tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51202022079642898782024-03-19T04:48:09.580-04:00Mein BlogA Daily Review?Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.comBlogger3642125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-55616468627428139332024-03-18T21:44:00.014-04:002024-03-19T04:47:37.695-04:00 What do we do about anti-Zionist Jews?<p><br /></p><br /><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On the one hand, I'm going to be mean and merciless. On the other, I need to try to be compassionate, and by the end of this post I'll arrive at some sort of compassion. The inevitable end result is that I'll sound condescending. The best I can say is that I mean to, but this post is not just an admonishment to them, it's an admonishment to the millions of Jews who failed to accept them before it was too late. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This post deals with a particular form of anti-Zionism: not the ultra-orthodox idiots, who deserve their own vitriol, but the mostly secular type that would sacrifice Jewish lives in the name of justice, and would deliberately facilitate the rise of the most fundamentalist Islamic factions in the name of peace. There are religious factions within this movement, but this movement is ultimately secular. This kind of religious antizionist brings the most toxic elements of secularism into religious issues, whereas ultra-orthodox antizionists bring the most toxic elements of religion to secular issues. Whether religious or secular, this post deals with the particular form of anti-Zionism that admonishes us to listen to every marginalized voice except for the millions who shout 'We are going to kill you.' </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To the Jews who think Israel has gone too far, to the Jews who think Israel deserves to exist and defend itself but its strategy is self-defeating, even to the Jews who believe that Israel's Gaza invasion is a war crime, this is not directed at you. We have arguments, but they're just arguments, they are not bad blood. Even to the Jews who think Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, it will take me take years to forgive you, but this is not directed at you. </span></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In the leadup to every left-wing dictatorship, in the leadup to every Islamic theocracy, there were naive progressive voices so disgusted with authoritarian conservatism that they made common cause with anyone who superficially seemed to agree with them. These progressives so believed in justice that they allied with the most militant totalitarians. These totalitarians had the will to violent acts that would disgust every progressive long before everybody else. The totalitarian will to power easily overcame their would be allies - and progressive idealists were always among the first to die. Thousands would follow them to the mass graves, often hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div><br /><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So it would be all too easy for the rest of us to excommunicate anti-Zionists in our minds: to say that an anti-Zionist Jew is as Jewish as a Christian. But we don't have the right to make that claim any more than ultra-orthodox sects have to excommunicate the non-Orthodox. If some form of Nazis kill again, be they Hamas or Charlottesville tiki-torchers (and remember, their main complaint was with Jews...), they would kill the revisionist Jews along with the originals. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It's not enough to call anti-Zionist Jews wrong, even willfully wrong. They're indefensible. They are token minorities who give cover to hundreds of millions who want to murder us all; and they know it. They performatively disguise their egotism in selflessness, and their holier than thou sanctimony is as sickening as any Jew who covers for Trump, probably moreso. They deserve our vitriol, and in the company of other Jews they deserve to feel attacked and shamed; but eighty years ago they were much more common, and their lack of support for a Jewish state just might have been what killed them in the millions right next to the European Zionists who couldn't make it over. Anti-Zionist Jews are morons, but they don't deserve to die. They were all Jewish enough for Hitler, and they willfully ignore that they're Jewish enough for Hamas. It doesn't matter. A bad Jew is still a Jew. They die as Jews, they bleed as Jews, and if there is a god, they will have to justify themselves as Jews. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So long as they cling to this delusion, they deserve neither our trust nor our respect, but they do deserve our sympathy. There is no argument they can make that sounds like they came to their beliefs with their heads. But if they didn't with the head, they came to their beliefs with their hearts, and came to their conclusions as the near-inevitable result of limitations within the Jewish mainstream. So many of them became what they became because their lots are particularly difficult. Whether the issue is social, financial, physical, physiological, romantic, isolative, psychological or mere unlucky circumstance, they or their parents grew up feeling alienated from other Jews, and craving the community we denied them they fell in with dangerous elements, and lost their way as so many billions do around the world. The problem is not them, the problem is us, and somewhere along the way, probably many times, we failed them. We rejected them, we didn't reach out, we made fun of them, we humiliated them, we beat them up, we abused them or we looked the other way while others did it, we made them feel different long before they came to any conclusion, and craving the community we denied them, we made them into true believers who'd sooner sacrifice us all than stop repressing what their brains are screaming at them. </div></div></div></div></div><div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #181818;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Eric Hoffer, as so often, says it best: “The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></span></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">They would, of course, argue that it is Zionism that is the self-renouncing mass movement, where millions of Jews go to lose their heads. We can't pretend they don't have a point. Zionism was founded precisely because Judaism fit in no place around the world for millennia. Even now, there are so many byways in the Zionist labyrinth where you can lose your way: religious, military tactics, settlements, weaponry, the willful accession to authoritarian rule. If they wanted to argue that the majority of Zionists have lost their way, there is a good chance they're absolutely right. By giving unquestioning support to the contemporary Israel in all its flaws, worldwide Jewry has sinned. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But anti-Zionists sin much more gravely. There is no world where sacrificing Jewish security in the name of international solidarity is morally acceptable. There is no world in which it's morally acceptable to make Jews fall so that other peoples rise, if they rise at all as the result of our fall. Maybe there's one world where that's morally acceptable, but that's the relativist, ultra-realist world of Henry Kissinger where life is so cheap that you can annihilate an entire race in the hope of saving other races. There may be a next world, but the notion that a just world comes to ours by laying down our arms is no more likely than the existence of heaven, and what other country, what bloodier country, is demanded to disband itself in the name of world peace? </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whether they realize it, Judaism is pragmatism; it's looking realities straight in the face and negotiating ways around them. This is the Rabbinic tradition, this is the lesson of Moses appeasing Yahweh simultaneously to appeasing the Israelites, this is the lesson of Joseph and Abraham negotiating their survival among the Egyptians, this is the lesson of Jacob dealing with Laban. It is only through pragmatic compromises to morality that you can pursue the moral purpose and destiny you find in Isaiah, Sinai, Amos and Abraham's covenant. </span></div></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There are millions of apragmatic Jews in every era: zealots, messianists, millenarians, communists, even neoconservatives, and their refusal to stare reality in the face gets Jews killed. They do not believe in moral ambiguity, they only see their way, they see every argument against them as an argument for them. In pursuing their beliefs to their logical conclusion they never build the world they seek, and rather than acknowledge that sometimes you have to kill to minimize dead bodies, they pave the way for people who maximize them. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Again, antizionists will say that it is we who do not see a way but our own. There is no limit to bad faith arguments that flip truth upside down, but that is precisely the point. There is no world where you don't deal with bad faith, there is no world where you don't deal with people so convinced they are right that that they can interpret everything through the filter of what they believe. Zionism takes in the liberal as well as the illiberal, but there is no liberality in anti-Zionism, only a naive national pacifism that is exploited so easily that no person could use their head to embrace it. </div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Antizionism is our punishment for our limitations, it is the dark side of Judaism that disguises itself as light and mistakes bitter for sweet.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So it's only by transcending our limitations that we overcome it. Anti-Zionism is not a rational belief, and like all irrational beliefs, the believers change their beliefs not through persuasion, but by being embraced. No matter what they deserve, it's only by accepting anti-Zionists on a personal level and not judging them their mistakes that we persuade them of the single most obvious truth about being born Jewish. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I don't have the room in my heart for them right now. I'm not that good, I'm not that tolerant, I'm too angry, too hurt, too scared. But I hope that one day I have room in my heart for them again just as I hope they have room in their hearts for mine, a fact made doubly difficult because I frankly doubt many of them have any room for me. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But as anti-Zionists correctly tell us, the only way to transcend violence is through forgiving the unforgiveable. I doubt such a leap can ever be made, but I do agree with them that the cycle of violence is only broken by embracing those who would perpetrate the worst on you in the hope that they embrace you back. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">But if there ever is to be an end to hatred, this is what's required. The difference between us is that I see no evidence it's possible and to bet on it is bad faith lunacy. Nevertheless, the human spirit is built on dreams like this. The world is what it is, but to dream of a world where a Jewish state is unnecessary is only human. If ever we can convince a few of them to let their dreams remain dreams, let them dream.</span></div></div></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1n2onr6" style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; background-color: white; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; overflow: hidden;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-radius: inherit; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All reactions:</div><span aria-hidden="true" class="xrbpyxo x6ikm8r x10wlt62 xlyipyv x1exxlbk" style="float: left; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; width: 100px;"><br /></span></div></span></div><div class="x1c4vz4f x2lah0s xci0xqf" style="background-color: white; color: #65676b; flex-grow: 0; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; width: 7px;"></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-33075088069632275762024-03-17T21:28:00.014-04:002024-03-18T03:41:33.249-04:00That's History<p><br /></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The only way I'm going to get through this incarnation of what Israel's call the 'Matzav' (the 'situation') is by disconnecting from it. Not stop reading, but stop connecting emotionally. At the very beginning of this, I wrote here that the only way we were going to get through this is by steeling ourselves. Not steel in the sense of eliminating compassion, but steel in the sense of facing cold hard fact: history is the eternity of subverted expectations. We're supposed to be heartbroken, and it's only when we're too heartbroken to expect triumph that triumphs are made. It's the experience of defeat following victory following defeat following victory. It's the eternal wheel of fate. Everything that rises falls, everything that falls rises. Jews are no exception, if anything we are the ultimate proof. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If Israel doesn't complete the decimation of Hamas, if Israel does not rescue the hostages, if Israel exchanges hostages for Palestinian prisoners, there will be more attacks on Israel, and Hanas will do everything they can to make them deadlier. Steel yourself. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">If Israel wins, Netanyahu can take the credit and may win back a narrow voting majority of the Israeli public, thereby staying as Prime Minister, possibly for life, no matter how hated by the rest of Israelis. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more millions of innocent Jews will be held responsible in unpredictable ways for the mere crime of supporting Israel, even a peaceful Israel. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more Gazans are likely to die of famine and disease in far greater numbers than have died so far. The longer this goes on, the more likely Hezbollah is likely to bomb saturate the Israeli north to the point that Israel will have to launch another ground invasion in Southern Lebanon. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">If a Palestinian state is recognized worldwide without Hamas stripped from power, if Hamas gets a full measure foreign aide, Israel/Palestine could experience warfare on a scale only seen in the modern Middle East by Syria and 80s Iraq/Iran. Steel yourself.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more tempted goyisher friends will be to dissociate from Jews for the crime of supporting Israel. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more tempted American left wingers will be not to vote for Biden, British left wingers not to vote for Starmer, German left wingers not to vote for Schultz, and French left wingers not to vote for Macron should he be in a runoff with Le Pen. Many leftists in all four countries reason that since their supposed liberal leaders advocate for what they construe as genocide, things can't get any worse. They would thereby cause the fall of any liberal bulwark against right wing authoritarianism, and perhaps the fall of democracy in all these major world powers. Thereby endangering the very Muslim communities they think they're protecting. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more Israel will necessarily become the ally of any Western power that opts for reactionary anti-democracy leadership. Steel yourself. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more willfully the world will overlook the crimes of Hamas and twenty other Middle Eastern dictatorships. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more Israel becomes a wedge issue between friendships, with potential for explosive fights that turn friends into enemies. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The longer this goes on, the more tempted other Shia powers are to create other theaters of war: not just Hezbollah in Lebanon but Iran, Yemen, Syria, spurring a war that could inflame the entire region, and perhaps spread elsewhere. Steel yourself. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This is history. History is not just one fucking thing after another, it's the dispelling of each era's illusions. Every solution is temporary. Civilizations have life cycles just like people do, so do policy solutions. Everything eventually lives out its use until its physiognomy comes undone. This is what we read about. You just face the unpleasant truths and realize that you are part of processes so much bigger than you are. Eventually we all are just nodes of data compiled in a book, where our life stories are distilled to historical trends, waves, forces, beliefs, where the reader views our way of life with ironic distance. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Nearly all of us feel the ground under our feet shifting right now, the expectations of our era are coming undone just like the expectations of previous eras. These tectonic shifts are more lethal than any earthquake ever recorded, but just like earthquakes, they always happen, and then they stop, we pick up the pieces, we rebuild, we latch onto new beliefs, and we take care as best we can to provide for a future that doesn't experience our turbulence. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But eventually, the turbulence comes back, and eventually, that turbulence will stop again just as ours will. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes, you just have to accept that you're on a ride bigger than anything you do, and all you can do is your best to make yourself into metal that doesn't melt in even the hottest climates.</div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xzueoph" style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 6px;"></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-33865055092048647552024-03-05T23:53:00.015-05:002024-03-06T17:48:02.313-05:00Why Are Jews So Sensitive About Israel?<p><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">So why are we so hypersensitive about all things Israel? Is it birth-to-death conditioning as so many progressives would have it? Is it as so many antizionists have it, a fascist connection to the Mogen David that represses any thought that contravenes our tribal mentality? Is it, as so many Jews would have it, the extreme frustration at gentile hypocrisy? Or is it as so many Jewish fundamentalists have it, that the world is crawling with antisemites?</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">It's none of the above. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">It's far more basic than any of those, simultaneously more primal and more real. </span></p><p><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">There is a baseline fear, often an unconscious one, but I maintain it exists in every Jew you've ever met, even somewhere in Jewish antizionists. The fear is this: </span></p><p><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">If you get rid of our state, you get rid of us. </span><br /><br />There is that nameless dread in every Jewish soul, repressed until we hear you talk about Israel, that all this security and prosperity is as paper thin as the citizenship documents which were always taken away from us. Other groups worry about prosperity and denied opportunities, Jews worry that it all will be taken away. </p><p>Here's something I wrote a while back: <br /><br /></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"></div><blockquote><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"So many gentile lives are constrained from too few choices, most Jews are stuck by too many. So many gentiles worry that they'll never get what they need, Jews worry that everything they need will disappear tomorrow. So many gentiles feel the chip of humiliation, and dream that with more things: titles, privileges, pride, their humiliations will cease. Jews are history's ultimate proof that everything you think is helpful is worthless: from materials to titles to privileges to pride to ESPECIALLY MONEY. There is no such thing as a life protected from humiliation - the whole point of how to live a good life is that we endured our humiliations with faith, honor, responsibility, righteousness, kindness and community; that we show seven good faces to a world that's wanted Jews dead for 2000 years, will want us dead many times yet again; and many people who seem friendly to us now may stand by as we get annihilated. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">No Jew seems oppressed until every Jew you know disappears overnight. No amount of money protects us, no amount of prestige stops us from being blamed, no amount of power cannot be stripped at a moment's notice. It is the eternal Jewish lot to rise as high as any outsider can possibly rise in a foreign society, only to fall the very moment when things go wrong and the true insiders need meat to throw to the populace." </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div></blockquote></div><p><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Look at every immigrant in the world whose state threw them out, then look at us. Other modern peoples get displaced for generations, or a hundred years, but our whole lifespan as a people is one long displacement and this is the one period since Christ himself that has been the exception. If we don't have Israel, we have no country at all, just memories of countries that threw us out whenever we became marginally inconvenient. We exist lifelong with stories of ancestors exiled from every corner of the world. That fate was what 2000 years of Jews worked so hard to avoid with no avail. It's the fate in which our guts tell us we will partake again. Even if the Palestinian refugee status lasts for the rest of my lifetime, it's still temporary compared to the Jewish stories I and fifteen million other Jews have heard our whole lives. If we get displaced again, it's not just us or even our grandchildren who might be refugees, it might be all our descendants for all coming time until we get another brief blip of security 2000 years from now. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">And that's only if we live. When we didn't have a state of our own, we were subject to all the same persecution as any other minority, only to then encounter complete, systemic, total extermination. Not the extermination of a substantial portion of us, not our extermination over the course of 400 years, but near complete extermination over two or three years, spanning our population over an entire continent. And not once, but repeatedly. In the Crusades and the mass expulsions of the Middle Ages, in the conquest of Judea by Rome, in the aftermath of the Black Plague, in the Chmielnicki massacre in Ukraine - that state which now means so much to liberal Jews, in exterminations thousands of years ago that seem ever so distant until the moment their stories reappear in our consciousness as horrifyingly present, and of course... that thing that happened to my grandparents. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">So many leftists and intersectionalists and anticolonialists find all things Israel distasteful, but they would read the above and see a complete affirmation of their worldview. "That's exactly why we fight for the dispossessed!", they would answer. "That's why we fight against nationalism! That's why we fight against genocide! That's why we fight for the rights of victims!" </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Why should we believe you? What makes your movement so special when every other revolution to save the world has backfired? </span></p><p>No one reaps the whirlwind ideological movements create the way Jews do. </p><p>Let me repeat that. </p><p>No one reaps the whirlwind ideological movements create the way Jews do. </p><div>The proof will be for another day. </div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-86270667309554198422024-03-05T16:08:00.011-05:002024-03-07T01:36:01.522-05:00Why I'm Feeling Black Dog<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Leaving aside any personal concerns, of which like everybody I have my share, probably a lot more, I feel like a man without company. </span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm trying to be a dispartial arbiter of what's going on so people could get context, but I've slowed down because I almost can't do it. What's going on with my former friends on the left is so infamously disgusting. What's gone on on the right is obviously disgusting and has been for decades, but on the left I saw it coming and warned them for two decades. I thought because some were my friends a plurality of them might be exceptions, but it made no difference to well over 50% of the people I know. I knew it at the time, yet I hoped against hope. There's the ancient antisemitism everywhere we look. Living is hard enough without feeling like people you once esteemed could abandon your children to lifetimes of the old discrimination, isolation, violence and mass murder, and then their children in turn, until hundreds of years from now when again there's a brief blip of tolerance before the ancient curse of being Jewish continues. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">One day soon I'll try to explain how it works again, but I wonder again and again, what difference does it make?