persuaded her live-in boyfriend, here named Andrew, to attend a demonstration in the Bronx. 

Witt had a press pass. Andrew did not. Witt showed her press pass. Andrew did not. He was arrested and spent the night in lockup at Queens Central Booking. It ended their relationship.

As Witt put it:

I relive this moment. I think I will forever. You can ruin your own life in an instant by not paying attention.

Dare we say, she did not ruin her life. She sabotaged their relationship. Andrew never forgave her for making him attend the protest. It had nothing to do with paying attention, but the point is that she wanted her boyfriend to perform a political act, and he tried to do as she said. 

She continued to recount his experience:

I understood then that he was angry with me. He had a broken finger, a scratched eye, and a bloody nose, and had been forced to sit in police custody with pepper spray burning his face for sixteen hours. It was my fault: I had made him go, and I was unscathed. 

We do not need to belabor the details of the breakup. Obviously, he held her to be accountable. It was probably not a good idea to drag her boyfriend to a mostly peaceful protest.

Fourth, Kamala has taken charge of administration Middle East policy. How has that been going.

Of late, a dozen or so Druse children were murdered in Northern Israel by a Hezbollah missile last week. 

Obviously, Israel was going to retaliate. It did so yesterday by eliminating the second in command of Hezbollah, in Beirut. His name was: Fuad Shukr Abu Mohsen.

As it happened, there was a $5,000,000 bounty on his head, the result of his role in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. Now we will see whether Israel will receive the reward.

Apparently, the Kamala foreign policy team had been trying to persuade the Israelis not to attack.

Fifth, in the meantime, Israel also eliminated the political leader of Hamas, in his home in Tehran. His name, Ismail Haniyeh. 

When Donald Trump left the White House, the Abraham Accords had brought a measure of peace to the region. Now, Israel is involved in a war on five fronts, and Kamala wants to be president. 

Of course, the media is all up in arms telling the Israelis not to escalate the conflict. To which Brandon O’Neill at Spiked! replies that the media only calls it escalation when Israel acts.

The Kamala policy makes clear that Israel is on its own. The results are none too pretty.

Sixth, meanwhile back in France, at the Olympic games, the organizers have decided to allow a male to compete in the women’s boxing competition. Transmania has come to the Olympics and it is now accetable to punch out women.

To which Riley Gaines commented:

As if the Satanic display at the opening ceremony wasn't enough, the Olympics glorifies men punching women in the face with the intent of knocking them unconscious.

But, we are opposed to violence against women-- aren’t we?

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The Great Estrangement

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a long, detailed front-page article on what I will call the great estrangement. Men and women disagree so fully about all things political that they end up being incapable of getting along with each other. They have become warring camps.

Another victory for feminism.

Men feel increasingly that they are the designated victims in today’s culture wars. They feel beaten down and abused by women. And they have turned to a certain male politician to express their grievances.

At times, the grievance descends into caricature, as happened when President Trump brought out one Hulk Hogan at the Republican Convention. 

One can easily dismiss Hogan as an empty caricature, without offending too many people, but the truth remains, as sociologists have pointed out, when a society becomes female dominant, manliness tends to reduce to a vulgar caricature, as in machismo. See Michael Carroll’s book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary.

And yet, one can easily praise J. D. Vance for presenting a better example of manliness, for his ability to protect and provide for his family. And yet, the unfortunate Vance has been wildly excoriated for saying the wrong thing about childless cat ladies. 

Of course, men will watch the piling-on and begin to think that it is not worth the trouble to be a good man, a good provider and protector. Better to be like Hulk Hogan and not give a shit.

Anyway, yesterday I received a new essay by Heather Mac Donald. It appeared in the City Journal. In it she demonstrated how the Boy Scouts, a venerable institution dedicated to turning boys into men, had eliminated the Boys part and had gone completely woke. 

Those who are whining about how American men are less manly, when they are not caricatures, ought to care about what happened to the Boy Scouts, now called Scouting America.

Effectively, the Scouts have sold out. They have devoted themselves to the propagation of gender ideology. And they have chosen to downplay more manly skills.

It’s all about male bonding. Naturally, those who want to feminize and girlify the culture have declared war on male bonding.

Mac Donald explains:

The value of an all-boys organization was self-evident to the Boy Scouts’ founders and to the Scout leaders who followed them. Masculine comradeship underlies males’ willingness to undertake military and civic sacrifice. Boys compete with one another, torment one another, but also sometimes elevate one another. They seek adult males to emulate—ideally their fathers but, in the absence of their own father, a father figure embodying masculine virtue. That father figure can even be imaginary; boys’ aspirations are fired by tales of male courage and the accomplishment of great feats.

