How the war in Gaza is like the war on math education

The way my side lost the Math Wars is like the way we are losing the "home front" in Israel's fight for survival. The current discussion on the horror in discovering that people we thought should know better but do not know better, is one really important example. Please let me explain.

My side in the Math Wars (we never had a good name for ourselves) was comprised of university math professors, K-12 math teachers, mathematically sophisticated parents, and some people who served in policy positions in state governments (CA and MA). How on Earth did we lose the debate on math education? It's as if lawyers debated tort law with truck drivers, and lost.

The Math Wars began in the early 1990s with fights over textbooks, pedagogy, curricula, and teacher training. We wrote papers and op-eds, we presented to parents and politicians, we debated the Education Mafia. After several years of getting nowhere, I took a step back and wondered what the Hell was going on. We were experts in the field, and no one was listening to us.

In short, the collapse of math education was never a technical problem like the wrong textbooks or ineffective pedagogy---problems that are easily fixable. The one and only problem was the Education Mafia: that corrupt syndicate of the schools of education, the teachers unions, and the professional organizations like "The Dark Side of The Force" (my pet name for the NCTM, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). 

In other words, it's not that America buys the wrong textbooks, it's that we hired the wrong people. We need astronomers but we hired astrologers.

No education reform is possible without reforming the Education Mafia, and the Education Mafia cannot be reformed. You cannot turn astrologers into astronomers. The only way is to get the Education Mafia out of education. But when I explained this to my comrades, my arguments fell on deaf ears. Understand: they did not refute me, they just did not respond. 

Now I had another mystery on my hands. Look, I may or may not be right, but after years of failure, you would think my comrades would be more receptive to an alternative discussion. That they were not, sheds light on allies who are not allies in Israel's fight for survival.

It turned out that all my comrades but one are on the political Left. To my knowledge, two are commited Marxists, the rest are "Yellow Dog Democrats". And the consequence is enormous.

You see, they are ideologically committed to the political structure of public education as it currently exists. They would never raise a hand against a union, and they want the continued existence of the "DOPE" (the U.S. Dept of Public Education). They want the Education Mafia to do the job of teaching children, but they want to tell the Education Mafia how to do their job. (We were painfully naive.)

In other words, my comrades, wonderful people that they truly are, are right about everything regarding the teaching of mathematics, and they are ideologically incapable of making it happen. The one thing that needed to be done was the one thing they could not do. They wanted to persuade the Education Mafia, not fight it.  We were doomed from the start.

Now consider the political fight for Israel. There is just too much about Israel and its fight for survival that violates Leftist dogma. And you can see how hard it is for our erstwhile allies to see through that.

In math education, everything is clear, and obvious, and present. You can read a textbook, you can walk into a classroom and watch the teacher, you can talk to the students. There is nothing abstract about it. My comrades know when the Education Mafia talk shit about math education. And they still can't see through their ideological blinders.

On the other hand, Israel is far away geographically, linguistically, and culturally. The Muslims are even farther away. It's difficult for any American to really know what's going on in the Middle East. It's ever so much harder for them to know that people like Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Andrew Napolitano, and Owen Jones are talking shit about Israel in Gaza. 

Thanks to the blizzard of propaganda blowing out of the Left, it is impossible to talk facts and logic when discussing Israel. It is more understandable, if not any less disturbing, that people we thought and hoped were our allies cannot see through their ideological blinders.  

We must find a way to help our erstwhile friends and acquaintances see through Leftist ideology to the justice of the Israeli cause. Otherwise Israel, and Jews all over the world, are going to pay a heavy price.

Whatever we have been doing up to now is not it.

The Truth Is Not Enough

Alan Dershowitz is a great champion of Israel, and here he is arguing that Truth is a powerful weapon in Israel's defense.  I like Alan Dershowitz, and I agree that Truth is a powerful weapon.  But, like any weapon, it has to be used correctly, and Dershowitz is not doing that.  Consider the First Sino-Japanese War (1895) as a counter-example.

