Art is 80

Sometimes, when you open up the newspaper in the morning (information for anyone under 50 – the “newspaper” is a printed version of the news, generally shortened from what you can find on-line, and usually at least 24 hours out of date, which people over the age of 50 believe to contain the latest news), you see things that surprise you.

For example, the Post this morning reports that Joe Biden has become very concerned about his continuing low poll ratings. Art Hessel has been very concerned about Joe Biden’s low poll ratings for months. Why has it taken Joe Biden until now to become so concerned? Is it possibly because he has slowed down, and that this is also the reason that his poll numbers remain so low? I am not answering this question, just asking it. And Biden may remain quick on the uptake internally, even when so many look at him and conclude otherwise. I don’t know. But I do know, as someone – as I have long said – only one week younger than him, that I would not trust myself to be president of the United States for the next 5 years and I don’t know if anyone thinks that I have slowed down mentally. (Of course, I think that I have – otherwise why would I have spent so much time looking for a bagel to toast this morning before finding it in the toaster where I had put it 5 minutes earlier?) And maybe Joe Biden has been concerned about his polling for months and has just kept it to himself?

[Diversion: Mr. President: it isn’t too late to step aside. I am sure that the Booker/Whitmer (or Whitmer/Booker) ticket is ready to go. (I know many of you disagree with me, I know, and I respect your disagreement and will defend, but perhaps not to the death, your right to disagree.)]

But this is not the Post first page article that intrigued me the most. That article is “Flood of falsehoods; AI fake news surges online”. And I quote: 

“Since May, websites hosting AI-created false articles have increased by more than 1000 percent, ballooning from 40 sites to more than 600, according to Newsguard, an organization that tracks misinformation.”

The long article then goes on (and on) to discuss the type of misinformation that is being published all throughout the world, starting with an article about Benjamin Netanyahu being somehow involved in the mysterious death of his psychiatrist. The article is 100% false (so they say), but has been published as real news all around the world. Whether Netanyahu has a psychiatrist we don’t know (we do know that if he does, he needs a new one), and if he does, it isn’t the one who is described in the fake news article, and that the whole story about the death, much less Bibi’s involvement is fake news. Or is it?

Maybe it’s true and maybe Newsguard is a fake organization. Maybe Biden’s polling numbers aren’t bad, and all the polling data being reported is false. Maybe Biden is not 81, but is really 18 (and is too young to be president anyway).

In fact, we really don’t know anything, do we?

And that is what got me thinking…….

Yes, Donald Trump may be a major risk to American democracy. But 78 year old Donald Trump will fade away one day in the near future (just like Biden and Hessel). But AI won’t.

And maybe it’s AI that will spell the end of democracy everywhere. Because if you can’t trust the news you receive AT ALL, you can’t have elections that rely on your interpretation of the news you receive. And if the amount of fake news keeps accelerating (and why shouldn’t it?) and it is an international phenomenon that knows no boundaries, how can meaningful democratic elections occur anywhere?

I quote again: ”Well dressed, AI-generated news anchors are spewing pro-Chinese propaganda, amplified by bot networks sympathetic to Beijing. In Slovakia, politicians up for election have found that their voices have been cloned to say controversial things they have never uttered, days before voters went to the polls. A growing number of websites, with generic names such as iBusiness Day or Ireland Top News, are delivering fake news made to look genuine in languages from Arabic to Thai.”

I will stick to reliable news sources, myself. By the way, I heard this morning that the cow jumped over the moon, and the dish ran away with the spoon. Heard that on a major network. But then I heard on iBusiness Day that it wasn’t true, but Ireland Top News swears by it. I don’t know what to think.

On Tuesday, it’s my turn to open the December board meeting of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies (I am vice president) with a “dvar Torah”. I have written something out, and am circulating it as today’s blog post. Here goes:

This week’s Torah portion is Vayagash, the second to the last reading in the book of Bereshit (Genesis). It’s a continuation of the Joseph story – Joseph tells his brothers who he is, instructs them to return from Egypt to Canaan and bring his father Jacob/Israel back to Egypt with the entire family. Joseph promises to settle his family in Goshen, the best land in Egypt, a place for them to graze their flocks. Jacob returns with 70 members of his family and settles in Goshen with the blessing of the Pharaoh. And it looks like they will live happily ever after. But they don’t.

God’s promise was to make Joseph’s family into a “great nation”. Presumably He does that. At least for a while, they prosper, and they live in Goshen for about 400 years. But then something happens. They have become not a favored people, but an enslaved people, the slaves of the Pharaohs who knew not Joseph.

God had made them into a great nation, but the great nation was not prospering in lands controlled by a greater nation, so God arranged, through Moses, that Joseph’s family, the descendants of himself and his brothers, leave the land of Egypt and return to Canaan, the land promised to their forefathers centuries before.

And the Jews conquered Canaan, says the Bible, and lived there for about 1000 years (with a few interruptions), but about 2000 years ago, they met their match. Another greater nation, this one the Roman nation, took control and, when the Jews rebelled, conquered the Jews, killed them or forced them out of their land.

Over the last 100 years or so, the Jews have been coming back into this land, or at least to a large part of it, now 6 million strong. Once again, they conquered the land. But also once again, they are surrounded by a greater people – at least much greater in numbers – who want, once again, to take the land from the Jews. This battle is being fought out as we sit here today.

We obviously do not know how the current battle will end. We are not endowed with the ability to foresee the future. But we know that the Jews living in this land need allies outside of the land. They are supported by a very large percentage of the Jews living in other lands, who have the ability to influence, or at least who can try to influence, their governments to support the government in what is now known as the State of Israel.

This is certainly true in the United States, which holds the second largest (or maybe the largest) number of Jews in the world. And the American government has been very responsive.

But there are clouds on the horizon. There are supporters of the greater nation, the Arabs nation, in our country. These supporters include, but are not limited to, Arabs living in the United States. They seem to include a large number of young people, ages 18-24, who have been schooled in what is now know as “progressive” social studies, or “social justice”. This school divides the peoples of the world into groups: religious groups, national groups, ethnic groups, gender groups, skin color groups. It proclaims that members of various branches of each of these groups are “oppressors”, who oppress other member of the same groups. For example, “white” people oppress people of color, and if you are white, you are an oppressor, even if you think that you personally are not. The same goes for men, who oppress women. Israelis who oppress Palestinians.

If you are strong, you are an oppressor. It is as simple as that. The purveyors of progressive social studies tend to classify Jews, who are perceived as strong and ambitious, as oppressors, even though their numbers are small. The Jews are viewed as oppressors in part because they are viewed as white. The Arabs are viewed as oppressed, in spite of their numbers, in part because they are viewed as not being white.

You may argue that the Jews shouldn’t be viewed as white in this sense, that white supremacists – for example – don’t view Jews as white at all. You may argue that the majority of Israeli Jews, coming from the Middle East and North Africa, have the same skin tone as the Arabs living in that area. You may argue that the entire division of human beings into these various categories is absurd on its face, and to the extent these differences exist, they should be fought, not applauded or exploited.

But at this point what you may think may be totally irrelevant. The progressives are growing in number, influence and power. The Harvard/Harris monthly poll for December showed that, while 2/3 of American support Israel in its current battle against Hamas, only 50% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 do.

As to the progressive way of looking at the world, which I described above, the Harvard/Harris poll shows that 80% of those between 18 and 24 support this ideology, this vantage point, in analyzing society. Of those over 65, only 19% do. Of the Americans in the 18 to 24 cohort, 67% agree that Jews should be classified as oppressors (9% of those over 65 do). 

There are many statistics, on many subjects, in this polling and if you Google the Harvard/Harris poll, you can see them all, and they all will fascinate you. I cite only a few of the more startling.

We in American have a lot of learning and teaching to do. We need to learn why the results are what they are, and what needs to be done to combat them.

The Haberman Institute is an educational organization. We serve an audience which is by and large well over the age of 65. We are preaching to the choir. We are carrying coals to Newcastle.

Should we be doing something different?

You wouldn’t call me a rabid sports fan, but I do watch a fair amount on TV, more than many people I know. But, often for me, the sports event is a background event. I am reading, or doing something on my computer, or even eating something. It is rare that I am only watching, and giving all my attention to, a sporting event on TV.

As to going to sports events, I do that less than I used to. We used to have, through my office, hockey tickets for all Caps home games, and we had seats for 20 Nats games. Now, no Caps tickets, and last year, we were down to, I think, 8 baseball games.

When I first moved to Washington in 1969, Washington had two major sports teams, both playing at RFK Stadium, the Redskins (now called the Commanders), a professional football team, and the Senators (now the Texas Rangers), a baseball team. I went to one football game, and no baseball games in those days.

In 1973, the area got two more teams, the Wizards (then called the Bullets), in the National Basketball Association, and the Caps in the NHL. The basketball and hockey teams both played at venue in Landover Maryland, off the Beltway. I went to one Caps game and no Bullets games in Landover. The Caps and the Wizards moved to a new venue, now called Capital One Arena, in the heart of downtown Washington, in 1997. The Redskins left Washington proper in the same year, 1997, and moved to what is now called FedEx Field in Landover. I have been to one game since then at FedEx Field.

The Senators had moved to Arlington TX the year before, 1972, leaving Washington without a baseball team until the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005, playing for the first few years at RFK Stadium, until Nationals Park was opened in 2008. Both those venues are in DC. I have been to many, many Nats games.

Here’s another way to look at it:

Basketball in MD from 1973-1997, in DC, 1997-______.

Hockey in MD from 1973-1997, in DC, 1997-____.

Football in DC from (1937)-1997, in Landover MD, 1997-_____

Baseball in DC from (1901)-1971 (two different teams) and from 2005-_____ in DC.

Now comes word that the Wizards and the Capitals may move to a new venue, in Alexandria VA in 2028. A surprise. What does it mean?

To look at it most parochially, it means nothing to me, I would guess. When the basketball and hockey seasons get underway in 2028, the projected opening date of the new facility, I will be 87 years old. So for me……means nothing. But for some fans, particularly those who will use public transportation, it will take much longer. Rather than a venue on the Red and Green lines, and a short block from Blue, Yellow and Silver lines, it will be a venue only on the Yellow line; transfers will be required. 

For those who drive, it’s harder to say – for example, getting into downtown DC from Montgomery County by auto (and finding a place to park) is complicated. Heading across the Beltway or Chain Bridge into Virginia and then driving down the George Washington Parkway to Alexandria is a longer distance, for sure, but may not take any more time. And parking might be much, much easier.

And there is no question but that the proposed venue will be better. It will be on 70 acres, and include more than the arena, or arenas. There will be a concert venue, and restaurants and, I assume, at least one hotel. And, by the way, those raising most questions about this are the folks who live close to the proposed new venue, worried about traffic and so on.

But what will happen to Capital One Arena and the many restaurants that surround it in downtown DC. The loss of tax revenue will obviously be important to a city whose downtown office base, historically very strong, is being hurt already by office downsizing as more and more workers connect from their homes. My guess is that the restaurants will not be hurt that much (OK, I am sure a few will be), and will make up the loss quickly enough.

My understanding is that the mayor, in addition to trying to convince the owner of the team to stay in DC and offering a $500,000,000 city gift if he would agree to do so, is creating a task force to rethink the Gallery Place area, where the Capital One Arena is located. Even with the Capital One Arena in place, the general area, which includes DC’s Chinatown, has not fully recovered from the pandemic, and needs a new push and a new concept anyway. And the people Mayor Bowser is putting on the task force are professionals who have succeeded in creating some of the newly exciting areas in the city, such as the Navy Yard area and Union Market. I have confidence they may come up with something.

I was reminded this morning through a New York Times article, that the New York Giants have played in New Jersey for 50 years, now. Spreading the sports wealth throughout the DMV (District Maryland Virginia) may not be a bad idea. We really are one, very large and very spread out community. And there is talk of building a new stadium on the RFK Stadium site to entice back the Commanders from their home for the past 25 years in Landover.

I remind you of the history outlined above. Sports team move around the DMV, in and out of Washington proper. Whatever happens……I think it will be good.

And, yes, this is the first time, perhaps, that I have concluded a post on the blog with the thought that something will probably be good. (Don’t think this optimism will continue, however.)

[Since this was written, it has been announced the the Mystics, our WNBA team, would move into Capital One Arena, and that Virginia is giving a 1.35 Billion Dollar subsidy for the Alexandria project]

So, what am I thinking about today?

