Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Vorpal Sword
In short, not much
government at all.
Sort of a negative space.
Something more explored
in art than geo-politics.
The Conservatives have
their knickers in a twist — do I have that precious expression right? —because
David Cameron, the genius who called the Brexit referendum, is resigning, and Boris
Johnson, his rival for leadership of the Tories, is backpedalling fast as he
can.
(Johnson, a classical
scholar, has even been heard reciting Latin verses in reverse, and some ancient
Greek, likewise.)
On the Labor side,
turns out Jeremy Corbyn, the party's leader, didn't really fight to stay in the
EU — too many worries about globalization innit — and is hemmed in by
loud-mouthed Laborite anti-Semites who can't keep their opinions muted, in
keeping with the usual conventions of English restraint.
No! Now it's all Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, whot! (Is this a correct use of "whot"? Or
would an all-purpose "innit" have done as well?)
It's kind of fun to see
Brits being unintentionally funny. The UK is being broken back not to Little
England, as C.S. Lewis might have fondly described it, or as Frodo, hero of the
little people, defended it, in the LOR sagas, but to Monty Python England,
Angle Terre the ridiculous, England the absurd.
Crackers.
"Can I to tawk to
Missus Sawtre, please."
"What, won't take
my cawl? Well bugger the French."
Not to mention the
Germans, Poles, Italians, Belgians, and whomever didn't grow up speaking the
King's.
There are some who
think the Jabberwocky —not the Jabberwocky personally given his termination suffered
at the hand of the fiendish beamish boy — should rise up and claim their proper
place in a dissolving Angleterre.
That vorpal sword branished
by beamish boy? One idea is it goes to Brussels.
Vorpal Sword
In short, not much
government at all.
Sort of a negative space.
Something more explored
in art than geo-politics.
The Conservatives have
their knickers in a twist — do I have that precious expression right? —because
David Cameron, the genius who called the Brexit referendum, is resigning, and Boris
Johnson, his rival for leadership of the Tories, is backpedalling fast as he
can.
(Johnson, a classical
scholar, has even been heard reciting Latin verses in reverse, and some ancient
Greek, likewise.)
On the Labor side,
turns out Jeremy Corbyn, the party's leader, didn't really fight to stay in the
EU — too many worries about globalization innit — and is hemmed in by
loud-mouthed Laborite anti-Semites who can't keep their opinions muted, in
keeping with the usual conventions of English restraint.
No! Now it's all Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, whot! (Is this a correct use of "whot"? Or
would an all-purpose "innit" have done as well?)
It's kind of fun to see
Brits being unintentionally funny. The UK is being broken back not to Little
England, as C.S. Lewis might have fondly described it, or as Frodo, hero of the
little people, defended it, in the LOR sagas, but to Monty Python England,
Angle Terre the ridiculous, England the absurd.
Crackers.
"Can I to tawk to
Missus Sawtre, please."
"What, won't take
my cawl? Well bugger the French."
Not to mention the
Germans, Poles, Italians, Belgians, and whomever didn't grow up speaking the
King's.
There are some who
think the Jabberwocky —not the Jabberwocky personally given the his termination
suffered at the hand of the fiendish beamish boy — should rise up and claim
their proper place in a dissolving Angleterre.
That vorpal sword branished
by beamish boy? One idea is it goes to Brussels.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Brexit You Own It
Remember when Slovakia broke off from
Czechoslovakia in 1993? The Slovaks were hot for independence, until they
achieved it. Then they did a 180 and begged to be reunited with the more
prosperous Czech Republic, which refused.
Brexit You Own It
Remember when Slovakia broke off from
Czechoslovakia in 1993? The Slovaks were hot for independence, until they
achieved it. Then they did a 180 and begged to be reunited with the more
prosperous Czech Republic, which refused.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Nader, Naderism, again
Case histories:
Weimar Germany, in
which Socialists and Communists fought street battles against each other
instead of uniting against Nazi brown shirts, may feel too far away. Still, together
they might have won against Hitler. Divided until the very last, they lost.
1968, when anti-war
protestors demonstrated against Humphrey, occasioning what journalists and historians
have collectively deemed a police riot in Chicago, is too complex, I think. It's
absurd to argue the protestors, people like me, should have sat back and put faith
in Humphrey, who gave exactly no indication of deserving it, and had never
differentiated himself from LBJ with regard to Vietnam. When LBJ refused to run
in '68, Humphrey should have too. Instead he campaigned under the banner of "The
Politics Of Joy."
