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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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Yes, there are many different Jews, and in fact a Jew doesn't have to lose relations with the Tribe to be less given to its peculiar shortcomings. After all, it's internal Jewish analysis that I'm citing, we're all reading our Matt Levine to understand the SBF catastrophe better, Yudkowsky is here to deliver a sermon against naive utilitarian reasoning, and Finkelstein's the one who castigates Dersh in his «Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History». But that's just normal, every group has to be aware of its own failings, if perhaps one-sidedly.

As for the rest, I disagree. Elon Musk's distinguishing character trait is daring, not chutzpah. Sure, to the extent that he's leading us by the nose with Full Self-Driving and indulging in irresponsible stunts on Twitter, there is a chutzpah-like quality too. But his rockets go up and come down, his robot walks and his cars charge and he didn't steal anyone's money to get there. Essentially, he is doing honest work, boldly. Oh, and he doesn't hire poker frauds as his «Chief Regulatory Officers» managing this kind of monstrosity.

Now, had you said «Richard Branson», I'd have agreed wholeheartedly. Elizabeth Holmes – even better. And Martin Shkreli... well, there's a reason JewOrNotJew.Com readers were nervously praying he'll turn out to be a Gentile. It was just too stereotypical. And Mavrodi was Russian-Greek but, again, people had trouble believing it.

I am aware that Gentile Americans have appropriated that word. It doesn't mean what they think it means, just like «one baaaad motherfucker» and «sick bastard» and «this nigga is a stone cold killer» aren't really positive descriptors. The problem is, some people use such descriptors as positive despite having their literal meaning in mind; a bit like Russians who embrace the label of «Orcs». Alan Dershowitz, for instance, uses «chutzpah» in the original sense when he calls for assuming the role of bona fide «first-class Americans» while defending spies of the Jewish ethnostate; a beyond-audacious attitude his Gentile admirers may fail to appreciate even as they read a whole book on it.

It's a somewhat common problem.

Elon "FSD in 2018" Musk didn't steal anyone's money to get there?