(1) Breads Unlimited, in Bethesda, our usual source of challah for Shabbat, has started to add 50 cents to the price of a challah if you want either poppy seeds or sesame seeds on it. I don’t know if this is the fault of Biden or of the Federal Reserve, but I assume they share the blame and that if Trump is elected for another term in November, this inflationary surcharge will be dropped. In the meantime, I will pay my 50 cents, but I also notice that about 1/3 of the poppy seeds fall off the challah before I even take it out of the bag. If so, should I get 1/3 of my 50 cents back? Should I save the poppy seeded bag and bring it back the following week to demonstrate my right to the 17 cent refund? I really need advice here.

(2) Yesterday, I wrote about my problems with my dermatologist’s Patient Portal, and that I was told that all would be explained when the office “manager” called me to talk to me. It has now been 48 hours, and no one has called me yet. I’d like to complain, but because my problem with the Portal is the apparent lack of a way to communicate, I don’t think I can give anyone my thoughts. Again, I blame this on Biden. But just blaming it on Biden doesn’t help me solve my problem. (Of course, maybe the answer is in the name itself: Patient Portal. Maybe it’s telling me: “Arthur, just be patient”)

Now you ask: why are you thinking about these totally unimportant things? The answer is simple. I think about Breads Unlimited and my dermatologist’s Patient Portal because I really don’t want to think about what is happening in Gaza, or what is happening in Ukraine, or what is happening on many college campuses. Can you blame me?

On Wednesday, I listened to an interview with John Mersheimer, who teaches at the University of Chicago, and is known for his sometimes controversial positions. I was listening on YouTube in my car, and I don’t even know who was interviewing him, but the interview took place about a week ago. Mersheimer claimed that Russia was going to defeat Ukraine – no ifs, no ands, no buts about it. And he seemed to think this whether or not the U.S. gave more funds to Ukraine and got over the impasse in the House of Representatives which has now stopped future funding in its tracks. It’s the first time I heard anyone say this and Merhseimer, who describes himself as and is known to be, a realist, simply thinks that Russia has the manpower and the resources to fight on and on and on, and that Ukraine has limited manpower and limited resources and, perhaps especially because of the limitations on its manpower, will at some point have to give up.

Which reminds me. Throughout my legal career dealing with affordable housing, one of the memes (I don’t really know what a meme is) that you kept hearing about was “a public-private partnership”, as if it was the answer to whatever the problem was. I never found public-private partnerships to be a panacea – and not because of the failure of the private partner; it was usually the government which was unable or unwilling to fulfill its side of the deal. It’s a lesson that Ukraine may be learning the hard way, and that the Biden administration should have realized before giving the assurances that they did.

Mersheimer, who some years ago authored a controversial book about the Israel lobby, of which he was very critical, was also asked about Israel’s lobby today. Now I am not a Mersheimer expert and I never read his earlier book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, but when asked about the Israel lobby on this podcast, said that he had no problem with it – that lobbying is part of the American system and that Israel has as much right to lobby the government as does the National Rifle Association.

He also alluded to something else, about which I know (knew) nothing – that the rules about having to register as a foreign agent before lobbying the government on behalf of a foreign country either (a) does not apply to Israel, or (b) is not enforced against those who lobby for Israel. I know nothing about this – he didn’t say it in a questioning way, just a matter of fact way. He also said that the relationship between Israel and the United States was perhaps the strongest alliance between two countries in history.

Finally, I continue to wonder what will happen to Gaza when the war is over. I have talked about this time and time again on this blog, but I still wonder. Who will govern Gaza? Who will fund the reconstruction? And so on. And with 2,000,000 Gazans displaced from their homes now, with food low and health care sometimes non-existent, and close to 20,000 people dead, how will the current generation of Gazans ever be able to live alongside Israel? Only the other Arab countries, taking control under some sort of an agreement with Israel, backed by the U.S. and maybe Europe and the UN have a ghost of a chance. Emphasis on ghost.

Enough for today.

On Tuesday, I went to my dermatologist because I seem to have developed some sort of scalp infection – like dandruff on steroids without the steroids. She prescribed something to rub into my scalp twice daily and two different special shampoos to use at very specific times for the next two to three weeks. She told me that if I had any questions, the best way to reach her was through the Patient Portal, where I can ask a question and get back an almost immediate answer.

I told her that I didn’t know anything about a Patient Portal, but I would find it and get on it when I got home. I went to her website (actually the website of the large group of which her three doctor office is only a part) and clicked on “Patient Portal”. A screen came up which asked me to put in my patient I.D. (I of course didn’t even know I had a patient I.D., but I think it told me it was my email) and my password. Of course I didn’t have a password, so I clicked on forgot my password, which did me no good, because it told me that I didn’t use a valid patient I.D. I tried my name; that didn’t work either.

I realized that maybe there were instructions, so I looked into the fine print on the page, and saw something that I thought was pretty surprising. It said that to log in the first time, you needed certain information which could only be shared in person at their office; so if you want to create a presence within the Patient Portal, “just stop by the office”.

Seemed a little weird, but whatever, this is life. So I stopped by the office yesterday, and told the young lady who checks you in why I was there. She didn’t understand why the website told me to come in, she said. She didn’t know anything about getting onto the website, she said, but I will send you a link.

OK, and she did, and I sat down with my phone, clicked on the link and it took me to just where I was the day before when I tried it from home. I repeated my motions and got the same response – I couldn’t register on the site. The desk then called my doctor’s assistant who came out, and told me that my I.D. was my email. I told her I figured that, but it didn’t help. She told me she couldn’t help me, either, because she had never been in Patient Portal because (as she said) “I am not a patient”. She did answer my questions, though.

I went back to the desk and told them that their link didn’t work, and a young man told me that it didn’t work on phones, only on laptops. I told him that I tried it on my laptop and that didn’t work either. But he told me that he would have his manager (not in, it appeared) call me.

The manager hasn’t called yet, but last night – after three more attempts – I finally was able to register myself on the portal using the link that they had given me earlier in the day. I must admit I was impressed at how much information about me is on the portal, including a photo (I have no idea where they got that), so they can identify me.

In the meantime, I had a few more questions about how I am to go about the treatment protocol. And, as my dermatologist said, this is the best and quickest way to reach her. But…..I can’t find a way to ask a question on the website. There is a “message” section which appears to have a line where I should be able to click and type – but the clicking doesn’t get me to a place where I can type. The portal seems to be generally read-only.

So, when and if the manager calls me, I have one more question for him/her. And in the meantime, I have found the portal, but it doesn’t really seem to lead anywhere.

My mind, this morning, is flitting from one thing to another – there are so many things to flit about.

(1) I just read that the House of Representatives is going to vote on a resolution stating that MIT and Harvard should fire their presidents. Does this seem as absurd to you as it does to me? Aren’t Harvard and MIT big enough that they can choose their own leadership? I guess that most Republicans and some Democrats will vote in favor of this resolution. Bipartisanship in action. Reminds me of the last scene in Jules Feiffer’s play of decades ago, “Little Murders”, where the estranged father and son are sitting at the windows of their New York City apartment firing their guns indiscriminately at passers-by, while the wife/mother beams and says something like “it’s so nice that the family is together again”.

(2) And just yesterday, I listened to part of a House of Representatives hearing where the legislators were doing real important work, preparing for another House vote. This would (will) be on whether to authorize an investigating committee to determine of they can find anything that would authorize the opening of an impeachment investigation of Joe Biden. This is a direct follow-up, I guess, to the resolution presented by Marjorie Taylor Greene just following Biden’s inauguration in 2021 to impeach the President. I am not sure the Bidens had even moved into the White House yet. The hearing was basically: Republicans – “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. Democrats – “there’s no smoke”. All of it of course hinges on whether the Biden family (a family, apparently, in Cosa Nostra terms) illegally made a fortune from China or from a Ukrainian gas company or somewhere. Which reminds me – what’s the name of the family that is making a fortune off of a hedge fund with Saudi investors? It’s on the very tip of my Trump.

(3) In the meantime, it appears that Mr. Zelenskyy’s trip to Washington might have been a waste of time and money. The Republicans say that they will provide no more assistance to Ukraine until the Biden administration illegally closes the southern border. At least, that’s how I read it. Congress is unable to draft, much less pass, new immigration legislation, but expects the executive to ignore existing law in dealing with the border. Not that I follow this situation that carefully, but it seems to me that the courts, when asked to rule on governmental border actions, seem to feel that the existing laws should be followed. And, again if I had this right, the Democrats have asked for appropriations for more border patrols, but the Republicans say “no, first you have to adopt our (presumably illegal) policies”. If someone can correct me, I’d be happy to be corrected, but this is how it seems to me. (This is not to imply that the border isn’t a mess – it is. It is also a big vulnerability for the Democrats politically, and the Republicans want to make the most of it.)

(4) Back to Ukraine (which is where I thought I was going on paragraph (3)). Remember Vietnam and the domino theory – if Vietnam goes, everything will go. This is of course one of the arguments being used now – if Ukraine falls, can Latvia be far behind? Well, you can pooh-pooh this argument, but I heard yesterday that Putin said “Russia knows no boundaries”. And there is a lot of fear in the Baltic states. Russia has lost over 300,000 troops, and apparently 2/3 of their tanks. But (and I got the inspiration from that ad for Shingles medication on TV) “Putin doesn’t care”.

The destruction in parts of Ukraine rival the destruction in Gaza, and millions of Ukrainians have fled the country and are hanging out elsewhere in Europe (and some in other places). This is a difference in Gaza and Ukraine. Ukrainians can flee; Gazans are trapped. That is a big difference.

By the way, speaking of Eastern Europe – have you ever looked at population figures? The populations of Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia have diminished by a very large amount over the past decades – as young people have found greener pastures elsewhere (largely elsewhere in Europe). This must mean something – but what does it mean? And did you see the article on French – the language – the NYT this morning? How French is becoming more an African language than a European one? But French with an African twist that the French academy can do nothing about? That’s zogo. (This paragraph was a diversion.)

Maybe the rest of the day will be a diversion, too. It’s getting harder and harder for me to actually sit down and accomplish anything. Maybe I should run for Congress.

By and large, the people who live in cities and the people who live in rural areas vote very differently. In the United States, for example, if you look at the vote in cities – even in very red states – they tend to favor the Democratic candidate. It is difficult to fine a large city that votes Republican. Even Jacksonville, the only Florida city that tends to vote for the more conservative candidate, just elected a Democrat as mayor. In Texas, all the cities vote Democratic, I believe, except for Ft. Worth. One of the only states where the large cities vote Republican is Oklahoma. In Ohio’s 2020 presidential election, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland and Akron – the largest cities – all voted Democratic. The rest of the state voted for Trump.

It’s not only true in the United States. There would have been no Brexit if only the cities in Britain voted. Hitler would never have become German chancellor if the Berlin vote was the only determinant. Erdogen would not be chancellor if it was only up to Istanbul.

Why this is almost always the case, I am not sure. In the United States, it has been because of minority groups (including Blacks, Hispanics and Jews) in the cities, and the educated elite who live in the cities. And this pattern has been set for some time, without change. But with regard to 2024, maybe there will be a change. If the minority groups who populate the cities do not support Joe Biden, for example, he will most certainly lose the election to Donald Trump. And, so far, the Biden presidency and the Biden campaign has been losing much of the minority voters, if the polling is even somewhat correct.

But let’s look at the broader picture. What is getting Trump so much support that it overrides his obvious flaws and dangers?

(1) There has long been a strong isolationist trend in American political thinking, and Trump is capitalizing on it through his America First message, and his hard talk against China, and his desire to stop American involvement in Ukraine. Remember, Woodrow Wilson, before he brought the US into World War I, was the candidate who ran for his second term on the slogan “He kept us out of war”. Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t overcome the strong neutrality feelings in the this country for years, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the Nazis declared war on the United States. Perhaps candidate Eisenhower’s most important promise was extricating us from the Korean War. And the more recent military adventures of the US, in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan have not, let us say, been resounding successes.

So Trump’s promise to end our support of Ukraine, and to weaken NATO, perhaps by eliminating our pledge to come to the defense of attacked NATO members, is also attractive, as is his promise to befriend Putin and Erdogen and Xi and Kim Jong Un.

(2) There has long been a strong anti-immigration strain the this country. Until about 100 years ago, the relatively empty United States welcomed virtually all immigrants. The only action that had been taken in this country was the Chinese Exclusion Act, which dated from the 1880s. Virtually anyone else was allowed into the country. This changed in the 1920s, when it was realized that the immigrants coming into the country were not all German, English or Swedish, but included millions of Jews, Italians and Irish, and the Italians became anarchists, the Irish drunkards, and the Jews became ……. whatever you wanted to accuse them of being. So our borders were virtually closed and remained largely closed (helping contribute to the death of millions of Jews in the Holocaust) through World War II.

