Jayapal's comments are a good reminder to those of us on the Left to always keep Aristotle's warning that a virtue in excess becomes a vice. in mind Identifying with the oppressed and advocating for them is not a vice. But excusing, whataboutisming, and other refusals to acknowledge and condemn the oppressed when they engage in acts of pure evil is unambiguously wrong. I'm heartened to see the examples Charlie shared of progressives who get that.
And tell that to "progressives" who think Biden is a stodgy fool who can't/won't do what they want, and go out and vote for Trump. True progressives work with the world they have and try to gain support. They don't whine and take their toys away when others don't feel like they do.
I have always considered myself a progressive but think I will go back to calling myself a liberal. I don't want to be associated with people who hate Jews and refuse to condemn Hamas as a violent terrorist organization.
It isn't just the "progressives" who say that. I see it in some of the comments here. They want an ideal candidate who does what they want. Compromise is a dirty word, working with others they don't like is what they don't want to do. The current GOP is a living example. But there are a few Ds who are just as whiny and blind.
Expecting (demanding) a candidate who perfectly reflects one’s own ideology is, to me, the natural consequence of our National Narcissism. A destructive trait delivered to us by social media, but obviously lying dormant, but fully formed, waiting to be released.
This reminds me of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's presidential campaign in 2000 that clearly cost the election for Al Gore. His line was there was no difference between Gore and Bush. They were Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Given how Bush got us into the Iraq War with questionable intelligence, one was clearly more evil than the other.
Another great example for Ranked Choice Voting. I'd love to have a system where we could express our disapproval of various candidates without functionally supporting the one we like least.
I hope liberals come to their senses next year. Do they vote for a decent guy who is old but smart, progressive (though not a flaming pro-Hamas leftist,) cares about the country and democracy or do you throw it all away and take a chance that the world's most demented twisted, sociopathic narcissist gets his hand on the reins of power again?
But I was listening to a Podcast and they were saying that the anti Israel pro Hamas protest is a lot smaller than the media makes it out to be.
And by the way, why would liberals support a anti women, pro authoritarian country like Palestine? All the Muslim countries are anti Democratic, anti women and religious fundamentalists. Why would any liberal support them? I think its media propaganda. Most of the US media is all in for Trump. We have to think more critically when digesting "news" today.
And not only that, he says he is banning moslem immigration and outing Muslim Americans. Where is the outrage to that statement? Or do they just tell themselves that Trump wouldn't do that. Don't be stupid, of course he will.
I am suspecting there are a lot of lefties who adopt a position just to stick a finger in the eye of the “establishment”, similar to MAGAs. A version of the “horseshoe” effect that’s based on psychology, not political position. I’m willing to believe Jayapal could be antisemitic, but she could also be devoted to contrarian extremism itself.
And that’s a good thing. But her extremist positions could be hurting the bigger agenda long term if it turns voters off to Democrats - and I think that’s very likely.
Jayapal represents a strain of leftwing politics that sees nearly everything through the prism of color. Because, in their eyes, Israelis are whiter than Palestinians the latter are victims by definition.
Yeah the 200,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel are White. As are the 400,000 Yemenite Jews. None of whom would have been allowed inside the segregated elementrary school I attended. Not to mention the millions of Mizrachi Jews who are indistinguishable from Palestinian Arabs except for religion.
Yes. I learned about these Jews who had lived in Palestine for over a century in a terrific documentary I watched recently, "How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict" (https://youtu.be/ZXfuqUhzESg?si=hHImzStT1W1hPaI8). Even the Jews in Israel were divided. The right-wing extremist who assasinated Rabin was a Mizrahi Jew. He had been rejected by the Ashkenazi parents of a girl he was dating because he was Mizrahi.
Quick story: I was in Ireland a few summers ago. We went to Derry in Northern Ireland, the scene of much of the violence during "the troubles". In that conflict, both sides were white, and being Irish (like me), about as white as you can get! The schools in Derry were segregated then. They have just started to be integrated.
