The world is going more than a little crazy.
Ye delivers an antisemitic rant and gets himself bounced from Twitter and Instagram.
It wasn’t subtle: "I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE". (He meant Defcon 3, but we digress.)
The celebrity, formerly known as Kanye West, said he couldn’t be antisemitic "because black people are actually Jew also" – okay – but he also suggested Sean "Diddy" Combs is controlled by Jews, in a post titled "Jesus is Jew."
Some on the right initially defended Ye – remember that he visited President Trump and donned a MAGA hat – but backed off upon seeing the ugliness of the posts. As Kim Kardashian sadly found out, the man has mental health issues, which she calls a bipolar diagnosis.
And then there’s the president of the Los Angeles City Council, Nury Martinez, who was caught in a leaked audio recording comparing the black child of a white council member a "little monkey." And for good measure, the Latina lawmaker called immigrants from one Mexican province, living in L.A.’s Koreatown, "short little dark people."
Martinez, who apologized after the Los Angeles Times obtained the recording of her speaking with two other council members and a labor leader, resigned under pressure as president yesterday but held onto her seat. She said she is "truly ashamed."
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, speaking at a Trump rally in Nevada over the weekend, is also drawing criticism for racist rhetoric.
"They’re not soft on crime," the Alabama Republican said of Democrats. "They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bull****!"
The us-versus-them language quite clearly targeted the descendants of slaves.
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It may be sheer coincidence, or it may reflect a lowering of the bar for what is considered acceptable discourse in our hyperpolarized culture.
Antisemitism, of course, is thousands of years old. And just three years ago, Democrat Ilhan Omar, a member of the Squad, drew a torrent of criticism for saying political influence regards it as "okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country" – indicating that American Jews put loyalty to Israel first – after saying American leaders’ backing of the Jewish state is "all about the Benjamins."
Many House Democrats pushed to censure Omar, but wound up passing a watered-down resolution condemning all kinds of hate, including antisemitism.
It’s also true that accusations of racism can be off base. Conservative columnist Rich Lowry points to a New York Times piece about a GOP advertising offensive on crime.
That piece includes Wisconsin’s Black lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, who has lost ground against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson after an aerial barrage. In one case Barnes’ supporters "called the ad racist," the Times notes.
A Washington Post story, which leads off with Barnes, says allies of the Democrat "have derided the attacks as racist messages that feed on stereotypes."
The complaint about one ad – which begins with Barnes favoring an end to cash bail – is that he is associated with the Squad, although that is true – he praised Omar at a 2019 event.
The beef about another ad is that Barnes’ name is sprayed in graffiti – crude, to be sure, but as Lowry argues, Democrats haven’t shied away from using Jan. 6 footage against the GOP.
Finally, an ad calls Barnes "dangerously liberal on crime." But as the lead of the Times story notes, Republicans are also calling Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman "dangerously liberal on crime," and he is White.
The craziness I’m seeing goes beyond congressional politics.
Why on earth did Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors sucker-punch his own teammate, Jordan Poole, at a practice?
At a news conference, Green said he was in a "very, very, very bad space mentally" that day, and he will "take some time to myself" to "allow our team to start their healing process."
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Of course, the craziest person on the planet is one who controls a large nuclear arsenal. Vladimir Putin, having rained terror on civilian targets in Ukraine in retaliation for the bombing of a bridge in Crimea, has in his desperation explicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons in the brutal war that he started. President Biden has warned that we could face a nuclear "Armageddon."
The increasingly tense confrontation can’t be resolved with a mental health break or a banishment from social media. Crazy has consequences.