In today’s America, she continues, far too many boys are growing up fatherless.

Today, American boys are plagued by fatherlessness, both real and symbolic. Whereas in the early twentieth century, boys lost their biological fathers to industrial accidents and tuberculosis, now they lose them to parental irresponsibility. In 2022, 40 percent of all American children were born to single mothers. Black newborns faced a catastrophic 69.3 percent illegitimacy rate, while more than 53 percent of Hispanic children were born to unmarried females. Whites had a 27 percent illegitimacy rate; the rate among the white underclass is twice that. Already in 2016, 59 percent of births to white women who did not finish high school or obtain a GED occurred outside of marriage. Boys suffer the most in the typical fatherless household, with its lack of structure, parade of shiftless boyfriends, and inconsistent discipline.

And you think that the most important political issue is-- abortion.

Women want to gain power. They want to be in charge. They want to be girlbosses. And then they become single mothers, and cannot figure out how it happened.

So, there has been an all-out war on men. It has not been an effort to afford men and women equal opportunity. It has wanted to replace men and especially to overthrow fathers, i.e., the patriarchy.

The disintegration of the family coincided with the devalorization of males, making the possibility of even a symbolic father figure remote. Feminism was zero-sum: it championed females by tearing males down. The concept of toxic masculinity was active decades before the American Psychological Association declared traditional masculinity (which the APA defined by such civilization-creating traits as competitiveness, stoicism, and the desire to provide for others) a malady. Positive male characters in television and movies were replaced by dolts and abusers. And a cascade of female-uplift programs started pouring out of the government, foundations, corporations, and universities.

Of course, putting women in military combat units does not improve combat readiness. Refusing to allow male bonding, as though it is a conspiracy against females, has undermined group cohesion and group effectiveness.

Females have been injected into military combat units, the ultimate male-bonding group, for reasons having nothing to do with improving the military’s battle readiness and everything to do with qualifying females for top military brass positions. 

Putting women in military combat units counts as a grand social experiment. And yet, when you introduce people who are weaker, and who diminish the effectiveness of a team, you are guaranteeing that they are not going to be treated as equals. Nor will they be respected as leaders.

Putting politics aside, the great estrangement is a sign that American society is disintegrating. The family has been undermined. Children are brought up outside of an organized family structure. Perhaps they vote for one party. Perhaps they vote for the other. The truth remains, if men and women in America cannot get along, cannot function within family groups, cannot respect traditional roles and rules, we are in very serious trouble.

Don’t imagine that other cultures around the world have not noticed. The last thing they are likely to do is to emulate our bad example.

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Fundraising

Time flies, or, as the old saying goes, tempus fugit. 

Anniversaries are normally celebrated, and I am happy to invite everyone, especially those who have not done so before, to offer some financial support to the blog. It’s not just a good cause; it’s a great cause.

It seems like only yesterday, but for slightly more than sixteen years I have been writing my blog, Had Enough Therapy? 

Obviously, it takes time and effort to do the job, and I could not have done it without the financial support of you, my readers.

I try to make my writing sound effortless, and, as the old saying goes, it takes a lot of work to make anything seem effortless.

The internet is awash in blogs. I am grateful to those who have chosen to spend a small part of their days reading mine. I have tried to be worthy of their confidence, by presenting reflections and analysis that are unlikely to be found elsewhere. 

If you would like to express your gratitude by donating please make use of the Paypal button on this page. If you prefer, you can mail a check to 310 East 46th St. 24H. New York, NY 10017.

If you have already donated, please pass the word along to your friends, family, associates and colleagues.

Thank  you in advance.

Kamala Takes Charge

The scene was so compelling that I believe that it is not redundant to return to it. 

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Kamala Harris stepped forth like the new president. She stood before a row of flags and intoned an appalling example of moral equivalence. 

Harris whined about civilian casualties in Gaza, and chastised the Israeli military for hurting civilians. Someone should point out that our own great military targeted civilians during World War II. It was part of the strategy, designed to break the Axis will.

Of course, Harris knows nothing about urban warfare. She knows nothing about the difficulties and challenges presented by war in Rafah. She managed to boycott the Congressional address offered by Prime Minister Netanyahu, where he made clear his nation’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties. And she did not hear that Hamas wants civilian casualties, the better to run its propaganda war against the Jewish state.

The result of this unfortunate posturing was a rocket attack in Northern Israel yesterday, killing nearly a dozen Druze children. Whatever Harris thought she was doing, Hezbollah got a slightly different message.

