Art is 80

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.

Assuming it doesn’t spread, what will happen when the war in Gaza is over? We aren’t very good at figuring out that sort of question, are we? Even when we win a war with relative ease, we find that winning the peace can escape us. Look at Iraq as an example.

Those who are thinking about post-war Gaza talk about the Palestinian Authority, or the United Nations, or an Israeli occupation, or some form of Gaza Palestinian self-rule yet to be determined. Then, they say “but none of these will work”. And they may be right.

After all, the United States – “the world’s oldest democracy” have a hard time governing ourselves and, with Trump rerunning, and the growing right wing groups in Congress, we may have to give up the idea of the constitutional democracy we have been struggling with. And certainly Israel, with a diminished center and a more diminished left, with a coalition which includes ministers who want to annex the West Bank and nuke Gaza, is not today a successful example of a functioning democracy.

In 2010 and 2011, we witnessed Arab Springs – when the possibility of popularly elected governments seemed to stand a chance to reconfigure the Arab world. Of course, the chance turned out not even to be a ghost of a chance, and led to, if anything, less representative governments.

It led to thinking whether any Muslim country can be governed by a representative, elected democracy. The only Muslim democracy is/was Turkey, and that’s because it had its growth as a secular Muslim country with a definitive line between religion and state. As it is now controlled by a religiously oriented Muslim government, its government has become more and more repressive, although in form it has not changed, and could reverse itself.

But clearly there is no true Arab democracy. Every country on the Arabian peninsula is tightly controlled by a religious, tribal or monarchical leader. Iraq is a “democracy”, but a pawn of Iran. Egypt controlled by the military, Jordan and Morocco by a king, Syria by a dictator, Libya by no one. Tunisia comes closest, having adopted a form of democracy after the deposing of its most recent dictator. But it is a shaky democracy.

And none of those countries have the problems that Gaza has. The devastation, the lack of a viable economy, the stated necessity of Israeli border control for Israel’s security (now viewed more important than ever), the crowding of its population, the lack of sufficient resources to come close to self-sufficiency. It’s not even clear if Gaza should stand by itself or if it should be combined with the West Bank.

Let’s assume that, when the war ends, there is no Hamas. That is Israel’s stated goal. But a substitute Hamas, one that believes Israel should not exist, one that believes peace is impossible, one that believes in Palestinians from the river to the sea, would be no better. But is it possible to take the Gazan population, young as it is, educated on the evils of Israel and the illegitimacy of the Zionist state, and put it under the control of people who do not believe that and who hold the respect of the population?

I saw a recent poll of Gazan and West Bank residents. Over 3/4 at this point support the actions of Hamas. Before the war, Hamas support (at least in Gaza) was less. But the overwhelming Israel response to the Hamas atrocities (which Gazans may or may not believe were unjustified) has certainly convinced more Palestinians of the inhumanity of the Israelis.

So any popularly elected government for Gaza (or the West Bank, presumably) would lead to a highly anti-Israeli government. Any government overseen by Israel would be anathema (for good reason) to the Gazans. Any government overseen by an international organization would be anathema to Israel.

Perhaps the only possible course of action would be to have the Abraham Accord governments, along with Jordan and Egypt (as countries with relations with Israel) and Saudi Arabia if it wishes to play a part, propose and oversee a government with sufficient safeguards for the borders of Israel. Such a government would have to be blessed by Israel, but Israel would have to have no day to day responsibilities with regard to it. Along with the establishment of the government, there would have to be massive assistance in rebuilding (an al-Marshall plan, I would suggest), and a complete rewrite of the education programs in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to build up the legitimacy of and the possibility of collaboration with the other.

If this won’t work, what will? And I don’t know if this would have a chance of working.

First, something that I should admit at the start. I don’t like holidays. I don’t think I ever really have. Some people, of course, love holidays, and can’t wait for the next one. Some people take holiday customs as being very important and wouldn’t let one go by without having a Christmas tree, or changing dishes, or fasting until the sun goes down. My attitude is different. To me, holidays are always an unwelcome interruption of my routine, and generally I like my routine.

But there are some good things about Thanksgiving that set it above other holidays, to my way of thinking. First, virtually everyone in America celebrates it. It is not limited to this religion or that, or this ethnic group or that. Secondly, except for everyone getting together to eat for dinner, there are no rituals involved. I like that. Third, it doesn’t make any difference whether you are a “believer”, or not.

The history of Thanksgiving is interesting and because it is both interesting and history, it is important. But it is not important with regard to how the holiday is celebrated. I find that good. Most people take the name of the holiday literally – we should be thankful for what we have – and don’t look back to see who was invited to the first dinner, were there signs then as to what would eventually happen to American Indians. etc. There is no Thanksgiving Haggadah.

Everyone should be thankful for what they have, and – although this should be recognized every day – it’s nice to have a day where we are reminded of this. It is better to go through life with a positive attitude than with a negative one, and maybe a reminder to be thankful helps us do this. But we shouldn’t become too self-centered when we feel thankful. Even though this is an American holiday, we should feel that we being in America is crucial to our being able to be thankful. We certainly shouldn’t let Thanksgiving feed into feelings of American exceptionalism. By now, I think we know that we are not exceptional.

Similarly, we shouldn’t look at others in other places or other circumstances with pity and think “there but for the grace of God go I”. There are a lot of misguided adages hanging around, and I always felt this was one of the most despicable. It assumes that there is a God who has decided to make my lot better than someone else’s, as a conscious (whatever that means when referring to a God) decision. And of course, it means that God decided I should be better off than that other guy, and that’s OK. Sadly, that may be the necessary consequence of belief in a God, who focuses on and has control over the individual, and many religions are of course based on just that type of belief.

Most of my Thanksgivings have been very nice – with family, with friends, with good food. No complaints. But there were a couple of Thanksgivings that I would have liked to have been able to do over.

The one my children remember is the one we went to St. Louis to celebrate (a lot of Thanksgivings in St. Louis over my life), when my sister was suffering from the lymphoma that eventually took her life. We all flew to St. Louis and I promptly got sick – as I recall it was some sort of a stomach bug. I stayed in a suburban hotel (I guess Edie stayed in the hotel, too, maybe, while the kids stayed with a cousin), and because my sister was immune compromised, I didn’t see her at all. I spent Thanksgiving Day by myself in my hotel room. I had no real appetite, although I knew I should eat something. All I wanted was a Swiss cheese sandwich (on rye? on wheat? I don’t remember) with mustard, and a coke. That is what I wanted.

I think my brother didn’t think that was what I wanted, so he went out and got me Chinese carryout, which he left outside my door. I did not want Chinese carry out, but I opened it up and what I saw was some sort of mushroom and noodle concoction, which (even though I didn’t eat it) set my recovery back several days. Finally, I got my Swiss cheese sandwich, which was delicious.

My most difficult Thanksgiving was during my first year of law school, in 1964. I didn’t want to fly back home, I was invited to a few places, but I didn’t really want to go anywhere. It seemed to me that I should just stay in New Haven, catch up on all my class work (I think I had a paper to write – maybe not). Law school was still new to me and, to be perfectly honest, I was lost. There were classes that I didn’t understand at all, cases that I couldn’t comprehend, and so forth, and I thought this would give a chance to go back and review what we had learned the first couple of months and give me a fresh start.

I was living in a law school dorm (my roommate had gone back to North Carolina), and I figured there would be some people hanging around like me, and that we would get a group together for a Thanksgiving dinner somewhere.

Wrong. As far as I know, I was the only law student who made that dumb choice. When I looked around the campus on Thursday morning, it was deserted. Not just a few people. Zero people.

I went out to get breakfast. Every place within walking distance was closed. I did have a car, but for some reason, I didn’t want to get in it, and just roam around. I remember going back to the law school, and getting something to eat and drink out of the vending machines. And the vending machines were just basic vending machines – candy bars and potato chips. That sort of thing. And that’s what I had for breakfast.

Oh, and I had the same thing for lunch.

I remember at about 5 or 6, I went out again, to get my “Thanksgiving dinner”. With all of the restaurants around the Yale campus, I was sure some would be open. I started walking. Closed. Closed. Closed. Closed.