Such Joy. Joy and
napalm. Joy and the draft.
He may have been
something once, way back, in progressive politics, but by '68 was farcical.
Nader is the best case
to present to Sandernistas who think it's better not to vote at all than to
vote for Clinton. Nader played a key role in Bush's win over Gore in 2000. To
put it another way, were it not for Nader, Bush would not have won.
Granted, there was Gore's
dull candidacy, Florida votes, an anti-democratic Supreme Court decision. Still,
Nader's impact, where it mattered, right at that point of impact, brought us
Bush, the invasion of Iraq and all the infinitely many sorry consequences.
For what it's worth
Nader, to date, stands by his candidacy. He did no wrong. The rest of us were
wrong.
I think that after his exemplary career as consumer advocate, Nader, trying to translate such insights into political acclaim, became, at any speed, the problem.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/ralph-nader-still-wont-admit-he-elected-bush.html
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Etgar Keret
Etgar Keret is a celebrated 48-year-old Israeli author of
short (sometimes very), pungent, often surreal fictions. If you want to familiarize
yourself with his work, I'd recommend the pleasures of "Suddenly, a Knock
on the Door" (translated from the Hebrew by Nathan Englander.)
Keret also has political opinions. He has differentiated
himself from an august elder of Israeli literature A.B. Yehoshua, who upholds
the higher, the maximal Zionism, meaning that for him Israel is the only place
you can really be a Jew.
Keret demurs. He makes no such sharp distinction between
"Diaspora" and Israel. A Brooklyn Jew is no less a Jew than a Jerusalemite.
In a new op-ed for the NY Times, Keret argues for being
ambi-Israel, meaning you can stand up for the existence of your country while utterly
opposing the harm it inflicts on those it occupies.
He writes:
Those with “ambi” positions will be allowed to support an
end to the occupation while still condemning Hamas; they may believe that the
Jewish people deserve a state but also maintain that Israel should not occupy
territories that do not belong to it.
NY
Times Book Review 6/26/16
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/opinion/im-not-anti-israel-im-ambi-israel.html?ref=opinion
Etgar
Keret
I’m
Not Anti-Israel, I’m Ambi-Israel
TEL
AVIV — I was recently honored to learn that I had won the Charles
Bronfman Prize. It’s an award that recognizes humanitarian work
inspired by Jewish values, and I was overwhelmed and thrilled to receive it.
Several news outlets reported on the announcement, and one headline in
particular caught my attention: “Anti-Israel Author Etgar Keret Awarded
Bronfman Prize,” proclaimed FrontPage Mag, a conservative website.
As
I perused the article and the online comments (debating the best way to connect
with my books, one reader suggested throwing them in the toilet and flushing
them with urine), I found myself contemplating the term “anti-Israel.”
Apparently a person cannot engage in Middle Eastern political issues without
being quickly labeled “anti-Israeli” or “anti-Palestinian” (or sometimes, if
his or her opinions are complicated enough, both).
We
are all familiar with the term “anti.” We understand what it is to be
“anti-Semitic,” “anti-gay” or “anti-Communist.” But what exactly does
“anti-Israel” mean? After all, Israel is a state, and we rarely encounter
someone who is “anti-Switzerland” or “anti-Netherlands.” Unlike ideologies,
which we can attempt to sweepingly reject, when it comes to states there are
complex, multifaceted, heterogeneous entities, and that much is clear to anyone
who sets out to defend or attack them. For example, we can be grateful for the
Dutch people who hid Anne Frank in their attic, while at the same time criticizing
the Dutch citizens who volunteered for the S.S. We can adore the soccer talent
that evolved in that same country, but be less admiring of aged Dutch cheeses.
As
far as I am concerned there is no difference between “pro-Israel” and
“pro-women-with-big-breasts.” Both positions are equally reductive and
chauvinistic. I find it perplexing that precisely on the issues I hold dearest
and most essential, many people insist on reducing my views to such
superficiality. I love my wife, but I’m not “pro-wife,” especially when she’s
unjustly berating me. I have a fraught relationship with my new neighbor, whose
dogs leave their waste right outside our apartment building, but it would be
wrong to say that I’m “anti” her, or her cute dogs.