Then, over the last 50 years or so, the nature of immigrants changed. Asians (Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis) became dominant, then Caribbeans and Central Americans (Cubans, Haitians, Salvadorans, Hondurans, and so forth) and Mexicans, followed by pressure from Muslim countries. All this fed into this anti-immigrant sentiment, and when the numbers increased because of external conditions, this sentiment grew exponentially. And, because Congress found itself unable to make policy changes reflecting the world as it exists today (what else is new?), the answer for many is simply: close the borders. Trump’s promise to do this and disallow asylum seekers, is welcomed by those who fear immigration, and his promise to be especially tough on Muslims is more than welcome. Lastly, the thought that drugs, and especially fentanyl, are being brought in illegally by immigrants (whether or not this is the case in fact) is frightening enough that a closed border seems an imperative.

(3) America’s religiosity might be declining, as religiosity seems to be declining throughout the majority-Christian world, but it is still high, and those who stick to strong beliefs in particular dogmas are certainly afraid of the social programs of Democrats, which threaten the way they want their children to be raised and taught. Women’s health autonomy (abortion, etc.) is of course a part of this, as are all of the culture wars being fought in schools across the country. For those who believe our society should be run with what you might call Christian sharia law, or those who at least want to themselves to be able to organize their lives around these principles, electing any Republican is crucial. And the fear that a Democratic president may be in a position to nominate the next Supreme Court justices looms over everything.

(4) Finally, there is a rural fear of the educated urban elite. This is not an irrational fear, as the educated urban elite and rural Americans tend to look at so many issues from opposing sides. The Democrats epitomize elitists, and it appears to those on the right that the Democrats want everyone to believe what the elite believes – no God, tolerance to minorities, affirmative action and so forth. Donald Trump may be a New Yorker, but he is clearly not a member of the educated urban elite. He is treated by the elite as an outsider, and that is crucial to his supporters. If the elite doesn’t like Trump, that’s good enough for us, they think. He must be doing something right.

All of this seems to override the positive things Biden has done. “It’s the economy, stupid” does not seem to apply today. And the world has clearly gone awry – Ukraine, Israel – for sure, and Taiwan perhaps. Inflation in the US may be less than elsewhere, but it still has hurt many people, and pointing out that wages are outdoing inflation doesn’t get you votes from those for whom that is not true.

Biden at 81 and showing signs of it (even though this may have no effect on his competence), and his inability to connect with Black and Hispanic voters (and Arab voters in places like Michigan) does not help the situation. As charismatic as Trump is to so many, Biden appears to have the opposite effect to an equal number. Whether or not people are being rational in their lack of support for Biden is not the important point. The important point is simply that there is a lack of support for Biden, even among those who should approve, or in fact do approve, his policies.

Alas, poor Biden, I knew him well. And it’s time for him to step aside.

The real estate industry has a reputation as bad as the legal industry, and I have often been asked whether I spent my career representing slum lords. I have always said, no, and that’s an honest answer. There are many ways of making a living, and making a living in the affordable housing business, where the tenancy can be difficult, the neighborhoods rough, and the multiple governmental regulators always irrational, is far from the easiest.

Yes, it’s true that a lot of money can be made in the affordable housing business (and it’s certainly true that most of my clients were much wealthier than I am), but it is money made through taking on a lot of risk and a lot of work, and operating through governmental programs that, by the way they were constructed, provide a more than adequate living to successful industry participants.

Just a simple and obvious example. If you have a company that manages a government assisted housing property, your management fee must be approved by a government agency as reasonable. You accept the fee, and you probably realize that your profit is minimal, if it is there at all. But when you add a second property, you find out that you have earned a profit, because you already rent your office, you already pay your staff (other than on-site staff), you already have your computer system in place, and so forth. Your profit increases as you add properties until one day virtually all of the marginal management fee becomes profit. And there are many companies that manage hundreds of properties.

In addition, most of the people I represented in this business did have a social conscious and chose this particular niche because they thought they could serve a broader purpose, while not compromising their own financial positions. Many, like me, when they left school (undergraduate, law or graduate business school) went to work for non-profits or government agencies in the city planning, affordable housing field. This is where they learned what they needed to learn to feel comfortable entering the field, and where they made the contacts that they were able to use as their businesses grew.

Sitting here today, I can only think of two times that I felt uncomfortable representing a client. Not that the details are important, but here they are:

(1) I was approached by a man who lived in western Washington state, and who owned a property in central Washington, on the other side of the Cascades from where he lived. The HUD area office in Seattle was after him for not maintaining the property and were threatening to cancel the subsidy contract on the property, and perhaps to foreclose on the mortgage and take the property from him. I hadn’t been to the property, but I had seen some photos and had had a lot of conversations with him, and with HUD officials. We tried to respond to every demand, but weren’t getting anywhere. I couldn’t figure out why.

Finally, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Yakima Washington. I don’t remember the details of the litigation, but I flew out to Washington and, for the first time, saw the property. I was aghast. I don’t remember ever seeing a property that looked as bad this one did – it was as if it was staged to look bad. It was clear that we should lose this case, although I had to do my best. My client was put on the stand by the government, and he was perhaps the worst witness you could imagine.

We lost the case. He wanted to appeal. I refused.

(2) I had a client from North Carolina who bought a well known DC property, which had had a very checkered history. It started out as a luxury building, became extremely run down, and then received a government rental contract to provide sufficient funds to fix part of it up for lower income tenants.

I got involved when my client was sued by the government in federal court here in DC. The basic claim was that the property was in subpar condition, and had failed a series of HUD inspections where the client had done nothing to remedy the problems. HUD had, of course, a long list of what should be done.

Now, HUD had a set of standards called the Minimum Property Standards, which sort of set a base line for safe and sanitary housing. And it was pretty basic. HUD also adopted some additional standards, apart from the MPS, that it wanted landlords who received HUD rental contracts to meet.

My client’s position, which neither I now the other lawyer representing him could in good faith maintain, was that the Minimum Property Standards were not only a minimum, but a maximum, and that HUD had no authority to determine, program by program, what standards should be met by recipients of HUD funds in addition to the Minimum Property Standards. To give a bad analogy (because I can’t think of a good one now), if the HUD MPS forbade a walkway 5 feet from a dangerous ledge, my client wanted to maintain that 5.1 feet was acceptable even if the walkway was in wind tunnel that blew you towards the ledge. That’s not a real example, but that’s the kind of thing he wanted to do. Clearly a losing proposition.

And, of course win or lose, these were positions that were ethically wrong to assert.

In addition to these two, I only remember one case where I refused to represent a client based on the condition of his properties. I don’t remember his name. The property was in Cincinnati and, having been embarrassed by the situation in Washington state, I wanted to see the property before embarking on the representation. There was something that I just didn’t trust. I flew to Cincinnati, taxied to the property, saw the condition (and the condition’s problems weren’t major things that needed major financing to remedy), and said “no but thanks for the invite”. The property could have been cleaned up and made more livable with a minimum of effort, but that effort was nowhere to be seen.

That’s really it. Not bad for 40+ years. I actually think it speaks well for the industry. Or at least for my part of it.

This is not that I think all owners of subsidized housing properties are the best. I do remember one sad morning, five or six years ago I would guess, when I woke up and looked at the Post and saw articles affecting three housing developments I had been involved with. In one, a manager had absconded with thousands of dollars, in another the property had been run into the ground and in the third there had been significant drug or criminal activity.

I did not know any of the owners or managers of the properties, each of which had changed hands since I was involved with them. But it shows you what can happen and I will admit reading these articles and thinking that perhaps I had spent 40 years thinking I was doing good when actually I was just treading water.

There’s a church on Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda that I often pass. For a long time, its marquee has said “Every saint has a past; every sinner has a future”. Not a unique thought, to be sure, but one that is often forgotten in our cancel-culture world. I think we should keep it filed in our minds, and refer to it when appropriate.

I don’t know how many of you watched (live or later) the House hearings where members of Congress castigated the presidents of three prestigious universities as they were testifying on antisemitic activity on their campuses. At least two of the university presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of Penn were embarrassingly bad witnesses, generally answering specific questions with the same repetitive, redundant and repeated cliches over and over again.

It’s hard to know what was worse – Gay’s trope that calling for the murder of Jews might be wrong depending on the circumstances, or Magill’s defense of the decision to hold a pro-Palestinian conference last month with avowed anti-semites on the panel. But in either case, it showed the universities’ lack of active concern about antisemitic activity on campus or among students and – perhaps worse, or at least as bad – the universities’ treatment of antisemitic speech and activity more leniently than speech and activities targeting other groups. I had so hoped that someone would have asked Gay, for example, if Harvard and she would have taken the same position of students had marched through the Harvard campus calling for the murder of Blacks. And I was intrigued by Magill’s seeming defense of the different treatment given to speakers who would speak against groups other than Jews – such as Penn’s decision to cancel an invitation to Narendra Moti, now president of India, after a number of Indian faculty members and others objected to his presence (I think I have that right, but there were a number of incidents like this if I am not entirely accurate).

Magill has now resigned her presidency, in advance of a scheduled Board meeting that might have resulted in her being fired. The chair of the Board also resigned. Gay has not (yet?) resigned, but there is more to come on this subject, I am sure. And Rabbi David Wolpe, a member of an advisory council on antisemitism at Harvard, did resign from that commission on the basis of President Gay’s testimony.

Back to the church marquee. Both Magill and Gay have very impressive pasts, and – to my knowledge – apparent antisemitism has not been part of it. And I have no reason to think that they themselves are anti-Jewish or anti-Israel. They clearly did not speak out when they should have, and they clearly blew it at the hearing. As I watched, my reactions were “boy, is this embarrassing”, and “they clearly were told to say what they are saying, and not to say anything more or else – who is telling them this, and why do they seem to be clones of each other in the way they are answering?”

If any of you got to page 28 of the front section of this morning’s New York Times, you saw the answer. Both Magill and Gay were coached on how they should answer. And they were coached by the same law firm – Wilmer Hale – and by specialists in how to respond to questions at Congressional hearings. Say, what?

I am not sure what these legal “experts” had in mind. Primacy of the First Amendment’s free speech provision? Importance of sticking to a university’s “policies and procedures”? There were fatal flaws in this that should have been obvious to everyone. First, once this is your focus, you will find yourselves trapped and unable to give an appropriate answer without contradicting yourself. Second, you aren’t focusing on all of the situations where the same universities undertook very different courses of action, because you haven’t been schooled on those, most of which happened under different leadership and circumstances. Third, you seem stupid, because all you do is repeat phrases that are not really answers. Fourth, you seem like bots, not human beings.

But should this require the resignation or the firing of these university presidents? My answer would be “not necessarily”. Both Gay and Magill are presumably very bright, not personally anti-Jewish, and have the ability to understand when they make a mistake and how to keep the same mistake from being made again. Back to the church: every sinner has a future.

By the way, my comments are not meant to excuse the lines of questioning from the House members, and especially the Republicans. Not the one demanding that the witnesses immediately resign from their positions, not the one that claimed that Harvard lacked diversity because they didn’t have conservatives on their faculty and didn’t even keep records on the political leanings of faculty members, and not the one whose every question contained an irrelevant (to me but not to him, apparently) biblical quote. But that’s the way it is in Congress these days.

One more related new article today: a sixth grade math teacher in the Montgomery County public school system was suspended today because she added the phrase “from the river to the sea…..” after her name on her public school email signature line. She has filed a complaint saying that other teachers have used other, equally controversial phrases on their school email signatures – like “Black Lives Matter”. I don’t know whether this teacher should be suspended – I don’t know much about her, or her politics, or feelings towards Jews in general. So I can’t comment on whether the suspension was warranted. There should be other ways to deal with the situation – why are teachers allowed any such add-ons to their signatures on school emails? Again, saints? Sinners? Pasts? Futures?

It is always a tough call. For a teacher…..at school they should be neutral on anything so controversial. In their private lives, I guess they should have more latitude to express their views. But it’s a tough call.

But “cancel culture”? That just does not seem right to me. It simply divides us from each other more and more, not helping to resolve anything. And it ignores the church’s marquee completely. And it’s much too easy.

(I should remind you that all this does tie in with the “decolonizing” “oppressor/oppressed” social justice philosophy, and that Jews – under this way of looking at history and social science – Jews are “white” and “oppressors”, not “victims” or “non-whites”, who are worthy of extra protection.)

You might think that writing a daily blog is difficult, or tiresome, or sometimes just a slog. None of this is true for me. As long as I have the 15-30 minutes I need to scribble something out, I don’t find it at all an imposition. On the contrary, my problem is that, throughout the day, as I see something, hear something, think of something, or do something, I want to write it down and send it out. I could keep someone busy all day just reading what I write. But I couldn’t afford to pay the salary such a reader would demand.