Finally, I found a Chinese restaurant that was open. I went in and ordered dinner. I was the only customer.

That was Thursday – I still had Friday, Saturday and Sunday in front of me. Food would no longer be a problem, but I was still the only person around, and I will say the feeling of loneliness was surprisingly overwhelming.

That was the last time I ever did anything as misguided as that.

Having bared my soul and written about one of my biggest professional embarrassments yesterday, I thought it might be appropriate to talk about a success. Then, tomorrow, we can think about turkey (or whatever you have instead of turkey, like a …… turkey sub).

So, in 1989, my first law firm imploded (another story waiting to be told anew), and I – along with about 20 of my fellow lawyers joined the Washington office of a large, multi-national, New York based law firm (still another story to be told anew), which I hated.

Putting my hatred aside, our new office was composed of the 20 or so of us from the old firm (maybe not quite that many) and an equal number of lawyers that had been with the new firm previously, or who came to the firm from elsewhere. We were an odd mix.

Now to my triumph:

The client was a Pittsburgh based construction company that had acquired a multifamily property in Pasadena, TX (suburban Houston) directly from HUD. It was a failed property. HUD had foreclosed on the original mortgage, and taken title to the property. Now it was selling it to the highest qualified bidder, providing (as I recall) both financing and a subsidy so that the property could serve low income families. The property required a significant amount of rehabilitation before it would be ready for occupancy.

When HUD put foreclosed properties up for sale, it issued a prospectus which described the property and the terms of the sale. One of the terms of the sale, as described, was that HUD was going to provide rent subsidies under the Section 8 program to the buyer, and that these subsidies would be available at the time title transferred to the buyer.

Our client bought the property and was told by HUD that the subsidies would not be available until after all the rehab was completed and the property inspected and approved by HUD. They said that, notwithstanding what they said in the prospectus, this is what they meant to have said. This would have made the purchase infeasible.

We sued the government for breach of contract (I don’t remember the details of the claim exactly) in the United States Court of Federal Claims. While I never was, nor wanted to be, a full time litigator, I have been involved with a fair amount of litigation over the years, and from time to time argued cases in court, but I never did it solo, and usually not as the lead counsel. I was often the strategist, the one most versed in the facts and the law, but never the one most versed in courtroom procedures, so I relied on someone else to make sure motions were filed when appropriate, deadlines weren’t missed, and the opposing counsel’s filings monitored.

In this case, I worked with a senior associate who had been with the new firm for a number of years, and was very highly regarded. I was the partner on the case, and therefore in charge, but I was very reliant on him for the procedural details. We also decided that he, since he was a full time litigator, would do the actual arguing, although I had written all of the briefs, etc. He and I carefully went over what he was going to say, and rehearsed. I went into the court room confident of our position and of his ability to present it.

The judge, whom I had met on a few pre-trial meetings, was quirky. That’s all I can say – he was a quirky guy. When it was time to put forth our case, he called on my associate, who went up to present it. After he said a sentence or two, the judge interrupted him with a question. It was pretty quick for that kind of an interruption, but as I recall, I thought the question itself reasonable. My litigator fumbled around a bit trying to answer it (I am not sure if he really ever did), and when he was finished fumbling, it was time to get back to his presentation of our position. But something happened. It was like the question threw him completely off-track, and he had no idea how to get back on course. Like he forgot everything we talked about. Like he forgot what the case was about. He finished and sat down.

I couldn’t believe it. Our winning case went down the drain. I was aghast. And it must have shown on my face, because the judge looked down on me and said, “Mr. Hessel, you look unhappy. I don’t want anyone in my court room to be unhappy. If you want to add anything to Mr. ______’s presentation, come on up and address the court.”

Wow! How often does that happen? I got up and explained what we were trying to say. I knew the situation cold, so it really wasn’t an effort. I was just explaining it, the same way I would explain it to you. And then I sat down.

Some time later, the judge issued his opinion. We won the case (as we should have). But, quirky fellow that he was, his opinion was equally quirky. I have read many, many judicial opinions, and none of them mention a lawyer, unless the lawyer is being targeted for some malfeasance. But in this case (and I am not looking at it now, so my language will not be exact), the judge said:

“In fact, I was about to rule in favor of the government, but then Mr. Hessel stepped up to the podium and convinced me of the correctness of the position of his client.”

Yes, this is written in the published opinion of the Court of Federal Claims.

So, this was a success. And the lawyer who almost lost the case for us? No, he did not become a partner in the firm. And, no, I don’t know that I ever spoke with him again. Happily, I have completely forgotten his name, his appearance, or anything else about him.

I had lunch with a friend yesterday who is a regular reader of my blog. He wanted me to write something about my legal career – what did I do? How did I do it? I told him I had hesitated only because I didn’t think it was interesting, but he tried to convince me I was wrong, so here I go.

And, dear reader, promise me something. Please read this post to the end. I know that some of it may seem uninteresting, but reading it to the end will be worth it.

I first started the private practice of law in 1972. I had previously done several years of government work, first in St. Louis and then with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. I went to the office for my last day of law practice on December 31, 2011. During that time, I practiced with three different firms, and the majority of my practice involved representing clients who developed, managed or financed affordable housing. And most of the housing I worked with were multifamily housing developments which received either FHA mortgage insurance, federal subsidies, direct government loans, low income housing tax credits, or a mixture of two or more of these.

The work was interesting, had a public benefit aspect to it, and was often frustrating, of course. Dealing with the government is never easy. Because I had worked at HUD for a few years before entering private practice, I had the advantage of knowing how the government worked, how government employees thought, and I knew many of the officials with whom I interacted personally.

What should I tell you? Maybe I will start with one of my most embarrassing moments. Then, if I sense any interest in this, I can later talk about my successes.

Probably my most embarrassing moment involved the first real estate construction closing I was ever involved with, only a few months after I left HUD. I had just started with a small 7 man firm that was only two years old and was created to do this type of work. One of the partners assigned me to represent a developer from New Jersey. I don’t remember my client’s names or anything about them, except that the FHA world was new to them as well. This would be their first FHA project, and I sensed they didn’t know very much. The firm had never represented them before.

The project was a federally subsidized property with, as I recall, maybe 20 townhouse units, to be built with an FHA insured loan that came from Wachovia Bank in North Carolina. It was being built in a small town in southwest Virginia, Chatham VA. And yes, I did have a local lawyer to work on all of the zoning and other local law aspects of the transaction.

The closing was held in Richmond, at the HUD office there. Oh, you may not know what a closing is. Basically, it is when the financing is put in place, the construction contract signed, and the first funds released by the lender, so that construction can start. I wasn’t too nervous, because I was going to the closing with a partner in the firm, and I assumed I would just listen to what he said and see how he handled the closing. I figured that after doing this a couple of times, I’d be ready to do it on my own.

At least this is what I thought until the night before the closing when the partner told me that he decided he wasn’t going to go (or maybe something had come up and he couldn’t go), and I would be the only one there from the firm. What???

I drove to Richmond and met with the client and then with everyone else, including a lawyer representing the lender, an employee of the lender, the architect, the contractor, people representing the title company, and a slew of people from HUD. I soon realized that I was in charge of the closing, but really didn’t know what to do. There was a pile of documents that had to be reviewed and signed, and I just guessed that I should identify each and pass them around. That seemed to be the right thing to do.

The group was friendly enough and I was stumbling through the closing, looking more confident than I was in fact (obviously), and I began to relax a bit. And then a question came up. It had something to do with the title insurance, and the question seemed like something you would learn in Title Insurance 101. I thought I knew what the answer must be, but I had not thought about it before, and I didn’t want to blow it. Although I don’t remember the question, and although I thought it basic, I also remember that a wrong answer could raise all sorts of future problems. So I punted, and said that although I knew the answer, that there was something that I wanted to check, if they would give me a couple of minutes to call my office.

I called the partner to confirm my thoughts on this clearly very basic question. I asked him, and his answer was: “I have no idea. I have never done an FHA closing.” “What?”, I responded, “Can you switch me to someone who has?” And he said, “No one here has. This is the first one the firm has ever done.” I didn’t faint, but I did feel all of the blood drain out of my head down into my feet. I took a deep breath and went back to the closing room.

