Iranians have been asked to pray for the safety of President Ebrahim Raisi after his helicopter went missing on the way back from a meeting Sunday with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan.
The helicopter was also carrying Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, among other officials. It went missing in heavy fog in the mountainous region of northwestern Iran.
The official Fars news agency asked Iranians to pray, according to the Times of Israel:
Authorities have lost contact with the helicopter in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was traveling, according to the Iranian Fars news agency.
Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi says authorities are awaiting further details on the search and rescue operation, adding that teams are still on the way to the apparent crash site due to difficult weather conditions.
Fars calls on Iranians to pray for Raisi following the reports.
Earlier Sunday, the Abu Ali Express news blog reported on the meeting between Raisi and Aliyev, saying that it had been “disturbing” from Israel’s point of view, because Azerbaijan has been friendly with Israel until now.
A helicopter crashes in “heavy fog” in the mountains? Highly unlikely anyone survived that crash. Time to get the obituary ready:
My thoughts are with the @washingtonpost obituary team in this difficult time as they fiercely debate whether to call Ebrahim Raisi an “austere religious scholar”, a “patriotic anti-Zionist leader” or a “zealous anti-corruption crusader”.
If anyone wishes to understand why the United States is experiencing a startling increase in antisemitism, I would direct their attention not to the pro-Hamas protesters on university campuses, but rather to Rep. Jamie Rankin (D-Md.), who is so obnoxious as to make Jehovah Himself declare, “No, sir, you are not chosen.” It is to be recalled that Raskin spent months presiding over the phony J6 “insurrection” hearings, conducted by an illegitimate committee whose membership was handpicked by Nancy Pelosi contrary to the rules of the House.
That is to say, if anyone can be considered an expert on unethical congressional proceedings, it is Jamie Raskin, and this is not incidental to recent events that made headlines. Everybody was in a tizzy this week after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) made a remark about the “fake eyelashes” of Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx.). What caused that dust-up? The transcript:
GREENE: I’d like to know if any of the Democrats on this committee are employing Judge Merchan’s daughter.
CROCKETT: Please tell me what that has to do with Merrick Garland.
GREENE: Oh, Goldman. That’s right. He’s advising. Ok.
CROCKETT: Do you know what we’re here for? Do you know we’re here —
[CROSSTALK]
GREENE: I think your fake eyelashes are messing up your —
Why would Greene bring that up? The answer has to do with Jamie Raskin, but before I explain that, first we must remember why the House Oversight Committee was meeting Thursday. It was a full-committee markup where they would formalize contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Merrick Garland. The Committee has subpoenaed the Department of Justice to turn over recordings of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s mishandling and improper disclosure of classified materials. Let us not be naive about why the Republicans in charge of the committee want that recording — they believe that audio of the interview will demonstrate the severity of Biden’s cognitive decline. Indeed, one imagines that if the committee got its hands on that recording, excerpts would be featured in GOP campaign ads showing how Biden is lost in a hopeless of fog of confusion, which is why Garland is stonewalling them.
In his opening remarks, Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) cleverly made the point of how important it is to comply with a subpoena:
Not long ago, a Member of this Committee said:
“The lesson is, please tell your children out there in America, if you get a subpoena to go before Congress, if you get a subpoena to go to the court, go. You have a legal responsibility to go.”
That was Ranking Member Raskin in 2022. Now, Ranking Member Raskin has spent this Congress making excuses for why people like Hunter Biden or, now, the Department of Justice don’t have to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
ZING! Welcome to the New Rules, how do you like ’em? Democrats in power are always doing things that they condemn as unfair whenever Republicans in power do the same things. When Raskin was running the “insurrection” show trial, he was willing to put people in jail for refusing to comply with his subpoenas, but now that the GOP is in the majority, suddenly contempt of Congress is no big deal. After Comer finished his opening remarks, then it was Jamie Raskin’s turn:
Ladies and gentlemen, in this special nighttime episode we resume the madcap comedy mystery series called “Comer’s High Crimes and Misadventures: The Hilarious Quest to Impeach a President Who Has Done Nothing Wrong,” an avowedly low-budget but multi-million dollar taxpayer funded production which most Americans assumed had ended two months ago and everyone had completely forgotten about.
But tonight, with the cast and crew fresh back from a surprise trip to New York City itself, it’s clear the show must go on!
Now, our originally scheduled performance was supposed to be at 11:00 am today but it was postponed when members of the Majority chose to join a mass spiritual pilgrimage to the New York criminal trial of a Florida man, an adjudicated fraudster and rapist, as he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying corporate financial records to cover up $130,000 paid in hush money to a porn star sex partner.