At any event, I spent a fair amount of time yesterday with my radio on C-Span, when I was driving between various errands. Let me start with what I think is a diversion – Yesterday morning, I spent about 30 minutes listening to the morning C-Span call in show, and it was one of those half hours where they have “open phones” and people can call in and say whatever they want.

Now free speech is a wonderful thing, I know. But spreading disinformation is not so wonderful. And the majority of C-Span open phone callers spread a great deal of disinformation. You should hear the things most of them say about our completely open border – about all those people from China coming into our country. Or about how we treat those who cross the border – do you know that we kick veterans out on the street to make room in luxury hotels in New York City for illegal aliens? Do you know that the reason we had so much COVID in this country is that Joe Biden let everyone in the country and then bused them around to all sorts of places, spreading COVID as they went – that Joe Biden was the biggest COVID spreader in the world? The fact that he wasn’t even president yet seems irrelevant. On the other hand, do you know that the reason there are cartels in Mexico is that Ronald Reagan wanted to stop the Contras from immigrating into our country, so they formed cartels instead? Or that the first prime minister of Israel spent his time sinking ships and bombing hotels?

It goes on and on. I think either C-Span should stop their open phone segments, or they should have a fact checker there who can simply say “no”, or “I don’t think so”, or “I never heard that; better check it out”.

Onward:

During the afternoon, I listened to parts of a panel discussing the war in Gaza, and then the Foreign Minister of Egypt being interviewed by a Wall Street Journal reporter. The panel also was made of high ranking Arab political leaders – from Egypt, from Jordan, from Qatar and from Saudi Arabia. Both were in front of live audiences – I do not who or where. And in neither case did I hear the entire conversation.

I thought some interesting things were said that should be noted. First, everyone condemned what happened on October 7. Second, no one was standing up for Hamas. Third, everyone condemned the Israeli reaction, the displacement, illness, injury and the loss of life, the destruction of the Gazan infrastructure. Fourth, everyone begged for a ceasefire, and claimed not to understand why the United States was opposing it, since trying to arrange a ceasefire when two sides are fighting is what other countries always do; that Israel is getting special treatment.

OK, those are the obvious things. But there is more.

First, the representatives of each of these countries kept saying that the only solution was a two state solution and all of the current problems exist because of the occupation. No one said “from the river to the sea”, no one said Israel has no right to exist. If anyone addressed the failure of Hamas to recognize the legitimacy of Israel, or the slogan “from the river to the sea”, I didn’t hear it. But clearly no one was endorsing this position.

Second, the representatives of each country blamed Israel, not the Palestinians, for the failure so far of a two state solution, that Israel always wanted conditions that would limit the sovereignty of the Palestinian state. What they said was interesting, and I think sincere – I guess there are two sides to this question.

And they made it clear that Israel’s position on Palestinian statehood has gotten worse as time as passed, with Netanyahu publicly opposing a two state solution, with Ben Gvir and Smotrich talking about genocide, and with another Knesset member (whose name I did not hear) recently saying that all of Gaza should simply have been leveled. And of course, they said that the occupation of the West Bank has been made more difficult by the increase in the number and size of Jewish settlements, and support from some ministers of Israeli absorption of all of the West Bank.

Third, no country said it would not work with Israel – they were critical of Israel today, but supported both continued diplomatic relations and the Abraham Accords.

When they talked about the “occupation”, they included Gaza as an occupied land. Just because Israel pulled its military and its citizens outside of Gaza, they implicitly contended that Gaza remained occupied, by virtue of the limitations placed upon its residents. They also maintained that Israel, as the occupying power, has the responsibility to ensure the safety of its population, and the rebuilding of its infrastructure.

I learned some things. For example, I didn’t know that the US calls Hamas, but not the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization, while Egypt calls the Brotherhood, but not Hamas, by that designation. The Foreign Minister claimed that Egypt condemns all radical Islamic movements, actually all radical religious movements. Why doesn’t this include Hamas? He said it was because Israel and the US wanted Egypt to remain in communication with Hamas, as it share a Gaza border, so it could act as a mediator when necessary. I had not heard this before.

The Qatar representative was interesting. He said that Qatar’s biggest concern was the remaining hostages, saying that all should be released now without conditions, and that the Qatari government was working as hard as it can on this question. He obviously didn’t have to say this – it was interesting that he did.

And of course, both Egypt and Jordan said they would not take in any refugees from Gaza (and in the process said, unsurprisingly, that Palestinians all wanted to remain in Gaza). The Egyptian foreign minister was asked if they wouldn’t take in some families on a temporary basis until residential buildings could be rebuilt. The answer was a simple “no”.

There’s a lot to think about. And for those of us who sympathize strongly with Israel, and who detest everything about Hamas, there is one question that we aren’t asking ourselves. If the October attack had happened when a different Israeli government was in power, would the Israeli response, both on October 8 and today, have been the same? Would 17,000 Gazans have been killed? Would there be so much damage to the Gazan infrastructure? Would more, or fewer, of the hostages been released by now?

Are we blindly supporting Israel’s actions which are being led by a government with whom we disagree on so many other points?

Maybe.

Today is the first day of Hanukkah. The first candles were lit last night. There are seven more days, and seven more nights to go.

What should I say that you might not already know? Some of you know more about Hanukkah than I do. Some of you spell it Chanukah, but I choose to spell it Hanukkah for one simple reason: that’s the way my computer’s spellcheck spells it.

Three points: (1) Hanukkah is a holiday clearly based on a real historical occurrence – the revolt of the Hasmonean Maccabees against King Antiochus IV in about 135 B.C.E. (2) Because Hanukkah was based on a post-biblical event, it cannot be mentioned in the Hebrew bible. (3) It is considered a “minor” holiday, although it has over the past several decades taken on greater importance.

What makes is a minor holiday? Well, for one thing, as I said, it is not biblical. For another, there are no religious ceremonies (other than the night lighting of the Hanukkah candles or oil lamps, generally at home and very quick) to celebrate the holiday. For a third, it is not a day when practitioners are not permitted to work. It is a normal workday.

On the other hand, especially in the United States it has become a holiday when children get presents, and families often spend more time together than usual. And of course, there are some foods which are special for Hanukkah, so there is often more attention paid to the evening meals.

This brings me to one of my personal favorite Hanukkah anecdotes: Years ago (25-30 years ago, maybe) a friend of mine – a woman, an African-American, a Christian was the president of the Washington Women’s Bar Association (I am not sure of its exact name – but you know what type of organization I am referring to). Each year, the Women’s Bar Association had a December dinner meeting – gala, with major speakers, and hundreds in attendance.

My friend the President was in charge of this dinner and she called the hotel where the dinner was usually held to see what dates their main ball room was available. It turned out that each of those dates was during Hanukkah. My friend wondered whether or not this would be a problem.

So she called a mutual friend, perhaps the most observant Jew that she knew, a lawyer, and a woman who would most likely be attending the dinner to ask if she could schedule the dinner on Hanukkah, or if this would either be offensive or cut down on attendance.

Our observant mutual friend told her that it wasn’t a problem. It was just one night of eight, you go home, you light candles and then you go to the dinner. Don’t worry. Set the date during Hanukkah. No problem.

So she did.

And then the firestorm started. It’s Hanukkah!! I have to be home with my kids!! Etc. Not from one or two people, but from scads (that’s the exact number, I believe, if memory serves) of people. I am not positive what happened next (I was not a member of the Women’s Bar), but I think it was too late to change the date.

But my friend, the President called me up during the middle of this ado (which I until then knew nothing about), with a simple question. “Art”, she said, “I have a question about Hanukkah. Is it a holiday that you only observe if you aren’t religious?”

That pretty much sums it up.

Of course, there is more I could say. I could talk about the success the Maccabees had in defeating Antiochus, cleaning out the Temple and rededicating it (Hanukkah means dedication). I could talk about the differences within the Jewish community, especially in Jerusalem (the site of the Temple), where there were many Jewish Hellenizers, as they were called, people who assimilated into the Greek culture of the ruling families, and the war of the Maccabbees became, to a civil war as well as a war against Antiochus. I could talk about the failure of the Maccabees, whose successors were not as traditional and whose rule became much more religiously lax over time.

And, if I had been living in Jerusalem at that time, what would I answer when a Jewish Pete Seeger would look at me and say “Which side are you on?”

But let’s save that for another day.

“Nakba” is the Arabic word for “catastrophe”. It is the term used to describe the movement (forcibly or otherwise) of approximately 700,000 Palestinians from the land currently known as the State of Israel in 1948. It is also increasingly used as a term to describe everything that has happened in the Middle East since the European powers (and in particular France and Great Britain) began to exert varying degrees of influence and control during the 20th century in that part of the world, culminating in the British League of Nations Mandate over Palestine between the end of World War I and 1948, when the British pulled out, leading to the proclaimed creation of the State of Israel covering a large part of that land. The term is additionally used to refer to the situation that the displaced Palestinians and their descendants have faced since they have left pre-Israel Palestine, whether they are currently in the parts of Palestine now known as the West Bank or Gaza, or whether they are living elsewhere.

Of course, the Jews have had their own Nakba, known to themselves and the world as the Holocaust, where approximately 6,000,000 lost their lives not in Israel or the Middle East, but in Europe. With basically nowhere to go, the surviving Jews began to pressure Britain to let them into Palestine, their ancient place of residence and their biblical homeland, and to permit the establishment of a political state for the Jews.

At the time, there was much uninhabited, or underinhabited, land in Palestine, even though there were a substantial number of Arabs living there. Some of these Arabs had been there for generations, and some had recently migrated there during the first part of the 20th century. Some were farmers, some city dwellers, and some nomadic.

The United Nations proposed a partitioning of the land, creating both an Arab and a Jewish state. The Jews accepted the partition, the Arabs did not, the Jews declared independence on the part of the land allocated to them by the partition, and seven neighboring Arab states attacked the new Jewish, resulting in a war in 1948. This war was won by the Jews. As in all wars, there were atrocities perpetrated by both sides, and about half of the Arabs who had been living in what became the Jewish state left on their own, were tricked into leaving (sometimes by Arab armies promising them they could return upon victory), or were kicked out by the Israeli military.

After the war was over, some of the Arabs wanted to return; the Jews said “no”, and their homes and lands were confiscated. Rather than say “ok, you won, we lost”, the Arabs have maintained their right of return ever since, have declared not only the 700,000 displaced Palestinians but their 5 million descendants today as refugees, and have continued to affirm that Israel is an illegitimate state and the the Arabs have the right to the land from the (Mediterranean) Sea to the (Jordan) River.

The Nazi-caused Nakba (the Holocaust) is not, however, the only catastrophe faced by the Jews. In 1948, there were about 750,000 Jews living in Muslim countries – particularly in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. About 700,000 of them were kicked out of these countries. Most made their way to Israel, some to Europe. But virtually all of these countries are today Juden-frei, and their displaced Jews are not considered by any of these countries or by any international organization to have a right to return, even if they wanted to return. Meanwhile, by the way, 2,000,000 Arabs – largely descendants of those Arabs who stayed in Israel in 1948 – still live in Israel as welcome citizens.

There have been subsequent wars. Perhaps the most significant was in 1967, when Israel again won, and took over a lot of territory not included within the boundaries of the state in 1948. Since 1967, some of this land as been annexed by Israel (the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem), some has been returned (Sinai), some has been abandoned (Gaza), and some remains under occupation (the West Bank). Over a half million Jews have moved into the part of the land still under occupation, with pressure to expand even further into “Palestinian” territory.

The Palestinian Arabs who have remained in Gaza and the West Bank have been unable or unwilling to declare themselves an independent state, and the question of what the boundaries of such a state would be is still an open one.

As the current war between Hamas in Gaza and Israel rages, it is tempting to say that the only solution is a two state solution. And this is probably correct. But it is also probably correct to say that the two “states” involved – Palestine and Israel – will be unable to achieve this solution. Perhaps the only way the two state solution can be achieved is with all of the moderate Arab states (Egypt, Jordan, the Abraham Accord states and Saudi Arabia) pressing a solution on the Palestinians, one that Israel will agree to, one that will provide ways for the 2+ million who live in Gaza to be able to move around the world as they wish, and one that will guarantee security (perhaps with the help of the US and the UN) over a long term. Israel would want to ensure security and no “right of return”. Other than that, I would assume everything would be open.

Giving up the right of return would be difficult for the Palestinians, as so much of their psychological makeup seems to be based on the illegitimacy of Israel altogether. Creating a secure situation for Israel without having Israel wielding direct military power in a new Palestinian country will be difficult for Israel, trusting no one other than itself (and maybe not even itself today). But what other choices will there be?