“It’s as I thought”, I said, “there’s no complication here. The answer is _________.” Everyone shook their head up and down.

The closing was completed. I drove back to DC. I felt relieved. I had completed the closing. On to other things.

One day, about nine months later, the phone in my office rang. It was the lawyer who represented the lender, the bank, at the closing. He told me that my clients had defaulted on the loan, and abandoned the project mid-construction. I hadn’t known that, but it didn’t surprise me – I hadn’t any confidence in them.

When this type of default occurred, a lender would “assign the loan” back to the FHA. The FHA (a division of HUD) would then become the lender, and HUD would pay the lender the amount it had already loaned out under the FHA insurance contract. Assigning a loan is not difficult. The most important thing is for the lender to take the mortgage note, and to endorse it on the back over to the FHA commissioner. Not difficult at all.

But one thing. In order to do this, the lender must have the original mortgage note. And the lawyer representing Wachovia didn’t have it. He asked me if, perchance, I had taken the original note by mistake at the closing. I told him that was impossible (and I thought “Jeez. He lost the mortgage note?”), but I would check my file.

I hadn’t looked at the file since the day of the closing and within its several inches of documents, there it was. The original mortgage note – the most important document for the lender to have in his possession as he left an FHA closing.

I called the lawyer back and told him that, in fact, I had it (I was a bit embarrassed). I told him I had swept up all the papers left on the table after the closing and put them in my file, without looking at them. But I asked him how it was possible that he (or his client) hadn’t made sure to take the mortgage note. “Well”, he said, “you didn’t know this, but it was my first FHA closing”.

Let’s start with an aside: Happy birthday to Joe Biden, 81 years young. As it seems to be every year, he remains six days older than I am, and he is gearing up for another presidential run, something that frankly has never occurred to me. But I must add that an old friend (you know who you are, obviously) who I have known since college and who is already 81 has just announced that he is running for the Florida state legislature on the Libertarian ticket. Now, I doubt that a Libertarian will win his election, but I do think that it blunts any criticism that he has of Biden on account of age. I am sure being a Florida state representative is as hard a job as running the country. I wish him luck and – if anyone can figure out a way that I can vote for him absentee – I will.

Now, for Argentina. I have never been to Argentina, and would love to go there. I feel an affinity for two reasons stemming from my childhood. My grandparents used to go to Miami for a couple of weeks in the winter, and made friends with a couple from Buenos Aires. Their daughter was getting married and my grandparents debated whether to take a trip to Buenos Aries for the wedding. I was probably 6 or 7, and tried to get them to go, but they didn’t. And then, when I started to collect stamps at about age 8 or 9, I had all these stamps with pictures of Eva Peron. I wasn’t used to seeing women on stamps and that intrigued me, too.

At any rate, Argentina always seemed like a nice place. Pleasant. Big cities. Beautiful countryside. Mountains. What could be bad? It turned out a lot could be bad and, economically and politically, it often was. And it has been such a mystery – Argentina seemed to have everything it needed, but it could never quite put it all together. If I were 40 years younger, and fluent in Spanish, I would like to study Argentina. No one has really been able to figure it out.

The post-Covid years have not been kind to Argentina. We complain about inflation here when it goes above 3%, and in fact it went as high as 7%. But in Argentina, inflation this year has been 140%. Just for one example. Half the population is considered to be living in poverty, for another.

At any rate, Argentina had a presidential election yesterday. The winner was a younger Donald Trump. Javier Milei is in his 50s, he is a former TV personality, and he is a far right right winger. His platform: get rid of the central bank (Argentina’s Fed), peg the currency to the US dollar, outlaw abortion, gut government spending, slash welfare, eliminate several government agencies (like the ministries of culture, health, women and education), liberalize gun ownership, and more. His vice-president is a woman from a military family, who wants to shutter the museum that memorializes those thousands of Argentinians who “disappeared” during the years of military dictatorship.

Former/future President Trump and former/future Brazilian president Bolsinaro have both praised the election results. The pre-election polling showed it to be a close race, with Milei projected to win by a small margin. In fact, he won 56% to 44%.

For the Democrats who want to ignore the current and consistent polling showing a slim popular vote victory for Mr. 78 over Mr. 81, this should be a clear warning. The world is not what we would like it to be, and we must adapt our tactics to keep it from falling further down the proverbial rat hole. Time for President Biden to graciously bow out, and for the Democrats to get together (perhaps without a great deal of public oversight) and select a new candidate for the 2024 presidential election.

How many times must I say that?

Ending with another aside: has anyone else noticed that the NYT is changing from a daily news vehicle to more of a magazine, with articles that reflect general issues, but are not necessarily germane to the day of publication? Today, for example, there’s a front page article on 30 year mortgage loans, and internal front section articles on Morocco’s choices in how to rebuild after a major earthquake and how they are still looking for survivors after the terrible storm in Acapulco, climate changes in Death Valley, the “iron monkeys” no longer in Harlem, a mother who finds her son’s grave in a pauper’s cemetery, a cancer victim who is providing posthumously help to other cancer victims. All interesting, to be sure, but not “news”.

At the same time, the Washington Post has announced that it is cutting 240 jobs and trimming back its expenditures.

Without the Times and Post operating at full throttle (is that a term that works here?), how will we keep up with anything? Most other newspapers have already failed to meet their responsibilities.

This one is important, but complex. You may want to read my Nov 16 post first, if you haven’t already. It’s about the course I am taking to help me understand the world of post-modernism, decolonization, intersectionality, oppressor/oppressed, white/non-white which permeates so much thinking in the humanities and social sciences at universities today. And how the departments which teach these subjects are set up in such a way not to have an open search for “truth”, but to start with a “given” and look for supportive facts. And how Jews are classified as “white” and therefore are in the “oppressor” class, and that Israel is a place that is illegitimate and must be “decolonized”. If you do not believe this, you are not “woke”, as this term in used by the proponents of this way of thinking.

[As an aside, it may be that Jews are classified as “white” by these post-modern intellectuals, but they are classified as “not white” by white supremacists. Beginning to see the problem?]

Now, let’s dig a little deeper. You may have seen that Brandeis, Columbia, Fordham, George Washington University and all Florida public universities and colleges have suspended or decertified an organization called Students for Justice in Palestine, which is one of the most active of the anti-Israel “from the river to the sea” groups, on campuses nationwide.

[Another aside: In Florida, Gov. DeSantis banned these groups from public institutions state-wide. He and the State have been sued on the basis that this is a violation of members’ free speech. Who brought the suit? The ACLU. This is one more reason why I just do not like the ACLU, and haven’t since the Skokie Nazi march incident decades ago. I view the ACLU’s putting free speech on a pedestal the same way I view all those organizations which put religious expression or the right to own guns on a pedestal. Sorry, ACLU supporters, but that is how I feel.]

Let’s go back to Students for Justice in Palestine. It may surprise you to know that this organization (which keeps its address, officials, members, and financial supporters a secret – or tries to) has between 200 and 300 (another secret) active branches on US campuses. And that it does have a website: http://www.nationalsjp.org. (By the way, it is not a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization)

Five days after the Hamas attack on Israel, SJP declared a “Day of Resistance” on more than 200 campuses. It issued a toolkit instructing local chapters on how to act and react. It called Israel a vassal state of the United States, and a state that has been engaged in genocidal activity to its founding. It clearly supports the destruction of “the Zionist entity”, although it has not – to my knowledge – threatened Jewish genocide, and it welcomes Jewish supporters. On its website, Students for Justice for Palestine also supporters various black, feminist and Latino/a movements for freedom, saying all of these movements are closely related. This, of course, is consistent with the post-modern, woke, decolonizing teaching described above and on my blog post of two days ago.

In the toolkit, the SJP declared that October 7 was an “historic win for the Palestinian resistance”. Some of its campus branch organizations went further. For example, Michigan: “Power to our freedom fighters. Glory to our martyrs.” John Jay College: “Do not let the Western media call this terrorism. This is DECOLONIZATION.” Swarthmore: “There exists only the colonized and the colonizer, an oppressed and an oppressor. To resist is to survive and it is our right.” [These statements were quoted in an excellent article by Judy Maltz in Haaretz on Friday]

The origins of Students for Justice in Palestine is a bit murky, but it is clear that one of the founders is a man named Hatem Bazian, originally from Nablus in the West Bank and now on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley. It is of continual interest that so many leaders of this pro-Palestinian movement are at Berkeley, at San Francisco State, at U Cal Davis – and other branches of the California public university system.

