OPINION

from The Mesa Tribune - Zone 1 - 06.20.2021

by Times Media Group

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Feel like a victim? Don’t invite me to lunch

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ

Tribune Columnist

The argument began, as so many do, over words. A friend, male, late forties, Jewish, was detailing an anti-Semitic insult he’d suffered at the hands of a client. Then he wanted it to be my turn.

“You must be the victim of discrimination like that all the time,” he asserted.

My response? “I’ve never been the victim of anything in my life. Have I experienced anti-Semitic language, insults? Sure. A lot. But victimized? I don’t think so.”

Our conversation descended into semantics and harshness over what constitutes victimhood. My friend argued that we’re all – all 7.6 billion Earthlings – victims of slights and people we may never admit or never know harmed us. I argued that his de�inition of victimization trivializes real injury.

“If everyone’s a victim, then no one’s a victim,” was my �inal salvo. The server mercifully delivered the check. “I’ve been to murder scenes. I’ve interviewed survivors of concentration camps and rape. I just don’t see a parallel between how they’ve been hurt and some idiot calling you a hebe.”

It’s true that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Mine probably cost me a friend.

I thought about this exchange for days, about why being called a victim so lodged in my craw.

I guess it’s because in America today the prevalent narrative – one I reject with great force – is that we are a nation of victims and victimizers, the af�licted and the af�licting, and I try every day to live my life as neither one.

To consume news in 2021 is like reading an endless scroll of society’s victims.

Violence, racism, income inequality, police brutality, bullying, ageism, sexual harassment, gender inequality, COVID-19, LGBTQ discrimination, kink shaming, sizeism, and countless more stigmas and prejudices.

If I sound intolerant, cold or sarcastic – or like I’m “mansplaining” in a discriminatory huff – that’s not my intention. But lately I �ind myself experiencing an “empathy de�icit,” the sense that my well of compassion might be running lower than Lake Mead on a blazing June afternoon.

A confession: I do everything I can to empathize with victims in proportion to the injury done to them and the theft committed against them.

I grieve the murdered dead. I want justice and greater compassion for all who suffer sexual assault or hate crimes. I loathe Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein for their criminal acts. I want police of�icers to seek out wrongdoers without seeing skin color.

I donate to charity. And yes, I “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and that we, one and all, possess “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

I was raised to honor the Golden Rule. Or as Jesus put it in Matthew 7, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”

That’s an old-fashioned way of thinking, of course. Today, it’s insuf�icient to treat others as you hope to be treated. Instead, we’re asked to treat everyone exactly as they would like to be treated, or risk being branded a victimizer.

Alternately, we are expected to empathize

��LEIBOWITZ �� 21

Biden performance with Putin a concern

BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin spent a mid-June day in Geneva, talking to each other at a summit conference. NBC News headlined its preview of the event in this fashion: “Biden begins long, tense meeting with Putin.”

Don’t believe it.

And in a world where the true news cycle would change by the nanosecond, the old-line press organs in the United States have remained remarkably consistent, especially over the last decade.

Collectively, they spout varied narratives under this broad theme: Conservative principles are wrong and dangerous, while Leftist goals are somehow “forward thinking,” and to be embraced.

When it comes to the pre-summit headline from NBC, further analysis is in order. The National Broadcasting Company is better de�ined these days by the words “Never Believe Conservatives.”

Accordingly, the pro-Biden press partisans wanted to project an image of the 46th President as the “tough guy in the aviator shades.”

If only.

Sadly, we saw a very different image of Joe Biden during the G-7 Meetings, just prior to the Russian Summit. The swagger was replaced with a shuf�le. Con�idence gave way to confusion. Statements of certainty became mumbled, incoherent mutterings. The “Leader of the Free World” had to be led by his wife.

Joe Biden has cognitive problems and the press has a real problem with credibility.

Our international adversaries suffer no such delusions. Neither should we.

Russian “President” (in reality, NeoSoviet Dictator) Putin resembles the cat who ate the canary. He remembers the days of the old USSR, when he was a young KGB Agent, and “old” was the operative term in Moscow.

When President Reagan was asked why he had not held a summit with the USSR during his �irst term, he responded, “My problem for the �irst few years was they kept dying on me.” Brezhnev. Andropov. Chernenko.

Now, in the United States, there’s an aging Democrat Troika on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Pelosi. Schumer. Biden. Of the three, the Senate Majority Leader is the “spring chicken,” at age 70; the House Speaker is the most senior at 81; and the President is 78.

What’s Russian for “Now the shoe’s on the other foot”?

During the one-day US-Russia Summit, President Biden meekly pushed to Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure targets “off limits” to Russian cybercriminals.

So, can the internet thieves begin with number 17 on the target list, or should Vlad have thanked Joe for helping Russia’s cyber warfare experts by doing their work for them…or both?

Putin took the typical Russian approach: he simply denied any cyber connection.

Back home, there’s no denying the curious paradox of President Biden: our Chief Executive, so confused during his trip abroad, leads an administration that is singularly focused on what it perceives as the top domestic threat.

Attorney General Merrick Garland spelled it out during the “off day” between the G-7 meeting in England and the summit in Geneva. “In the FBI’s view, the top domestic extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists – speci�ically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

Got that?

Never mind the more than 8,500 extremists of BLM and Antifa arrested during the riots last summer. They did

with anyone who has not been treated up to their own exacting standards. Don’t believe me? Check the scathing Yelp reviews authored by anyone who has ever been served a not-quite-medium-rare burger.

There are victims in the world and I do feel for them. But there are also people who seem to de�ine themselves chie�ly by the injuries they have suffered, every sickening insult, every deprivation, every last inequality.

That is their prerogative, I suppose. But they probably shouldn’t invite the rest of us to lunch anytime soon. 

HAWORTH �� 20

billions of dollars in damage, but many made bail, courtesy of the Hollywood Left and Democrat politicians, including Kamala Harris.

So rioters from the left are mere protestors.

Protestors from the right are rioters, insurrectionists, and likely white supremacists.

Quite the narrative. Dark days ahead. 

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