I asked our guide, having experienced the color line in the US, how did you know the difference between Catholics and Protestants? It was by where you went to school.
I'm sure the progressives know little about either of those situations because it's not convenient to their "straight/white/male is bad" agenda.
But none of them are in leadership in Israel. Same with the US - any Jews who are visible and powerful are not POC.
Just a quick note on power and the Left. This is the prism through which they view social structures. I got this from Fukuyama's "Liberalism and Its Discontents": The critique of the liberalsim of The Enlightenment that spawned the Declaration of Indepence and the Constitution came from from French philosophers in the 1960s. (I was in college then and although I never read them, they were well-known among the anti-war literati on campus I hung around with.) This point of view came to be known as critical theory and it spawned Critical Race Theory in the 1970s.
The critique is that the domination of the powerful over the oppressed was embedded in liberalism. Any who advocated liberal values such as equality, individual rights, private property, were unconsciously suppressing marginalized groups.
So, for the progressive Left, power is bad. That's the bottom line. It just happens to be held by straight, white, males. Here's the syllogism: Straight, white, male, liberal democracy power is bad --> Israel holds power --> Israel is white.
We are unsophisticated in our racism and descrimination. Folks who grew up with a knowledge of caste systems will be able to teach us new ways to hate and separate. :/
I don't mind Tlaib being compromised since she has ties to the area. That said, your friends are supposed to help you keep it together when you are emotionally compromised a la Chris Pine Star Trek.
Can’t we condemn the killing of innocent Palestinian women and children and the brutal rape and sexual assault of the Israeli hostages? Why does it sink to whataboutism? The subject of the interview was the brutality against the women hostages. The guest tried to change the subject. Good for Dana Bash for not letting it slide!
The text you included from Judge Chutkan's ruling was enlightening. I especially liked her referencing George Washington. His sentence beginning with the warning about "cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be willing to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroylng afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion...." is incredibly applicable to what actually transpired with Trump 220 years later. She really nailed it.
You made me look it up! Apparently, the term had existed for a long time in Europe, but was first applied to the single head of a government at Washington's inauguration in 1789. It was used in the wording of the Constitution and, at the urging of James Madison, in the oath of office. He was certainly the first leader of a government to have that formal title.
Right, the title was in common use for a long time. What I should have said is Washington was the first single head of a Republic (read : nation) to be called President.
Interestingly, Vermont was an independent Republic from 1777 to 1791, but it was officially the State of Vermont and its Head of State was called Governor.
The officer who presided over the Articles of Confederation Congress was called the president.
We had a local gotcha question— who was the first president of the United States? The answer was John Hanson. Our local junior high school was named for him. BTW, my brother was the star pitcher on their champion baseball team c 1964.
Really enjoying this comment and thread, thanks! To me, Washington's stepping down and establishing the precedent for a peaceful transition of power is the most sublime individual political act in US history (I am sure others could make compelling cases for other acts - don't mean to discount others).
I find it mildly ironic that many Republicans on Twitter are expressing outrage at Jayapal for her both sidesing, when not too long ago, they were saying things like:
"If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it."- Clayton Williams, R-TX
"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that down."- Todd Akin R-MO
"Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation." - Rick Santorum R-US
Let's also acknowledge the fact that rape is often used in wars as a means of establishing control through fear- ISIS was famous for it, and often used in conflicts in Africa.
Let's keep this outrage over innocent women and children being raped and assaulted in war time going!
You know when the cost of war hit me the hardest (growing up in the 60s and 70s with Vietnam, assassinations and Kent State, mind you) was when we buried my father at Arlington Cemetery. Thousands and thousands of white crosses in every direction, with the average age being somewhere in the 20s. It just takes your breath away how the future of our country is dying in wars.
Lovely sentiment. Now tell Hamas, Putin, and all the other dictators. And yes, I know that even the US has been complicit in violence. That's what organizations like the UN, NATO and others exist - to try to stop wars or at least contain them.
The UN was a great idea, but had no real enforcement mechanism. It stopped nations like Russia from going to war -- until they wanted to go to war. Then, they were powerless.
