A Letter to Encourage a Disillusioned Friend
Don't lose faith, there are reasons for optimism. We will win.
This is the 5th installment of the new “Axis of Genocide” series at this Zionist Substack, the successor to the “Antisemitism and Culture” series which can be read in two 30-essay collections here and here.
This new series will document and analyze the antisemitic genocidal war waged against Israel by the Hamas terrorist group and its primary supporter, the Islamic regime in Iran. The accomplices in this attempt at a second Holocaust — Vladimir Putin’s criminal-gangster state in Russia and the authoritarian regime in China — will also come in for scrutiny and loud condemnation, as will the non-state actors supporting them, particularly the international Muslim Brotherhood propaganda network, and radical activists of both the far left and the far right. Other evil states and terrorist groups will also receive scrutiny. You can find a list of previous installments at the end of this post. Thank you for your support.
This week, one of my friends and I were having a lively email debate when, all of a sudden, the discussion took a sad turn. It was my fault. I had pressed a point — as I am notorious for doing, often to many people’s annoyance — and then got back a very sad, disillusioned answer. I feared this had shaped our entire spirited exchange.
My friend had grown pessimistic about the future and doubtful of our ability to meaningfully impact it with our writing and activism. My friend had burnt out after so many years of fighting. Now, they had come to the depressing conclusion that all of that work had been a waste, ultimately accomplishing nothing.
And so I shifted the tone of our correspondence. I decided to make a different extended argument - both to try to cheer up my friend, and to persuade them to join the fight again.
Here is an edited and expanded version of that email, illustrated with relevant YouTube videos and AI-generated imagery. I hope reading it inspires you, too — it helped me to to write it!
The world is so scary right now. There's all the usual bullshit, and now we see terrifying wars being waged - wars that have real chances of boiling over into global conflicts. So I think it’s important to keep this in mind with absolute clarity:
We can and will win this war.
Subject: The Case for a Different Disillusionment
To My Dear Friend,
Wow! And I thought I was cynical about humanity! I suppose it makes sense, though – full-blown Xer that you are - that you would feel it more deeply than Xennial me.
I appreciate you explaining more to me what sorts of disillusionment you've grown into and how it's crushed your will to write. I, too, grew cynical, disappointed, and exhausted after years working in the right-wing media and counter-Islamism space. Which is why I don't anymore! But I didn’t give up writing entirely. I gave up the way I was writing. And in doing so, I escaped the terrible people barking absurd orders at me.
Here are six points to consider as you make your decisions:
Our Bosses’ Broken Way of Seeing the World is Why They Failed.
The seeming failure of our work in the counter-Islamism sector was not a reflection on us - or on the way people respond to it in the broader world. It's a reflection on the failures of the terrible men who employed us all those years. Their approaches and personalities and terrible moral character are what isolated them. Then they isolated us, along with everyone else who made the mistake of working for them. That isolation had a greater effect than you may realize now.
And it's not just about the very unprofessional, often outright abusive work culture - an environment that was so much more toxic for women than for us guys. (That still really infuriates me: it seems to be a symptom of industry players’ broken way of thinking and acting.)
I'm still interested in writing about antisemitism and terrorism - and I think there are, indeed, people interested in these subjects. The steady growth of our Substack demonstrates that! There just aren't a whole lot of people who are still receptive to our old right-wing bosses’ style of writing on these subjects, which they insisted we follow so closely.
Israel never made a mistake – Yes, you read that right
I disagree that Israel itself has made any mistakes at all since its founding. You know who made the mistakes? Specific governments of Israel.
A country cannot make mistakes. A country just lies there on a map, existing. Israel deserves to exist, and to defend its existence. In so doing, mistakes may certainly be made. But they are the fault of individual people in the government, not the fault of the whole country. And individual politicians are regularly replaced in functioning democracies, as they should be.
Who is responsible for 10/7? I think once the war is won and everyone is accessing the data, it'll be fair to say that Benjamin Netanyahu himself made a lot of the mistakes that made this war possible. So did the other governments and plenty of defense and intelligence organizations. Likewise, 9/11 happened because of the mistakes of the Clinton government and catastrophic intelligence failures. We need to distinguish between groups of politicians making mistakes, and the countries as a whole making mistakes.
