The Toxoplasmosis of the Feline Left

If you're unfamiliar with the single-celled parasite toxoplasma gondii, it probably means you're a cat lover, and if you are a cat lover it likely means you have an infection called toxoplasmosis gondii and therefore have no idea you're sick. All you know is, you can't get enough of cats, which is exactly what the bacillus intends. And if you have the misfortune to be a small animal, such as a mouse, the disease causes you to lose your fear of the predators, turning you from prey into lunch in short order. 

So it is with what Elon Musk has called the "woke mind virus" now found today on the international Left. Like toxoplasmosis, it seems to thrive chiefly among females, although both sexes are well represented. Its symptoms are an unaccountable compulsion to cozy up to your deadliest enemies, to soothe them and coddle them and caress them until one day they finally eat you. It's suicidal, of course, but such is the power of the virus.

Consider the case of poor Vivian Silver, a Canadian "peace activist" recently murdered by Hamas in Gaza. 

Silver was a dominant figure in several groups that promoted peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as a prominent Israeli human rights group. She also volunteered with a group that drove Gaza cancer patients to Israeli hospitals for medical care.

“On the one hand, she was small and fragile. Very sensitive,” her son Yonatan Zeigen told Israel Radio on Tuesday. “On the other hand, she was a force of nature. She had a giant spirit. She was very assertive. She had very strong core beliefs about the world and life.”

Zeigen said he texted with his mother during the attack. The exchanges started out lighthearted, with Silver maintaining her sense of humor, he said. Suddenly, he said, there was a dramatic downturn when she understood the end had come, and militants stormed her house. “Her heart would have been broken” by the events of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, Zeigen said. “She worked all her life, you know, to steer us off this course. And in the end, it blew up in her face.”

As I noted in this space over the past few weeks, Reality Bites. Nor do the Gods of the Copybook Headings ever really go away. And perhaps, at long last, the Scales Have Fallen from many pairs of eyes. And yet it seems that over and over again well-meaning people must learn that good intentions do not change the world. As Al Capone famously said of growing up in Brooklyn, in his old neighborhood you could get farther in life with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.

Alas for the bien-pensant, Capone's is the voice of reason. Of hypocrisy as well, as course: the gang leader ordered the 1929 hit on his Irish rivals in the bootlegging business in what came to be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a little fatal squabble between competitors and fellow businessmen that in today's culture of violence would hardly even make the papers, let alone go viral on the internet. But Capone and the mobsters of his day did not get where they did without a keen understanding of human nature and a ruthless willingness to see the world as it actually is and not how they wish it were, and to act accordingly.

So tempting, so tasty, so deadly.

Ah, but kittens are cute, you say. What harm can there be in "rescuing" one of the little darlings? And then two, then three, then eight, then a house full of them? Once infected, you can't stop. The bug has caused you to lose all fear for your own safety or well being, and dedicates you entirely to serving its cause, which is its survival, not yours. 

A couple was found dead inside their Yorktown home this week with nearly 150 cats inside. The man and woman were discovered Monday after a request for a welfare check at the home on Cordial Road. Yorktown police found the couple dead but were not able to investigate further due to the number of cats inside the home. "I'm surprised people could live inside with the conditions present," said Yorktown Police Department Chief Robert Noble.

Well, they did until they didn't. And so it is with geo-politics and the noxious poison known as "wokism" or whatever the shape-shifting radical Left is calling its war on Western civilization today. The goal, like the parasite found in cat poop, is to get well-meaning, big-hearted, but soft-headed fellow travelers to lose their fear of consequences and only see the adorable objects of their pity. World peace! Who could be against that?

But dangerous predators, no matter how small or cute or cuddly, have teeth and a willingness to use them on whatever fool crosses their path. Just two decades after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is suddenly a pop star. Who had that on his bingo card? 

In what may be the most stunning case of antisemitic distortion and disinformation in the last six weeks—a very high bar, given the slew of such cases since the terrorist assault on Israel—hundreds of TikTok videos have cropped up praising excerpts of a letter written by Osama bin Laden in 2002 that allegedly explains (and, to many social media readers, justifies) al-Qaida’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001, and by extension, Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023. 

“If you haven’t, you have to go read Osama’s letter to America,” one user who posted it wrote. “Then you’ll see what this has to do with us. They have lied to us more than enough. Reading that was honestly life changing. My bond with this conflict”—presumably Hamas’ conflict against Israel—“is unshakable.” Another user said, “So I just read ‘A Letter to America’ and I will never look at life the same. I will never look at this country the same.” The video lured 1.2 million views in less than 24 hours.

Quelle surprise. When relativism rules the roost, when a false application of egalitarianism becomes the dominant orthodoxy, this is the result. We know these students/indoctrinees have no clue about the way the world works, but unfortunately they don't. And yet they are determined to tell us what they feel: not just tell, but shout, scream, wail, implore, plead, and screech their infantile "demands" until we finally give way. Which is exactly what over the course of the past few years we have done. 

The kids aren't all right. And my cat comparison is an apt one. Consider this story from Britain's radical left Guardian from a few years back:

When pets can emit twice the carbon emissions of our homes’ electricity and kill up to 200 million wild prey in the UK every year, we cannot stay silent. Unfortunately, in many cases pet ownership is simply another form of destructive consumerism. For obvious reasons, truth-telling about pets to friends can be a painful process but it is not something we should shy away from. 

The Mammal Society estimated in 1998 that 63 million small mammals, frogs and snakes and 27 million birds were killed every year by UK cats. House sparrows, blue tits, thrushes and blackbirds are among the most common killed. Another UK study estimated that each cat kills 18.3 wild prey each year. This would equate to 200 million wild mammals and birds killed in 2019, including 54 million birds

Of real concern is the vulnerability of endangered bird species in habitats close to urban cats. When some species are down to the last few dozen, every one lost to cat-predation may be a final step to extinction. The study also showed cats only consumed 24 per cent of their prey; 28 per cent was brought home to their owners and the rest just left where it was killed.

"Down to the last few dozen... final step to extinction... left where it was killed." Think about that  and then consider what Mother Nature might be trying to tell us about the human condition as well. The predator doesn't thank its prey for kindly providing a hot meal. It just eats it,