Both sides will have to repress historical fear from their national psyches. Israel will have to realize that it will need to live within the boundaries assigned to it by whatever agreement is made. Palestine will have to agree that its state would be limited to the boundaries assigned to it by that same agreement.

Prior to 1948, there was no Israeli state, and there was no Palestinian state. All of the land was part of the British mandate and, prior to that, all was part of the Ottoman Empire, a Turkish state. For the past 75 years, there has been an Israeli state, but the Palestinians have failed or refused to create their own state.

How a Palestinian state would be organized is another question, especially on an interim basis. Israel cannot dictate it, the U.S. and other western nations cannot dictate it. This is why the moderate Arab states must come to the rescue.

For good or for bad, we will see how all of this plays out.

(1) What does it mean to wipe out Hamas? That’s an important question. A corollary question is: who is Hamas?

I don’t have the answer to either of these questions. Maybe Israel does (and maybe even the U.S. does), but I don’t. I ask this question for two basic reasons (and several other subordinate reasons). I heard yesterday that there have been about 15,000 Gazans killed so far in this war, and that of those, about 1/3 were Hamas and 2/3 were not. I have also heard that over 60% have been either women or children.

Assuming those are accurate statistics, what does it mean? None of the children could be Hamas. But what percentage of the men killed are Hamas? Of the women? Do we even know exactly who has been killed? Can someone say that a man named Abdul bin Abdul was killed and he was (or was not) Hamas?

And if we can’t identify Hamas, how do we know when Israel has destroyed Hamas and how do we know that 2/3 of those killed have not been Hamas?

See my problem? I can make it even more complicated. We are told that the major leaders of Hamas are in Qatar, or maybe in Lebanon. Until these men are killed, does Hamas still exist? And, putting Hamas aside, what about other Islamist groups, such as Islamic Jihad? Assuming some of those already killed were affiliated with Islamic Jihad, are they part of the 2/3 killed so far in Gaza who are not Hamas? And if that is right, how many of them have been killed?

(2) I read an interesting article – It was titled “How Israel Missed Its Chance to Eliminate the Leadership of Hamas”, but was really more generally about proportionality in war, when responding to an attack. When does a response become too much. It’s in part a technical article, looking at various definitions created over the years, which focus on things like the military importance of the response, the likelihood of success, the anticipated collateral damage, the danger of not going so far. On this basis, the author determines that, notwithstanding all of the criticism thrown at it, Israel is within its rights to inflict death and injury on civilians.

The article also focuses on examples, citing instances where Israel did not pursue certain enemies because of the fear of collateral damage, where the result was that the spared enemy became responsible for many more innocent Israeli deaths than Israel would have killed had the Israelis targeted the specific individual.

The author then talks about the Allies in World War II, when they did not institute any proportionality analysis and killed untold numbers, writing them off as a cost of winning the war. He talks about the number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. And he concludes that Israel is simply being held to a different, and unreasonable, standard.

The article was written by Shlomo Brody – not a name I new. I was surprised to see that he is a rabbi, and the author of a recent book, Ethics of Our Fighters: a Jewish View on War and Morality.

(3) The world seems to be adopting the definition of antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. I have discussed it in some detail earlier. One of its facets is to equate certain statements opposed to Israeli policy as being within the definition of antisemitism.

For various reasons, I disagree with this. I think it is clear that one can be against various Israeli policies without being antisemitic, and I even think one can be against the existence of the state of Israel without being antisemitic (although I think in most cases today, they cannot be separated). I think, on the other hand, it is in the interest of the State of Israel to equate anti-Israel sentiments to evidencing antisemitism. And I think Israel has pushed along this identification when it passed the law that declared Israel a Jewish State, something I also disagreed with. I can devote a full post to how I, Jewish and pro-Israel, can hold this position. There isn’t enough time to do so now.

I just want to point out that the House of Representatives yesterday passed a resolution condemning antisemitism, using the IHRA definition. It is now the position of the House and those who speak against Israel are antisemitic. I find this very dangerous. I also want to point out that this resolution was passed by the Republican majority House, in spite of the majority of Democrats voting either no or present. And that the opposition to the resolution using the language it did was led by three Jewish representatives and it was in large part based on the use of the IRHA definition So I am not the only one holding the position I do.

But was this a good political move by the Democrats? Here, I would say it wasn’t. I think it will increase the concern of so many that the Democrat and Israel are drifting apart. I think it would have been better to state the reasons they wish the bill were drafted differently, but then to hold one’s nose and voting for it. But when is the last time the Democrats made a good political choice?

(4) Did you see yesterday’s hearing on campus antisemitism? I watched part of it, before C-Span cut off its TV coverage to cover the Senate voting on a newly nominated potential federal judge. The witnesses included the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn (all women, interestingly) and they were all questioned on the degree of pro-Palestinian and antisemitic activity on campus. I can’t say that I found any of the presidents’ answers satisfactory. They generally answered in platitudes about the importance of free speech – even if you don’t like the content – and the need to make sure it doesn’t cross the line – a line which is impossible both to describe and to recognize. They were being too careful in their answers, perhaps, shying away from specific instances, and not making any specific promises for the future.

On the other hand, the Congressional Republicans were, of course, even worse. Elena Stefanik was operating a decibel level which was hard to take, as she yelled and screamed at Harvard President Claudine Gray “I think you should resign!!!!!” All I could think of was how much Claudine Gay must think that Elena Stefanik (Harvard graduate, by the way) should herself resign.

(Digression: why in Congressional hearings are members of Congress allowed to yell and scream and berate and humiliate witnesses, while witnesses can’t respond in kind?)

And then there was Congressman Grothman from Wisconsin, who was focusing on diversity at Harvard. He was berating Gay for Harvard’s lack of diversity. Huh?, you may ask. Grothman was referring to support for Trump and to various statistics (probably not valid) that suggested that only 2% of Harvard faculty members voted for Trump (or supported Trump, or didn’t think that Trump was evil incarnate, or something), and that this was evidence that there was no diversity at Harvard. He asked Gay why she thought Harvard’s faculty was so slanted in their political views.

Gay’s response was double edged, to be sure. Harvard is very careful in selecting its faculty, she said (my words, not hers), always looking for the smartest and most talented in their field of study.

I promised today would be more upbeat than yesterday’s post which talked about the potential end of civilization as we know it. In other words, the task I gave myself was easy.

So let’s leave politics and climate change, and talk about what I have recently seen on screens:

(1) The program of the Haberman Institute last night was on the Rosenwald Schools and the work being done to create a National Monument honoring Julius Rosenwald, who was a part owner and executive of Sears, Roebuck, and a major philanthropist. The program, featuring four individuals involved in the Rosenwald Foundation, says it all, and will be available on the Haberman site (habermaninstitute.org) within the next few days. Rosenwald, who became enormously wealthy from the success of Sears, gave away a lot of money, some to Jewish causes, but most (I think) to causes supporting Black Americans. Foremost among those efforts was the building of what are now known as the Rosenwald schools across the South to educate Black children who often had had no schools which they could attend. We are not talking about two or three schools; we are talking about almost 5,000 schools. And the success of these schools can be measured in part by the success of their well known graduates. If you don’t know the story, you will learn a lot by watching the program (it’s about 90 minutes). And by watching Aviva Kempner’s documentary about Rosenwald released about eight years ago, titled simply “Rosenwald” (although I am not sure this film is currently available to stream).

There were something over 200 viewers tuned into the program last night. Go to the Haberman website and see what is coming up. Most programs are on Zoom, and most are free. The next one, which I am introducing, will be on December 18, and will feature Professor Amit Schejter of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and will be on diversity in Israeli society and its relationship to the current war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. There are more than 200 other programs available to stream on the Haberman site.

(2) We took a rare trip to an actual movie theater Sunday to see the new Paul Giamatti film “Holdovers”, which has received such good reviews. It is, generally, a film about a peculiar, and seemingly one dimensional, teacher at a New England boarding school, who has been selected to be the faculty member assigned to stay with the few students who have nowhere to go over the Christmas holidays and who will be holding over at school. There are three stars of the film, Giamatti who plays the teacher, young Dominic Sessa who plays a student, and Davine Joy Randolph, who plays the head of the school’s kitchen and who is also alone for the holidays. Sessa graduated from the Deerfield Academy, one of the boarding schools where “Holdovers” was filmed, in 2022. All three actors do a more than credible job.

But it’s a strange film in a way that I have never found a film to be strange before. I found the first half of the film absolutely dead, boring, worthless, a waste. But the second half of the film picked up the pace, actually developed a plot, and brought out the humanity of the three main characters. I felt like I was watching the film before the weak parts were edited out, like watching a first draft.

Would I recommend you watch it? I wouldn’t tell you to stay away, but I wouldn’t suggest you run to your nearest theater, either. I don’t think the enjoyable second half completely made up for the worthless first half. So maybe I should tell you to stay away. Or better, wait until you can stream it at home….for free, and you can fast forward the first hour.

(3) We finished watching the third year of the French Netflix series, “Lupin”. Seven episodes. Worth it? Sure. You know the series? Omar Sy (a very appealing fellow) plays Assanne Diop, a master thief, a master of disguise and a master escape artist, who bases his exploits on the exploits of Arsene Lupin, a fictional master thief, master of disguise and master escape artist, who was the creation of French author Maurice LeBlanc, who wrote a series of books over the first three or so decades of the 20th century.

Diop baffled the police in Paris, even Detective Youseff Guedira, a police officer who is also familiar with the Lupin books, and who recognizes Diop’s game plans.

The thefts are not random – they involve very big ticket items (a diamond necklace once owned by Marie Antoinette, a Manet oil, a black pearl from Tahiti, and a diamond and ruby bracelet), and the reasons for each theft are related to events in Diop’s life – so what he is trying to do is part revenge, and part fun, and part just ways to evidence his confidence in himself.

The plots are complicated – we found ourselves having to struggle to remember, each time we turned on an episode, exactly what had happened in the previous episode. But don’t let that discourage you. It is all fun.

This one I do recommend.

(4) On the other hand, stay away from the 2023 Netflix film “Fair Play”. It’s the story of a young couple, both analysts for a flashy hedge fund in New York City, madly in love with each other. They get engaged – but they can’t tell anyone because of a strong anti-nepotism policy at the hedge fund. Then, one of the two, the woman, gets a promotion and the man resents it. That’s when the film begins to convert into a horror film – everything bad happens: he rapes her, she stabs him. It’s a really awful film.

Why did we watch it? Because, believe it or not, a friend (you know who you are) recommended it. Told us it was “very powerful”. I told him that out of 5 stars, I’d give it a 0.

(5) Having nothing to do with a screen, let me add one thing. I had my annual lunch with two of my college roommates (it’s been an annual lunch – it’s now been changed to a twice yearly lunch) at First Watch in Bowie MD. We go to Bowie because one of them is in Annapolis – and this is sorta half way. I have been to various First Watches maybe a half dozen times, and it is THE BEST place for breakfast or a casual lunch. Why isn’t there one NW DC? (Rhetorical question, but I think they are franchised, so……if you’re interested)

That’s it. Good News Tuesday. No tacos.

I keep running into fascinating quotes. This one is from Glenn Seaborg, who was the chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, and it is from 1966!!

“At the rate we are currently adding carbon dioxide to our atmosphere (six billion tons a year), within the next few decades the heat balance of that atmosphere could be altered enough to produce marked changes in the climate – changes which we might have no means of controlling even if by that time we have made great advances in our programs of weather modification……I for one would prefer to continue to travel toward the equator for my warmer weather rather than run the risk of melting the polar ice and having some of our coastal areas disappear beneath a rising ocean.”

This quote is from pages 14-15 of Rachel Maddow’s 2019 book, Blowout.

I haven’t written much on this blog about climate change or the other catastrophic possibilities we face.

My good high school friend Charlie Goldman, now a retired MD, sent me the piece that he wrote to put in his Yale 60th Reunion book, and said I could share it. Charlie has spent a lot of time in recent years concentrating on climate change and its effects on human life. But in his Yale submission, he seems to have gone beyond that.

I quote: “In the ten years since I last wrote for this class book, I have studied the growing field of existential risk, and tried my hand at environmental activism, leading two local groups. Sadly, my conclusion at this point is that civilization is collapsing like a house of cards (the collapse is labeled by some as “The Great Simplification” or “The Great Unraveling”): scientists describe a rapidly worsening “polycrisis”; gun sales soar with every mass shooting; we could not collectively rally in response to a mild pandemic; we have algorithms that stupefy and AI that powers autonomous weapons; bio-terrorism is probable; facts compete with fakes and fantasy; “forever chemicals” merge with the biosphere; women lost basic human rights; smoke fills the air; nuclear weapons proliferate….The collapse may be global or regional, continual or sporadic, but it is happening…..Interpreting this glass as half full would be delusional. If I were young, how would I cope with this version of the truth?”

