You’re Such A Cassandra!
In college I was obsessed with the ancient Greek myth of Cassandra, princess of Troy. The god Apollo was enamored of her and so he gave her the gift of prophecy. When Cassandra rejected his advances he added a curse that no one would believe her predictions. Cassandra foresaw calamities and tried warning people, but her warnings were never heeded. Everything she foretold in her prophetic visions came to pass, including her own murder.
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The last month has felt initiatory for me, to say the least. Spiritually the term “awakening” is when you wake up from an illusion or delusion, or become aware of something heretofore hidden in the shadows. Well, let’s just say that I am wide awake now.
Because I’m Jewish and have actual skin in this game, I can’t afford to spend my time on social media posting willy-nilly about things I know nothing about. It’s a dangerous business and it causes immense harm. Out of necessity, I’ve had to arm myself with an education. It’s been a steep learning curve, and I imagine that I’ve just barely scratched the surface.
I’ve never been a very political person. In retrospect, I was just dead asleep at the wheel. I’m trying to forgive myself for my gullibility and distractability and naivete, and for all of the ways that I missed the writing on the wall. The truth is, I have just been hanging out in an echo chamber, regurgitating the same progressive ideas, with the same groups of people, who share the same beliefs as I do for years… Just validating each other’s liberal perspectives and opinions ad nauseam.
“Diversity is not a bunch of people who look different but think alike.”
For those of you who are interested in learning alongside me, in holding more nuance, complexity and paradox, and in being willing to consider perspectives other than your own, I’m including some insights and information below, as well as some personal reflection. But before I do that I have to ask… When did I become an unreliable narrator? I have found the propaganda machine to be so effective that I now have “dear friends” disappear when I ask them to consider another perspective. People who trusted me with their most intimate material, and who trusted me to offer them wise counsel right up until 10.7.23 suddenly find that I am not worth listening to about the Israel/Hamas issue because I am a Jew.
“When will be the moment when Jewish voices are taken seriously, not smeared as agents of pro-Israel propaganda, but understood as Jews who are being marginalized because of who they are?” -Blake Flayton
Part of the reason I am asking people to treat me as a reliable narrator is because what I am sharing here actually affects all of us. Jews may be on the front lines right now, with the largest targets on their backs, but what I am sharing is SO MUCH BIGGER than that.
So what have I been learning about? I’ve been learning about the relationship between progressive liberalism and Jihadist death cults, the extreme danger that is TikTok, the correlation between Qatari endowments to American universities and the antisemitism that is now running rampant on college campuses, and so much more. Out of everything I’ve read (and I have read a lot!) I believe that the article about progressive liberalism and Jihadist death cults entitled “The Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away” is worth your undivided attention.
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The day after the October 7th massacre in Israel I shared this post on Facebook: “The holocaust isn’t some far off abstraction. It wiped out my paternal grandmother’s siblings and parents, and caused all of my family members to flee in fear for their lives. What many (most?) non-Jews don’t understand is that ANYTHING that happens related to Israel opens up global floodgates of anti-Jewish sentiment (and action.) And that Jewish people worldwide still live with a visceral, epigenetic terror that gets activated when these kinds of things happen.” I’ll spare you the “I told you so,” but I can also honestly say that never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we’d be back here again - experiencing what the FBI has called “historic levels of antisemitism.” In every generation our elders warn us to not get too comfortable, to not assimilate too much, and to not lessen our vigilance. In every generation we ignore them. And in every generation they are proven right.
“We are now in an isolated place, a constricted place, and the foundation upon which our very existence rests has been rocked by barbarism and by a gaslighting world intent on telling us we are the bad guys. Perhaps we were naïve to be taken in by America’s freedoms. We got carried away, untempered by the reality of the hatred that has always been there, will always be there.” -Nani Beraha
It would be easy for me to despair right now, but I remembered something essential this past weekend. I remembered that Jews, as a people, love life. That they choose life. Again and again. That they keep coming back. No matter what anyone tries to do to the Jewish people, they rise again. Because they love life. “To life, to life, l’chaim!” is what the Jews affirm again and again throughout time. Jews are not a “glory to the martyr” death cult. Jews choose life.
COMEDY BREAK: Hilarious and prescient SNL clip with Dakota Johnson from 2015.
I’ll leave you with one last quote. Though not in the realm of Greek mythology, Orwell and Huxley were also prophets…
“Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. “As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.' "In 1984, Huxley added, 'people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.' “In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.” –Neil Postman from his novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Addendum: The above post is all about prophecy and foresight… What Cassandra saw, what the book “Can The Whole World Be Wrong” saw, what SNL foresaw, what Orwell and Huxley saw (how that ties into TikTok.) Recently The Free Press published a series of articles entitled The Prophets that highlights messengers from the past who had keen insight into the issues and events of today. I recommend it highly!
