Jordan Peterson & the 13th Rule for Life

I read in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald mag Good Weekend the feature - Toughen up, snowflake - on professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Jordan Peterson.

Peterson, apparently, is the latest, trending intellectual guru with all the answers - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos - for the perplexed (and who isn't these days?), so before rushing out to buy his tome, I thought I'd subject him to the infallible guide for sorting the sheep from the goats, the Palestine/Israel litmus test.

It's really quite simple to administer. Just Google the guru's name + 'Palestine' or 'Israel' or both and check out the result.

So I did, and OMFGx10!

Google took me to a YouTube video, beneath which these words appeared:

"Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson, Professor Salim Mansur, Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and Ezra Levant, co-founder of The Rebel Media give a spirited talk on the historical significance of the Balfour Declaration (May 18, 2017). The event was hosted by Canadians for Balfour 100, a project of the Speakers Action Group in cooperation with The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow and the Mozuud Freedom Foundation."

The Gatestone Institute? Chaired by John Bolton? That's right! As to the rest... well, life's too damn short.

I proceeded straight to JP's 16-minute contribution, but could barely manage 10. Here's why:

"Maybe even the enemies [ie Arabs] of the Jews [ie Israelis] respect them because they've done so well and it's just annoying."

"Israel's a shining beacon on the hill [in] a God-forsaken part of the world."

"You think about the common complaint that the Western colonialists, say, were responsible for the divisions of the Middle East. I mean, that's one way of looking at it. If you start history at 1917 after the allies won the First World War and took down the Ottoman Empire... you could say, well, England and France had the upper hand and they arbitrarily divided up the Middle East, but you could just as easily say that the Ottoman Empire collapsed and they had to do something with it. It wasn't obvious, and they gave some of it to the Arabs who really didn't have any land to begin with, or not any independent land that's for sure, because they were dominated by the Ottoman Empire, and they decided to give some of it to the Jews. Well, maybe that wasn't the world's best solution either way but they were maybe making the best of a bad lot."

According to our intellectual guru, empires (and presumably, countries too) just collapse - no push, no shove necessary. In the case of the Ottoman Empire, no foreign interference over decades, no foreign interventions, no final British push in Palestine. One minute it's standing, the next it's in a bloody great heap, just begging to be cleared away.

And guess which innocent bystanders just happen to be around at that precise point: 'Blimey, chaps, just look at that! How frightfully messy. OK, duty calls, roll up your sleeves and pitch in! And when we're done, we can give some of it to those Arab blighters, and some to the Jews.' To which latter suggestion said innocent bystanders exclaim as one: 'What a jolly good idea!'

Hey, Jordan, here's a 13th Rule for Life. Put it in your second edition: If you don't know anything about a subject, don't talk about it.