Which
brings me back to my initial question: Why is it that people refuse to accept
this reductive perspective on most aspects of our lives, yet they adopt it
without batting an eye when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why,
for example, are people who are appalled by the death of Palestinian children
in an Israeli Air Force bombing of Gaza, or horrified when Israeli children are
killed in a terrorist attack, moved to these reactions by an unbending support
of the Palestinian people, or of the Israeli nation, rather than by a
no-less-fervent defense of innocent lives in general?
My
theory is that many people on both sides of this dichotomy are tired of
earnestly debating the specifics and find it easier to demand a tribal
discourse, the kind that essentially resembles a sports fan’s unequivocal
support of a team. This denies a priori the possibility of criticizing the
group you support, and moreover, if done properly, can absolve you from voicing
any empathy for the other side. The “anti” or “pro” appeal aims to invalidate
any discussion of tiresome issues like “occupation,” “coexistence” or
“two-state solution,” replacing them with a simple binary model: us versus
them.
Israeli
society’s avoidance of the complexities and ambivalences of genuine
introspection was especially noticeable during the debate after an Israel
Defense Forces soldier, Elor Azaria, shot and killed a wounded terrorist in
Hebron. His supporters united around the slogan, “The soldier is the son of us
all.” Just as with the “pro” or “anti” ralliers, many of these supporters did
not bother wading into the subtleties of moral or legal arguments, sufficing
with a declaration that the soldier is our virtual child, and when it comes to
our own children we do not have to concern ourselves with the facts but simply
stand by their side.
One
question, however, is unavoidable — and this may only reinforce my
“anti-Israel” label — and that is: Is this really the case? If your own son
were to shoot an unarmed terrorist, would you consider your love of him a justification
for his acts? It is a complicated issue, but those of you who would continue to
love your son while still condemning his deeds would not necessarily become
“anti-son.”
To
lend a helping hand to those who are fond of simplified labels, I would like to
suggest a third option. Let’s call it “ambi.” The terms “ambi-Israeli” or
“ambi-Palestinian” will simply indicate that our opinions on Middle Eastern
affairs, while they may be resolute, are complex. Those with “ambi” positions will be allowed to support an end to the
occupation while still condemning Hamas; they may believe that the Jewish
people deserve a state but also maintain that Israel should not occupy
territories that do not belong to it. Careful application of this new label
might enable us to delve deeper into the essential arguments around the
conflict and its resolution, instead of merely squirting water at one another
in the shallow end of the pool.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Abbas
If you have a sense of humor, you gotta love anti-Semitism. For
example, you gotta love Mahmoud Abbas, sclerotic, mostly brain-dead, 81 year
old President of the State of Palestine (which doesn't exist), proclaiming,
before the European Parliament the other day, that: “Just a week ago, a week, a
group of rabbis in Israel announced, in a clear announcement, demanding their
government, to poison, to poison, the water of the Palestinians.”
He got wild applause for this principled, deeply researched
remark.
Have Palestinians been mistreated by Israeli authorities? By
Israel occupation of the weiqi? No question, yes.
Have Israelis been poisoning Palestine water at the behest
of rabbis?
This is where a sense of humor would be useful.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Roy Cohn as Trump's Fixer
Did you know this, namely that Roy Cohn and Donald Trump go
way back, and that Cohn served Trump as what is called in certain kinds of
novels a fixer, a rabbi (no actual Judaism implied)?
One tidbit: "One of Mr. Trump’s executives recalled
that he kept an 8-by-10-inch photograph of Mr. Cohn in his office desk, pulling
it out to intimidate recalcitrant contractors."
Another: "For 13 years, the lawyer who had infamously
whispered in Mr. McCarthy’s ear whispered in Mr. Trump’s. In the process, Mr.
Cohn helped deliver some of Mr. Trump’s signature construction deals. . .
"
Friday, June 17, 2016
The worship of worship .. . .
I don't always read, much less like, David Brooks, the would-be
centrist conservative who op-eds for the NY Times.
How do I know he's a would-be centrist-conservative? Because
he longs for the kind of Republican Party that will never be again, where people
could be both — relatively speaking, of course — sane and Republican. No more: Trump has put an end to that.