If you were to grade Hatem Bazian on his level of activity, you would have to give him an A. Just look at the Maltz article (if you can get beyond the paywall) or better yet, look at his own website (www.hatembazian.com). This is one active fellow, and he has started a number of organizations, including Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine. Maltz talks about attempts to link these organizations itself to Hamas (Bazian denies any direct connection) to see if there are any funding links. Her conclusion is (to paraphrase) that it’s possible to see the smoke, but no one yet has found the fire. She also cites a few statements by Bazian that go beyond criticism of Israel and seem to target Jews more generally – such as the influence Jews have on American Universities, which can be seen by the names on so many university buildings.

I am not going to go further into Bazian’s many writings and activities – he is one of the ultimate “woke, post-modern” intellectuals, who sees Israel and Israel’s supporters (which include not only the United States, but many “Zionist Arabs”, those Arabs, mainly from the countries party to the Abrahamic Accords) as colonialists, occupying Palestinian land, pure and simple. He concentrates, as you would expect, on the West Bank as well as Gaza, and (this time perhaps more understandably) rails against Israeli settlements, and annexation threats. But he sees it all in the context of his overall theory.

From all of this, one can see the difficulty universities have in policing organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which are national in scope, have available teaching or action resources, and which may or may not be well funded. But identifying SJP and the people and forces behind it, is clearly a first step. The question is, though: what is step number two?

I am not one of those people who go through life angry. I rarely think of myself as angry at anyone. When I sense anger, it generally melds with disappointment. I decide I am more disappointed with what someone did than I am angry at them.

But today, I find myself angry. Not disappointed. Just angry. Disappointment has got me nowhere. Maybe anger will.

(By this way, this may become a long post, I am angry at so many people. Tomorrow, I think I may list the people that I am not angry at. You will be able to breeze through that one.)

Let’s go down the list, one by one.

(1) I am angry at Donald Trump. I am angry at him for making the world so much worse than it was (and it had a load of problems before he even came along). I am angry at the way he has torn the country apart politically, at the way he has threatened our democracy, at the way he gives bigots permission to be bigots, at the way he believes himself above the law, at the way he speaks to and about others, and so much more. I am not disappointed in Donald Trump, I am angry at him.

(2) I am angry at Vladimir Putin. I am angry at him for destroying what forms of democratic values were taking place in Russia, at the way he punishes his political enemies and anyone whom he deems a threat to him and his regime, and to his unwarranted invasion of Ukraine. I am not disappointed in Vladimir Putin, I am angry at him.

(3) I am angry at Hamas, its leadership and its supporters. I am angry at them for their unwillingness to admit to the legitimacy of Israel, for their disregard of the safety and welfare of their own people, and most of all for their sponsoring the October 7 attack on Israel with the death of 1400 Israelis and the capture as hostages of another 150 or so. I am not disappointed in them, I am angry at them.

(4) I am angry at Elon Musk. I am angry at him because of his purchase of Twitter, his weakening of Twitter’s already weak policing of hate speech, and his willingness in fact to engage in hate speech itself on the platform, which he renamed X. I also think Musk has too much money and too much power – between Space X, Twitter, Tesla, Starlink and other entities that permit him decide on the future of the U.S. space program, whether or not certain war zones can use communication devices and so forth – but I am not angry at any one for this, although I probably would be if I knew how to direct my anger.

(5) I am angry at Bibi Netanyahu and the members of his current coalition government for their lapse of security on the country’s Gaza border, on their failure to utilize their intelligence in monitoring activity in Gaza, for their riling up the settlers in the West Bank against the Arabs living there and supporting potential annexations, for their attempts to reconstruct Israel’s court system, and for their kowtowing to the country’s Orthodox religious establishment.

(6) I am angry at Joe Biden for not keeping to his promise to be a one term president and recognizing that his perceived physical age is going to mean that Donald Trump will become the next president, and not bowing out of the race early enough so that the Democrats can unite behind and prep an alternative candidate. OK, here I guess I am disappointed at Biden as well.

(7) I am angry at the Ayatollah Khamenei and his religious followers, who have been supporting, financially and otherwise, proxy groups around the Middle East to threaten and destablize Israel and the region. I am not disappointed in him.

(8) I am angry at politicians in Brazil, Argentina, and various African companies who have decided to emulate Donald Trump and falsely claim fraud in election results, threatening democratic institutions in their countries. I do not know them well enough to be disappointed in them.

(9) I am angry at virtually every Republican in the Senate and the House of Representatives for their stated or tacit support of Donald Trump, and their disregard to normal American governmental practices. I am disappointed in some, but not most of them.

(10) I am angry at right wing radio and TV commentators, who inundate their listeners and viewers with regular hate filled and inaccurate information about policies of those officials with whom they disagree. I am not disappointed in them.

(11) I am angry at the American voting public, which continues to support Donald Trump and dismiss Joseph Biden, so that every poll shows that Trump will win the 2024 election, base on the nonsense that Trump kept the world at peace, that Trump’s economy was much stronger than Biden’s, that Trump will control the border better, and the Republicans are better stewards of the national debt than Democrats, as well as ignoring Trump’s first term divisiveness, his continual lying, his 91 felony count indictments, his vindictiveness, his claims of election fraud, and so forth. And yes, I am disappointed with the American public.

This is my 368th daily post, without a miss. But who’s counting?

I am sitting in my home office, looking out a window, seeing so many trees in transition, some green, some yellow, one red, some barren. But I know where this is all heading, and what I will see out of my window, say, two or three weeks from now. I am confident what will occur.

With the rest of the world, I have no such confidence and have, in fact, no idea where things are heading. Nor do you, nor anyone else. Sure, there’s a thrill to that – it keeps you interested. But – at times like this – there is fear.

Where am I going with this? No idea. So let’s veer off this subject, but just a bit.

Ukraine. As I understand it, there are many Russians who simply think that Ukraine should not exist as a separate country. Can this view be justified by history? I turn to Wikipedia, which informs me that:

1. From the 9th through the 13th century, there was a Slavic, proto-Russian empire, centered in Kiev and including much of what is now Ukraine and Russia.
2. In the 13th century, after this Kievan empire weakened, the Mongols took it over, and for the next 600 years, today’s Ukraine was ruled by outsiders – Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians, Austrians, Ottomans, and Russians.
3. In the 18th century, today’s Ukraine was divided between Russia, Poland, and Austro-Hungary. After the partition of Poland, it dropped out of the picture and today’s Ukraine was divided into Russian and Austro-Hungarian sectors.
4. In 1917, after the Bolsheviks defeated the Romanovs, a Ukrainian Republic was formed, but only lasted for five years.
5. In 1922, Ukraine was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Crimea was a separate autonomous district, designated as part of the Russian, not the Ukrainian, SSR.
6. In 1954, Crimea was transferred by the Soviet Union to the Ukrainian SSR.
7. In 1991, Ukraine became independent.
8. In 2014, Russia occupied the Crimean Peninsula, and started a campaign that culminated in a full scale invasion and occupation of the eastern Donbas region in 2022.

Obviously, this is a simplistic outline. But what you can see is (discounting the period ending 800 or so years ago, when the large Slavic empire was Kiev, not Moscow, led), Russia itself has never ruled over or included all of Ukraine, and since the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, Ukraine has been separate from Russia, both SSRs in the USSR.

So, when the Russians invaded in 2022, they invaded a sovereign nation – and, in fact, one whose sovereignty they had specifically pledged to respect at various times, including in a binding treaty, signed after the breakup of the USSR, when the nuclear military weapons stored in Ukraine were moved to Russia.

So, my first rhetorical questions of the day. Why all those who are condemning Israel’s action in Gaza not condemning equally strongly Russia’s action in Ukraine? Why are all those demanding a ceasefire in Gaza not demanding a ceasefire in Ukraine?