Two experts in the field, Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth explain it all in the New York Post:

Harris’ self-serving decision to pander to Gen Z and progressive votes on Thursday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office is turning out to have deadly results.

Harshly criticizing Israel as she did in front of Bibi at the White House might bag November votes – but they are also leading to body bags in Gaza and North Israel.

Now, Israeli civilians are paying a heavy price for her words.

In what could be described as a second Oct. 7, Hezbollah launched a rocket attack on a soccer field Saturday afternoon in the Golan Heights, killing 12 people, including children, and injuring 40.

The attack struck the village of Majdal Shams. Home to a large Druze community – an Arab and Arabic-speaking ethnoreligious group. Many Druze are Israeli citizens and proudly serve in the IDF.

Israel identified 30-plus projectiles crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory and has blamed the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group for the attack. Hezbollah denies the accusation, “firmly denying” they fired the rockets.

According to IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the rocket used in the attack on the soccer field was an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket.

The White House is reportedly urging Israel to provide a “balanced response” to the latest atrocity. That is not likely.

As for causality, the authors emphasize this point:

In telling Israel she has serious concerns, Harris unwittingly, yet predictably, sent a greenlight to all three Axis of Evil partners that it is open hunting season again on Israel and its civilians throughout the country.

Harris naively might have thought her ploy for votes in Michigan would lead to a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. But that ceasefire is not going to happen now and Harris, despite her team’s denials to the contrary, shoulders much of the burden of blame.

Israel is in damage control now. Harris is requiring a clean-up on aisle 9 – and now the IDF has a new and emerging mission in Northern Israel: destroying Hezbollah.

It is highly likely that in the coming days, we will start to see kinetically the beginning of the end of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I think it fair to say that Biden administration interference, coupled with its constant criticism of Israel, has prolonged the war and produced more civilian casualties.

Iranian proxies can not merely act with impunity-- against American and Israeli targets-- but they see that the Biden administration and Kamala Harris has their back.

Why should they surrender-- the quickest and easiest way to end the war-- when the Biden administration is defending them and is working to defeat Israel in the propaganda war.

One remarks that the Antony Blinken reaction to the attack in Northern Israel was similar to that of Kamala Harris. He wanted Israel to call a cease fire, the better to leave Hamas in place.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized:

The earnest Mr. Blinken seems not to appreciate that U.S. pressure for Israeli restraint gives Hezbollah a green light to keep shooting, which makes it harder for Israel to avoid war. On Sunday Hezbollah launched more rockets.

As for how better to conduct policy, the Journal offers this:

The better way to make war less likely is to announce that American munitions transfers to Israel will be expedited immediately, as they were earlier in the war and as Congress has approved, and that all oil sanctions on Iran will be enforced again. Hezbollah and its controllers in Iran will get that message, even without a translator.

One remarks that Donald Trump, a man who unabashedly took Israel’s side, told Natanyahu that he wanted to let Israel finish the job. He seems to realize that the calls for restraint and the continuation of the war plays into the terrorist propaganda war.

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Is DEI DIEing?

Tyler Durden sounds just a tad too optimistic. At a moment when half of the country is lathering itself into a frenzy over the least qualified presidential candidate in American history, a grossly embarrassing giggling, cackling fool, Durden suggests that cancel culture and the cult of DEI is losing its corporate enablers.

And yet, corporate America has discovered that DEI is a losing game. So, it has begun to unravel the programs that hire and promote by race and gender. Evidently, this is not a task that one can accomplish quickly or even painlessly. 

Durden emphasizes that cancel culture, the kind that punished people for expressing incorrect thoughts-- a reprise of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and a highly ambitious effort at mind control-- could not have gained so much ground if it had merely been limited to college campuses and media. It needed the active support of large companies:

In fact, without the support of companies like Blackrock, Vanguard, Google, Facebook, Twitter and many others the cancel mob would have little to no power.  The situation seems to be changing, or the damage seems to be minimized.  One corporate entity reflects this shift more than any other, and that's Disney. 

It was not, he suggested, organic growth. The advent of the Biden Administration gave power and legitimacy to the companies who promoted cancel culture, environmental activism and diversity initiatives. 

The political left had been accumulating social influence with the aid of international corporations, NGOs and government officials since at least 2016.  However, after the Biden Administration took office and pandemic hysteria went into full swing, the activists sought to flex their cancel culture muscle in a big way.