China and Japan fought the first modern naval battle in the western Pacific, for control of Korea.  Both sides bought modern ships from the Europeans but the smart money was on China.  However, the Chinese admiral was an old cavalry officer, and in the decisive battle of that war he brought his ships out line-abreast, like a cavalry charge.  The Japanese blew them to bits, and all of Korea became a slave-labor camp for the Japanese, culminating in the "comfort women" of WW II.

Admiral Ding Ruchang indeed had a powerful weapon at his disposal, but he did not know how to use it.  Disaster followed.

Alan Dershowitz is not an old cavalry officer, he is an old trial lawyer and a professor of law who uses the truth like a defense attorney.  But, just as Ding Ruchan was not in a land battle,  we are not in an American courtroom (or in the Oxford Union).  We are in a global propaganda war.  In a propaganda war, if you play defense you will lose.  Israel has been losing the propaganda war for 40 yrs.

In a propaganda war, the only winning strategy---not the best strategy, the only strategy, if you want to win---is attack.  To paraphrase Georges Danton, in a propaganda war it is "l'attack, encoure l'attack, toujours l'attack!"  Or, as we might say in English:  Attack!  Attack!  Attack!

The other side says we eat babies for breakfast?  Alan Dershowitz says, "No, we don't."  He lost that battle.  And, if you lose enough battles, you lose the war.

When the other side says that Jews use the blood of Muslim children to bake Purim pastries (the Blood Libel is very much alive and well in Muslim lands) the only effective response is to say that Muslims bugger little girls.  And then produce photographs, videos, testimonials, etc.  It's the truth.

If the other side organizes an annual Israel Apartheid Week, we organize a monthly Apartheid Week.  In January it is Saudi Arabia Apartheid Week, in February it is Pakistan Apartheid Week, in March it is Iran Apartheid Week, etc., for every month colleges are in session.  And we show pictures and videos of women being stoned, 12 yr old girls getting married, gays being thrown off roofs, Christian girls being kidnapped and raped, etc., etc., etc.

In 1967, Israel was the darling of the global community.  Today, it is a pariah.  How did that happen?  The Muslims and anti-Semites have been winning the propaganda war for 40 years.  We must figure out how, and learn the lesson.  And they do not even have Truth on their side, but they attack, attack, attack.

I would bet most of you reading this hate my suggestion.  You are wondering how will we ever make them our friends.  Do not worry about being their friends.  Let them worry about being our friends.  Get over yourselves.  This is not about you and your delicate sensibilities.  We are in a real war.  Real people really are dying and propaganda is an essential part of that war.  The only question is:  Do you want to win?

Yes?  The rest follows.

I leave you with that awesome introductory speech by George C. Scott in the movie "Patton". At one moment, Patton says,

Some of you boys are wondering if you are going to chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood, shoot them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do.

After 40 years of losing the propaganda war, surely we know what to do.  And we had better get to it.

The Annihilator Adjective

In this Elder of Ziyon essay, The immorality of charging Israel of "genocide", I learned a new phrase:  incremental genocide.  What does that mean?  It truly does not matter.  The propaganda technique for today is what I call "the annihilator adjective."  It empties meaning out of the word being modified, allowing you to fill it back up with whatever meaning you like.

Suppose you want to call someone an asshole, but you can't just use the word straightforwardly because he may not be objectively an asshole and you would thus open yourself to criticism.  So, instead, you call him a "social asshole" or "decentered asshole" or "networked asshole".  Really, you could use any adjective you like, the weirder the better.  The adjective doesn't have to mean anything, it just has to sound like it might mean something (see:  "Jabberwocky").

Then, when challenged, you reply, "But, I am not calling him an asshole as you understand the concept.  What I mean by asshole is..." and you can proceed to bury your interlocutor in an avalanche of meaningless verbiage.  The avalanche of meaningless verbiage will leave no lasting impression on your interlocutor's mind because it is meaningless.  The enduring impression is that your victim is labelled an asshole and in your interlocutor's, simple and impressionable, mind is left the sense that you are one smart guy (you "know words").

