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Comments on the Jared Taylor video

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I’m interested people’s comments on Jared Taylor’s video advocating that Trump make explicit statements about White interests. For politicians, the only important thing is to win. Would it backfire on Trump when media freaks out at explicit statements on White interests? Would Whites really rally to Trump more than otherwise or be made to feel guilty by the media uproar? People are saying Blacks and Latinos are going for Trump more than for past GOP candidates. Would they be turned off? Is implicit Whiteness enough?

How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me

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Written by a progressive Jew who hates both his cousin Roy Cohn and Trump.

How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me

Portrait of Roy Cohn, circa 1959.

Portrait of Roy Cohn, circa 1959. Photo by Getty

By David L. Marcus

October 8, 2024

Forgive me if I’m cynical about humanity. I just stumbled into sunshine from the darkness of a screening of The Apprentice, the stunning fictional-yet-fairly-factual film about Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn.

That’s Roy Marcus Cohn, my odious cousin.

These 120 minutes in the theater unearthed so many memories that now I’m reeling from PTCSD: Post Trump-Cohn Stress Disorder.

With a bit of artistic license, The Apprentice illuminates the truths that several documentaries have depicted. We see Roy molding Trump out of a lump of formless clay. We watch Trump wallow in Roy’s world of chicanery and bribery, bold-type gossip pages and bald-faced lies.

I’ve long thought of Trump as Roy’s acolyte, his disciple. But “The Apprentice?” Ah. Nice wordplay.

Let’s pause for a personal disclaimer-plus-trigger warning.

Roy and I shared one trait: devotion to the bubbly, optimistic Libby Marcus — my Grandma Libby, Roy’s Aunt Libby. Libby was staunchly loyal to family. No matter if you were an awkward dork (me) or an indicted perjurer (Roy) or a disbarred attorney (Roy) or a possible murderer (Roy). Or even if the IRS slapped liens on your property for evading millions of dollars of taxes (Roy again).

It’s easy to loathe everything Roy represented: The self-hating homophobia. The peculiar antisemitic behavior of a Jewish person a couple of generations removed from the shtetl. The flag-waving, faux family-values conservatism, drenched in hypocrisy.

Speaking of hypocrites: In the heady heyday of the 1980s, I briefly met The Donald several times at Cousin Roy’s birthday parties. That was when the self-proclaimed Real Estate Tycoon was overleveraging, putting himself on the path to bankruptcy. He was bamboozling bankers and journalists — as Roy manipulated him like a marionette.

Since childhood, I’ve known that I owe my existence to Roy Marcus Cohn. More about that in a moment.

The real Roy

If you finished high school after 1980, you might not comprehend the sweep of Roy Cohn’s pernicious, perfidious four-decade-long career. Here’s the SparkNotes version (skip this section if you know why Roy’s shenanigans provoked Joseph Welch to say, “Have you no sense of decency, Sir?”).

Roy was an obnoxious wunderkind. He graduated from Columbia Law School at age 20. His mother Dora Marcus Cohn was a helicopter mother before anyone knew the term. She was so protective of her only son that she rented a cabin down the road when Roy went to sleepaway camp. Roy’s father Al Cohn, a judge, introduced Roy to New York’s dealmakers.

This country will never again have an unelected person who wields so much influence for so many years on politics and the media. Never.

Roy Marcus Cohn with his beloved aunt Libby Marcus (grandmother of David L. Marcus) on his yacht Defiance, which mysteriously sank off the Florida coast in 1973. Courtesy of David L. Marcus

In the 1950s, Roy was a prosecutor in New York who sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair on overhyped espionage charges (Roy revealed that he made ex parte — illegal — calls to the judge). Then, in D.C., Roy was chief counsel to the drunk demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy. They destroyed lives and careers while persecuting so-called “Communists and homosexuals.”

Roy went too far: He pushed that Wisconsin Weirdo to take on the U.S. Army in the first Congressional hearings to be televised live. McCarthy died in ignominy. Somehow, Roy reinvented himself. Back in New York, he was the attorney-consigliere to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, ultraconservative Francis Cardinal Spellman and Mob boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno.

Roy befriended Republican bagman Roger Stone and helped elect Ronald Reagan. Soon after, Roy’s pal Rupert Murdoch got the Reagan administration’s blessing as he amassed the television stations that became Fox News.

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan star as Roy Cohn and Donald Trump in ‘The Apprentice.’ Courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment

As The Apprentice opens in 1973, Roy meets dimwit Donald (played convincingly by Sebastian Stan). The U.S. Justice Department is suing the Trump Organization, run by Donald and his father Fred, for refusing to rent apartments to Black tenants.

The film gets it right: Other attorneys advised the Trumps to quietly pay a fine and settle. But not Roy. He goaded Trump to countersue the government for $100 million. Roy shared his three golden rules with Donald: Attack, attack, attack. Deny everything. And “no matter what happens, never admit defeat.”