As I think I said several days ago, in his interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Elan Musk said that the thought of AI destroying civilization and the world used to keep him up at night (until he realized that seeing the collapse of civilization would be so interesting), and there’s an article this morning on the front page of the Washington Post about a conversation that, some years ago, Musk had with Larry Page, then Google’s CEO, about the good and the bad potentials of AI – with Page taking the half full side, and Musk the almost all empty side.

Looking at the list of horrors Charlie and others have written, there are at least two that are not stated (and probably several more). One is our apparent inability to educate our children and grandchildren for the coming world. There is no so much controversy as to teaching methods and content, so much truancy, and so much disruption caused by the year(s) lost to the pandemic that we wonder if we (at least for the majority of our young people) ever really catch up. And then there is the dangers of social media, leading to depression, suicides and more, which take up so much of everyone’s time – children and adults, but especially children. And there is the danger of overpopulation, not only in Gaza, but elsewhere, exacerbated by climate change and the necessity of mass migration and the potential result of mass starvation.

They say, of course, that every generation feels that theirs is the most dangerous – and it’s true that no one ever knows what tomorrow might bring. And certainly there have been many tomorrow which have brought nothing but horrors.

But there is danger, and then there is danger. And in the situation we all now find ourselves in, there is overwhelming danger, not to one person, one family, one religion, one country. There is overwhelming danger to everyone.

Tomorrow, this blog will be cheerier. I promise. In the meantime, think about all of this, and come up with appropriate responses.

Sincerely yours,

Chicken Little

Last evening, I finished reading Masha Gessen’s The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, published in 2017. I mentioned it a few days ago when I was just about 25% through the book, and I talked about her discussion of the study of the psychology of Soviet citizens (she called them homo sovieticus), a psychology that permitted them to live more or less contently within the Soviet system and how there was thought that homos sovieticus were becoming an extinct species in the 1980s as they were opened up to more of the outside world, and that this change in their mentality opened the way for the Gorbachev perestroika and everything that followed to take place, including the eventual breakup of the USSR.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Gessen would conclude that two decades later that the Russian citizenry had reverted to their previous homo sovieticus status, thus allowing them once again to live in a totalitarian society, this time under the rule of Vladimir Putin.

As this book was published in 2017, Gessen was able to cover the incursions into Ukraine in 2014, but not the full invasion of Ukraine that occurred in 2022. The points the book makes about the Russian/Ukraine relationship are both interesting and prophetic.

First, Crimea. Gessen discusses Crimea’s connections with Russia, how it had been Russian controlled since the late 18th century, and was originally part of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, not the Ukrainian SSR, until – for reasons never quite explained – Khrushchev conveyed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. As Stalin in the 1930s relocated most of the native Crimean Tatars, the population of Crimea was now overwhelmingly Russian and Russian speaking, Crimea was the site of Russia’s largest naval base, and it was the preferred vacation spot for people all over the USSR. Polling showed that well over 90% of the population of Russia supported the takeover of Crimea in 2014.

Next Donetsk, the largest city in the Donbas region now under Russian occupation. One of the four young Russians whose lives Gessen follows in the book visited Donetsk twice. Her first visit was before any thought of a Russian incursion, and Donetsk is described as an up-to-date city, with a thriving nightlife and much activity. Several years later, but before the Russian “green men” entered, the city is described very differently – gray, very tense and very much on guard.

Gessen also refers a number of times to Alexander Dugin, whom she first introduces as an overly studious young man anxious to learn languages, philosophy and everything else. He comes back later in the book as a full fledged philosopher and Russian nationalist, someone who became a public voice and an individual who developed a substantial amount of influence on Vladimir Putin. Sometimes called Putin’s Rasputin. I had never heard of Dugin – but it seems clear that, if I lived in Russia, I would be very familiar with him.

I want to quote from pages 434-435 of the book regarding Dugin:

“Another person to whom Putin’s speech sounded familiar was Dugin. He recognized himself. It had been just over five years since Dugin declared his intention to become his country’s lead ideologue, and it was happening. Putin was using Dugin’s words and his concepts, and he was carrying out his predictions. Back in 2009, Dugin had prophesied the division of Ukraine into two separate states: the eastern portion would be allied with Russia and the west would be forever looking towards Europe. Dugin saw Ukraine as inhabited by two distinct nations – the western Ukrainians, who spoke Ukrainian, and the people of the east, a nation that included ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians who were nevertheless Russian in their language and culture. The two nations, in Dugin’s view, had fundamentally different geopolitical orientations. This meant that Ukraine was not a nation state. It also meant that its division was preordained – the only question was whether it would be peaceful. There might be war, he had warned back then.”

Then, on pages 440-441, Dugin in 2014, was expressing disappointment that Putin was moving too slowly. “By the end of May, he was growing impatient and even disappointed with Putin. Rather than embark in an open, all-out war, the Kremlin seemed intent on creating a quagmire. What was the point of that? It was true that a slow war in the east would serve the purpose of destabilizing Ukraine, sapping its strength and weakening its new government, but these were petty tactical goals. Dugin wanted Putin to invade Ukraine openly, using regular troops, and to aim for a glorious victory that would expand Russia. Indeed, it would be only the beginning of Russian expansion.”

There is all this talk today about how Israel scored an intelligence coup in coming up with the plans for an invasion from Gaza, and how Israel totally blew their coup by ignoring all the warnings, thinking that the Arabs will never be able to pull off something so complex.

But now in Gessen’s book, we see, that as early as 2009 and 2014, one of Russia’s top influencers, was egging Putin on to have a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Our security services must have known this, but, seven years later, as Putin was marching over 100,000 troops towards the border with Ukraine, the United States and the rest of the west seemed to think that this was all for effect, and that the possibility of a full scale invasion was very low.

This is only a very small part of Gessen’s book (a National Book Award Non-Fiction finalist) on Russia from the fall of the Soviet Union onward, through the Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Medvedev, and Putin periods. It is a very detailed book, concentrating on the psychological and sociological aspects of Russian society and not on daily political events, except as they affected Russian life. And this is all done through a unique method. Gessen picks four young Russians – a young woman interested in psychology, a young man who discovered he was gay and becomes a scholar of gender studies, a young woman who became, step by step, a political activist, and a young woman whose father, Boris Nemtsov, was an anti-Putin politician. She follows their lives from their student days throughout the 25 years she covers. It’s a very effective technique, even if a reader would sometimes get confused as to the history of each of these characters as she goes from one to another. At least, this reader got confused.

But I do highly recommend the book, provided that the topic interests you. If it doesn’t……well, that’s a different story.

If you looked at today’s NYT crossword puzzle, you saw that one of the clues was “statement that in fact, was not part of the Hippocratic Oath”, and when you looked at 7 letter space (and maybe after you got a few letters from vertical words), you saw that the correct answer was “Do No Harm”.

So, I looked on Wikipedia’s article on the Hippocratic Oath, and saw that – when referring to patients – the Oath includes “……I will do no harm to them.”

What does this mean? That I shouldn’t rely on the NYT crossword puzzle writers for my education, or that I shouldn’t rely on Wikipedia? I think I know the answer.

And, while the Hippocratic Oath may not be a part of our legal system, we know that many doctors treat it seriously, and find that many of new restrictions popping up on abortion treatment do, in their minds, require them to violate their sacred professional oath.

Who else is bound by the adage “Do no harm”? Probably no one, and this is too bad. Wouldn’t it be nice if political leaders had to take such an oath and had somehow to live up to it?

When it comes to, among other things, war, clearly “do no harm” takes a back seat to “destroy the enemy”. I guess there may be no way out of this, but wars usually destroy not only the enemy, but also the victors. And most political leaders don’t have the foresight to see this coming.

Who am I thinking of?

Well, first, look at Vladimir Putin. He truly is engaged in reconstructing part of the Soviet Empire with his invasion of Ukraine, and reconstructing what he believes is Russia’s natural place in the world. He wants to do this Ukraine by taking part of that country and annexing it to his own and having the government of the remaining Ukraine as beholden to, and subservient to, his Russia. He saw Russia losing its power and influence and, yes, only he can fix it.

Putin started this invasion without any provocation from Kiev, just as he had marched into Ukraine seven or so years earlier to occupy the Donbas region and the Crimean peninsula. Through his land invasion, and air strikes, he clearly was not following a “do no harm” ethos. Quite the contrary, harm is what he wanted to create.

The latest statistics that I have seen show that, in doing this, Russia itself has already suffered 100,000 deaths and another 200,000 casualties. These exceed the casualties among Ukrainians. So in undertaking this war, Putin has not even given thought to refraining from doing harm to his own people, his own constituents. He apparently doesn’t care about Russian lives any more than he cares about Ukrainian lives. Or if he does care about either, his care is subordinate to his need to restore Russian glory.

Let’s move to Hamas. Hamas attacks Israel on October 7. The attack was devastating and (maybe) a surprise. It was certainly a surprise to those who felt the brunt of it. The Israeli response was to leash a fierce ground and air war against Hamas and the Gaza Strip. One can criticize the Israeli response (both its immediate response and its continuing response) on any number of levels, to be sure, but that is not my point here.

My point is that Hamas clearly knew there would be a response. And they knew that the response would lead to great harm throughout Gaza, the land that they governed and that, you would think, they would want to protect. But, no. They had a larger purpose – again the restoration of of a grand political dream by taking control of all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, from the river to the sea. (Of course, there is a difference here – the empire Putin wants to resurrect at one time existed; the empire that Hamas wants to create has never existed.)

You often hear that Hamas doesn’t care about the people of Gaza. It’s easy to slough this off (is that the right word?) as Israeli propaganda, but no….it seems to be true. Knowing how strong an Israeli response would be, knowing how much power Israel had and who its allies are, Hamas knew that the effect of the response on Gaza would be horrific. They just didn’t care. (In part this is because their leadership is safe in Qatar and Lebanon.)

So Putin starts a war of aggression that, so far, has resulted in over 300,000 Russian deaths and injuries, and the war is nowhere near over. And Hamas starts, and continues to fight a war, that will result in the total destruction of Gaza, and its leaders have even said that their sea to land goal does not include protecting its citizens. Let the UN do that, they said. (The UN role is keeping the Palestinian situation festering is still another issue.)

Presumably, when the Russia/Ukraine war ends, there situation will be quite clear. There will be a Russia and there will be a Ukraine (the boundaries may or may not change from today’s boundaries), and there will be mechanisms developed that, at least in theory, will hold the peace and allow for rebuilding.

When the current Israel/Hamas war ends (and assuming it does not escalate and spread dramatically), things are much less certain. The parties will continue to hate and fear each other, Gaza will be totally destroyed (physically and economically), and 2,200,000 people in Gaza will look around and say “what next?”, “where’s food?”, “where’s shelter?”, “where’s a job?”, “where are the schools?”, “where are the hospitals”, etc., etc, etc.

Will anyone really care about the Gazans? It doesn’t look like it to me. And, as I have said before, there is barely enough room in Gaza for 2 million, but since half of the 2,000,000 are under 18, we are talking about a population which will soon be 3, then 5, then 8 million. You can’t leave this many people in Gaza, even if there were no restrictions from Israel and Egypt on what can come into the country. There Arab world, and maybe countries beyond the Arab world, will have to open up.

Obviously, I could go on and on. But guess what? No matter how much I write here, we will not get any closer to the answer we are looking for. But of course, it isn’t up to us; it’s up to the “leaders”, whoever they will be, of those two countries (I consider Gaza a country – after all, if it isn’t, what is it?). And those leaders will have a number of goals as they move forward. Sadly, it’s hard to imagine that “do no harm” will be among them.

Edie was cleaning out some old files yesterday, and she came upon my obituary. Of course, you know that I am still here, but apparently about 20 years ago – I assume when I turned 60 – I wrote my own obituary and gave it to Edie to use if it became necessary. Here is what I wrote:

“Arthur R. Hessel

Safeway Club Member

Arthur R. Hessel, a long standing and proud member of the Safeway Club, died today while crossing the Negev on a camel.

Hessel was the son of the later Meyer and Mildred Hessel of St. Louis, known by his former brother-in-law as Muck and Mire. His only sister, Joan Toby Laitman Eisenkramer, died several years ago, shortly before her 50th birthday, fulfilling her long standing desire never to grow old. Hessel is survived by his wife, the former (and who knows, maybe the future) Edith Tepper, who can be reached at murchnurse.@yahoo.com, and his daughters, Michelle and Hannah, both of whom resident within the Baltimore-Washington SMSA.

