Liar, liar, liar

Netanyahu, Trump, and Musk – three peas in a pod (if the peas were all telling huge lies)

I 100% agree with the Jewish Council on Public Affairs’ (JCPA) statement today on recent public comments by the three men mentioned above. Here’s their statement:

JCPA STATEMENT ON NETANYAHU AND TRUMP COMMENTS

For Immediate Release: September 18, 2023
 
NEW YORK – Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick released the following statement:
 
“This Rosh Hashana, we saw both Prime Minister Netanyahu and former President Trump take a page directly from the authoritarian playbook – attacking Jews who vote or peacefully protest against them as enemies of the state.
 
Former President Trump’s claim that Jews who vote against him are ‘destroying’ the U.S. and Israel follows a long history of antisemitic comments attacking the vast majority of Jewish Americans as ‘disloyal’ to him and to Israel.
 
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s comment that Jewish pro-democracy protesters in Israel and the United States are ‘aligning themselves with the PLO and Iran’ should be offensive enough on its own. It’s all the more dangerous with Netanyahu himself meeting with Elon Musk, who has done more to normalize antisemitism than nearly anyone – including this weekend, during Rosh Hashana, when Musk promoted the same Great Replacement conspiracy theory that has fueled the murder of Jews and so many others in recent years.
 
All of this makes Jews less safe, while seeking to further erode democracy in both countries. And as an American Jew, it’s simply heartbreaking to watch – and to worry that the two places we were told we’d be safe may no longer offer that safety.

The fight for democracy, here and in Israel, is our fight too as American Jews – and our safety, our future, and our values obligate us to make that clear.”

I am so frankly disgusted by the ways in which Bibi and the former president lie and work to undermine democracy, fairness, and the rule of law, projecting their authoritarian narcissism in an unending stream of gaslighting and whopper sized fabrications. And Elon Musk … don’t even get me started.

I encourage all who care about democracy in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere to support the pro-democracy Israeli protest movement, and to support Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans who are determined to never let an authoritarian liar anywhere near the White House again. Call out the lies, stay true to your values, and remember that authoritarianism is a spiritual, political, and moral dead end. L’shana tova (a good new year) to all.

We need a Plan B in case Plan A doesn’t work

The J6 indictments improve the odds of Biden’s re-election, but by now we must learn to always plan for the worst.

I am, like many of you, overcome with welcome emotions in response to Jack Smith’s announcement of the four serious indictments against Trump and his efforts to overthrow our democratic system and steal the election he lost. Those feelings include: deep appreciation for the methodical diligence and hard work by Garland and Smith and the many, many professionals who avoided damaging leaks or foolish fumbles with witnesses or evidence; profound thankfulness for the degree to which our system of courts has remained independent, going all the way back to all of team Trump’s late 2020 failures to get courts to validate their baseless claims of election fraud, even with Trump appointed judges involved; and finally, enormous gratitude for the mountains of work that the J6 House Committee did, paving the way for this moment.

As a friend put it earlier today, these indictments are the third major public moment of accountability that has happened since the J6 insurrection. The first was Impeachment, the second was the J6 House Committee Report, and now Smith laying out the evidence for why Trump’s behavior was criminal. Even without knowing how the future will unfold — when it will go to trial, if the trial go smoothly for the prosecution, if there will be convictions? etc. — this is an historic moment.

Considering the 2024 election

It’s also reasonable to think that the overall impact of these indictments will damage Trump’s chances of winning the 2024 election. Sure, he’s fundraising a ton off this and probably the same GOP leaders who’ve refused to ditch him will continue to lie for him. But anything that reduces Trump’s odds of reclaiming the White House is welcome news.

There are other good reasons for optimism about Biden’s re-election. He’s presiding over an economy that is improving and probably will continue to improve incrementally over the next 16 months — maybe not enough to convince the mainstream media to depict Bidenomics as genius policy, but very likely enough to give him plenty of bright narratives to highlight (so much new infrastructure getting built, new American manufacturing, new EVs on the road, better wages for people who were making the least hourly money, low unemployment, and he’ll be able to play the “are you better off than you were 4 years ago” Reagan card too.)

Joe Biden is the Columbo of politics

The Columbo Fandom Wiki describes one of my favorite TV detectives like this: “Columbo is a disheveled, shabbily dressed, seemingly slow-witted police detective whose fumbling, overly polite manner makes him an unlikely choice to solve any crimes, least of all murder. However, he is actually a brilliant detective with an eye for minute details and the ability to piece together seemingly unrelated incidents and information to solve crimes.”

Columbo’s most famous strength as a detective is his gift for getting people to underestimate him. But that strength alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Columbo is also an excellent judge of human character and behavior. He usually hones in on his prime suspect right from the beginning, but spends a lot of energy smokescreening his initial clarity about who-almost-certainly-dunnit.