Both left-wing and right-wing governments in Israel made a lot of mistakes. So what? All countries make a ton of huge mistakes. America has launched whole wars that in hindsight now seem to have been mistakes. And entire decades of Cold War policy constitute a huge mistake. Is this a reason to grow disillusioned with America, in the abstract?
A lot of people did because of Vietnam and Iraq. And it was a mistake.
No, blame such errors on individual actors and their supporting governments, not on anthropomorphized countries. That's the only way we can hope to improve.
The Constitution is Great – Too Bad So Few Americans Agree
As you noted, we are indeed a "post-constitutional society." But this is not new: we always have been.
I do believe in and support the Constitution, but most Americans don't, and they never have. Did you know that the founders themselves grew disillusioned with America? George Washington didn't expect the Constitution to last more than 20 years - and he was basically right. Many thought they'd made a huge mistake in even fighting to found the country. Here's a great book you should read: Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders by Dennis C. Rasmussen. Daniel Sherrier wrote about it here:
And, of course, the founders’ doubts were ultimately proven right with the Civil War. Following the Civil War, we basically became a new country. And following World War II, we became a new country again. Now we're in the process of transforming into another country. This is normal. This is how countries go. New technologies transform cultures, which in turn transform politics.
Andrew Breitbart’s famous truism didn't go far enough, which I've been saying since I was an editor at PJ Media a decade ago: politics may be downstream from culture, but new technologies can change the course of the whole river.
Nothing Is True? So Everything is Permitted?
Objective truth absolutely still exists. That there are many postmodernist pagans who dispute this does not mean the concept is dead. Science, investigative journalism, and other logical, rational methods can still isolate the facts that are empirically and undeniably true.
It is normal for most humans to reject objective truths and instead just follow their feelings. People have always done this. Certainly, this tendency has been amplified by technology like social media, but the behavior itself is not a new phenomenon.
When exactly was the world not burning down?
Your idea that "Western civilization" is in "decline" is an evergreen topic that people have argued over for centuries. But I don't agree.
When exactly was "Western civilization" in a "good" spot? When was civilization's peak, in your opinion? What period of time constituted some great Golden Age that you would have us get back to?
We're not at all in decline - look at the incredible increase in health, wealth, and standards of human living all over the planet - yes, even in so-called “third-world” countries - over the last 100 years. There's plenty to be optimistic about moving forward, just as there's plenty to fear.
You've decided that Western civilization is just so doomed that there's no point in spending your time writing in defense of it. However, I must say, that decision is based more on your own subjective feelings than on objective facts. (See my last point!) There are plenty of objective measures of the last 100 years that show we aren't really on the decline.
The writer who has influenced me the most in life, Robert Anton Wilson, wrote about how the doubling of real knowledge (verifiable scientific facts) - which is happening faster and faster - results in the doubling of real wealth, too. This pattern can be observed going back centuries. It explains why the Industrial Revolution heralded a sudden boom in Western wealth and prosperity. During this time, knowledge could be gained and put to use more quickly. Under this acceleration, the rapid creation of new technologies flourished. Thus, the acquisition of new wealth accelerated, too. And the result of that was higher standards of living for all people.
Today, all of this is just getting faster and faster – which is part of why so many people are so confused and anxious about the world. It’s just changing so much faster now than when they were younger.
The Case for a Different Disillusionment
I'll conclude on what I think you should be disillusioned with instead; the same issues I'm disillusioned with, myself: the Left/Right, liberal/conservative, Democrat/Republican ideological and partisan framings of everything. I think it's a mistake to align oneself with just one side of these binaries because, when trying to convince others of the need for real, meaningful change, one needs to appeal to both sides in different ways.
And Zionism does that.
Polls are very clear that the belief Israel has a right to exist is still the dominant position in America and the mainstream one in both parties. Look at this:
· 50% of Americans say that Israel’s response to Hamas is fully justified
· 20% say it’s partially justified
· 8% that it is not at all justified
· And 21% are apparently confused.
So we're basically beating the antisemites here 70% to 8% with a confused 21% in between. Is that a sign that Western civilization is in decline? Or that we should be pessimistic about the future? Or terrified that the campus leftists are going to take over the country? Of course not.