The P5 in general, and their veto power in particular, seems destined to have crashed the effectiveness as a global peacekeeper, even if everything else worked.
On the other hand, outside conflict zones, the UN still coordinates and delivers an awful lot of humanitarian and development aid (46 and 29% of the budget, respectively).
As I have said previously, the US courts are proving to be as effective at stopping corruption as the French Maginot Line was at stopping the Germans. Trump seems to be able to bully his way though every felony. Spending tens of millions of dollars on lawyers gives access to a completely different legal system. Any other person would have been in jail months ago. In some countries he would have been executed -- which is what he wants to do to all his critics if he gets reelected.
Agree in part. Yeah, TFF*G should have been in jail, and Garland should have sicced Jack Smith on him a lot earlier. But TFF*G has been losing cases in court, including several appeals courts lately. Right now, I think the problem we face is that the courts are trying, as is the DOJ, but many areas of the country/society aren't. The GOP is all in on the whiner-in-chief, including those with some semblance of power, and the rabid voters among them are literally threatening people's lives and families. The few Rs with any balls really need to consolidate their money and strengths and actively, openly, oppose both the Party and Trump. Right now, they seem to be scattered voices fighting the tornado. They need to actually, actively consolidate and open their mouths loudly. Pick Cheney, Christie, Bloomberg, someone sane - which leaves out everyone in the current R "candidates".
Mills of the gods grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine. Fingers crossed. I don't think its good lawyering but the apparent awe of the Office of the President no matter who holds it -- and the fear of the armed MAGA mob. But yes he should have been handcuffed Jan 7 and the courts should be pushing these cases through asap instead of deferring to his nonsense.
I used to feel this way. I was active in the Beyond War movement (http://traubman.igc.org/bwarchive.htm) in the 1980s. I worked at an aerospace company (yeah, lifelong liberal Dem me - I was definitely a fish out of water) where I had a conversation with an engineering manager about the poster popular in those days that said "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." His response was yeah, that would be good, but we have enemies that want to hurt us.
Yes, because we have hurt them, I thought. That was also the explanation on the Left of 9/11 - revenge for all of our misdeeds in the Middle East. Same with explaining Hamas by citing all of Israel's misdeeds.
But since Trump, now I see the global conflict we are engaged in as the democratic liberal West vs the authoritarian Russia/Iran/China axis. Same with our national conflict.
That's why we are supporting Ukraine, a sovereign, liberal democracy. What will be the result if Ukraine loses to Russia? Almost everyone I read says Russia will be emboldened. They will invade more countries. I just don't see how we can just stop defending them.
Yes, sadly we have learned that we can’t unilaterally declare peace. Ironically, the MAGA Party is ready to do that and turn the world over to Russia, China, and Iran.
Don't forget the Russians who liberated Eastern Europe during WWII. Many of the liberated were more terrified of them than the Germans because of their reputation for rape. Just ask the people of Ukraine.
What struck me about the Jayapal blowback is it was mostly all women bashing another woman. Where are the men condemning rape as in instrument of war? The Russians used the same tactic against Ukrainian women and the press dropped it like a hot potato after nanoseconds worth of coverage. I wonder why that was?
Texas hasn't had a governor worth a shit since Ann Richards. She and another formidable, hurricane force Texas woman (and contemporary of Ann), Molly Ivins, are sorely missed and even more sorely needed today.
Jayapal's comments are a good reminder to those of us on the Left to always keep Aristotle's warning that a virtue in excess becomes a vice. in mind Identifying with the oppressed and advocating for them is not a vice. But excusing, whataboutisming, and other refusals to acknowledge and condemn the oppressed when they engage in acts of pure evil is unambiguously wrong. I'm heartened to see the examples Charlie shared of progressives who get that.
And tell that to "progressives" who think Biden is a stodgy fool who can't/won't do what they want, and go out and vote for Trump. True progressives work with the world they have and try to gain support. They don't whine and take their toys away when others don't feel like they do.