Although some people are churlishly complaining that Members of the House should actually be here to vote on public business and should not have forced a last-minute change in the Committee schedule, our colleagues properly demonstrated for all of history their fierce devotion to this clearly reformed, devout, and pious Florida spiritual leader who many supporters are calling the Messiah from Mar-a-Lago.
Of course, in the meantime, Chairman Jordan in the House Judiciary Committee preempted our GOP colleagues on Oversight, rendering this exercise not only absurd, but completely meaningless and redundant. They have already held Attorney General Garland purportedly in contempt.
Now, when we last met on this matter, you’ll recall that the Majority still had not identified a single high crime or misdemeanor that the President had committed.
The Committee’s impressive 3.8 million pages of documents and 80 hours of testimony from 20 witnesses produced nothing but overwhelming and definitive proof that President Biden had nothing wrong. . . .
Really? There is “definitive proof” of Biden’s innocence? But notice how Raskin had to bring up the “Orange Man Bad” theme, pandering to Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers while mocking the proceedings of a congressional committee as a “madcap comedy mystery series.”
Raskin rambled on in this vein for a while before delivering what he certainly considered his pièce de résistance:
Real obstruction happened when two members of this Committee, who may be preparing to vote tonight to hold Attorney General Garland in contempt, brazenly refused to comply with subpoenas from the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, and still have not responded to those subpoenas.
But now, it seems, Mr. Chairman, I just got passed something, that the whole obstruction gimmick may just be a fundraising ploy, which demeans the overwhelming legal integrity and impressive theatrical ambitions of this enterprise. I was just handed a mass fundraising email solicitation for your campaign that you sent out this evening, Mr. Chairman, stating that, “Biden and his advisors are terrified that I will release the recordings, forcing the media and Democrats to answer for the dismal decline of Biden’s mental state. … This could be the final blow to Biden with swing voters across the country. … The Democrats are pulling out all the stops to stop the bleeding. … Signed, James Comer, Chairman, House Oversight Committee.”
No, I must confess my disappointment to be handed this fundraising solicitation, signed by you as Chairman of the House Oversight Committee. I thought that you were serious about the legal enterprise here, and not just another political huckster calling hearings to score cheap political points and to make a buck.
Oh, ho, ho! You mean to tell us that Democrats don’t constantly do the exact same thing? Do you, Mr. Raskin, expect us to believe that you never once sent out a fundraising letter mentioning your “insurrection” show trial? Your pretended abhorrence of such fundraising reminds me of a certain Captain Renault, who was shocked — shocked! — to discover there was gambling was going on in Casablanca.
Now, perhaps, you see the point that Marjorie Taylor Greene was trying to make. Raskin and the Democrats were trying to suggest that Comer and his fellow Republicans were engaged in unethical behavior, which prompted Greene to bring up the fact that Loren Merchan, the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, currently presiding over the Manhattan trial of Trump, is a Democratic campaign consultant. You see, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a member of the Oversight Committee, paid more than $150,000 to Loren Merchan’s consulting firm. Committee Democrats are up to their eyeballs in the corrupt persecution of Trump in Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, and yet dare to accuse Republicans of wrongdoing in their investigation of Biden! And while Greene was making that point, she was interrupted by Crockett — who hadn’t been recognized by the chair — and then Greene responded with the “fake eyelashes” jab, which sent AOC into a fit of shrieking hysteria.
All of that, however, was merely the sequel to the dishonest and hypocritical performance of Jamie Raskin in his opening statement. So if anyone at the Anti-Defamation League wants to know what’s causing the rise of antisemitism in America, I’ll just show them a picture of Jamie Raskin: “Have you seen this guy? Looking for all the world like a crude caricature of a sleazy Jew published in a 1932 edition of Der Stürmer? If you guys really want to do something about antisemitism, how about convincing Jamie Raskin to retire from Congress?”
One of the unfortunate habits of journalists, academics and other members of the intelligentsia is to generalize about generations to the point of promoting stereotypes. It is somehow acceptable to make categorical characterizations of Baby Boomers in a way that would be considered racist — RAAAAACIST! — were one to make such broad generalizations about ethnic groups. Vox Day (b. 1968, and therefore a member of Generation X) often sneers at Boomers in this manner, which annoys me. Being a “Boomer tradcon” in Vox’s telling, makes me complicit in every failure of the Republican Party for the past 30 years, despite my avowed opposition to all of the most obvious errors of the GOP during that period. For example, it was not me who thought that nominating John McCain in 2008 was a good idea; in fact, I voted for Bob Barr on the Libertarian ticket that year, as there was obviously no point in voting for the doomed “Maverick,” who was wrong on every issue that mattered, especially immigration. I am generally paleoconservative, and agree with much of Vox’s indictment of “tradcon” errors, yet there I am, categorically denounced merely by virtue of being born in 1959.