</span></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xzueoph" style="color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space-collapse: collapse;"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-89351839771013048062024-03-02T15:57:00.009-05:002024-03-04T20:36:48.917-05:00Last Night's Concert<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I went to a fascinating but dispiriting concert last night. </span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It started with a nearly masterly performance of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony from an unlikely source. I often think that James Conlon would be happier with a career like Jaimie Laredo's, in front of chamber orchestras where he can do utterly unfashionable performances of Haydn and Mozart. What we heard last night was the most gemutlich, large orchestra, vibrato laden, old-Vienna performance of Schubert's Unfinished one will ever hear. You'd think it was Josef Krips up there. He must have spent hours getting that high cholesterol string sonority from Baltimore musicians still trained in David Zinman's period punchiness. It was just short of heavenly, with extremely un-Conlon like rubato and ostentatious detailing in the phrasing. He seems to have spent his entire career scaling down Wagner, Verdi and Shostakovich to sound more like Schubert and Mozart, while in Schubert and Mozart he does all the operatic things you'd expect from Verdi and Wagner. After three years of watching this guy, I just don't understand him: a vastly skilled musician who's performed all around the world for fifty years, but whose conception of music has never moved on from the mistaken values of 1970s Juilliard. </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I should have left after that, because then came 50 minutes of 'automatic' Wagner, played like a machine that you simply turn on and off. Hardly any phrasing, hardly any detail, barely a memorable moment: generic, generic, generic.</div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But it is utterly unbelievable how Wagner's orchestration still fits the modern orchestra like a glove, every detail speaks in the concert hall with utter clarity. It's the exact opposite of the older masters. In Mozart, Schubert, Brahms you have to work endlessly hard to get the music's details to speak properly. Many claim it's different for them with a period instrument ensemble, but I'm far from convinced. In those three particularly, it's almost as if the expression in is so high minded that they're barely even conscious of what instruments they use, and the work is on the composers. It's as Joachim said of Brahms that they don't write for musicians, they write against musicians. </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But contra his reputation, Wagner fits the capabilities of instrument so easily, even proper Wagner voices are supposed to find it easy to sing with the way he divides vocal parts through the entire vocal range - whereas Verdi stays planted all night long in the voice's top 20 percent, </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There's a reason Wagner makes every detail register: he is the music of sociopathy, manipulating emotions in the audience so effortlessly that he does feel himself. In Schubert, such emotions are a confession by the not composer, human communication from one heart to another. But emotions that exist in Schubert like a partnership of equals becomes emotional manipulation in Wagner - designed to excite audiences to fever pitch. Perhaps Wagner skeptics like me would find our responses more easily exploited if today's singers were better. The Brunnhilde last night was Christine Goerke, possessing a power tool of a mid range with a vibrato through which you can sometimes fit a mac truck. Aside from Lisa Davidsen, this is the best we'll do today, and how can Wagner make its proper effect without voices to equal his charisma?</div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">You can't blame the singers: the expectations of singers are so high today. Not even Wagner can account for today's huge halls, loud orchestral instruments, slow tempos, and relative lack of emphasis on vocal technique. No modern singer can get through Wagner without blowing out their voice in a couple years. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">As I've said many times, as everybody's said many times, one can't deny Wagner's genius. He is, as Auden argued, possibly the greatest artistic genius of all time. Wagner's is an endlessly meaningful art, for which there is no bottom in the numbers of ways it can be analyzed, interpreted, and felt, but there are problems in Wagner that stick out like a sociopath amid normal people, and next to Schubert, he can sound paltry indeed. One excites and disturbs the soul, one nourishes it.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-78632845537510539672024-02-29T20:25:00.015-05:002024-03-01T01:40:21.667-05:00What do I do?<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I have no idea what to believe at this point.</span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On the one hand, I'll stand with the Jewish community through any disingenuous approbation from people who stay silent in the face of every uncomplicated genocide everywhere but regarding the complicated actions of the world's only haven for Jews, and I no longer trust any friend who asks Israel to cease fire. You're asking Jews to just die willingly. So long as they don't call Israel a genocidal state publicly, I can stay friends with the hundreds who believe it, but not without resenting the hell out of them. </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But I can't pretend there isn't an authoritarian curtain gone round the Jewish community long before October 7th, a curtain of steel that might lift only so slightly whenever Netanyahu goes. There is no pretending the modern Israel is not Netanyahu, and there is no pretending Israel wasn't deserving of blistering censure long before all this. The moment they ceased to be the state that pursued peace in this conflict, they began an agonizing moral slide that's gone on my entire adult life. Israel is as deserving of criticism as any other Western country that willingly welcomes right wing authoritarianism into its government, not much more, but around Israel's long authoritarian slide from Sharon to Smotrich, the Jewish community's formed a protective wall of incendiary rage. It's a pustule that needs a biopsy, and until we accept that it's a boil in need of the most painful lancing, the only chance to rid the region of radical Islamic parties is to so decimate Gaza and southern Lebanon that it would be a genocide indeed. Our long term choice is this: become again the side that pursues peace in the face of an enemy who demands war, or become the genocidal people our so called friends think we already are with offensives far worse than what's coming for Rafah. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I woke up October 7th and on that day said farewell to every chance the world will become anything I love. I was terrified of a bad outcome for the world before October 7th, but I wasn't certain of it. I've said it a hundred times, but Israel lives on the world's most dangerous fault line, and the seismic eruptions spread. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So now, I just can't see anything but the strange death of the liberal world in my time. After the biggest liberal gains since the 60s, this liberal rule of law is thoroughly decimated by right wing radicals, who are only enabled by a left's insistence on pushing reforms that are not even good, let alone practical. It seems to be an endemic feature of any historic period when liberals rack up victories: rather than celebrate, the people we most expect to celebrate want to smash it up, and an ever more resentful right wing is all too willing to help them. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the one hand, anybody who hasn't ditched liberalism for leftism realizes there's no future for Israel without severely damaging Hamas. So far, the deaths are nearly 100% on Hamas, not Israel. The whole point of what Hamas did was to throw their own people into death and get willfully naive leftists to blame Israel for it. It's not antisemitic to criticize Israel, it's not antisemitic to think Israel went too far, but it's sure as hell antisemitic to expect us to turn the other cheek, and it's antisemitic to insist on ceasing fire the moment this all began. You expect Jews to die with no fight. What other group would you expect that of?</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the other hand, if Israel goes into southern Gaza, if they do not let aid in, it will be far from 100%. It's thoroughly out of touch with reality to expect you can get rid of Hamas. Until now, no matter how bloody, it's been self-defense. But an incursion into Rafah is simply vengeance. It's not genocide, but it's democide. And even if you get rid of Hamas, you've created a power vacuum where an organization as bloody or more than Hamas will rise. The best possible option is to not go into Rafah, let the aid come in, and make Palestinians so fear a repeat of these months that they would sooner rise up against Hamas than let them do it again. It's worked in Lebanon against Hezbollah for 18 years, it will likely work in Gaza. Not only does Israel not need to go into southern Gaza, going in will probably have the exact opposite of the desired result. </span></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We have to face facts: some of hostages are not coming home without a colossally unfair prisoner exchange. It's just the name of the game. Let Hamas declare victory. 85% of Palestinians will realize at this point that any claim of victory is a thorough lie, including Hamas. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This is Israel: it's only a matter of months until they develop technology to monitor the tunnels. </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In the meantime, I don't trust dozens of progressives for whom I have enormous affection. Many of them don't feel safe around people whom they think would not look out for their best interests, and now, I sure as shit don't feel safe around them. I'm no saint, but our friendship makes me feel dirty. The problems of Jews don't count for them. They excuse themselves by claiming you can separate Jews from Israel, and yet they don't. They hold the Jewish community responsible for its support of Israel. They say there is a conspiracy to support Israeli interests which they barely distinguish from the Jewish community. But they do exactly the same with the issues they care about. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On the other hand, Israel is going full speed ahead into a colossal, vengeful mistake. It was not a mistake to go into northern Gaza, but they've decimated the whole thing, pushed the entire population southward. It's enough. They're starting to make the Palestinian population starve to death, and now mean to push a million and a half people back into the north where they must starve amid the ruins. No words exist for a country that would do this except a state so dominated by military thinking that it's indistinguishable from an authoritarian dictatorship, and no word exists for people who'd willingly follow them except authoritarians. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">How do you forgive a whole world that turns to evil?</span></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1n2onr6" style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-radius: inherit; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All reactions<br /><br /></div></div></span></div><div class="x1c4vz4f x2lah0s xci0xqf" style="color: #65676b; flex-grow: 0; flex-shrink: 0; white-space-collapse: collapse; width: 7px;"></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; white-space-collapse: collapse; z-index: 0;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-74035194854508161132024-02-27T23:10:00.007-05:002024-02-27T23:10:58.049-05:00Program Note for Performance on 3/23<p> To Jewish music listeners whom it may concern,</p><div>You are about to listen to two pieces by Evan Tucker, one of many Jewish composers featured on this very Jewish concert. Evan Tucker is not the best composer on this program, but he can assure with relative certainty that he is among the most Jewish - raised to speak both Hebrew and Yiddish, two languages which he tries to forget with only some success, and was brought up with so much Jewish content that he never really learned math or science (by the way, he's learning disabled). Were it not for music, he would not have known a single non-Jew until he was 16. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>The two pieces are settings of biblical Psalms, all 150 of which were supposedly written by King David, but probably written by an assistant adjunct court poet paid part time for full time work while still paying off their student loan along with two side jobs, one in a furniture moving company and one waiting tables in a Jerusalem restaurant for tips. The Psalms are generally regarded as so boring that John Mulaney based a whole bit on how much people hate them, but they were meant to be chanted as music, not poetry, and as music have a history so long and illustrious that they range from Monteverdi and William Byrd to Stravinsky and Steve Reich. </div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div></div><div><div>The first of these Psalms is the first of these Psalms: Psalm 1. Mr. Tucker wrote this work in 2009: nearly homeless, living on the couch of friends with nothing to his name but fifty dollars and Sibelius software. He had dreams of starting a chorus and achieving 'choral glory', whatever that means, and rather than fix up his life, he decided to begin a mad project, ambitious as only undertaken by the delusionally desperate. For this chorus he'd found he would write settings of all 150 Psalms over the course of a lifetime. A Jewish Music Apollo Program. As befits