We did watch the final episode of Adolescence last night. It surprised me by having its focus not on 13 year old Jamie, but on his parents and sister. And it surprised me, because it set us up for a second season, which I guess is a possibility. You can see following this family for a while. And there are still questions to be answered.  I did look to see what does happen in the U.K. if a 13 year old is convicted of murder. The answer seems to be a mandatory life sentence, with the possibility of being released any time after 12 years subject to the discretion of the equivalence of a parole board.

We pretty much finished road trip packing yesterday, so after watching Adolescence, we had time to watch a movie and we decided to watch 50 (yes, 50) year old Jaws, which neither of us had ever seen. You probably have, an epic battle between three men on an old fishing boat, saving a portion of humanity from a great white predator shark which is determined to keep vacationers off the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard or eat them up one by one. There is a current analogy in there somewhere, I am sure.

I am sure because the same uncertainty that spread fear amongst the beachgoers and merchants now seems to plague us generally. Which of us will be the next victims of the current changes we are witnessing?

Most of today, we will be in Pennsylvania, going east to west. We are not going to be in blue Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, or Erie), but in red red Pennsylvania.  I looked at the results of the 2024 election in some of the counties we are going to be passing through, and was again surprised at the extent of the Trump vote. I was reminded that the election wasn’t close anywhere we will be. On average, it looks like the Trump vote was 70%, and the Harris vote 30%. In the past, I would have accepted this as interesting and anecdotal. Today, with all that is going on, I see it as frightening and wonder how bad this administration would have to act before voting patterns there will change. And I wonder what causes such one sided results and conclude the biggest cause must be racial fear, and realize that the Republicans have been playing this fear since the Nixon days, before Jaws was filmed, just as the Democrats played it for almost a century before.

I must admit to also being afraid of potentially increasing antisemitism in the country, though not particularly in southern Pennsylvania. In southern Pennsylvania, for a number of complex reasons, antisemitism has been tamped down. It would be in blue Pennsylvania, where people vote like I vote, that it is most concerning.

This topsy turvy situation is all because of Israel’s relentless, no holds barred, actions in Gaza and the West Bank. In this country, anti-Israel actions have been sporadic and concentrated on university campuses, and that has led to some formerly inconceivable reactions among Americans of many political groupings. But across the world, things are different. Just yesterday, we have witnessed 50 Jewish campers, ages 10 to 15, kicked off a plane in Spain, a group of Israeli vacationers leaving a club on Rhodes chased and beaten, and a demonstration in France against Israeli participation in the Tour de France. This is all after a series of incidents around Europe at or near football/soccer matches.

In Israel, on the other hand, in addition to the continual controversy over IDF actions in Gaza, we have seen, again yesterday, a member of the Knesset state that all Palestinians will be evicted from Gaza and Gaza will become Jewish (he said Jewish, not Israeli), and we saw over 70 Knesset members vote for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank. Put this together with Israel’s self definition as a Jewish State (even though 20% of those who live in Israel proper are not Jewish), and the growing world wide acceptance of the definition of antisemitism penned by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association which defines certain anti-Israel positions as being inherently antisemitic, and you gave a very toxic recipe for trouble.

This brings me back to Adolesence (possible spoiler alert here) and poor young Jamie and his father. They both are fairly normal people until something triggers them, and their tempers take over and their actions become uncontrollable. The same can be said perhaps for those who today lead as well as for those who are vehemently against Israel’s current actions in Gaza and the West Bank. And explosions of uncontrollable temper are, well, uncontrollable.  You just can not tell where they will take us.