Unfortunately, whining and threatening to take the toys is an eventuality with identity politics.
Sadly. And it might take down the country.
Well said. More evidence they are not adults.
Yes, but butthurt people DO that... and being butthurt often outweighs being progressive or whatever else would tend to make you vote Biden.
I have always considered myself a progressive but think I will go back to calling myself a liberal. I don't want to be associated with people who hate Jews and refuse to condemn Hamas as a violent terrorist organization.
I'm with you.
It isn't just the "progressives" who say that. I see it in some of the comments here. They want an ideal candidate who does what they want. Compromise is a dirty word, working with others they don't like is what they don't want to do. The current GOP is a living example. But there are a few Ds who are just as whiny and blind.
Expecting (demanding) a candidate who perfectly reflects one’s own ideology is, to me, the natural consequence of our National Narcissism. A destructive trait delivered to us by social media, but obviously lying dormant, but fully formed, waiting to be released.
This reminds me of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's presidential campaign in 2000 that clearly cost the election for Al Gore. His line was there was no difference between Gore and Bush. They were Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Given how Bush got us into the Iraq War with questionable intelligence, one was clearly more evil than the other.
If I remember correctly, Hilary lost to Trump in 2016 by fewer votes than were cast for Jill Stein.
That is also a condemnation of the Republican Primary process. John McCain would have easily defeated Al Gore -- and would never have invaded Iraq.
Another great example for Ranked Choice Voting. I'd love to have a system where we could express our disapproval of various candidates without functionally supporting the one we like least.
Exactly. If a candidate says he is going to completely change everything to suit you, he's lying.
Why are Democrats evil? Because they compromise? Isn't that the definition of representative government. Not everyone gets everything they want.
I hope liberals come to their senses next year. Do they vote for a decent guy who is old but smart, progressive (though not a flaming pro-Hamas leftist,) cares about the country and democracy or do you throw it all away and take a chance that the world's most demented twisted, sociopathic narcissist gets his hand on the reins of power again?
For a lot of these folks, hating on Israel is worth destroying democracy in the US. If they cared about democracy they wouldn't be supporting Hamas.
But I was listening to a Podcast and they were saying that the anti Israel pro Hamas protest is a lot smaller than the media makes it out to be.
And by the way, why would liberals support a anti women, pro authoritarian country like Palestine? All the Muslim countries are anti Democratic, anti women and religious fundamentalists. Why would any liberal support them? I think its media propaganda. Most of the US media is all in for Trump. We have to think more critically when digesting "news" today.
That thinking led to the GOP gerrymanders after "progressives" stayed home on 2010.
"Progressives" voting for Ralph Nader and Jill Stein gave us W and TFG.
And the huge Black voter turnout for Obama in ‘08, stayed home in 2010. That’s a consistent problem.
In less than 12 months we will learn just how far down the whiny baby non-voters (and voters!) will drag us.
And not only that, he says he is banning moslem immigration and outing Muslim Americans. Where is the outrage to that statement? Or do they just tell themselves that Trump wouldn't do that. Don't be stupid, of course he will.
Jayapal needs to be primaried.
Given the makeup of her district, that’s unlikely.
I think she is in an ethnic neighborhood where most if her constituents are Muslim.
I just don't understand that kind of waffling coming from a so-called progressive.
I am suspecting there are a lot of lefties who adopt a position just to stick a finger in the eye of the “establishment”, similar to MAGAs. A version of the “horseshoe” effect that’s based on psychology, not political position. I’m willing to believe Jayapal could be antisemitic, but she could also be devoted to contrarian extremism itself.
She votes with the Biden agenda 98% of the time.
And that’s a good thing. But her extremist positions could be hurting the bigger agenda long term if it turns voters off to Democrats - and I think that’s very likely.
I think her contrarian extremism is her ticket to glory.
I’ve seen it so much in my personal life over the years, and now it’s rampant in public life too. Our “attention economy” demands it.
Agree!
It's mostly propaganda. The anti Israel contigent is very small and not really liberal.