All of that is preamble to introducing Matthew Schmitz, an earnest young native of Nebraska who graduated from Princeton and became a senior editor at First Things, a conservative publication founded by the late Richard John Neuhaus. A Millennial (born circa 1986), Schmitz has published an article entitled “The New Midlife Crisis”:
Check all the boxes, then chuck it all aside at forty to follow your muse. Play by the rules and win, only to decide that you don’t want the prize. Most of the rebellions were minor. The devoted housewife informed her husband that she would not be cooking dinner for the family on Tuesday and Thursday nights, as she was finally taking the art class she had always dreamed of. The cliché for men was the red convertible. But some people set off explosions: quitting jobs, filing for divorce, engaging in affairs.
For Baby Boomers, the midlife crisis was very nearly a rite of passage. John Updike made a career of chronicling the earthquakes that rattled the mannered world of upper-middle-class suburbanites. But that world of well-scrubbed children, stay-at-home wives, and afternoon cocktails seems as remote today as King Arthur’s court. For most millennials, the idea of being a forty-year-old ad executive on a commuter train, oppressed by routine and convention as he returns to his spacious suburban home, wife of eighteen years, and two teenage children, is just a fantasy. For those who haven’t yet found a spouse or bought a house, it might seem not a nightmare but a dream. . . .
Baby Boomers got married, owned homes, and had kids. The price was conformity. No doubt it could be stultifying. But for most people, the crisis was mild. You could waste money on a sports car and still have grandchildren someday. That was true even if your affairs led to a messy divorce. What of my generation? Our plan of life has been to put off the old patterns of adulthood.
(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) Let us stipulate, at the outset, that comparing the life experiences of two age cohorts in a general way, to examine the way how social change has affected those experiences, is a worthwhile endeavor. For example, I might compare my own experience to that of my parents, who were born in rural Alabama and made their way to Atlanta (and eventually its suburbs) in the 1950s. They were born in the era of the Model T Ford, and by the time I was born, were living in the era of interstate highways, jet aircraft and nuclear weapons.
In general, then, it is worthwhile for Schmitz to compare what a typical “midlife crisis” meant for Baby Boomers, as compared to what it means for younger Americans. As he points out, before you get divorced, you first have to get married, and the under-40 cohort has historically low marriage rates. In particular, Millennials have tended to delay marriage and, especially among college-educated women, to delay childbearing to such an age that becoming a mother may require medical intervention, if it is even still biologically possible. Whereas, by comparison, when I was living the bachelor life back in the 1980s, I was being countercultural — because in the Bible Belt, most folks still got married in their late teens or early 20s — nowadays, it would be countercultural to marry young.
Interestingly enough, my kids are countercultural in this way. Our eldest daughter married at 21 and, of our six children, the only two who haven’t married yet are Jefferson (a 25-year-old law school student) and our youngest daughter, Reagan, now a 21-year-old college junior.
You do not have to follow social trends; you do not have to be a slave to peer pressure. Intelligent people can evaluate choices rationally, and make choices based on their own judgment, rather than being another sheep in the conformist herd. Of course, larger social factors may limit one’s choices. Beginning with Ronald Reagan’s presidency, there was a general economic expansion, a boom that lasted until the 2008 collapse caused by the mortgage crisis. For those who have come of age in the past 15 years — a cohort that includes Matthew Schmitz — economic realities have generally been less encouraging, and the housing market in particular has been made difficult by “Bidenflation.” Furthermore, employment opportunities have been diminished by various regulatory impositions of government (a fact of which Democrats seem oblivious), and many young people have no choice but to become freelance hustlers in the “gig economy,” because there are fewer full-time jobs available.
General economic conditions, however, cannot explain everything wrong with the lives of Millennials (or Gen Z). The lazy bum sitting on the sofa in his mom’s basement, playing videogames all day, is not a victim of anything except his own sloth. For every miserable young slacker like that, you can point out many others who are energetic and industrious and who, as a consequence of their good traits and good attitudes, have a clear path ahead to success and happiness in life.