The result was a dystopian frenzy in which mass censorship was rampant and speaking out in any way against official narratives might get you booted from social media and even fired from your job.  Leftists called it "consequence culture" as a way to justify their behavior, but the consensus was that this was thought-policing on an Orwellian scale.  The assumption by leftists being that they are the virtuous arbiters over what words and beliefs should be punished.  No one voted for them to do this job.

The madness reached deep into the Disney corporation:

UFC fighter and actress Gina Carano was one of those people.  Carano says she was harassed by Disney management to add "pronouns" to her social media bio to "prove her support for trans lives".  After the actress made an online joke by listing her "pronouns" on Twitter as 'beeb bop boop', the company brought pressure to bear in an attempt to force Carano into silence. 

So, Gina Carano was canceled:

Her eventual removal by Disney was heralded by the political left as a great victory and a display of the cancel mob's power.  If they could destroy the career of a Hollywood celebrity then there was a good chance they could destroy the life of almost any average conservative.

Flush with success, Disney then started to put DEI propaganda in its movies and television shows:

Disney then engaged in a slow boil of the theater-going public with DEI propaganda.  Many suspected Disney was removing white, straight and male characters from the majority of their productions on purpose.  As it turned out, that's exactly what they were doing.

Disney wanted to be on the right side of the war against white males.

The result, bad product and lost profit:

The vast majority of Disney content from films to streaming series have been met with box office failure and audience disinterest.  In 2023 alone, Disney had only one film that made a significant profit (Guardians Of The Galaxy) while spending a billion dollars on multiple box office flops (not counting marketing costs).  Not one Disney+ series was met with audience acclaim.  Streaming subscriber numbers sank.   

The wreckage of DEI appeared on the bottom line. 

 Disney stock has been hovering near 5-year lows since 2023.  Their brand is essentially destroyed and their content is treated by most consumers as radioactive.  The sheer size of Disney and their holdings means that they have the capital to survive for years without public support, but the company has already started cutting employees in mass layoffs, including 14% of Pixar in May.  Not a good sign.   

Given the choice, the free market is voting against DEI. And Disney is paying the price.

Is the karmic hammer finally swinging back to hit Disney in the face after nearly a decade of woke bullying?  It seems that way.  But the bigger question is, does Disney's decline reflect a larger national move away from the woke mob and cancel culture in general?  Are Americans finally fed up with progressive pearl clutching and DEI?  This seems to be the case.  Disney fueled cancel culture for years only to find themselves canceled in return.   

Which leaves us with the conundrum called Kamela Harris. Is her candidacy the reductio ad absurdum of DEI or does it represent the apotheosis of a very bad and very stupid idea?

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Saturday Miscellany

First, having warmed up by calling Republicans liars, the mainstream media and even Democrat politicians are showing the world how best to lie. Or, should we say, gaslight. 

The advent of Kamala Harris has produced ecstatic release among the left-leaning intelligentsia. Given the requirements of DEI-- and if you think that there is another reason why cackling Kamala has ascended the political hierarchy, you should revise your thinking-- we are now being called upon to bow down, even to genuflect before the greatness of Kamala. 

We now know that a woman who was given responsibility for the situation on the nation’s border was not given responsibility for the situation on the nation’s borders. Since she failed miserably at the task, we must think that it was not her task. Major media organizations have expunged all reference to Kamala the border czar.

As they have removed all references to Kamala, the most liberal senator. 

It is pathetically insulting, but it suggests that the media does not respect the intelligence of the average citizen. 

Then again, if you think that a male who thinks he is a female is really a female, perhaps they have reason not to respect yours.

Second, the prime minister of Israel gave a speech to the United States Congress on Wednesday. And a very good speech it was-- as all present agreed.

As it happened, the president of the Senate, vice president Kamala Harris boycotted the speech. She had to meet up with some sorority sisters, and we know that that is more important than a speech by an ally.

Anyway, Elon Musk was in attendance, because apparently he did not have any sorority events to attend.

Meantime, one Nancy Pelosi, often adulated as the smartest political mind the world has ever seen, managed to make a profoundly stupid remark. To this effect:

Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States. Many of us who love Israel spent time today listening to Israeli citizens whose families have suffered in the wake of the October 7th Hamas terror attack and kidnappings.  These families are asking for a ceasefire deal that will bring the hostages home – and we hope the Prime Minister would spend his time achieving that goal.

Let’s see, the speech was so bad, in Nancy’s eyes, that Kamala was right to boycott it. In fact, Kamala is so smart that she knew how bad it was going to be without showing up. The same is true of Nancy. Apparently Nancy covered her own dereliction by meeting with the families of Israeli victims.