It's the horseshoe effect, eventually they get so far left, they become far right.
Jayapal represents a strain of leftwing politics that sees nearly everything through the prism of color. Because, in their eyes, Israelis are whiter than Palestinians the latter are victims by definition.
Yep. Jews are white because they are powerful, so they can't be the victim. And anything white is bad.
Yeah the 200,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel are White. As are the 400,000 Yemenite Jews. None of whom would have been allowed inside the segregated elementrary school I attended. Not to mention the millions of Mizrachi Jews who are indistinguishable from Palestinian Arabs except for religion.
Yes. I learned about these Jews who had lived in Palestine for over a century in a terrific documentary I watched recently, "How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict" (https://youtu.be/ZXfuqUhzESg?si=hHImzStT1W1hPaI8). Even the Jews in Israel were divided. The right-wing extremist who assasinated Rabin was a Mizrahi Jew. He had been rejected by the Ashkenazi parents of a girl he was dating because he was Mizrahi.
Quick story: I was in Ireland a few summers ago. We went to Derry in Northern Ireland, the scene of much of the violence during "the troubles". In that conflict, both sides were white, and being Irish (like me), about as white as you can get! The schools in Derry were segregated then. They have just started to be integrated.
I asked our guide, having experienced the color line in the US, how did you know the difference between Catholics and Protestants? It was by where you went to school.
I'm sure the progressives know little about either of those situations because it's not convenient to their "straight/white/male is bad" agenda.
Really? There are a lot of Jewish people of color.
But none of them are in leadership in Israel. Same with the US - any Jews who are visible and powerful are not POC.
Just a quick note on power and the Left. This is the prism through which they view social structures. I got this from Fukuyama's "Liberalism and Its Discontents": The critique of the liberalsim of The Enlightenment that spawned the Declaration of Indepence and the Constitution came from from French philosophers in the 1960s. (I was in college then and although I never read them, they were well-known among the anti-war literati on campus I hung around with.) This point of view came to be known as critical theory and it spawned Critical Race Theory in the 1970s.
The critique is that the domination of the powerful over the oppressed was embedded in liberalism. Any who advocated liberal values such as equality, individual rights, private property, were unconsciously suppressing marginalized groups.
So, for the progressive Left, power is bad. That's the bottom line. It just happens to be held by straight, white, males. Here's the syllogism: Straight, white, male, liberal democracy power is bad --> Israel holds power --> Israel is white.
We are unsophisticated in our racism and descrimination. Folks who grew up with a knowledge of caste systems will be able to teach us new ways to hate and separate. :/
Just like her colleague from Michigan.
I don't mind Tlaib being compromised since she has ties to the area. That said, your friends are supposed to help you keep it together when you are emotionally compromised a la Chris Pine Star Trek.
Can’t we condemn the killing of innocent Palestinian women and children and the brutal rape and sexual assault of the Israeli hostages? Why does it sink to whataboutism? The subject of the interview was the brutality against the women hostages. The guest tried to change the subject. Good for Dana Bash for not letting it slide!
The text you included from Judge Chutkan's ruling was enlightening. I especially liked her referencing George Washington. His sentence beginning with the warning about "cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be willing to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroylng afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion...." is incredibly applicable to what actually transpired with Trump 220 years later. She really nailed it.
It's a little foggy in my recollection, but I think George Washington actually coined the term "president" to replace "king." One who presides.
You made me look it up! Apparently, the term had existed for a long time in Europe, but was first applied to the single head of a government at Washington's inauguration in 1789. It was used in the wording of the Constitution and, at the urging of James Madison, in the oath of office. He was certainly the first leader of a government to have that formal title.
Thanks for the research. Obviously, TFG does not think it should it apply to him, unless it buys him something.
Pennsylvania had Presidents. One of them was Benjamin Franklin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Executive_Council_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Pennsylvania#Presidents
Right, the title was in common use for a long time. What I should have said is Washington was the first single head of a Republic (read : nation) to be called President.
