Bret Wallach

AI, music, pickleball, family and friends (probably not in that order) are what make my life great!

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

We host (early) classical musicians in our house when they're in town for various concerts. This is what I sometimes come home to. It's really wonderful!!!

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@EthanLevins2 Israel's "illegal" nuclear weapons? If they even exist, they are precisely as legal as the United States' nuclear weapons (and Britain's, France's, etc.).

Israel's nukes, if any, are only ever a threat if they are about to be exterminated.

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

Here’s a question nobody likes asking about Nazi Germany:

How did countries like Austria, Poland, and France collapse so fast? These were established nations with armies, governments, borders, and millions of people. France alone was considered one of the strongest military powers in Europe.

Traditionally, we are taught that Hitler’s army was simply this unstoppable military machine that steamrolled Europe because it was overwhelmingly powerful. And yes, Germany was militarily strong. But that explanation alone has always felt incomplete, because historically even very strong armies usually do not conquer enormous amounts of territory that quickly unless something inside the targeted societies is already collapsing first.

Austria disappeared almost overnight. Poland fell within weeks. France collapsed in six weeks. History usually does not work that way unless large parts of the population no longer truly believe the fight is about their own survival.

The uncomfortable and dark reality is that many people did not initially think Hitler was coming for them.

Austria is probably the clearest example. The Anschluss was welcomed by huge parts of the population. German troops entered to cheering crowds, flowers, and celebrations. Many Austrians convinced themselves that joining Nazi Germany would mostly affect the Jews while improving life, or at least preserving it, for everyone else.

That mentality existed across Europe in different forms.

The illusion behind Hitler’s message was essentially: you can still be French, Polish, or Austrian. Live your life. Raise your children. The real problem is your Jewish neighbor.

And for millions of people, that was enough to weaken the will to resist.

A society only fights with total determination when people believe defeat means the destruction of their nation, identity, and future. But many Europeans convinced themselves the Jews were the primary target, so they accepted things they never would have accepted otherwise.

Some collaborated. Some stayed silent. Some rationalized. Some simply looked away.

The tragedy is that they were wrong anyway.

Austria lost its independence. France was humiliated and occupied. Poland was devastated. Cities were destroyed, sovereignty disappeared, millions died, and entire societies were dragged into catastrophe.

People often think evil can be managed as long as it is directed at somebody else first.

History shows otherwise.

This is why I’m done trying to convince Americans or Europeans about the dangers of extreme Islamism. In many mosques and Islamist circles, hatred toward America, Christianity, Western civilization, and Jews is preached openly and repeatedly. Yet many people in the West still process it the same way many Europeans processed antisemitism in the 1930s: “Yes, maybe they hate the Jews, but that doesn’t mean they are coming for us.”

That psychological separation is exactly the point.

As long as people believe somebody else is the primary target, they convince themselves they can safely ignore the ideology itself. They assume the hostility will remain contained to Jews, Israel, or some distant “other.”

But ideologies built around civilizational hatred do not stay neatly limited to one target forever.

And the end result, increasingly visible already across parts of Europe, is collapsing social trust, collapsing law and order, ethnic fragmentation, parallel societies, radicalization, and the steady erosion of the very national identities people assumed were untouchable.

At some point, societies make their own choices.
And eventually they live with the consequences of those choices.

You reap what you sow.

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

🤣🤣

[Uri Kurlianchik @VerminusM]

I wonder if Iran will bomb Israel if the US strikes Iran after Iran shot down an American helicopter, which will result in Israel responding to the Iranian response to the American response to the Iranian response... God, I love living in the Middle East!

[Gail Heriot @GailHeriot]

The CA Legislature tried to strike these words from the state constitution in 2020 (put there by Prop 209 in 1996). The voters smacked them down when 57.23% said NO—despite the YES campaign outspending the NO team by more than 14 to 1. Now they’re trying again—calling it a “clarification” instead of an effort to gut the provision’s application to public education. Don’t believe them. If approved by the voters, this would be a major change. The aim is to pave the way for the recommendations of California’s Task Force on Reparations. The Task Force wants to make college free to African Americans no matter how well off their parents are and to get school districts to fund individual schools based on the race of the students who attend.

