Saturday, April 4, 2020

Beware the Hydes that disguise as Jekylls

Robert Louis Stevenson once had a story to tell, so he wrote a novel that recounts the tale of a Doctor Jekyll that did good work in his practice during working hours, but turned into a monster at night when no one was watching, committing horrible acts under the assumed name of Mr. Hyde.

Stevenson must have known about Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in which Shylock the Jew wanted someone's pound of flesh perhaps to stew, to grill or to do God knows what with it. But if Stevenson intended to write a metaphor, he should have waited a few more decades to be born, because he would have been inspired by real stories of cannibalistic Hydes masquerading as Jekylls.

And the Hydes are not even hiding their true nature these days. On the contrary, they are shouting it from the rooftops of punditry. Here, look at the following title and be convinced: “Don't lift Iran sanctions, not even for the coronavirus.” It's an article that was written by Michael Rubin, and published on March 24, 2020 in the Washington Examiner.

So I ask you this, my friend: Who might it be that wants something like this, who doesn't want pounds of Iranian flesh to do with it God knows what. If you want to read the complete Michael Rubin article and get ideas, you'll find it published in The Washington Examiner on March 24, 2020.

But if you think that this Rubin article might have been just a fluke, let me assure you it wasn't. And here is the proof: Eight days later, on April 1, 2020, the same Michael Rubin did what Jews do routinely. He scrounged around looking for morsels of flesh that may not be Iranian, but taste close enough to be a Farsi dish. And he found something. What he found inspired him to write: “Human Rights Watch reports are no longer credible,” an article he published in the same old Washington Examiner.

Look what it is that prompted Michael Rubin to write the March 24 article:

“Two dozen activist groups demanded the United States lift sanctions on Iran to help it fight the coronavirus, saying that hospitals overrun and Iranian doctors struggling to procure necessary equipment, the US must be part of the solution rather than part of the problem”.

As you can imagine, Michael Rubin turned furious at the sound of someone pleading the cause of the Iranian people, so he did the very Jewish thing of making his case––not by analyzing the subject that's being discussed or by articulating his views on it but––by attacking the activist groups and the Iranian people whose cause they were pleading.

Nothing short of grotesque was the look of freshly ingested human blood frothing at the mouth of Michael Rubin, the proverbial cannibal that disgusted his readers all the way down to the end of his article. That's where he concluded his presentation with the following blurt:

“The sad reality is that the financial benefit for Khamenei and the ruling clerics of Iran's suffering is simply too great to risk. The coronavirus, and Khamenei's desire for cash rather than substantive help, reveals his true self”.

One of the activist groups that Rubin has attacked was Human Rights Watch. He made it the subject of his April 1, 2020 article. Here too, instead of engaging in a civilized discussion about what he sees as the merits of letting the people of Iran die by the ongoing pandemic––thus punish their leaders no end––Michael Rubin has once again frothed the cannibalistic method of attacking the messenger that is the Human Rights Watch. Here in condensed form is what he said in this regard:

“Human Rights Watch has strayed from the objective to the subjective and from the neutral to the corrupt. Too many of its reports today are short on methodology and long on ideology. This brings us to its October 2019 report 'Maximum Pressure: US Economic Sanctions Harm Iranians' Right to Health,' which has been increasingly cited to show that the US should lift its sanctions to help Iran fight the coronavirus crisis. The group interviewed six Iranian medical professionals. It also spoke with four other experts on US government policymaking on Iran. Still, until Human Rights Watch has new leadership, it should have no weight in the US and human rights policy debates”.

In science, when you want to derive a hidden law of nature, you disturb the equilibrium that's keeping things quiet. The disturbance will cause a change you can measure and correlate with the amount of disturbance you used to cause the change. And that relationship––between the cause and the effect––is what yields the law of nature that was hidden behind the apparent equilibrium.

The same method works out in human affairs. It is that when things are running normally, you cannot tell what Mr. Hyde may be lurking in the skin of every Dr. Jekyll you know. It is only during disturbed times, such as the spread of a pandemic, that the true nature of the Michael Rubins of this world is revealed. It is what happened this time, thank the stars.

If you want to call that a silver lining, be my guest.