Interestingly, Vermont was an independent Republic from 1777 to 1791, but it was officially the State of Vermont and its Head of State was called Governor.
https://sos.vermont.gov/vsara/learn/constitution/1777-constitution/
The officer who presided over the Articles of Confederation Congress was called the president.
We had a local gotcha question— who was the first president of the United States? The answer was John Hanson. Our local junior high school was named for him. BTW, my brother was the star pitcher on their champion baseball team c 1964.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hanson
Really enjoying this comment and thread, thanks! To me, Washington's stepping down and establishing the precedent for a peaceful transition of power is the most sublime individual political act in US history (I am sure others could make compelling cases for other acts - don't mean to discount others).
Has Trump ever ventured an opinion on Washington? He would not like to be upstaged by the long-dead General, would he?
Yes...Trump believes he's the one who invented the $1 bill.
And don't forget his victorious recapture of the airports from the British.
He would say that Washington was a chump for imposing a 2-term limit on himself when he could have been king.
“Yes, George, really good guy who’s been doing some good things and getting talked about.” DJT 🤓
HaHa!!!! As consolation for tRump's weakening our government, he's given us a comedy goldmine.
I think Trump shies away from principled figures. The whole cannot tell a lie story about Washington contradicts his lack of ethics and morals.
It sure is. He understood what unprincipled men could be like.
I find it mildly ironic that many Republicans on Twitter are expressing outrage at Jayapal for her both sidesing, when not too long ago, they were saying things like:
"If rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it."- Clayton Williams, R-TX
"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that down."- Todd Akin R-MO
"Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation." - Rick Santorum R-US
Let's also acknowledge the fact that rape is often used in wars as a means of establishing control through fear- ISIS was famous for it, and often used in conflicts in Africa.
Let's keep this outrage over innocent women and children being raped and assaulted in war time going!
Let's stop the wars! They accomplish nothing but death and more wars.
AMEN!!
You know when the cost of war hit me the hardest (growing up in the 60s and 70s with Vietnam, assassinations and Kent State, mind you) was when we buried my father at Arlington Cemetery. Thousands and thousands of white crosses in every direction, with the average age being somewhere in the 20s. It just takes your breath away how the future of our country is dying in wars.
"Where have all the flowers gone" is still true.
Lovely sentiment. Now tell Hamas, Putin, and all the other dictators. And yes, I know that even the US has been complicit in violence. That's what organizations like the UN, NATO and others exist - to try to stop wars or at least contain them.
The UN was a great idea, but had no real enforcement mechanism. It stopped nations like Russia from going to war -- until they wanted to go to war. Then, they were powerless.
The P5 in general, and their veto power in particular, seems destined to have crashed the effectiveness as a global peacekeeper, even if everything else worked.
On the other hand, outside conflict zones, the UN still coordinates and delivers an awful lot of humanitarian and development aid (46 and 29% of the budget, respectively).
They are the organization that gets tasked with trying to clean up the mess created by the wars they can't stop.
Lack of enforcement seems to be a problem in many areas - Supreme Court, Congress (thanks McConnell!), even in the Parties themselves.
As I have said previously, the US courts are proving to be as effective at stopping corruption as the French Maginot Line was at stopping the Germans. Trump seems to be able to bully his way though every felony. Spending tens of millions of dollars on lawyers gives access to a completely different legal system. Any other person would have been in jail months ago. In some countries he would have been executed -- which is what he wants to do to all his critics if he gets reelected.
Agree in part. Yeah, TFF*G should have been in jail, and Garland should have sicced Jack Smith on him a lot earlier. But TFF*G has been losing cases in court, including several appeals courts lately. Right now, I think the problem we face is that the courts are trying, as is the DOJ, but many areas of the country/society aren't. The GOP is all in on the whiner-in-chief, including those with some semblance of power, and the rabid voters among them are literally threatening people's lives and families. The few Rs with any balls really need to consolidate their money and strengths and actively, openly, oppose both the Party and Trump. Right now, they seem to be scattered voices fighting the tornado. They need to actually, actively consolidate and open their mouths loudly. Pick Cheney, Christie, Bloomberg, someone sane - which leaves out everyone in the current R "candidates".