On the other hand, when the Russians marched into Ukraine and began to destroy roads and towns and kill civilians, millions of Ukraine were granted temporary or permanent permission to relocate in neighboring countries – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and more. When, however, Israel moved into Gaza, no other country (neighboring or not) has stated its willingness to accept, on even a temporary or transit basis, a single Gazan? My second rhetorical question is: why not?

Moving to still another hand, when Russia kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children and moved them to Russia, out of contact with their families, to “reeducate” and Russify them, the world (through the international criminal court) responded by naming Vladimir Putin as a was criminal and has continued to demand their release. When Hamas kidnapped about 250 Israelis and still holds them, there is no action at the international criminal court, and demands for their release seem to be limited to Israelis and their American supporters. My third rhetorical question is:

When Hamas invaded Israel, its goal was to begin the process of destroying the State of Israel – exactly what that would mean is unclear – but it could certainly lead to a “leave or die” order to Israeli Jews, while a Palestinian run government would control the land from the river to the sea. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it was not to wipe Ukraine off the map, but to make its government subservient to the Russian government, and to lop off parts of Ukraine and incorporate them into Russia. Other than the war casualties, there was no threat to the very lives of the Ukrainian people. So, the Hamas invasion potentially has more dire consequences than does the Russian invasion. Rhetorically, speaking: why doesn’t the world see this obvious difference and react accordingly?

That’s probably enough for today – but one more thought. And one more question (not rhetorical): is Hamas the government of Gaza? If so, why are they doing nothing to protect the citizens of Gaza – why don’t they simply return the hostages in return for some sort of ceasefire agreement and more? It’s because they are not a normal government. They are a pan-Muslim movement dedicated to ridding Muslim soil from the Zionist entity, and Gaza is a handy base. Gaza has no government. And until Hamas is neutralized (and structures are in place to keep them neutralized), Israel will have no rest.

That’s definitely enough for today.

I am taking a four part Zoom course titled “Ideological Antisemitism and Progressive Politics” taught by David Bernstein of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values. The course is sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Governmental Antisemitism Policies. I had heard of neither of these two groups until last week.

The first segment was yesterday afternoon. Its title was Radical Roots: How an Extreme Ideology Took Roots in Institutions. I thought it extremely worth while – it built on what I have been thinking about and concluding, and added – of course- much I did not know.

I took notes. Let’s see if I can make sense of them.

We started with a video of a young blond, blue-eyed woman, hair covered, a student (apparently) at the School of Social Work at Columbia University, talking about a pro-Palestinian “die-in” her school’s main building. In this brief video, among other things, she spoke of the need to “decolonize” social work. This then took us to the website of the School itself, which explained the Columbia approach to social work: intellectual decolonization, understanding social work as working towards the elimination of societal systems of oppression as viewed by the oppressed, as implementing Radical Social Justice. This is a paraphrase – even more than a paraphrase. And you thought social work was making sure low income people were able to secure their governmental benefits.

Bernstein stated (probably should be obvious) that you can look at any area of study this way, not only social work. Any could center on the relationship of the oppressed to the oppressors.

He then discussed the concept of “post-modernism”, which he described first as “going beyond what we now have”. He said it is an ideology that denies that there are “truths” and “knowledge”, which it describes as only the creation of the powerful, privileged classes.

In other words, post-modernism tells us that we (not being post-modernists) look at things not objectively, but through the view points of the elite. The white. The privileged.

And that our looking at things from the biased way, makes it very hard for us to talk with post-modernists, because not only our perspectives but even our choice of words and language betray our lack of understanding. Therefore, we can say things that we might feel as neutral (or even as something to discuss or debate), but which in fact are not neutral, but betray our “white” mentality. And, we Jews, we are considered by post-modernists to be white and privileged, so we obviously lack understanding of the world.

He traces this ideology back to the 1950s and 1960s, and the writings of three men: Foucault, Marcuse and Derrida. Two Frenchmen and a German? Perhaps, but three Jews, of course.

But these three talked about post-modernism as an intellectual activity, a philosophical activity, an alternative way to see the world. They had their followers, however, who took it a step further – and decided to combine their philosophies with activism. And they took a still additional step and said that those who are the “oppressed classes” were the only ones who had a true understanding of their position in society and of the workings of society. The privileged classes were blinded by their privileges. In other words, only Blacks understand the position of Blacks; only the disabled understand the disabled. (But you don’t have to say that only Jews understand Jews, because Jews are white and are privileged, so this generalization does not apply to them).

Professor Edward Said, who also taught at Columbia, carried this forward with his students, claiming – all this is according to Bernstein – that to understand the world, you had to learn to decolonize your mind.

And of course all this related to the colonization of other races, and other locations, by the privileged whites, and that can make the United States, and certainly Israel, as States which continue to exist as exemplars of this phenomenon. Another example is Australia, of course.

What if you disagree with this entire theory of looking at the world? Tell this to a post-modernist, and he will give you his answer. That means you are a racist. And he (I am not making this post gender neutral, I know – and that does not make me a member of the patriarchy) will tell you that you are not “woke” (i.e., you have not awakened to this important concept) and have no understanding of the study of Critical Social Justice.

He then turned to San Francisco State College (now University), which became in the late 1960s, the center of these studies, with the creation of an ethics department dominated by post-modernists. The chancellor at the time was S.I. Hayakawa, who later became a one term U.S. Senator. He was against the creation of this department, but gave in to continual pressure, by activists such as Stokely Carmichael.

Bernstein says that the ethics department was not a normal academic department – it was not built on a basis of intellectual neutrality to be a place of research and debate. It was a department built on the basis of a particular ideology, with answers given and with research limited to studies which would support the predetermined ideological conclusions of the department’s ideology. Neutral research and debate were rejected, he says, as simply a cover for white privilege and supremacy.

Since then, Bernstein continues, post-modern department after department in certain study areas have proliferated. And in some places, post-modern curricula have been developed, and are being implemented, in K-12 schools.

Bernstein finds all of this very dangerous, of course. He finds it uncomfortable that Jews are considered white and privileged, with no credence paid to their history of being the victim.

In the next session, we are going to begin to hone in on the relationship to this antisemitism. Bernstein ended by suggesting that, if you are looking for societies where Jews do well, you have to look at liberal, open societies, where debate is encouraged. And that this is just the opposite of post-modern (and I guess woke?) societies, where debate is looked upon as a tool of the enemy.

My score is 50-50. I thought there would be well more than the originally anticipated 60,000 at yesterday’s Rally for Israel, and more than the updated estimate of 100,000. It turns out that there were 290,000 who attended (unofficial estimate) and that, if we had not been drafted for unexpected grandparent duties, there would have been 290,002. Score one for me.

On the other hand, I was concerned that there was a lack of clear focus, that a rally for Israel, for hostage release, and for antisemitism might get confused. The confusion never seemed to arise. Hostage release and antisemitism were separate, but not conflicting, subjects, and each of the speakers, as far as I could see, stayed away from talking about the current war in ways that could antagonize others. In other words, no one talked about an immediate ceasefire, and no one talked about nuking Gaza. So I lose on this one.

I don’t know how many watched the rally from afar – I assume it was televised by C-Span (it’s their sort of thing), but we watched it streaming on the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington website. I didn’t watch every minute of it. Or rather, maybe I did watch every minute of it, at least out of a corner of my eye, because the computer was on, but I didn’t listen to every minute of it, because I only turned up the sound when there was something I thought would be interesting.

I didn’t watch, for example, the relatives of the hostages talking about the necessity to get their loved ones back. I have heard enough of that over the past month. I didn’t listen to any of the music (although I started to several times) because I didn’t like any of the music.

I did hear most of the other speeches, I think. I missed Van Jones (I am sure he gave a good talk), and I couldn’t understand most of what Natan Sharansky said. But I thought that Deborah Lipstadt gave a very good talk, as did all of the Congressional representatives, and even Rev. John Hagee.

Hagee, a Christian Zionist with very strong feelings, was – I believe – the most controversial of the speakers, and I can only assume that there was a good reason to invite him to talk. He gave a fine rally pep talk, avoiding the stridency of some of his views and the details of his theology. I was relieved at that. I had earlier read that no rabbis or other Jewish clergy were invited to speak. I can’t say that I understand that, either. But I also can’t say that they were missed. This was a political event (with sociological overtones) and not a religious gathering.