One notes that the Pelosi solution involves blaming the Israeli prime minister. When you have allies like that, you do not need enemies.

Third, apparently, Kamala had second or third thoughts about boycotting the prime minister of Israel. It’s alright to be anti-Semitic. You should, however, to hide it from public view.

So, she scheduled a meeting with Natanyahu, followed by a rather ceremonial speech about her own policies. She was surrounded by flags, in a situation that made her look like she was in charge. You might understand that for some members of the press, what really matters is looking like you are in charge.

One conspicuous omission-- the Israeli prime minister did not attend. He boycotted Kamala’s effort to pretend that she was in charge.

Fourth, as I have often pointed out, the difference between the Trump administration and the Biden administration is the difference between the Abraham Accords and October 7. 

One notes that Trump’s ambassador to Israel, one David Friedman, one of the authors of the Abraham Accords, wrote a commentary on the Kamala speech, for Twitter:

Well here you have it. @KamalaHarris offers her take on the war in Gaza. NO CONDEMNATION OF HAMAS! Just some platitudes about complexities, nuances, human suffering , peace and security. And a plea for a “two-state solution.” 

Madame Vice President, there was a Palestinian state in Gaza - not a single Jew or Jewish soldier was there when this war began. In 2005 Israel evacuated all its soldiers and citizens from Gaza, handing full control of the territory to the Palestinians in the hope of peace. And the Palestinians in Gaza then elected Hamas. 

Hamas received billions of dollars in international aid — aid that the Trump administration cut off but you and Joe Biden restored! It used those funds to build terror tunnels and shoot rockets at Israeli civilians. And on October 7, 2023, it committed the most barbaric and despicable acts of violence against Jews since the Holocaust. 

I noted not a word from you in your speech regretting that your administration funded Hamas terror (directly, and through sanctions relief on Iran). Your push for a Palestinian state at this time is tone-deaf and a betrayal of the Jewish lives lost and still missing from this heinous assault. It also conflicts with the recent vote of the Israeli Knesset which overwhelmingly rejected a Palestinian state. You are no friend of Israel and you have exhibited a shocking lack of command of the relevant facts. 

Your insensitivity to Jewish suffering and failure to attribute good and evil where they belong, means you will never help to bring peace to this troubled region. All those in the region who seek peace - Israelis, Arabs, Jews. Muslims and Christians - now know after hearing this speech that you are NOT the one to achieve it.

Fifth, it might have been inadvertent; it might have been motivated by malice, but Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI let slip during his recent testimony that he was not sure whether former president Trump had been injured by a bullet, or by shrapnel.

Naturally, the maniacs who believe that Trump is Hitler pounced on this notion, and asserted that Trump had set it up himself in order to win sympathy.

It was a grotesque error by the director. 

So, for the truth, we turn to the New York Times, of all places. The paper of record researched the matter and concluded that Wray was wrong:

An absence of medical records or official accounts from the assassination attempt on Donald Trump has stirred confusion, but a New York Times video and trajectory analysis indicates a bullet, not debris, wounded the former president.

As you know, Congressman and physician Dr. Ronny Jackson did examine the records and the president. His conclusions were in accord with those of the Times.

And the FBI walked back the director’s assertion. As of now, we await Wray’s public apology.

Sixth, as for the highly consequential matter of America’s reputation on the world stage, reputation that has just taken a major hit with the candidacy of Kamala Harris.

British politician Dan Hannan described her thusly in the Washington Examiner:

She is slow, vacuous, and superficial. She talks in cliché because she thinks in cliché. She cackles, not because she has some sardonic take on life that eludes the rest of us but because she cannot think what to say. Almost every political office she has occupied has been handed to her on grounds of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Seventh, Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann have a few thoughts on DEI, for the site, American Greatness:

Diversity, when implemented by force, is the purposeful dilution of staffing that makes a company or government consider immutable qualities that have nothing to do with capability. At woke companies and government agencies, this so-called diversity has nothing to do with the job at hand. Diversity is heralded as a “strength.” Well, our military has failed miserably for over thirty years using this attribute, losing Afghanistan, losing in Ukraine, and for the last three years, losing on our southern border. We are witnessing a clear and rapid deterioration of our infrastructure, from our airline transportation to our local policing, all due to racial and gender quotas.

Perhaps more important is the simple fact that a diversity hire will not command enough respect to function in their new role:

A DEI hire will always be stained with the notion that they “Didn’t Earn It” among fellow workers, regardless of their true capabilities. This was hammered home last year when recently appointed Harvard President Claudine Gay was called to testify on anti-Semitism on college and university campuses.

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