Mills of the gods grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine. Fingers crossed. I don't think its good lawyering but the apparent awe of the Office of the President no matter who holds it -- and the fear of the armed MAGA mob. But yes he should have been handcuffed Jan 7 and the courts should be pushing these cases through asap instead of deferring to his nonsense.
The UN stopped North Korea from taking over South Korea.
I don't know of any other examples, though.
I used to feel this way. I was active in the Beyond War movement (http://traubman.igc.org/bwarchive.htm) in the 1980s. I worked at an aerospace company (yeah, lifelong liberal Dem me - I was definitely a fish out of water) where I had a conversation with an engineering manager about the poster popular in those days that said "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." His response was yeah, that would be good, but we have enemies that want to hurt us.
Yes, because we have hurt them, I thought. That was also the explanation on the Left of 9/11 - revenge for all of our misdeeds in the Middle East. Same with explaining Hamas by citing all of Israel's misdeeds.
But since Trump, now I see the global conflict we are engaged in as the democratic liberal West vs the authoritarian Russia/Iran/China axis. Same with our national conflict.
That's why we are supporting Ukraine, a sovereign, liberal democracy. What will be the result if Ukraine loses to Russia? Almost everyone I read says Russia will be emboldened. They will invade more countries. I just don't see how we can just stop defending them.
Yes, sadly we have learned that we can’t unilaterally declare peace. Ironically, the MAGA Party is ready to do that and turn the world over to Russia, China, and Iran.
Yes, because they have what political psychologist Karen Stenner calls the authoritarian disposition, and those countries are led by dictators.
Per Edwin Starr and Eric Burdon:
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, uhh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y'all
War, huh (good God)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me, oh
War, I despise
'Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mother's eyes
When their sons go off to fight
And lose their lives
I said, war, huh (good God, y'all)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, just say it again
War (whoa), huh (oh Lord)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
It ain't nothing but a heart-breaker
(War) Friend only to The Undertaker
Oh, war it's an enemy to all mankind
The thought of war blows my mind
War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die? Oh
War, huh (good God y'all)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it, say it, say it
War (uh-huh), huh (yeah, huh)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
It ain't nothing but a heart-breaker
(War) It's got one friend that's The Undertaker
Oh, war, has shattered many a young man's dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious
To spend fighting wars each day
War can't give life
It can only take it away, oh
War, huh (good God y'all)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it again
War (whoa), huh (oh Lord)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
It ain't nothing but a heart breaker
(War) Friend only to The Undertaker, woo
Peace, love and understanding, tell me
Is there no place for them today?
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there's got to be a better way, oh
War, huh (God y'all)
What is it good for? You tell me (nothing)
Say it, say it, say it, say it
War (good God), huh (now, huh)
What is it good for?
Stand up and shout it (nothing)
I might still have that 45 somewhere!
Don't forget the Russians who liberated Eastern Europe during WWII. Many of the liberated were more terrified of them than the Germans because of their reputation for rape. Just ask the people of Ukraine.
What struck me about the Jayapal blowback is it was mostly all women bashing another woman. Where are the men condemning rape as in instrument of war? The Russians used the same tactic against Ukrainian women and the press dropped it like a hot potato after nanoseconds worth of coverage. I wonder why that was?
Men are embarrassed to talk about it.
Don't we all?
I remember Clayton Williams comment. Ann Richards (D) won the election and became governor of Texas because of it.
Texas hasn't had a governor worth a shit since Ann Richards. She and another formidable, hurricane force Texas woman (and contemporary of Ann), Molly Ivins, are sorely missed and even more sorely needed today.
Molly Ivins was a force of nature!
What I wouldn't give to be able to see her eviscerate, emasculate and discombobulate Trump in a live, televised interview.
I miss Molly like crazy ! My daughters and I saw her in Santa Cruz....❤