Thomas Wictor

I’m nocturnal. It’s just the way I am. For two days in a row I’ve been awoken by early-morning calls, so tonight I’m unplugging the phone. At fifty-three and enjoying the fruits of several illnesses, I can’t bounce back anymore. Don’t bother calling me tomorrow morning. My crankiness accounts for tonight’s post, which explains in a word why so many people hate Jews.

Mediocrity.

The mediocre hate the excellent.

I’m been called a “philosemite,” meaning I’m in love with Jews and everything they do.

Well…no. A lot of Israelis and Jewish people have trouble with boundaries. They send me some pretty intrusive requests and insulting comments. That’s something I could do without. I don’t mean, “Could you please look at this photo if you have time and tell me if it’s fake?”

Like this image of an M825A1 smoke shell exploding.

It’s fake. When you apply the “equalization” function of photo-enhancing software, you get this.

It’s a composite image made of several layers. Each layer has a different light value, having been taken at a different time and place. When you put all the elements together into one image, the layers retain their original light values. The equalization function tries to redistribute the collective light value of the entire image more evenly; the darker areas become lighter, and the lighter areas become darker. A real photo—not a composite—won’t change that dramatically after you equalize it.

A real explosion during Operation Unified Protector, the American involvement in the 2011 Libyan civil war.

The image after applying the equalization function of photo-enhancing software.

There’s almost no difference because the light value of the photo is unified. That explosion was photographed at a specific time and place. Each element of the image was bathed with the same sunshine at the same hour in the same latitude and longitude.

I don’t mind answering such questions. What annoys me is when people correct something I got wrong and do so with condescension, as though they’re leaning down from the heavens, imparting knowledge to a nematode.

Being shockingly rude and ending it with, “But I still love most of what you write” doesn’t cut it.

And arguing as a hobby is something I can’t bear. My father argued about everything, just for fun. Regardless of my point, I had to justify it with graphs, quotes, and sources. I put up with it for fifty-one years. If I get the impression that you’re fighting just for the sake of fighting, I’ll stop responding to you.

Finally, if I want your advice on my personal life, I’ll ask for it. If I don’t ask for advice, that means I’m not looking for advice, especially dating advice, grooming advice, sartorial advice, and financial advice.

I defend Israel and Jewish people because they’re unjustly targeted more than any group on the face of the earth. That makes me angry. But Judaism has nothing to do with it. I’m not a groupie.

So this statement is based on objective truth, not philosemitism: Many if not most people hate Jews out of envy. It’s the envy that the mediocre have for those who excel. Jew-hate is exploding across the globe because mediocrity is spreading like a plague. Here’s what we’re talking about in the US.

Rachel Dolezal, a smirking white who’s been pretending to be black by wearing spray-on tan. She was the president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), until she resigned yesterday. She “identifies” as black. That means we have to call her black. She also identifies as an artist. Here’s one of her paintings.

It’s titled Pariah because we Americans confine black people to the hellish edge of society.

We force them to live in the ghetto of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

An orange woman who paints like a talented eleven-year-old ends up chapter president of the NAACP, where she complains about how badly she’s treated. It’s like saying that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman who’s showing incredible courage.

No. Caitlyn is a man, because he has XY chromosomes and male genitalia. Also, Caitlyn stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars and is being lauded by the whole planet. It’s a cheap, pale imitation of courage that Caitlyn is showing.

I knew a transgender person. This was a male to female who worked in a bookstore. As far I could tell, the only people who talked to her were my Republican mother, my Republican brother Tim, and me. I never saw any of the other progressive, open-minded Californian clerks even take notice of the person. My guess is because she looked like Joey Ramone.

But with prominent breasts. Frankly speaking, the transition was a disaster. But is that any reason to shun somebody? Are you telling me that you’ll never accept a tall, homely man who felt it necessary to live as a woman? What, exactly, is the issue that turns you against the person forever? I’ll tell you what it is: Your lack of character. Your mediocrity.

She was very pleasant, and we liked all the same books. We were both lefties, so the first time I met her, I held out my south paw.

“Put ‘er there, pal!” I said, and she laughed and shook my hand.

I didn’t do it out of pity; I liked her. And all of her colleagues treated her like a leper. She never had customers at her cash register. It was a disgrace. I’m not saying you have to marry the person, but don’t you have the slightest dollop of empathy and humanity? Like, a subatomic particle’s worth?

Most people are mediocre in mind and in life. To paraphrase Anne Tyler from her exceptional novel The Accidental Tourist, they wear a groove into the floor and refuse to try and get out of it. The entire popular culture of my country is swirling the drain because of mediocrity. Any form of virtuosity is seen as alienating.

And that’s why so many people hate Jews. It’s because Jews tend to be virtuosos. They aspire.

It isn’t even the success of Jews that people hate; it’s the mere desire to improve. What we’re seeing now on every continent is a movement to turn us all into slobs, weaklings, damsels in distress, peasants, grunts, morons, and barking seals. As a group, Jews tend to reject that.

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.

His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmaties, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

—Mark Twain, 1897

I’ll tell you the secret of Jewish immortality, Mr. Twain. Dreams and daring. Dreams of a better world and the daring to eclipse.