@christopherrufo

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@Shoshana51728 Gee thanks. Do you often throw whole groups of allies under the bus (there are over a million Jews in California)?

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@sappholives83 The inventor of the frontal lobotomy (aka the prefrontal leucotomy) received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or medicine.

As a result, I've always been skeptical of Nobel Prizes.

But, as always, I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy!

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@chico_ray "...and let Israel finish the job."

What exactly does "finish the job" mean? Remove nuclear material? Remove the Islamic regime? Something else? And how specifically would Israel go about doing whatever that is?

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

Perhaps Trump has lost his way. Perhaps not.

What precisely do you believe he should do right now, going forward? Drop a bunch of bombs? On what exactly? Launch a ground war? With what objective and at what cost?

Time will tell if you're right, but I don't think you know at this point.

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@ZenVehicles @sappholives83 😂😂

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

The war against Israel is a war against Western civilization.

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@ArynneWexler Here's the mysterious version. 😂

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@ZeekArkham It's more complicated than that. Making better choices are likely to lead to a better future and playing the victim may have longer term disadvantages. At the same time, hasn't the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, etc. made it generationally harder for blacks to make good choices?

[Loay Alshareef لؤي الشريف @lalshareef]

🚨 Lebanon is a beautiful country. Its people are joyful, resilient, and deserve to break free from the cycle of endless wars.

Peace between Lebanon and Israel should be the result yielded by the current ceasefire.

I explain why here.

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@TheDemSlayer All young men? What's a man? Would trans women be exempt? Do you really want to infest our military with lots of LGBTQ+ folk? Just as the military is barely recovering from Biden's onslaught? If so, do you think military effectiveness would be maintained?

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

Elon Musk's first wife once described what it's like to watch him fail.

She said he doesn't react the way normal people react. When a rocket explodes, most people in the room go silent. Some cry. Some start calculating the financial damage.

Musk pulls out his phone and starts making calls. Not emotional calls. Engineering calls. "What failed. When can we fix it. When's the next launch." His voice doesn't change. His face doesn't change. The rocket that just cost $60 million is already in the past. The next one is all that exists.

She said it was the most unsettling thing she'd ever witnessed. Not because he was cold. Because he genuinely wasn't affected. The failure didn't register as failure. It registered as data. An experiment that produced results. Results that inform the next experiment.

This is why he wins. Not because he doesn't fail. He fails more spectacularly than anyone in history. He wins because failure occupies zero psychological space. It enters as data and exits as action.

Most people lose not because they fail but because they spend weeks processing the failure before acting again. Musk spends zero seconds. The gap between failure and next attempt is a phone call.

- @multiplanet1

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@CoreyWriting People are either anti-Israel or they're not. Gvir and his supporters will have virtually no impact. Are you suddenly anti-Israel because of this?

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@LizaRosen0000 I think it's horrific, but I suppose killing newborn baby girls is just a form of abortion and abortion rights advocates probably love it, right?

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

A Soviet MiG-25 pilot who defected to the West in 1976 was so brainwashed by communist propaganda that he refused to believe American grocery stores were real. Viktor Belenko had been taught his whole life that capitalism produced only poverty and empty shelves. When he was taken inside a U.S. supermarket, he was stunned by the overflowing produce, the variety of fresh food, and—most of all—the fact that there were no frantic lines or shortages. Convinced it was an elaborate CIA Potemkin village staged just to impress him, he even tested it further at gas stations and on an aircraft carrier. It took him time to realize this wasn’t a show. This was everyday life under capitalism. That same sense of disbelief is exactly what makes this Turning Point USA meme hit so hard:

[Bret Wallach @bretwallach]

@Shoshana51728 If that mosque didn't exist, those mentally ill teenagers may have gone to a Jewish facility of some sort and killed Jews instead. Would've you preferred that? I definitely would not!