In addition to long years of service to the Safeway Club, Hessel also held a Ritz Frequent Photo Card, and was especially proud of his designation as a Hertz Gold Card member, which entitled him to see his name in lights whenever he landed at an airport with a state of the art Hertz facility. He was also an avid collector of things his wife felt not worth holding on to, and only wore button down shirts.

Know far and wide for his wisdom, Hessel was also active within his Jewish religious tradition, and was one of the few who held onto the old tradition of being shomer Tuesday. He only ate kosher meat at home (lucky, since his home was kosher) and had a poppy seed bagel every morning with his French Roast coffee. He had a lifelong ambition, which was to ride a camel across the Negev, which he was unable to completely refill.

Contributions may be made to the Clark Gable Museum or to the old car museum in Auburn Indiana, each a museum that no one ever contributes to. The Hessels will welcome guests at their home for the next six nights. They have turned the air conditioning full blast in observation of the traditional Jewish shiver observance.”

Of course, if I wrote this today, it would be much different, I think. For one thing, my Ritz Frequent Photo Card is now of limited value and wouldn’t be mentioned, and I have stopped using Hertz for reasons known only to Hertz and to myself.

The other obvious questions are (1) how could I have been so immature at 60 to write this obit, and (2) how could I be so immature at 81 to publish it in this otherwise serious blog.

I only saw the last half or so of the interview with Elon Musk yesterday on CNBC. He was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin, who was as usual masterful. Andrew is the son of my law school classmate and friend Larry Sorkin and my old friend Joan Ross Sorkin, who I met well before she met Larry. I don’t usually watch Andrew on CNBC, but I do see him often when he is a guest on Morning Joe on MSNBC. I am always amazed at Andrew for three reasons: he is always knowledgeable, he is always smooth, and he always agrees with me.

It’s the first time I have seen Musk in that kind of a forum. I assume that the entire interview was well over an hour, and Andrew was able to ask him a raft of challenging questions with appearing at all antagonistic or unfriendly.

sSo much of what Musk said was so interesting. I did not hear anything about his trip to Israel, his alleged antisemitism, his loss of advertisers on X, or anything related to that. I saw nothing about SpaceX. I assume all that was covered before I signed on.

The comments that I did hear him make (hopefully I am going to be accurate here) included:

(1) He really does not like Biden. It seems personal, starting when Biden had a summit for electric vehicle manufacturers and did not invite Musk or Tesla to attend. He claims not to know why Biden did this (I certainly don’t – I don’t remember it even happening), but it has certainly soured Musk on Biden. On the other hand, he really liked (and got/gets along very well with) Barack Obama. Asked about Trump, he clearly does not think much of Trump. He said he could not vote for Biden in 2024; he doesn’t know if he could vote for Trump. He thinks that will be a terrible choice.

(2) He is a fan of free speech, and he thinks Twitter was being too controlled by the government. His plan for X seems to be not to wield a heavy hand eliminating posters, but to mark posts as being false or possibly force after they are posted. When asked why there were so many pro-Hamas posts compared to the pro-Israeli posts, he responded with: well, there are billions of Muslims and, what, twenty million Jews – what do you expect?

(3) He discounts those who say that there isn’t or won’t be a demand for electric cars. He says that 90% of the cars being sold in China are electric, and he believes that there are several very competitive electric car manufacturers in China, where he thinks they really have the skill to make them, He didn’t name any American car manufacturers who he thought competitive.

(4) He says he doesn’t like unions because they contribute to a “lord and peasant” mentality. He thinks that Tesla is different. Line employees become executives. Everyone eats in the same cafeteria. No executive-only elevators. Everyone gets stock options, even those who don’t know what stocks are before they are hired, and many become millionaires. He is willing to have a union vote at Tesla any time; if the union wins, it means Tesla has failed.

(5) Sorkin asked him about self-driving cars, and whether the public would ever accept self-driving cars which might create injuries or fatalities, even if the number was significantly fewer than occur when there are human drivers. Musk believes that deaths can be cut up to 90%, and that the statistics will convince the public.

(6) I don’t know how to explain this, but another of his businesses is working on neurological medical devices which will connect directly to the brain, and let, say, people who have no use of their arms operate computers only by thinking of what they want to do on the computer. And, after this is perfected, which he thinks will happen soon, as test on humans are almost ready to begin, the next area to attack will be blindness, where he believes work on the optic nerve will enable some blind people to see – as blindness is often a brain problem, not an eye problem. This sounded very exciting.

(7) Artificial intelligence, good or bad? Musk is very afraid that artificial intelligence could lead to the end of civilization and needs to be carefully regulated. This led to a discussion of regulation in general – Musk says that he supports regulation not for the sake of regulation, but when it is required to promote human safety. He talked about the amount of regulation that an automobile manufacturer must comply with; he has no problem. Regulating speech, though, in light of the First Amendment, which he feels crucial in this country, is apparently another story.

Musk said that the dangers of artificial intelligence used to keep him up nights, but then he thought of the old Chinese proverb or curse: May you live in interesting times. And he realized that he wanted to live in interesting times (he said we are living in the most interesting times in history now), and if AI leads to the destruction of civilization, he would like to be around when it happens. It will be interesting.

Finally, Andrew asked him if he ever said anything that he later regretted saying. Of course I do, Musk said. He paused and then said – for example, I regret I said that just now.

(1) Let’s start with the beeping. At about 2 a.m. this morning, I beep-beep-beep woke us up. While pondering what it could be, after a few minutes of quiet, once again: beep-beep-beep. Out of bed, turn on the light (another beep-beep-beep) and I see that it’s our bedroom carbon monoxide alarm.

You would think that my next thought would be: “we gotta get out of here – we’re about to die.” But, no, it’s more like “why do these things always break in the middle of the night?” I do open a window just to make sure we don’t suffocate, but then I look at the screen on the alarm, which says “END”. There are two rectangular buttons – I push them both (I am still more asleep than awake) and the screen now has two more words on it: “error” and “silence”.

I unplug it, the words stay on the screen, but there is no more beeping, and I put it in my closet to look at more carefully today.

Why do things like this always break at night?

(2) Canada.

A friend put a photo on Facebook yesterday of a snowy Montreal, her home town. It reminded me of my first trip to Montreal. June 1964. One of my college roommates (I will call him D) and I had about a week to spare, so we decided, naturally, to spend it hitchhiking from Boston to Montreal to Quebec City and then back to Boston. We all know that, today, no one would even think about the possibility of doing anything so dumb (and now dangerous), and even then this was far form the norm, I am sure, but that’s what we decided to do. And we did get back on time.

What’s interesting is how little I remember of this venture. For example, we left from our Harvard House dormitory. We must have had a road map. But did we just stand in Harvard Square with our thumbs out and when someone stopped and said “where are you going?”, we said “Canada”? Perhaps. What luggage did we carry? I know we weren’t burdened, but I have no idea whether we had a small bag, or back packs, or what. I do know that the weather was good and that we decided we would wear khakis and sport jackets, so we looked respectable. But did we carry a sign?

It took us a number of rides (5? 10?) to get to the Canadian border. This was probably before the Interstates were open – I remember normal roads through the mountains. I think they were all cars, not trucks. I remember there was one time when we were a few hundred miles from our destination, a woman stopped and told us she was going 9 miles. We took the ride. I remember driving with one or two French Canadians who were wild drivers – we decided we didn’t want to drive with anyone with a French accent.

I know we crossed the border in Derby Line VT (why I remember that, I don’t know). But our ride didn’t cross the border. It let us out and we had to walk across. Sounds easy? But no, I don’t think that Canadian customs at Derby Line were used to two 18 year olds walking across the border. They questioned our intentions, our finances, our connections and so forth. For a while, we thought we might have reached the far point of our journey, but they let us in.

The only earlier times I had been in Canada was driving Detroit to Buffalo on my way to and from Boston and St. Louis. I knew that Quebec was French speaking, but one thing never occurred to me. It never occurred to me that most of the people we ran into spoke no English. And didn’t seem to care. It also surprised me that, having traversed the wilds of northern New Hampshire and Vermont, all of a sudden we were out of the mountains, and into fertile farm country with well kept small towns and villages. It was like we had gone north to wind up in the Midwest. How was that possible?

What’s interesting is that I remember nothing of Montreal. Where did we stay? What did we do? Did I like it? Was I impressed? I have no idea. What I do know is that D told me (I think not until we got there) that his grandfather lived in Montreal (huh? why didn’t he say this earlier – I know his father was from Nova Scotia, but lived in NY state), and that we should visit him.

It turned out his grandfather was 100 or 101 and lived in a nursing home/retirement home (I remember a one story red brick building out in a suburb or country on a large plot of land – very pleasant looking). We visited him on the front porch of this home, and he was old, but seemed alert and well enough and (I think) surprised to see D. I don’t remember if we told him we were coming or not. What I do remember is that he introduced us to a friend of his, who was a woman who I think was 104. Her claim to fame was that she was present when the gun went off at the Oklahoma land rush. That would have been 1893, or 71 years earlier.

I remember when it was time to hitchhike to Quebec (which sounded like it would be easy), it was cold and raining. I also remember that the road was quiet and people weren’t anxious to pick us up. I remember getting a ride to Trois Rivieres, about halfway between the two cities (we debated whether we should take it) and being left in the dark and the rain. I don’t remember if we found a place to stay there, or what we did.

Eventually we got to Quebec City and I remember being charmed by it. Again, I don’t remember what we did. But I certainly remember the ride back to school.

We set out on the road that goes south from Quebec City and gets into Maine in Jackman. Again, seemed simple. And the weather was good. And we know that there were no major towns in between, just farm country. And……there were no cars.

I had made a sign that said Vers Boston. I thought that would do it. But a sign doesn’t help if there are no cars. After hours of standing there wondering what to do, we saw a car coming. Not only a car, but I saw it had a Massachusetts license plate. I waved my sign (the driver told me I that because I was waving it, he had no idea what it said), and the car – a station wagon – stopped. It was someone who imported things from the U.S. to Canada and took this road often. He lived in Boston. He was glad for the company. He took us to our dorm.

Next time to Canada was, I think, 2 years later. But January, not June. F, not D. And a car, not a thumb. Maybe that’s for tomorrow. I remember more.

Post #379. And Artis81.

I woke up at about 3 this morning, and began to think about what I wanted to write today (of course, that was the wrong thing to do at 3 a.m.), and I figured it all out. Now, if I could only remember how I was going to say it……

I am reading The Future is History, a 2017 book by Masha Gessen, which describes the fall of the USSR, the chaos that follows, and the rise of Vladimir Putin. Gessen, as you may know, is a Russian born Jewish writer, who lives in New York and holds dual citizenship, has written a number of books and writes regularly for the New Yorker.

The Future is History is about 500 pages long, and I am only on page 125. For the first 75 pages or so, which deals with the history of the social sciences in the Soviet Union – the absence of the study of sociology, the tamping down and distortion of Freudian thinking and more – and which references totally obscure (to absolutely any American reader) Soviet academics and their fates, I was lost. Should even bother to continue reading?

But I knew I should when I saw where she was going. She was describing “homo sovieticus”, her descriptive for a person born and raised in the closed society that was the USSR, a person whose thought processes were so different from those of a member of western society, that neither can possibly fully understand how the other thinks. In other words, if you think that a Russian living under the USSR thought about life the way an American would think about life if suddenly transported to the USSR, you would be wrong. The entire way of thinking is completely different.

This, Gessen says, is why – when Gorbachev tried to open up Soviet thinking with his perestroika, he failed so completely – the majority of citizens were not ready to think the way successful perestroika would have required. They were simply confused. And they were confused when Yeltsin attacked Gorbachev, when the Russian Federation declared itself separate from the USSR, when the Soviet Republics began to split off, and when the USSR fell completely apart.

But Russian leadership was ready to move forward. And this is because, throughout the Gorbachev years, and to some extent earlier, more and more western ideas began to seep into Soviet academics, and entire species of homo sovieticus began to disappear. This, she surmises, was the real reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Educated people began to think more like westerners.

Okay, now let’s move back to something I have now written about in this blog several times: the enormous changes that have taken place in the way social studies topics are being taught at American universities. How the concepts of post-modernism, and wokeness, and decolonization have taken over the thought processes to the extent that history, government, sociology – any of the social sciences – are no longer taught the way they were taught 30 years ago and, when thinking about those subjects, the way of thinking of someone older than, say, 50 is so different from someone who is, say, 25, that we cannot even really comprehend how the other is thinking.

So, I am trying to make an analogy between the shock of the average Soviet citizen at the points Gorbachev was trying to make, and the shock of the average 50+ year old American at the way the social sciences are being taught at American universities today.