Actually, you are the asshole.

The canonical use of the annihilator adjective is "social justice".  What's that?  We all  have some sense of "justice", worked out over long years of moral, legal, and literary development, and we associated strong, positive feelings with the concept.  We tend to know what it means and we tend to like it, a lot.  Socialists want to cloak themselves in the mantle of justice, but it is not easy for them to do that because socialism is not just.

Enter "social justice".  Oh, what's that?  And the socialists proceed to bury us in an avalanche of meaningless verbiage, leaving upon us the impression that they somehow inhabit a higher moral plane.  Actually, they just want to take your stuff.

It turns out that the socialist assholes (I use these words in their dictionary definitions, no annihilator adjectives for me, thanks) want to label Israel genocidal.  This is absurd on its face and they cannot do that straightforwardly.  Enter "incremental genocide".  What does that mean?  Of course, it does not mean anything.  It's just a way for the socialist assholes to associate the word genocide with Israel.

Depraved Indifference At The U.N.

The NY Times has a piece on the culpability of the UN in the cholera epidemic in post-earthquake Haiti, in 2010.  Do I really need to put this into perspective?  Oh, alright.

So, worldwide, THE central human problem is water.  Getting potable water in, putting sewage water out, floods, droughts, mosquitoes (vector for malaria), and other stuff.  Water problems are the single greatest reason, by far, why humans die premature, horrible deaths.  Especially children.

Waterborne diseases are central to the problem of water control.  There are so many different kinds we have to categorize them:  protozoan diseases, parasitic diseases, bacterial diseases, and viral disease.  Each disease more horrible than the one before.  Diseases that don't kill you by dehydration will kill you by malnutrition, skin infections, and organ damage.  I can't put it any plainer than the World Health Organization:  Waterborne Disease is World's Leading Killer.

Among the waterborne diseases, cholera is big one.  Drink water contaminated by Vibrio cholerae and you will quickly suffer an agony of profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, loss of skin elasticity, dry mucous membranes, low blood pressure, thirst, and muscle cramps leading soon to renal failure, coma, and shock.  Death can come in hours, and it can be a mercy.

Friends, you pay attention to cholera, OK?

So, it came to pass that a magnitude 7 (that's big!) earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, epicenter mere kilometers from Port-au-Prince, causing nearly 300,000 deaths and many times that suffering.  People around the world wanted to help.  The UN wanted to help.  In the effort to help, the UN imported peacekeepers from Nepal.

As it happens, at that time Nepal was suffering a cholera epidemic.  And yet, at the UN a bell rang in nobody's head.  The UN went ahead with importing the Nepalese, they were housed in a compound on the Meille River and their waste was flushed into the river.  A recipe for disaster.

In American parlance, the very kindest characterization of UN behavior is "depraved indifference."  As I have long argued, the UN is a depraved organization.  And they are antisemites.  It is astonishing the extent to which the two go together.

Of course, the solution is obvious.

A couple of years ago I had in my class a Haitian student, a middle aged man.  How he knew I am Jewish I cannot say, but he made a point of telling me---as if I deserve some credit (I live only in reflected glory)---that many Haitians are keenly aware, and profoundly grateful, that after the earthquake the very first relief agents on the ground were these fantastic, highly mobile Israeli field hospitals.  They appeared over night, as if by magic.  No hoopla, no klieg lights, no press corp.  Quietly, they went about the business of saving lives, one after another after another,

No One But The Israelis Have Come To Help

In the words of the Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (who probably never spoke these exact words, but the sentiment is absolutely right), the Israelis Got there firstest with the mostest.

So, the solution to the UN depravity?  Tens of thousands of sick and dead Haitians attest to the rightness of this assertion:  All UN relief efforts must be run by Jews.

Oh, you don't think that's ever going to happen?  Neither do I.  Too bad, because a lot of people are going to die who do not need to die.