I was also pleased to see that logistics (even with such great numbers) created no problems, although I did hear that a number of bus drivers at Dulles decided to refuse to carry attendees from Detroit to a rally for Israel. I hope they found other ways to get to the Mall.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the fighting in Gaza continues, and skirmishes with Hezbollah threaten the north of Israel and the south of Lebanon.

Israel continues to be criticized for its activity near Gaza hospitals (or within them), including recent criticism from Trudeau in Canada. This is understandable, of course, because both the images and the facts are hard to grasp. But this is war and I don’t know that you can hold back from what you think needs to be done, just because people will be hurt. As I have so often said, we firebombed Dresden and Tokyo and Hamburg, and dropped atomic weapons on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and look what we did to Vietnam. Just sayin’.

And, of course, Hamas is egging Israel on by using people, including children, as shields, traveling in ambulances, and having major headquarters and warehouses beneath schools and hospitals. This, I don’t think is speculation; by now, it seems clearer than clear. And it is not normal, although neither is Hamas’ statements that it is not responsible for the welfare of its people – let Israel and the UN worry about them, they said.

Plus, although attacking hospitals seems like a terrible thing to do, is it any different from other attacks? Does it make sense to say that a healthy civilian can be collateral damage, but an injured or ill civilian shouldn’t be? Does that make any sense when you come to think of it? Why would sick people be treated differently from those who are well? OK, this is a rhetorical question – no answers required.

Last night, I began to read through one of the C-Span Booknotes volumes, and I was reading an excerpt of the program with Elliot Cohen (Director, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University) about his book Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime (I don’t know the book). He wrote about, among others, Churchill, Lincoln and Ben Gurion, as exemplars of wartime leadership. Each of these leaders of different countries at different times were confronted with military necessities that required decisions that would result in many, many deaths and injuries. In all three cases, where military necessity required it, the leaders did not shy away from authorizing the actions. Sadly, this is just what war requires.

We will see what happens in Israel. And we will continue to see what the repercussions will be for Jewish communities outside of Israel. In an hour, I am going to attend the first session of a four session class on the development and increase antisemitism on American campuses. I hope to learn something and, if I do, you can be sure I will write about it here.

But not today.

It’s about 10 a.m. In about an hour, we are scheduled to leave for the Rally for Israel on the National Mall. Maybe I will divide today’s post into two posts – a short one now, and a short one after we return from the Mall. I don’t know exactly what to expect.

Here is what I know: There has been a lot of publicity, not only locally but around the country. And there are a lot of people, a lot of buses, and a lot of groups heading here for the event. I had read that the organizers had originally expected 60,000 people. My guess is there will be more. There have been much larger rallies over the past week or two in London and Paris for example – over 100,000 in Paris at an anti-antisemitism rally last weekend. I know there are many coming to town from the New York area (as always), and I am sure from elsewhere.

We are meeting up with a group from our synagogue, Adas Israel. Now, we are a very large congregation, and located a few Metro stops from the Mall, and I expect there will be a few hundred in our group alone. And if we are having a synagogue group rallying together, you can assume that all other local synagogues are doing the same (that would be 50+), as well as all sorts of organizations, including the local Jewish Federation, which is I think (maybe along with the Jewish Community Relations Council) is the lead organizer.

The problem as I see it (I always seem to see the problems) is that this rally has three foci, which are not necessarily congruent. One, it is a rally to have Hamas release the 240 or so Israeli hostages it is holding. This is something that I assume everyone in the rally is supporting – and it is the least likely of the three to be influenced in any way whatsoever by the rally. It will be a good showing, of course, but – as the Bard would say –
probably “signifying nothing”.

The second goal of the rally is to denounce antisemitism. This again is something that everyone rallying will be in agreement on. Who wants antisemitism? (Of course, the antisemites do – or perhaps they just can’t help themselves) And reducing (you can’t eliminate, can you?) antisemitism is crucial nationwide and worldwide. We do, as a nation, have to figure out the relationship between antisemitic talk or action, and freedom of speech and expression. With a Supreme Court that has been anxious to call everything “speech” (like political contributions are speech) and to give entities (like corporations) the right to free speech as well as individuals, we have not only become victim to the goals of the rich and powerful, but we have become confused as to what the First Amendment really protects. We need to get over that – religious or ethnic or national bias should not be allowed. Full stop.

The third goal of the rally is to “support Israel”. This is where, I am sure, things will get confusing. And, of course, we are all confused about this anyway outside of the rally. There may be general agreement on this point, but no overall agreement. And the rally does not itself have a political slant. The organizers went out of its way to make this an inclusive event. The right wing Zionist Organization of America will be present, and the left wing Americans for Peace Now will both be represented. One group wants blind support for Israel; the other conditions its support on the nature of Israel’s military activity. Potentially, there will also be some of the fringier Jewish groups which are even more pro-Palestine, and would like to see major changes in Israeli policy or even the elimination of the Jewish state and the substitution of something else.

To me, this will make for confusion. There will be disagreement on this point amongst those rallying, and there will certainly be disagreement in the audience directed towards those making speeches. As I understand it, there will be a “variety” of speakers – we will see how that works.

Is it also possible for antisemites or pro-Palestinians to get into the rally grounds on the Mall? Of course, but everyone will have to go through metal detectors (you know what that means for a crowded rally) and, in theory, nothing that looks dangerous will be allowed in. That means not only no guns (ha, ha), but no lasers, and no selfie sticks, and no signs on sticks or poles, etc. This should make the rally safe. As should the hundreds of security officers (police and others) who will be both on the site and at the periphery.

BULLETIN: Our daughter Hannah is going out of town for several days today, and – as our son-in-law Andrew is a high school teacher with a rather inflexible schedule – we have partial responsibility for grand child care. It was to start with picking up our 3 year old grandson from pre-school around 4:30 or 5. But we just heard that our 8 year old grand daughter is being sent home from school because of conjunctivitis. We will pick her up and bring her here and that means two things: (1) We won’t be going to the rally after all, and (2) Probably no need for a second blog post this afternoon. To quote Kurt Vonnegut: “so it goes”.

“Joan Baez: I am a Noise” is a new documentary on the life of now 82 year old Joan Baez. We saw it Saturday night at the Avalon. We were really looking forward to the film, because, as I have said, everyone loves Joan Baez, and, although we knew that the film delved into her psychology, we expected to be uplifted by her music and, in general, her life.

The film, however, is not what we (or at least I, and I think we) expected. It does have clips of her singing, of course, but this is not a film to celebrate her talent as much as it is to dig deeply into what is, as it turns out, a very complicated mentality.

First, here is why I think everyone loves her. Her voice is (has been) perfect in tone and pitch. Her politics have been brave and generally on the side of humanity and human rights. She was, and remains, very physically attractive. And her way of carrying herself just makes it appear that she would be someone who could be friends with you. What more could you want in a person?

Apparently, this film was first conceived of as a film dedicated to her “farewell tour” of a few years ago, but it became something else. Much of this was, it appears, because it turns out that her mother, who died not that long ago at, I think, 100, had been a hoarder of Baez family memorabilia. She had a storage locker, which Joan had never been in but which she had access to, that had boxes and boxes of tapes, clippings, school records and assignments, drawings, and so forth, that seems to have been so complete and so interesting that they overtook the idea of just showing the tour performances.

And at some point, the filmmakers and Baez herself decided that, instead, the film should be a biography, almost a memoir, of her success and the frustrations that accompanied her success. And so we start with her childhood, and end with seemingly somewhat isolated, but quite comfortable, life today.

Her family was accomplished. Her father, born of Mexican parents, had a PhD from Stanford and was a co-inventor of the x-ray microscope and a university professor. Her mother was born in Scotland and was, as her daughter, a very engaging person. The family, consisting of three girls and their parents, traveled the world and lived quite comfortably.

But during high school, Joan apparently felt like an outsider, a Mexican, someone who didn’t fit in. She was talented in many ways – her voice, for sure, but she was also an artist, sketching her life cartoon-like, from an early age. Her mother, of course, kept those cartoons.