I don’t know exactly where this is going to go in Gessen’s book, since I am only on page 125 of 500. And none of us know where this is going to take us here in America either, as we, too, are only on page 125 of our own American playbook, which will have at least 500 pages, and possibly many, many more. And then things will undoubtedly turn in a different direction and the confusion will come from the thinking of generations not yet conceived when they develop still another way to look at the social sciences. Yes, as Gessen’s title says, The Future is History.

Last week, I heard a lecture sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Governmental Antisemitism Policies (ISGAP) by Prof. Ellen Cannon of Northeastern Illinois University of Chicago. Her topic, like so much I have been paying attention to, was again the teaching of the social sciences at American universities, and she too was trying to explain how it came about.

Cannon is, I think, primarily a teacher of Russian studies; she is an older woman who has been engaged in this work for decades. She was trying to explain, from a different angle, how the change in social sciences teaching came about. Until I heard her, all I had read started with Fourcault, Marcuse and Derrida, but she had a different thought. She thought it was an outgrowth of Soviet teaching of social sciences. Not that it was like Soviet teaching, but that the Soviets pioneered the concept that teaching social science was a way to support one’s way of thinking, not a way to encourage independent thinking.

When I heard Cannon, who struck me as very bright and well versed, I discounted what she said – I thought that it was unlikely that Soviet instruction had this spill over effect. But after reading Gessen, I am not so sure. Cannon may be correct.

Whatever the cause, there is much to be concerned about. As to the old adage “Is it good for the Jews?”, the answer is clearly “no”.

Birthday over. Thanks for the good wishes. Avoiding concentrating on bad news today. Let’s be entertained.

Films we watched over the long weekend.

SPOILER ALERTS FOR TWO BAD MOVIES, AND ONE GOOD ONE BELOW. THE ORDER WILL BE BAD, BAD, GOOD.

The worst was a new English film on Netflix called “Locked In” (thank you, Michelle). There’s an old country mansion in England, owned by a crusty, ex-actress, who lives with her chronically ill and chronically selfish son, along with the daughter of her oldest friend who had died, and to whom she had promised to take care of her daughter. The orphan daughter and the ill son marry, but it’s hardly a marriage in that the ill son needs constant caring, his mother won’t give it to him, and that leaves his young wife. The only other people they come into contact with is Robert Johnson MD, who is the family physician, and a nurse who treated the son when he was hospitalized and who is now treating the ex-actress, who is in a coma from an “accident”.

OK, so far, but then it goes astray. The doctor claims to fall in love with the young orphan/wife, and she with him. She is in a desperate situation, so from her place, this makes a bit of sense. From the doctor’s?

The doctor finds a way to drown her young, sick husband, so he is out of the way. But he has also been wooing the ex-actress (for reasons not quite clear to me), and this leads to an awful triangle, which winds up with the actress chasing the orphan/widow with a rifle, and the doctor running over the actress with his expensive SUV. Hence the coma.

Before it’s over, the orphan/widow shoots and kills the doctor just when he was getting ready to give a lethal injection to the ex-actress in the coma, but the nurse arrives just in time (and just when the police do – I think someone called them) and she vows to protect the murderer (and, I assume, care for the ex-actress, who it turns out is perfect mentally – or as perfect as she ever was – but can only communicate by blinking an eye). The end.

The second bad film was an American film from the 1950s called Accused of Murder. Can I even remember the plot? A prominent criminal defense lawyer is murdered presumably by a mob killer. He had been involved with a woman who is in the country on an artist visa and who sings at a tony restaurant/club. He wanted to marry her; she said “no”, and they had a series of arguments which leads her to be accused of the murder.

But a young woman who works as a 10-cents-a-dance dancer heard the shot, looked out the window and saw the mob killer. She was asked by the police to look at some photos to identify the man she saw. She did, she saw him, but she didn’t tell the police. Instead, she went to the man’s apartment and tried to blackmail him, but all she got was a black eye.

There are two police detectives on the case – Lieutenant Nice Guy and Sergeant Jerk. Sergeant Jerk is really a jerk, and Lieutenant Nice Guy is such a nice guy that he falls in love with the night club singer. They suddenly passionately hug and kiss each other, just as Sergeant Jerk walk through the door and gets Lieut. N.G. into a bit of a pickle.

Never fear, all is well, the bad guy is arrested, the black eye gets better, Sergeant Jerk mends his ways, and Lieutenant Nice Guy and the innocent singer with the artist visa share drinks at the bar as they talk about the days ahead when they will undoubtedly live happily ever after.

REMINDER: SPOILER ALERT FOR THE FILM YOU MIGHT WANT TO SEE. FILM = “JAANE JAAN”.

And we actually watched a film we liked and would recommend – an Indian film (subtitled) called Jaane Jaan, also on Netflix. Takes place in the north of India, a small town not far from Darjeeling. A young woman, estranged from her abusive husband for fourteen years, has built a life for herself and her daughter in this somewhat remote (but very picturesque) town in the mountains, owning a coffee shop. Her neighbor, an on-the-autism-spectrum math teacher, has a thing for her, but can hardly get up the courage to say “hello” when he goes every day to buy a takeout lunch at the coffee shop. He is the picture of unhappiness.

So is the woman, one day, when her former husband shows up and declares he wants two things – some money and his daughter.

The woman offers him money, but that does not satisfy him as he grabs for the daughter and a fight ensues, which ends when the woman discovers that he is dead. What to do?

The math teacher comes to the rescue. How does he even know that there’s a dead body in the apartment next door? Because he is brilliant enough to be able to add two and two together, when a normal person would not even know there were two two’s to be added. He volunteers to help, says he will destroy the body in a manner that no one would ever find it, and that she just should rest easy and rely on him.

ONCE MORE, SPOILER ALERT

The body is found within a day or two by the police. It is in a remote spot, has been disfigured and burnt beyond recognition. Near the body are the victim’s clothes, also burnt. But near the clothes is a tag, identifying the man.

An out of town police detective is assigned to help. It turns out that he was an old friend and classmate of the math teacher and is excited to see him. He also researched the life of the man who was killed and ties him into his ex-wife, whom he meets at the coffee shop. Suspicion falls upon the ex-wife, who is sure that she will be accused.

But no. The coroner says that the man died on the 10th (he had in fact died on the 9th), and on the 10th, his ex-wife and the daughter had what seemed to be an ironclad alibi. They went to a movie, to a restaurant, and to a karaoke club. And they had corroborating proof for each.

What happened? SPOILER ALERT. The husband was killed on the 9th. The math teacher did something with his body – we don’t know what. But on the 10th, the math teacher found a homeless man who was approximately the same size, murdered him and disfigured and burnt him beyond recognition, burnt the clothes, but left an ID tag for the husband (not for this murdered man) nearby, meanwhile arranging for the woman and her daughter to have a busy night, so that they could never be connected to the crime.

But the math teacher did not count on his old school friend who knew exactly how the math teacher thought and, reluctantly to be sure, concluding that only the math teacher could have carried out the crime on the 10th, but never understanding that the actual crime was carried out on the 9th and that he was dealing with two murders, not one.

The math teacher was convicted, and continued his life in his jail cell with his hard to solve math problems, no longer bothered by seeing but avoiding his neighbor and being annoyed by the children he taught in school.

All’s well that end’s well. By the way, this was a very well done film (subtitled in English). Interesting setting, and a unique way, as the film progressed, to explain to you the difference between what you saw and what actually transpired in a way that made you feel you were trusted to know the truth, not that you were dumb not to have understood it the first time around. If only that’s the way the world worked.

Post 377. Artis81.

No matter how I look at it, and I have looked at it from every angle other than from the point of view of a bowhead whale or a Galapagos tortoise, 81 is old. Even when someone says you are a “young 81”, you know that you are old. You can’t get away from it.

I was thinking about an elevator description of what happens when you turn 81. You obviously don’t know what tomorrow, or the year, will bring. Maybe I can relax with fewer responsibilities. Maybe I will develop a condition which will last the rest of my life. In either event, I guess you could say “It’s all downhill from here”.

But my biggest regret about aging is that at some point, you do age out, and when that happens, you most likely (ha!) won’t know what is happening to the world after that. And I want to know. I want to know if the lions will lie down with the sheep, if the Palestinians will break pita with the Israelis, if humanity will figure out how all the world can have the same climate as Addis Ababa with just the right amount of sunshine and water, if everyone will become Jewish (this is the least likely, I know), and if the Nationals will ever again win the World Series.

There’s a lot going on and, even if I can’t be part of it, I want to watch from the sidelines. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Well of course I may be thinking about all of this prematurely. Maybe I will, in fact, become a centenarian and have 20 or so more years to contemplate all of this. And by then, maybe my disgust level will have risen to high, that I will be happy to be on my way.

Things are not in good shape. We have always had wars and, I am afraid, always will. You just don’t want to be caught up, or have your family caught up, in one. But climate change on the level we are seeing it is new, and a population heading in the not too distant future to 10,000,000,000 may be more than the world could handle even without climate change.

Oh, well, one step at a time, as they say. But a step can go in many directions.

Is Art more pessimistic than usual, you might be asking, on what should be a celebratory day? No, is his answer, he just hasn’t had his first cup of coffee yet.

Tomorrow is my 81st birthday (the start of year no. 82). This is is my 375th blog post. I started early last year, because I wanted some practice. The question always looming was whether I would continue doing this after I turned 81 and, if so, what to do about the title, which will be outmoded. I actually like doing this – it does sort of anchor my day, so for now, it will continue. And the title, too, will continue – I have no idea how to change it and keep the same blog.

I read an article this morning on the Atlantic Magazine website, by Roge Karma (I have no idea who he is; I assume “he”), titled “Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History”, which I highly recommend to you. It seems to me that about 75% of the articles I read are not worth reading, about 20% are and give me some new insight, and about 5% seem brilliant. This is one of the brilliant ones.

I am not going to repeat everything he said by any means, but I do want to say what I got out of it. And this is my interpretation of his conclusions – he might find fault with what I am writing here. And I am certainly leaving a lot out.

Basically, he is suggesting that the United States was doing just fine, with each generation doing better economically than the previous one, until the mid-1960s, basically the Lyndon Johnson years. And, I don’t think he is bashing Johnson – he is just looking at some inflection points that occurred in the ’60s. One was the passage of civil rights legislation and the other the Vietnam War.

Until the civil rights laws were passed, white America was doing just fine, working hard, happy with Democratic governments that supported them, helped by strong unions, happy with increasing benefits and even the economic elite were not overly complaining about the high tax rates on their marginal income. Then, the government changed its focus, and began focusing on the racial minorities, especially the Black minority. The white working class felt abandoned and resentful, and became easy prey for the silent majority, southern white strategy developed by the Republicans that slowly, then quickly, convinced them to abandon the Democratic party.

Similarly, the Vietnam War saw the rise in influence of the educated elite, the university students, who made it respectable to badmouth the government, to stage visible protests against it, thus further alienating those working whites who by and large supported the military and the war, and who were more afraid of Communism than those left-wing, Marxist educated college students.

Both of these things led to the resurgence of the Republican party. Until then the Republican party was the home of the financial elite, the home of old American money. Nixon was the first Republican beneficiary of all of this, but he was still a believer in the old economy, so the government itself didn’t change much during his abbreviated presidency, no during Ford’s. And would have stayed the same during the Carter years and perhaps even thereafter, had it not been for the Arab oil boycott and resulting inflation.

With Ronald Reagan, however, the wealthy, establishment Republicans saw their opportunity to convince their new allies, the white working class, that what the white working class needed (in effect to guard against Black encroachment) was to lower the upper income tax rates, to create a rising tide which would raise all ships.

Unfortunately, this trickle down economic system never worked, and income distribution became more and more skewed, but the working class whites were convinced this was because of governmental interference, and that if the economy was truly set loose all would be well.

Today this division seems set in stone – in spite of so far failing attempts by the Biden administration to support unions and to talk like they are supporting the country’s working class, who are desperate to eliminate governmental controls as much as possible (thus, emphasis on free speech, and gun rights and all the rest), and who have become so gullible that the far right crazies have been able to gain so much influence, and who seem to be threatened so many historic American democratic conventions. At the same time, the educated classes, and especially the younger members of that class, have themselves moved into a new “woke”, post-modern direction, further alienating themselves from the working class.

And there we are today. In a terrible place.

I probably didn’t begin to do this article justice, so don’t rely on my analysis. Read it yourself.

In the meantime, I am getting ready for my birthday celebration. What will it encounter? I am not telling you, except to say that I have concluded that taking my family and all of my subscribers on a round-the-world cruise will not work this year. So you can unpack your bags.

Maybe next year.