Certainly, I suppose Matthew Schmitz points out the unfortunate trends among young Americans in order to encourage them to stop following these trends: “Be not conformed to this world,” etc. What was good advice to the early Christian church in pagan Rome is also good advice to anyone living amid the neopagan decadence of 21st-century America.
Because I was never a character in a John Updike novel, I resent having my life experience depicted as some kind of generational stereotype, and I’m sure that Matthew Schmitz would not enjoy being lumped in with the stereotypes of his own generation. He’s not a lazy slob or an anarchist spray-painting pro-Hamas graffiti on synagogues (to name just two of the many varieties of antisocial behavior popular among today’s youth), and unless he’s recently dyed his hair purple and gotten his earlobes gauged, seems to have avoided the worst trends of the era.
About 1,200 words ago, I began this post by comparing the stereotyping of generations to racism. Think about the phrase “the black community,” which is used to imply a monolithic commonality of interest among the 46 million black people in America. “The black community” is viewed as generally poor and oppressed, simply because of statistics, i.e., comparing group averages. Certainly it is true that, on average, black people have lower incomes than white people, but to turn this statistical comparison into a definitive description of “the black community” is unfair to those black individuals who strive to be more than average.
In fact — perhaps a white guy isn’t supposed to say this — many ambitious black people try to get as far away from “the black community” as possible. They want to make it into those John Updike suburbs, with spacious homes on tree-lined streets, and become part of the respectable bourgeoisie, living the American Dream. To achieve this goal, they must swim against the cultural tide of stereotypes which presents “the black community” as defined by ghetto behavior. Your chances of making it to bourgeois respectability are near zero if you don’t reject that ghetto mentality, and yet some pundits profess to be shocked by the emerging trend of black Trump voters. The idea of “the black community” as a political monolith, like the idea of Baby Boomers as a monolith, is a mistake, a mental trap of categorization that can blind us to individual differences. Because I’ve spent my entire life fighting against certain negative stereotypes of my own ethnic group (never tasted moonshine and I don’t play the banjo), I can relate to the dilemma of the black man who is accused of betraying his “community” if he doesn’t want to live the ghetto life (including the ghetto politics of the Democratic Party).
Rebellion, you say? Yes, there’s quite a tradition of that in my family, but “very fine people on both sides,” as someone once said.
If following the current trend means going straight to Hell — which is where it’s heading now — then it’s good to be a rebel. Deo vindice.
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Today is Friday in California.
A couple of our loyal readers submitted links to the Mad At The Internet post below. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
CNN is President Joe Biden’s preferred network to host at least one presidential debate, he said Wednesday.
CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will host, according to Puck News. . . .
The Biden campaign said the president would debate Trump only in June and September, without live audiences present.
“I’ve received and accepted an invitation from @CNN for a debate on June 27th,” Biden posted on X. “Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.”
Trump accepted Biden’s invitation and urged the president to debate him earlier and more often.
“I’m ready to go…The dates that they proposed are fine…Let’s see if Joe can make it to the stand-up podium,” Trump reportedly told Fox News Digital. “The proposed June and early September dates are fully acceptable to me. I will provide my own transportation.”
Trump also said he would debate Biden in October on Fox News.
Of course, everybody sees this setup as favoring Biden, who is trailing Trump in most polls and therefore will welcome the chance to reset the perceptions in a friendly media forum, knowing that CNN is completely controlled by partisan Democrats. As someone who routinely watches CNN (so you don’t have to), I can attest that Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are about as objective as Karine Jean-Pierre. Everybody sees this debate arrangement as proof of how desperate the Biden campaign is:
President Joe Biden’s decision to take Donald Trump up on his “anytime and anywhere” debate offer and propose June and September debates is a clear sign of worry among his reelection campaign team.
Two months ago, Biden cracked the door open to not having any debates, which hadn’t happened in a presidential race since 1972. Asked by a reporter if he would “commit to a debate with former President Trump,” Biden responded, “It depends on his behavior.”
Nothing has changed about Trump’s behavior since then. What also hasn’t changed is who is leading the polls. . . .
Recent polling suggests Biden only has a narrow path to 270. He would need a bigger recovery in the more diverse Sun Belt swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina—where his deficit is generally around 5 or 6 points—to recreate the multiple paths he had four years ago when he narrowly defeated Trump in several critical battlegrounds.
So we’re going to have a debate in June — more than four months before Election Day — and what happens if that doesn’t resurrect Biden’s poll numbers? Frank Lautenberg could not be reached for comment.