Sound familiar 50 years later?

Another Roy-ism: “Don’t tell me what the law is, tell me who the  judge is.”

Hello, Judge Aileen Cannon!

Seeing evil up close

All happy families are alike; every dysfunctional family has its own tragic history. My grandfather Bernard Marcus — Roy’s uncle — was president of a thriving bank in the Roaring Twenties. But in the Great Crash of 1929, the WASP  bankers helped each other, making Bernie a scapegoat.

Oddly, Bernie and his business partner Saul Singer were the only ones convicted of wrongdoing amid that wave of bank failures. The two Jewish guys. I’m not paranoid (about this subject, anyway). You can read economists such as Milton Friedman, who argued that the establishment financiers resented the Jewish interloper.

In the early 1930s, young Roy visited his Uncle Bernie in  the maximum-security Sing Sing prison. The experience shook Roy. He spent the rest of his life railing against “the establishment,” even after he became the establishment. …

Continue reading here.

Jared Taylor on the Trump campaign

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Don’t buy Nike.

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Prof. John Mearsheimer: “Israel is trying to drag the US and Iran into a shooting war”

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What passes as art in the West: Sancta Susanna, staged by Florentina Holzinger

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Explicit lesbian sex scenes at the OPERA leave 18 audience members requiring medical treatment: Graphic show features naked nuns on roller skates and Christ having his loincloth whipped off

A radical feminist opera which includes explicit lesbian sex scenes, real blood and injuries, and naked roller-skating nuns, has left 18 audience members needing medical treatment in Austria.

Sancta Susanna by composer Paul Hindemith caused a scandal back in 1921, with outraged critics labelling the one-act opera, which tells the story of a suppressed nun discovering her sexuality, too blasphemous to be shown.

Its premiere at the Stuttgart Opera was cancelled, but more than 100 years later, it has now been staged in the city for the first time – with the shock factor amped up to dizzying new heights in what its creators call a ‘radical vision of the Holy Mass’.

Extreme performance artist Florentina Holzinger is behind the astonishing adaptation, which sees its all-female cast playing nuns who strip off their habits throughout the ‘sensual, poetic and wild’ show.

The most bizarre scenes include an actress with dwarfism dressed as the Pope being raised up into the air and spun around by a robotic arm, while another performs Eminem songs dressed as Jesus.

Sancta tells the story of a suppressed nun discovering her sexuality. At one point she prays while watching two lovers in the garden of her convent

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Sancta tells the story of a suppressed nun discovering her sexuality. At one point she prays while watching two lovers in the garden of her convent

In one scene, tattooed nude performers clamber over a table, drinking wine and singing, while another lifts a sword in the shape of a crucifix and pushes it down her throat

In one scene, tattooed nude performers clamber over a table, drinking wine and singing, while another lifts a sword in the shape of a crucifix and pushes it down her throat

A female Pope features in the performance, which critics say 'dissects' Catholicism

 A female Pope features in the performance, which critics say ‘dissects’ Catholicism

At one point an actress with dwarfism is dressed as the Pope is raised up into the air and spun around by a robotic arm

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At one point an actress with dwarfism is dressed as the Pope is raised up into the air and spun around by a robotic arm

Performers wearing nun's veils roller-skate in a half pipe during one part of the performance

Performers wearing nun’s veils roller-skate in a half pipe during one part of the performance

The shocking performance includes nudity and 'painful' stunts

‘Bach meets metal, the Weather Girls meet Rachmaninoff – and naked nuns meet roller skates,’ is how the Stuttgart State Opera website summarises the performance.

The ‘feminist mass’ sees the central character, a young nun called Susanna discover her sexuality, eventually pulling down Christ’s loincloth on the crucifix in the scandalous climax. At one point, the nude nun has sex with the icon.

The performance has an age restriction of 18, and incorporates sex acts, painful stunts, real and fake blood, piercings and the infliction of a wound on stage.

Naked performers hang out of bells as clappers, with only their bare bottoms or heads visible, while others scale a rock wall in nothing but harnesses and clamber up ropes.

In one scene, tattooed nude performers clamber over a table, drinking wine and singing, while another lifts a sword in the shape of a crucifix and pushes it down her throat.

In one very irreligious exchange, an actress playing Jesus spanks a semi-naked woman of the cloth.

And in a particularly disturbing scene, bodies are strung up on the wall to mimic Christ on the cross, before vats of fake blood start pouring down over them.

Most shockingly of all, one critic detailed the moment an injury is inflicted on one of the actors live on stage.