Joan suffered from high anxiety and underwent therapy during those years, but then something happened and she became famous, and by the age of 18 and 19, was the toast of town wherever she went. The film doesn’t precisely detail her social life, but does spend a lot of time talking about, and speculating about, her relationship with Bob Dylan (she was responsible for introducing Dylan to the world, and at some point, he seemed to have outgrown her and left her behind), and with her husband of something under ten years, David Harris, who went to jail for 20 months during her marriage for avoiding the draft (or something like that) and with whom she had her only son.

Her career continued to sky rocket. Record albums, concert tours in the U.S. and abroad, and through all of this she had incredible emotional ups and downs, all of which are detailed, including several years when her main food seemed to be quaaludes. A real roller coaster about which we (certainly I) knew nothing.

The film also talks about her relationship with her older, and more reticent sister, Pauline and her younger sister Mimi (known as Mimi Farina), which was both close and fraught, and with her father (from whom she was estranged for a time) and mother. Both her parents lived to what they used to call a ripe old age; both her sisters have passed away.

At some point not that long ago, she decided to have more extensive therapy to determine what caused her emotional problems and to try to be able to mitigate them. During this period, she and her therapist focused on recapturing childhood memories. Although the film (and probably the therapy as well) somewhat was blurry on this topic, there seems to have been some sort of conclusion that she, and her two sisters, were all most likely/probably/perhaps the victims of childhood sexual abuse by her father. This isn’t detailed and even she, I think, does not know if her memories are real – her father consistently said – it appears – that she has “false memories” and that nothing like this could possibly have happened. I think, I think, the film is inconclusive on the point.

At any rate, Joan Baez, her farewell tour done, lives in a comfortable, somewhat jumbled house in California where she tends her garden, does her art, and searches her memories. She looks terrific for 82, and admits she is in much better shape than most her age, and still looks like she become your good friend. Her emotional turmoil, it appears, is largely behind her.

I think we all found the film a bit too intense and too packed with too many aspects of her life. But I am not telling you to stay away from it. Joan Baez is just a very complicated person – much more complicated than you or I could have imagined.

One personal note: years ago, Joan had a concert at George Washington University’s Lisner auditorium. She had just released a new cassette and she was having a “signing” at Tower Records, then just off the GWU campus. My daughter Michelle, who does a lot of singing and does it very well, was in high school, I think, and I took her to the signing to meet Joan Baez (I don’t think Michelle knew who she was at the time). After we bought the cassette, I told Joan Baez that Michelle might be the next Joan Baez (I know, tacky, huh?), and she was very gracious and said “just a minute”, calling back to one of her aids, saying “get me two tickets for the concert tonight”, which the proceeded to give us. Wonderful house seats.

You see why I think we could have been friends?

(1) CNN had some heartbreaking scenes from Gaza yesterday afternoon – once again. I don’t mind that. After all, that’s important. And it’s news. But it does get you thinking (or at least it gets me thinking): you can find the same scenes, even more widespread, today in Ukraine, in Yemen, and elsewhere. But you don’t find CNN, or anyone else, there showing similar things. Again, not that the situation in Gaza is unimportant, but it shows the degree to which it is the war most concentrated on by the western media, and it is clearly one of the reasons that Israel is targeted as so evil by so many.

I know I sometimes repeat things, but I looked up current wars and current war casualty figures today. Here is what I found regarding wars still going on:

Ethiopia: 300,000 to 500,000 dead

Kivu/Congo: 100,000 dead

Darfur: 300,000 dead

Mexican drug wars: 150,000+ dead

Nigeria/Boko Haram: 50,000 dead

Syria: 400,000 dead

Ukraine: 200,000+ dead

Yemen: 250,000 dead

All of these conflicts are recorded, but none of them (not even Ukraine/Russia) with the intensity that the Gaza conflict is.

(2) Before the war erupted in Gaza, we know there had been ongoing and enormous protests in Israel about the current government’s attempts to tamp down on the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court, and to bring about other changes to the government that would give the Knesset more power to make major changes. As you undoubtedly know, the current coalition, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, is comprised of very right wing elements of Israeli society. In Israel, right wing means people who want to lessen the more democratic elements of the government, and give more voice to those elements who want to annex the West Bank, populating it with more Jews and (truth be told) actively encouraging Arabs to leave, and those who want the Orthodox religious establishment to have even more say than they do, especially in domestic social aspects of Israeli life. Netanyahu, who would like to be PM for life, I am sure, is – like good old Donald J.T., under indictment for various crimes and wants to stave off any chance of punishment by remaining in control.

By increasing the divisions in Israeli society, the government weakened certain aspects of Israeli security. Had Israeli security been as strong as it professed to be, Hamas would never have been able to spend over a year planning the Oct 7 attack, and had government expansionism not stoked so many problems on the West Bank, the army on the Gaza boarder would have (or at least should or could have) been enough stronger that the border would never have been able to be breached the way it was on Oct 7.

But once the attack occurred, with so many deaths and casualties and so much destruction, all of traumatized Israel put aside their differences (more or less) and went to the defense of their country. And Netanyahu was able to tout that Israel was again united and strong, while criticism of the government (both in Israel and abroad) diminished.

But perhaps this isn’t the way things should be. There is a government that bears quite a bit of responsibility for the invasion’s success in power, and it is directing the Israeli Defense Forces in a massive invasion of Gaza, determining that the extermination of Hamas officials must be accomplished, even at the expense of Gaza civilians. That means that over half of the residents of Gaza have left their homes (and most will never see any of their possessions again) and those that remain are under constant bombardment, including the sick and very sick who are hospitalized, women and children who won’t or can’t leave their homes, health and safety providers, and so forth. Whether or not such intensity is required for Israel to accomplish the destruction of Hamas (or if such destruction is even possible) is hard to say, especially from afar. But I can’t imagine that their aren’t other ways (and I haven’t even mentioned the 200+ hostages Hamas still presumably holds).

Where am I going with this? Maybe it is a mistake for center and left Israel to show solidarity with Netanyahu and his coalition even at this time. Maybe within Israel, even during the war, there should continue to be the protests against the government, even to the extent of calling for new elections. It would be complicated, to be sure, but I am not sure it would be a mistake.

(3) The Wednesday rally on the National Mall will be big. I have read that the organizers have estimated that there will be 60,000 people. My read, based on what I have seen and what I have heard, is that it could be at least twice that big. And the rally does not have any “sponsors”, so that there is no one who can tell any group (Jewish or otherwise) that they cannot participate. And, so we don’t know who will show up. Except we know the participants will represent a wide array of positions.

But I think everyone will support return of the hostages, and fighting against antisemitism, here and everywhere. Probably virtual all will agree on more military aid for Israel, or at least sufficient military assistance. But there will be great disagreements as to how this war is being fought and how it should be fought. There promises to be a broad array of speakers on all of these topics. I would hope that each of the speakers will say things that I am 100% in agreement with. Sadly, I know that will not be the case, and I would guess that there will be some speakers who will make me cringe. We will have to see.

(4) Again, my plan this morning, was to write about some different topics. Including the film “Joan Baez: I am a Noise”, which we saw last night. But it will have to wait. Gaza wins out. Gaza uber Alles.

(Let me preface this with exciting news. For the past 80 years or so, when I looked at a list of most popular baby names, I would never find the name “Arthur”. Alright, so I didn’t look that often, but I did look maybe 5 times over those 80 years, and the answers were always consistent. Very few Arthurs were being born.

But yesterday, I looked at two such lists (no, no news of that type, I promise), and found that on babynames.com, Arthur came in as number 33. I was overjoyed, as you would expect. And then I turned to thebump.com, and guess what? Arthur is number 26.

I welcome all these Arthurs to the world, and wonder how they will navigate the Art/Arthur/Artie/Arturo conundrum.)

Now, let us proceed.

Of course I am thinking about Gaza. Not only about the conditions Gazans find themselves in today, and questions that must be crashing through the brains of Hamas officials (if Hamas has officials), but the practical things, the post-war things. And I am also trying not to think emotionally, one way or the other, about these things. Just, as I said, practical matters.

