RUTHFULLY YOURS

The terror attack on Jews in Boulder has exposed how deeply heads have been buried in the sand, especially when it comes to anti-Semitism and the left. Reporting out of the Colorado college town has an Invasion of the Body Snatchers quality to it, depicting a community of identical-looking but hollowed-out replacements for the humans that once populated it.

Infected with Hamas propaganda, American cities have become creeping horror flicks, with a trio of New York Times reporters in place of the scriptwriters. In today’s Times, those narrators set the scene:

“In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the college town of Boulder, Colo., has long been known as a laid-back hippie haven. Its residents cherish the outdoors, and its leaders are often elected on reliably liberal promises to expand affordable housing, address climate change and increase racial equity.

“In recent months, however, the City Council has been pulled apart over an entirely different matter: the war in Gaza.

“Pro-Palestinian protesters have regularly interrupted meetings with shouting and other unruly behavior, even prompting the council to temporarily move its meetings online to avoid further disruption and later adding rules to more easily bar people from City Hall.”

So the city of Boulder increasingly cannot function, and the reason is Gaza. This is the sort of thing that should have raised alarm bells long before the inevitable anti-Semitic terror attack it produced. How was this not a major story? The pro-Hamas (in some cases Hamas-connected) network in America is grinding the gears of local government to a halt, and the answer in Boulder was: Let’s have our council meetings on Zoom?

“It’s been a hard time here in Boulder,” Mayor Aaron Brockett told the paper. “We reiterate over and over and over again that international affairs are not the business of the Boulder City Council, and our work is to clean the streets and make sure the water comes out when you turn the tap.”

Okay, but… international affairs very clearly are your business now, Mr. Mayor. If you can’t hold meetings in person because of “international affairs,” you have a bit of a situation on your hands.

The promotion of Hamas isn’t limited to Boulder, Colorado, of course. It’s just a sign that the Gaza mind-virus has spread far outside of the big cities that were full of superspreader events. Containment has failed. First we were told that the craziness on college campuses wouldn’t affect the “real world.” Then we were told that the contamination had only spread to a few cities, life could go on as normal for most people. Now we see what 20 consecutive months of brainmelting media propaganda and an Ivy League education can do to a country, and it ain’t pretty.

At the same time, the willful blindness does not inspire much sympathy:

“Roughly 30 miles northwest of Denver, Boulder thrived as a center of counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s as students at the University of Colorado staged anti-Vietnam protests and flocked to Grateful Dead shows.

“The city of 105,000 residents has maintained its easygoing reputation. Its pedestrian-friendly downtown has rainbow crosswalks, shops offering psychic readings, crystals and hiking sandals, and a view of the city’s iconic crimson rock formations, known as the Flatirons.”

In fact, it is not at all surprising that rainbow crosswalks and crystals and calls to address climate change and racial essentialism provide the backdrop for violent anti-Semitism. That’s not because rainbows hate Jews or crystals are threatened by Jewish space lasers. It’s because all these, taken together, paint the picture of a self-consciously progressive environment. And a self-consciously progressive environment does not behave nicely toward the Jews who wander through its enchanted hinterlands.

It is true that once upon a time Jews were not considered the exception to the broader left-wing political coalition. But that was because, believe it or not, even the “hippie” left (as the Times would put it) was a coalition. Today the progressive movement is not so much a coalition as a single-file line that wraps around the block several times.

As one resident told the Times: “The city is behind on road work. They’re behind on infrastructure. We have a huge problem with homelessness. You can’t even take your kids to the public library anymore because of all the homeless around there. Those issues affect everybody.”

There is only one issue for the good progressive right now: the evils of the Jewish state. You want clean drinking water? Gazans don’t have clean drinking water, why should you? You want a crosswalk closer to the school? How many crosswalks have you seen in Khan Younis lately? Garbage pickup twice a week—when Rafah doesn’t even have it once?

All of this was foreseeable. But it was most foreseeable for the people who decided that their city government had to work remotely to try to slow down their city’s Hamasification, but said nothing until Jews were set aflame in the public square.