At one point an actress playing Jesus spanks a semi-naked woman of the cloth

At one point an actress playing Jesus spanks a semi-naked woman of the cloth

The provocative show is based on an opera which was decried as 'blasphemous' by critics

The provocative show is based on an opera which was decried as ‘blasphemous’ by critics

To illustrate the Eucharist, the body of Christ, a piece of skin is cut from a performer’s side, which is then grilled medium rare, according to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

On the show’s website, it warns attendees that the performance art is ‘not fake, but real.’

In the case of the sexual violence shown, the theatre issues explicit trigger warnings, saying some may be left in ‘discomfort’ or even ‘traumatised’ by the performance.

The almost three-hour show, which has no break, proved too much for some attending its Stuttgart showings.

An opera spokesman said those affected were in the rows near the stage, and would have known ‘what they are letting themselves in for.’

The opera company recommends the performance to viewers who are ‘daringly looking for new theatrical experiences.’

In the opera, a nun warns Susanna with an old story about the nun Beata, who had desired the Saviour on the cross and was walled up alive for it

In the opera, a nun warns Susanna with an old story about the nun Beata, who had desired the Saviour on the cross and was walled up alive for it

On the show's website, it warns attendees that the performance art is 'not fake, but real'

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On the show’s website, it warns attendees that the performance art is ‘not fake, but real’

The cast play nuns who strip off their habits throughout the 'sensual, poetic and wild' show

The cast play nuns who strip off their habits throughout the ‘sensual, poetic and wild’ show

‘Exploring boundaries and crossing them with pleasure has always been a central task of art,’ the opera quotes its artistic director Viktor Schoner as saying.

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Democrats’ Third World Reasoning

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DEMOCRATS’ THIRD WORLD REASONING

Watching the vice-presidential debate last week, I realized that Gov. Tim Walz has a primitive’s understanding of cause-and-effect. It pairs nicely with his primitive’s understanding of representative democracy, economics, science, national security, deductive reasoning and the Electoral College.

As our country becomes more DEI-oriented (the heart and soul of the Democratic Party), we can expect to see a lot more problems with causal reasoning — not to be confused with casual reasoning, which seems to be Kamala Harris’ method of thinking. The “diverse” cultures the Democratic Party is hauling in are notoriously poor at grasping causality.

Thus, for example, in Africa, AIDS-infected men firmly believe that sex with a virgin cures AIDS, because witch doctors told them so. (Duh.) Like communism and recycling, the virgin rape plan has never actually worked. But despite that, and despite massive international education campaigns, the locals persist in seeking this “cure” even today, raping toddlers, their own daughters and babies in diapers — as documented in innumerable official reports.

Our completely harmless trading partners, the Chinese — also big “traditional medicine” devotees — believe that ingesting tiger penis is a cure for impotence. (The good news is, if you’re a man in Africa suffering from both AIDS and erectile dysfunction, have we gotta deal for you!)

The fanatical hunt for tiger penis to serve the Chinese market has put tigers on the endangered species list and already driven 3 of 8 tiger subspecies to extinction. Tiger poachers in India have slaughtered so many tigers that the population has cratered from 100,000 in the early 20th century to about 3,300 today. In China itself, the tiger population totals around 50. Not 50,000. Fifty.

At this point, conservationists think the only thing that might save the tiger from total extinction is the introduction of Viagra, because, unlike tiger penis soup, it actually works. (Which is awesome because if there’s one hellish tomorrow even I can’t imagine, it’s a world in which the population of China is declining even a teeny, tiny bit due to a national E.D. epidemic.)

The cause-and-effect logic of the cultures currently colonizing America is remarkably similar to Walz’s reasoning. It’s probably not a coincidence that he’s a major proponent of importing gigantic numbers of Somalis, Ethiopians and Indians to Minnesota. If you think Minnesota schools are prosperous now, just wait.

Here are a few of Walz’s cause-and-effect claims from the debate. They are bedrock beliefs of the entire Democratic Party, but most Democrats are smart enough not to make such comical statements in front of a national audience.

WALZ ON HOUSING:

“People with stable housing end up with stable jobs. People with stable housing have their kids able to get to school. All of those things in the long run end up saving our money.”

This is the logic behind every Democratic policy, also known as the chicken and the egg fallacy.

Democrats say: People with drive, initiative, character and a strong work ethic tend have stable housing … Therefore, if we give stable housing to people who could never figure it out on their own — PRESTO! — they’ll have drive, initiative, character, etc.

Result: Cabrini Green and hundreds more housing projects like it, marinating in gang warfare, drugs, trash, graffiti, shootings and other incidents of, you know, “stable housing.”

Democrats: People with drive, initiative, character and a strong work ethic tend to live in nice neighborhoods … So let’s move people in bad neighborhoods to better neighborhoods, and they’ll magically turn into people with drive, initiative, character, etc.

Result: A doubling of violent crime in cities with Section 8 housing (the program that moves poor people into neighborhoods beyond their means).