As we know, the population of Gaza has been exploding, with I have read the average Gaza woman having 5 children (the average European woman now has, I believe, fewer than 2). It is now 2 million plus, with half of the 2,000,000 under the age of 18. As children continue to be born at this level, if they will be, the population of Gaza will soon be 3 million, 5 million, 8 million? The sky’s the limit as they say. (I have seen actual projections of 3 million by 2030 and close to 5 million by 2050.)

But the geography is also the limit. The District of Columbia (and the city of St. Louis, for that matter) is about 60 square miles. The entire size of the Gaza Strip is only about 120 square miles. That is just a little smaller than the size of the city of Philadelphia. The population of Philadelphia (a fairly crowded city) is about 1.5 million. Imagine if Philadelphia (within the city limits) had a population 50% larger today than it has, and it was going to grow at a Gaza rate. Want to find an American city whose boundaries are even more precisely aligned with the Gaza strip? Try Brownsville, Texas.

So, even assuming the war is going to enr assd, or that the war had never even occurred, how is Gaza (or Israel, or the Muslim world) going to cope with that many people on that amount of land?

OK, let’s move on a little further. I have read that about 1/2 of the residential dwelling units in the Gaza Strip have now been destroyed. And I would assume that there has been damage to some (or much) of the remainder. And we know that commercial buildings have been demolished, as have hospitals, other public buildings, and so forth. And of course, even before the war, Gaza couldn’t generate on its own sufficient power or electricity or clean water. Even if the war ends today, how will the population maintain itself with so much of its infrastructure destroyed? And how long will it take to restore it?

Of course, there have been wars before, and massive destruction before, and after peace, there has been restoration – usually taking a matter of years. But these have been larger countries, with more resources, and usually with external help. Who is going to help the Gazans?

And in the meantime, who is going to feed the Gazans?

And (I know – all of this is obvious), what about the Gazan economy? Offices have been destroyed, shops either have been ruined, or have no way to replenish their stock. Commuting to Israel for work is now off the table. We know some people will make a fortune on account of the needed reconstruction of the area, and needs of the people, but this will be a small number and probably not all Gazans. But, in such a small area, with imports limited, how will Gazans survive economically?

The fact is that Gaza cannot recover on its own – it is too small – its resources are too limited – its isolation too great – it is dependent on its neighbors. Its neighbors currently have exclusive control over access to Gaza, through two Israeli gates, and one that goes to Egypt. Gaza has no airport (it could, but it does not, thanks to a previous war with Israel) and has no operating port. Israel says its security requires that their be no independent port or airport (but now Israeli security seems sort of joke, too,right?).

When the war is over (I keep saying that), what will be the result? Will there be no Hamas, and no Hamas redux? (I really like the word “redux”) Will all the Gazans accept Israel as an appropriate neighbor? Will Israelis believe Gazans want to be their friends? Will they work together to build a strong Gaza next to a strong Israel, without fear or suspicion? Will Gazans be able to freely travel to and work in Israel, and will the beaches of Gaza become filled with Israeli (and other) tourists? And everyone live happily ever after?

I think you know the answers to these questions.

There is a summit of sorts going on right now in Saudi Arabia – Iran, Saudi Arabia, and I am sure others. I hope Egypt. What are they talking about? Are they talking about the destruction of Israel? Of Palestine from the river to the sea? Or are they talking about helping the Gazan people post-war, or allowing some to emigrate (to or through Sinai) during the war? Are they talking about health care for Gazans during the war? Are they talking about how to build a lasting peace with Israel? Or are they talking about opening another front – in the north, in the east?

I think you know the answers to these questions, too.

The Gazans are trapped. There is now no Gazan government. They are getting minimal support from outside. They are being attacked wherever they may be, or at least being threatened. Their jobs are gone. Their homes and businesses have been destroyed. Their minds have been poisoned by those who think that Israel (and perhaps Israel’s population) should be destroyed.

What do we need? Leadership. Where will we get it? _________

I want to say this tactfully. Normally, I wouldn’t talk about this, but I think it important.

We had dinner last night with the son of old friends who was here on a business trip from Houston. His parents were from India, but he was born here, and spent his first ten years in the DC area, when his family moved to Ohio. We last saw him 20 years ago at his wedding.

He is a physician , spent years at M. D. Anderson in Houston, and is currently the medical director of a Japanese based international pharmaceutical company. He travels internationally on a regular basis. He is about to turn 50, has a wife and two sons. He is a Jain, an ancient Indian religion. His wife grew up Hindu. He is very bright, very personable, and a very nice guy.

We sat at dinner for two hours (Masala Art in SW), and our conversation was far ranging – extended families, careers, and so forth. And then he changed the conversation. He said that he was doing this reluctantly, but he wanted to understand something. Why was there so much antisemitism? Not only today, but throughout history. Why were the Jews always attacked the way no other minority religions were attacked?

There are, of course, many ways to answer this question. I wanted to find the right way. I said something (I don’t remember what), and he responded. And then I said (to myself, this time), Whoa, I have to go way back and start at the beginning.

The reason is that he had none of the background that we take for granted. He doesn’t know the Bible (Hebrew or Christian) and to an extent that is understandable because he is of a totally different religion – but he has lived in this “Judeo-Christian/largely Christian” country for 50 years. He didn’t know that Rome ruled Judea or that the Temple was destroyed (he didn’t know there was a Temple). He didn’t know about the diaspora. He didn’t know Jews lived in Muslim countries. He didn’t have any idea about the Jewish situation in pre-20th century Europe (we didn’t discuss ghettos per se , but we did discuss various limitations on Jewish economic and social lives). He knew about the Holocaust – but probably not about its background. He didn’t know anything. (And by the way, his international travel has included at least one trip to Israel – he thought Tel Aviv a wonderful city.) He understands that the Israel/Gaza/Hamas/Palestinian situation is a mess – but certainly doesn’t understand any of the nuances.

When I finished my unrehearsed mini-lecture, he thanked me and told us it was very helpful. That he had never had this context to help him understand antisemitism.

Is his lack of knowledge exceptional? I don’t know – even if someone else had some, but not all, knowledge (like someone who grew up with the concept that the Jews killed Christ for example), would they still be as clueless as to the position of Jews, and the growth of antisemitism, today? Perhaps so.

My point? My point is that we often take too much for granted. We assume that those saying things (or doing things) that we find antisemitic are operating with basically the same factual knowledge that we have. And that is probably wrong. That does not mean, of course, that they want to sit down and hear a lecture on the history of the Jews, but it does mean that we can perhaps respond to them in ways different from those which we instinctively use.

I saw a TikTok (I think) reel the other day. There was a young man wearing a kippah and a suit, who may have been presiding over some sort of formal meeting/session at which others were able to make a statement. One such statement was made by a young (teen age? 20-something?) woman wearing a hijab, speaking perfect British English. She was criticizing the Israeli response in Gaza for targeting civilians (remember, this was a short reel; I don’t know what preceded what I saw) in a very strong way. She said that it was terrible that so many more Palestinians were being killed than Israelis.

The Jewish man responded (politely) with a question: In World War II, he said, the British killed more Germans than the Germans killed British – does this mean that the British shouldn’t have won the war, and the Germans were in the right? In her response, she tried to shift to different statistics and said “But the British didn’t kill German civilians”. Of course, we know that hundreds of thousands were killed by air attacks on Hamburg and Dresden alone. But this young woman obviously didn’t.

We just shouldn’t assume that those taking strong positions have the background that would support their positions. (And of course this may be true regarding ourselves and our positions, so we must be careful there, as well.)

That’s it for today. Just something to think about.

One other point. So Joe Manchin is giving up his Senate seat? Why would he do this? Probably because he knows he would lose. WV will elect a Republican senator in 2024, whether Manchin runs or not.

Will Manchin be the No Labels candidate? And, if so, who would he take votes from? The latest poll I saw showed that the avowed potential third party candidates would hurt Biden by 10 points, and hurt Trump by 7. Which way would Manchin influence these numbers? (At any rate, like virtually all current polls, it’s trending the wrong way.

Will Biden drop out? I think there is a good chance. Pundits and consultants and editorials are beginning to talk about it more. Maybe there are behind the scenes conversations among Democratic political leaders and funders? Lyndon Johnson didn’t announce he was not running for reelection until the end of March in election year 1968. There is still time.