Brooks knows it. Trump scares him the hell out of him, too.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Spite doesn't make right
My impression is that Sanders may, far from certainly, have
been the better Dem candidate. I would certainly have supported him though I
found many of his aims chimerical at best, e.g. universal health care. Yes, in
principle. Tear away the Affordable Care Act to get at it?
Please.
That said, the idealistic, somewhat intellectually sclerotic
Sanders is not going to be the candidate.
Don't blame me, or Paul Krugman. Blame caucuses, primaries,
the whole process. Blame money, peace, war, voting.
Clinton will be the candidate
And anyone who holds to the belief that Clinton is equal to
or worse than Trump is suffering from what I like to call "spite makes
right" syndrome.
Or, simply, Naderism.
My doubts about a Clinton presidency are profound, unlike my
feelings about the national and geopolitical disasters of a Trump presidency,
which present themselves as absolutes.
Maybe it's not just younguns who go for Sanders to the
degree of not voting for a Clinton. I know others of our, that is my,
chronological ilk who feel the same.
My private assumption is that they suspect they will never
have to live through the havoc of a Trump presidency, so why not go out with a
big fat utopian bang.
I had my big fat utopian bang earlier on.
Sanders has improved Clinton and with her the Dem party. His
legacy will hinge on how well, how earnestly, he unites with her to defeat Trump.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Ali, Vietnam
Walter Mosley, author of many works of fiction in a variety
of genres — my favorites are
the Easy Rawlins novels set in post WW II L.A. — posts a moving and heartfelt
eulogy for Muhammad Ali for the NY Times. It starts with the impact on Mosley
of Ali's refusal to be drafted for the War in Vietnam. Mosley remembers saying
to a friend he would not serve in Vietnam because he felt "no hatred
toward or fear of the Vietnamese people.” When he thought for a second about
where those words came from, he realized they had come from Muhammad Ali, who
had said much the same when refusing to be drafted.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Bernie Sanders: Message Good, Messenger Maybe Not So Much.
I don't
much like David Frum, who had served as speechwriter for GW Bush but has
clearly evolved from that kind of politics into I'm not sure what, perhaps a
certain sort of self-critical post-conservativism, assuming conservatives can
be self-critical, just like liberals.
Nor do
I agree with everything Frum says in this otherwise very stand-up piece.
For
example, in contrasting Trump with Bush Frum writes:
Even where the politician did not intentionally
lie, as George W. Bush did not intentionally lie about weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, important statements exposed as damagingly untrue inflict
untold political damage.
This is by way of Frum arguing that Bush made
mistakes in re Iraq whereas Trump starts with zero respect for any difference
between truth and fiction, and no taste for it. A liar, in short, knows there
is such a thing as truth. A bullshit artist of Trump's stripe doesn't.
I think in the case of Bush and Iraq Bush was
more a liar than Frum, who was working for him, allows. Bush wanted, lusted for that war, no matter what
untruths had to be deployed to get it. And the execution of that war suffered
from and was doomed by the same fantasies that had engendered it.
Still, Frum's calling Trump out, not just in
the name of conservatism but on behalf of United States history, including
history of the presidency, is smart and welcome.
I hope it has due influences.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/
Moving on, the more I hear from Sanders the
less I like him, the less I think of him not as the principled and idealist
alternative to Clinton I wanted him to be but as a bygone blowhard.
To put it bluntly, I hope he gets creamed in
California.
Why?
Because
California Gov. Jerry Brown, who shares many of the Sanders ideals, endorses
Clinton.
In
effect, Brown is saying ideals good, messenger bad.
This
take on Sanders as a messed up messenger of high ideals is furthered by Sanders
promoting Cornell West to the Democratic platform committee to come up with the
plank on Israel and Palestine.
No,
look, I like Brother West as much as you do, but I didn't really dig his
pissing contest with fellow black intellectual Michael Eric Dyson, over, among
other things, access to the Obama White House.
Nor
could I stand Brother West's attempted uncle Tomming of President Obama.
Bernie,
Burlington, not the White House, is the place for you. Sooner you get that, the
better you'll be.
Better
we'll all be.
Message
good.
Messenger
loud but tired.
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