Often, however, Columbo’s relationship with the prime suspect shifts about halfway through each episode. At this point Columbo begins tightening his orbit around his suspect, showing up at inconvenient times, still professing to only be looking for some missing tidbit of information that would help tie up a loose end, but by now we know that Columbo and the suspect both know that he’s not going to stop dogging their heels. At this point Columbo’s biggest asset is no longer his ability to get people to underestimate him, but rather his relentless drive to keep adding pieces of evidence that narrow the baddie’s options until they’ve all run out. Finally, Columbo’s arrests almost always involve an exhausted and exasperated suspect who has surrendered peacefully to the lieutenant. (There’s only one episode out of 69 in which he fires a gun.)

My daily grind

Hi all. This is probably the most personal disclosure I’ve ever shared on this blog, which isn’t exactly read by millions, so perhaps this is really just a chance for me to share some of my daily struggle with a small semi-random cohort of people.

So, my day to day life is governed by several relentless fears. They mostly have to do with politics. I mean, it’s quite possible that my brain has learned to displace fears I may have about things that are much more immediately part of my life, like fear of losing loved ones, or fear of becoming horribly ill, and that these fears I have centering around politics are all some kind of cover for something deeper. I can’t say. What I can say is I don’t experience myself going into debilitating funks of fear worrying that something bad might happen to someone that I love or to myself. I worry about those things – sure – but to a pretty normal degree. What I do experience for many of my waking hours is a terrible fear – a dread really – about certain possible things happening in politics. For me, currently, that fear is that Trump will return to the White House, or that someone with a similar neo-fascist agenda will do it instead of him.

I realize that millions of Americans were traumatized by Trump’s election in 2016, were further traumatized by many of the terrible things he did while in office, and continue to be traumatized by his anti-democratic, demagogic, toxic, and narcissistic behaviors. I’m not trying to compare my suffering to anyone else’s.

But what I experience – on an almost daily basis – is a form of suffering. I can’t seem to stop my thoughts from telling me that the possibility of Trump returning to power may be increasing, that I should check various websites online to find out if in fact that seems to be the case, and that if it is true I literally will not be able to live. That’s the constantly repeating thought cascade pulsing through parts of my consciousness. A few things interrupt it (deep focus in my work; animated conversations with others; studying; sometimes writing). A few things help tamp down the intensity of the fear for a few hours (yoga when I manage to do it, a vigorous walk or mowing the lawn). But my brain’s steady state is one of anticipatory fear of possible futures.

I can’t explain it rationally. I just feel inside like if Trump gets elected again I will die. That’s the fear, and it feels immediate, like as if I was staring down the barrel of a gun about to blow me away. There’s a variation of this thought process, which is that if he becomes president again, I won’t die, but I will live in a state of intense fright and agony every day that will be so horrible that I’ll wish I was dead.

Fearing the change that has already happened

A piece I wrote in 2011 – wondering if it still holds up to the scrutiny of hindsight given the last decade’s events.

Recently I saw Romney on TV warning that Obama is on a mission to change America into a country that we hardly recognize, and that this election represents our last chance to stop him before we lose “the America we know.” Echoing this message of cultural paranoia, last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC provided a platform for the most extreme versions of this thought, including panelists associated with white nationalist and anti-immigrant groups. The GOP’s core campaign message so far appears to be “Obama is dangerous because he isn’t really one of us.” 

Photo by Gage Skidmore – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6874342839

In the first couple years of Obama’s presidency, the right promoted this message in the form of “birtherism” and the “he’s a Muslim” claim. Now they’re pushing it in the form of the “he’s a European socialist” canard. In the space of three years, right wing paranoia has moved the geographic location of Obama’s Otherness from Kenya, where he wasn’t born, to Mecca, towards which he doesn’t pray, to Western Europe, whose fully socialized medicine he didn’t promote. Republicans are going to need a GPS navigation system to keep the American people up to date on the geography of their fictional portrayals of Obama. 

The truth, however, is not that Obama is trying to change America into a country we won’t recognize, but rather that the GOP’s leaders don’t recognize the country that America has already become. America has already changed into, and will continue to become, an ever-more-diverse nation of many cultures, religions, and ideas. Before anybody knew who Barack Obama was, this change had already taken root. Obama is an American with mixed racial heritage and family ties to Kansas, Hawaii, Kenya, and Indonesia. He also has Muslim, Christian, and even Jewish relatives. He is a walking American melting pot who could only have become president long after the death of Jim Crow America. What the fearful right doesn’t see is that Obama is an awful lot like most people in this country – mixed heritage, ties to different strands of the weave of this nation, and a values system that has tolerance and respect for all these different cultural elements. 

C’mon dudes this could be a great year progressives…

So, in the midst of this pandemic, those of us deeply hoping for a Democratic White House win this November have been reflecting on Bernie’s recent announcement that he has ended his campaign, leaving Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee.

If Bernie can help Biden and Dems win a big wave election, there are A LOT of very progressive young Dems running for literally everything downballot, and they’ll be a force to be reckoned with at every level of government.