I'll give you other objective numbers, too:
· 26% of the world is antisemitic by the ADL's definition (believing at least 6 antisemitic tropes.) Thus, the antisemites are very much outnumbered and certainly not at all evenly distributed.
· 165 of the 193 total member states in the UN recognize Israel. So again, the number of Zionist states which accept Israel's right to exist is far higher than those which are antisemitic. And if Saudi Arabia and Israel can make their normalization agreement - and I believe they will before the end of the decade, likely sooner - then that number will really start to rise.
You know where I suspect you're getting this cynicism and pessimism from? You're holding cultural and political views in your head that are now in decline and, honestly, have become somewhat irrelevant. The solution here? It's time to evolve. The world is changing - time for you to change, too! And if you do, then maybe you might not be so cynical and hopeless about the future. You'll see there is a lot to be optimistic about; a lot worth fighting for still. And by fighting, we can certainly win.
In the modern era, America has defeated the Nazis, the Communists, and the Islamists.
Yes, I'll say it: part of the real decline – our old bosses becoming anachronisms -- is because "the War on Terror" was largely successful. Islamism as a whole isn't totally wiped out - just as Communism and Nazism are still threats - but it's nowhere near as big a threat as it was when we were writing about this stuff 10, 15 years ago. Winning the War on Terror put anti-Islamism out of business.
Therefore, I think we should be optimistic and confident that the enemies of freedom can be defeated again. In my new series I've named the "Axis of Genocide" currently threatening the world: Iran, Russia, and China. Here are the first four installments.
Seriously, my friend: these evil governments are serious threats to global peace and prosperity, but I don't think they're at all as strong or threatening as many consider. I see their weaknesses and am confident that they can be beaten. And what about you? You're smart! You can look at the data, too, and come to similar optimistic conclusions. You just need to start looking at this stuff more broadly, beyond the conventional left-right framework that we built our early careers on. Then you won't be so down about everything.
And further: if we can beat the Axis of Genocide, then we can beat these pathetic extreme leftists in academia, media, culture, etc. I am not impressed or intimidated by these amoral idiots. They can be beaten, too. It's just not going to happen in the right-wing firebrand, new-media activist mode we operated in for so many years.
OK, that's enough for now. Time to go get today’s articles edited, published, and *groan* scheduled on social media. I imagine you get what I'm trying to say.
Have a great weekend,
David
And how did my friend respond? With an appreciation for the encouragement, a note of agreement on many points, interest in considering a broader range of ideas, and warm wishes for the weekend.
Debates are best when we can both win in the end.
And one last point, particularly for our wonderful wave of new subscribers over the last week, when I say that I reject both Left and Right and both dominant political parties, here is the data to back it up:
Yes, I thought for the fun of it, I’d try the political compass again. And while I expected to remain quite low on the authority-liberty axis, that I hit right in the middle on economics shocked me:
And guess what? When I suggested
try it out, we hit at almost the exact same spot. I’ll leave to her to consider the implications of that.The previous pieces in the “Axis of Genocide” series:
Mainstream Political Positions Argued in Extreme Ways: A Manifesto of Sorts
The Vicious Vladimir Putin Is a Disgusting Antisemite Who Is Helping Hamas
Click here to read Volume 1 of the “Antisemitism and Culture” series and volume 2 here. Ten of the most important installments from this series for better understanding this Substack’s approach to fighting hate include:
7 Reasons This Christian Hippie Became a Zealot Against Jew Hatred
2 Numbers Which Reveal the Overwhelming Level of Human Devastation Wrought by the Holocaust
7 Great Counterculture Authors Who Inspire My Writing and Zionist Activism
How to Revive King & Heschel's Black & Jewish Anti-Racism Prophetic-Activist Partnership
"You're holding cultural and political views in your head that are now in decline and, honestly, have become somewhat irrelevant. The solution here? It's time to evolve." 100% agree, and my particular concern is that this is widely felt and the reason why so many these days are getting sucked into woke, q anon, and other various forms of absolutist, cult-like thinking. I also agree that Israel will win because the vast majority of world Jewry believes not only in its right to exist, but enthusiastically and emotionally believes in its necessity and beauty.
Excellent,