I no longer engage with my FB or other social media the way I used to back in 2016, when I spent hours and hours reacting to comments by pro-Bernie friends who hated Hillary and, unbeknownst to me at the time, often re-posted Russian-troll generated fake news about her. I don’t do that anymore, so I don’t know whether the intensity of that kind of thing is as bad as it was then. I know there’s a pro-Bernie / Biden-loathing constituency out there, but I am not interested in debating people about my determination to support whomever is the Dem’s nominee, so I have no sense of what that whole situation looks, sounds, or feels like, and I don’t intend to find out.

What I am aware of, however, is that there’s an incredible opportunity that could be brewing, if Bernie, Joe, and a bunch of other Dems and progressives figure it out.

Here’s what I see: if Bernie leads by example and focuses on defeating Trump and maximizing the influence of his core supporters on the Dems’ platform and Biden’s agenda, and if Biden and all the other major figures in the D party seek to meet them halfway and show that their top priorities will be part of the overall D agenda, 2020 could be an unparalleled year of progressive gains.

By dropping out at this stage, so much earlier than he did in 2016, Bernie has already changed his behavior from four years ago. Right now he has leverage to influence a center-left nominee and (I hope) administration. I hope Bernie will focus on that goal and stay engaged with and identified with the party. If he leads in this way, he can continue to move his core ideas forward and build up the progressive wing of the party. He’s in a strong position to play the role of the father of a progressive renaissance within the Democratic party – one that works with center-left Dems to defeat neo-fascist Republicanism at every turn, while simultaneously promoting and popularizing progressive policy ideas. Part of this strategy should include Bernie elevating young Dems who can be the future of his agenda.

If Bernie can help Biden and Dems win a big wave election, there are A LOT of very progressive young Dems running for literally everything downballot, and they’ll be a force to be reckoned with at every level of government. That’s the key. 2020 could be a great year for progressives if Bernie and Joe both see the opportunity for what it is and work for common goals.

A Serious Injury or a Mortal Wound?

Is this the end of the USA’s democracy? Or does American democracy recover in a few years from Trump and his supporters? I wish I knew. This American dystopian unraveling of democracy that we’re living through, and which may easily last another 5 more Trumpian years (or more), has made me question a lot of things I have taken for granted my whole life about this country. I’m in agony, and I know a lot of other people who are too.

One of the things I didn’t see coming was the way that the times we’re living in have made a newfound literary love of mine feel prescient and relevant in immediate ways I never previously thought possible. I’m talking about sci-fi. And I wish that what I’m about to describe wasn’t the case…

Relieved, grateful, frightened

I’m listening to a Laura Marling song, which I find really moving and beautiful. It’s maybe half an hour after I’ve absorbed the news that the House voted to impeach, and I’m thankful for the Dems determination, perseverance, focus, and willingness to take political risks to try to save our democracy.

But seeing no Republicans (except I think one ex-Repub) vote yes, and hearing that they seem to be locking arms around a narrative of lies, and hearing that Trump’s approval ratings have even ticked up recently, and knowing that he and his fellow GOPers are going to full-court press their Fox News conspiracy theory BS and present it as “the real truth” and continue to whip up the frenzy of hate and lies — well, it’s what frightens me even more than Trump himself. It’s my fellow Americans who are all in for 45, for the kind of willful pretending that he hasn’t lied over and over again, conned people left and right, and spewed racist and sexist and just plain nasty divisive speech over and over and over again.

We Are the Democrats

My dear fellow Americans who don’t know the truth about who we Democrats are and what we believe: there’s a lot of nonsense being said about us, so I just wanted to set the record straight on a few things. 

It seems like Trump and the rest of the Republican leadership are hellbent on telling the public that Democrats are sickening, evil people who love late term abortions, want open borders, hate Christians, and want to impose socialism on the country. So, here’s the thing: all of this is wrong. Here’s what Democrats actually believe about these particular issues:

Democracy’s Revenge?

In the last days of May, several right wing ethno-nationalist leaders suffered blows to their holds on power and the aura of muscular triumphalism they love to project.

In Israel, a feud between two far right icons prevented Netanyahu, whose right wing bloc won the April 9 election, from being able to form a government within the legal time limit of 42 days. Now Israel is going to have an election do-over in September.

British PM Theresa May announced her resignation effective June 7, after multiple failed attempts to get Parliament to pass a law approving the agreement that May negotiated with EU leaders to create an “orderly” Brexit process. With no such agreement, the alternative is a “no deal” implementation of Brexit, which could result in major economic setbacks and other undesirable impacts on Britain and the EU member countries. Her departure doesn’t mean that the British public have turned against Brexit, but it does mean that Nigel Farage’s xenophobic nationalist campaign has now led to the resignation of two consecutive Conservative PMs.

Finally, Special Counsel Robert Mueller made public remarks in which he openly contradicted Attorney General Barr’s characterization of the Mueller report as exonerating of Trump, and in which he pointed to Congress as the governmental body tasked with holding presidents accountable for improper behavior (some have interpreted this as a strong hint on his part). Mueller’s remarks may create a catalyst to move House Democrats to go forward with an impeachment inquiry.