a traditional chorus, this is a very traditional Psalm setting, no doubt filled with subconscious echoes of the Chazzanus and Yiddishkeit from which he then felt deeply alienated. </div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div></div><div><div>The choral glory ended, but the dream of the Psalms did not. It followed him everywhere for years thereafter with almost supernatural obsession, and by 2016 he decided to resume them as electronic works: Musique Concrete, representations of the divine whose performers would not be present in corporeal form. </div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div></div><div><div>The second of these Psalms, Psalm 16, was written when he had no idea what his next Psalm should be, but he had an idea in his back pocket. Baroque composers would set the old Spanish dance, La Folia, to music, creating virtuoso instrumental variations on a very simple sixteen-bar harmonic scheme. Mr. Tucker wanted to do a version that took La Folia through all its many possibilities in electronic music. This was just to be one of a number of La Folia settings he would do through the Psalms whenever he couldn't come up with a new idea for the next Psalm. </div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div></div><div><div>After eight years, or possibly fifteen, Mr. Tucker is now 18 psalms into his project. He figures he will procrastinate on the rest until he's seventy, then do them all in a single all nighter. </div><div><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /></div></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-31047328645294695632024-02-22T23:33:00.021-05:002024-02-24T16:29:54.863-05:00A Farewell to No Arms<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I had to defriend a guy I like for sharing an article accusing Israel of 'annihilation' in Gaza. Until I read it, I didn't think there was a word out there more hurtful to Jews than 'genocide', but annihilation is it. Annihilation, or 'vernichtung', was Hitler's exact word of intent for what he wanted to do to Jews. You might as well go all the way into medieval blood libels and say Israelis kidnap Palestinian babies, sacrifice them, and grind their bones into matzah. </span></span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When this all began, I prepared myself as best I could, knowing that the only way to ensure Jewish survival is hard, hard deeds that would make sick anybody with half their humanity intact. I prepared myself for hundreds of thousands of deaths before this all was done - not necessarily in Gaza but all around the Middle East. I haven't prepared myself for calling anything that happens a genocide - and I still think the accusation is the basest sort of antisemtism. Nevertheless, I prepared myself for the worst sort of butchery: in Gaza, in Lebanon, possibly in Syria, possibly the West Bank, possibly even Iran, and god knows where else. I knew that I'd have to dissociate from many friends, and while I couldn't avoid it, I knew that talking to other Jews and their pride in vengeance would make me take multiple showers. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Worst of all, I prepared myself for the worldwide death of every human sentiment I value until the world recovers its sense, possibly not before I'm an old man: the death of American liberalism, of Judaism that can coexist with secularism, of any rational root that knows that the stability of the world is more important than any reform, any revolution, any principle; because once it all falls down, none of us can stand upright in the rubble. This conflict isn't like Ukraine where there are clear cut heroes and villains, and fuck you for thinking there are, this is a fight for survival and resources among two people who deserve it. Israelis are punished for achieving success for the first time in thousands of years. Palestinians are perpetually punished, by the Ottomans and Crusaders and Byzantines before the Israelis, passed over for success while other peoples around the north Mediterranean are only saved from squalor by their proximity to Northern Europe.</span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Will the death toll be over 5% of Gazans by 2025? Only a fool would deny the possibility. Though I have no idea how they come up with these statistics: the Economist tells us that there is one functional toilet for every 220 Gazans, one shower for every 4,500. Two thirds of Gaza's hospitals are closed and the 13 functioning cannot possibly minister more than a fraction of their would be patients. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Arif Husain, chief economist of the World Food Program, says that the scale and speed of Gaza's famine is without parallel. Well over half a million are going without food for more than a day at a time. Whole families are given nothing more than a tin of beans to survive a single day, a sack of flour costs ten times what it did pre-war, and nearly all Gaza's cash machines have long since had their holdings drawn out. By 2025, it's possible that more Gazans will die of famine than bombs. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A kleptocratic dictatorship like Hamas is exactly as bad as it seems, and there's no victory in war against a totalitarian regime unless you siege the population to the point the dictatorship collapses, but it's worth prolonging the war if it means getting the supplies to the Gazans, even if Hamas steals many of them and the war goes on longer, Israel can't afford this level of hatred directed against them. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's not a genocide, but it's the world turned completely to its dark side. I'm not willing to go over the basics yet again, but I don't see another option. Jews are not going to lay down and die again just because you demand it. And yet, to do this without guilt, to keep making self-righteous justifications, to not search endlessly for a different way, to declare with simplicity: 'we're right', 'they're wrong', is fascist, authoritarian, it's anti-democracy barbarism, and makes a direct line to any number of justifications that declare war on democracy. Once you believe completely in the rectitude of your violence, there is nothing you can't justify, and it's only a matter of time before you make violent decisions out of reasons far more contemptible than necessity. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">War is war. It is so much worse even than all but the bloodiest dictatorships, and there's no way to trust that the Netanyahu government will prosecute it with anything but selfish aims. It's no genocide, but it's the killing of ten to twenty thousand innocent civilians in just four months with many more yet marked for death, it's famine, and it's more bombs than the US ever used in twenty years of Afghan occupation many times over. </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The roots of this conflict are much more complicated than any bad faith American radical/Euroleftist would ever allege. For fifty years they've called Jews white oppressors when we'd been killed at unprecedented speed and volume for not being white enough, they call Israel an illegal occupier when dictators from minority sects occupy Middle Eastern country after country, they call for their countries to divest from Israel when they owe their entire first world existence to the cheap labor of China and and the cheap oil of Saudi Arabia, both of whom violate human rights with a volume dozens of times more than Israel's; and most outrageously, they insist Israel solve a problem of refugees which their countries solved by simply murdering hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, and exiling millions more. The world holds Israel to a standard no other country is held, and then insists that unconscious antisemitism has nothing to do with their assumptions. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div dir="auto"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-size: 0.9375rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is what it means to live as a Jew in the world, and often what it means to die as a Jew. But as much as you brace yourself for those realities, they sometimes come at you at light speed and all you can do is cry out to the god who puts us into these circumstances and seems to get his gratification from our suffering. We have paid every single price for our continued existence, and now the price of keeping ourselves alive is murder itself.</span></span></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><br /><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xzueoph" style="color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space-collapse: collapse;"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-75225757718065388242024-02-19T20:22:00.008-05:002024-02-19T21:18:59.626-05:00Another Three Mini-Essays #1: Where Are Our Navalnys?<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">The reason we knew Navalny was the real deal was not because he was unimpeachably liberal, but because he wasn't.</span></span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Warts and all, Navalny made the compromises of a man who truly wanted to achieve a goal and not pose on ceremony. He believed in Greater Russia, he collaborated with 'Greater Russians', he maintained right to the end that Ukrainians and Belarussians were little more than Russians who didn't know they were Russian, he just didn't want to risk his whole country by going to war over it. He marched in the same right wing protests as ultranationalists, even neonazis. To the end of his life, he never truly repented. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nelson Mandela never recanted on his periods of violent Marxism, Rabin never recanted the assaults he ordered on Palestinians over a period of 40 years. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">It makes no difference when a person whose conduct is above reproach wants peace or liberty, that's what you expect of them. But when a borderline authoritarian advocates peace and liberty, you take it seriously. They gained much of their power and respect through authoritarian methods, and to switch tactics to peace and negotiation puts their credibility on the line. *</span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It doesn't always work that way: all you have to do is look at Arafat, who to the end of his life could not let go of terrorism, but any authoritarian who offers peace puts his life on the line, and it's always an act of bravery for which they might pay with assassination. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Where is that bravery in Israel? Where is that bravery in the US? Where is that bravery in Gaza? In Russia, you're facing an authoritarian with an implacable mix of ruthlessness and power - Navalny's failure was all but assured. But here? There's a chance. Israel? There's a chance. Gaza? Well... so many potential Palestinian leaders are sitting in Israeli prisons where their lives are currently safer than they'd ever be in Palestinian territories. Is there no longer even one Republican congressman willing to stand up to Trump? Is there not one Israeli figure of consequence willing to say that offering a two-state solution is more important than ever now? Is there not one Palestinian leader willing to condemn Hamas's actions publicly? </span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-size: 0.9375rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">* I might add, this is why I firmly believe that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is serious about his offer to broker peace.</span></span></div><div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xzueoph" style="color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space-collapse: collapse;"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-60951462513886473902024-02-14T12:38:00.007-05:002024-02-14T12:38:52.147-05:00Voweled Words<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">It doesn't feel like two weeks since I set pen to keyboard. In fact it feels like two days ago. Nerve and morale are things you either feel or don't, and lately I've felt a complete lack of it, but the result of not writing is a mind that goes to seed. There's a reason I maniacally graphed my way through my thirties, and it's because without the words, there were just racing thoughts, and if the thoughts didn't focus on a subject, they always loomed on me, and only dread ever came out of that. </span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have no thoughts that will endear me to anybody. I am growing more and more alarmed by Israel, but I have no faith in any righteousness in the Palestinian cause until getting rid of Hamas becomes a larger priority than getting rid of Israel.</span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see a way out of Israel simultaneously becoming both an isolated international pariah and an authoritarian state where a semi-permanent narrow coalition holds together a state that grows asymptotically close to that dreaded a-word... I'm not going to say it because I don't want to stir the pot that badly. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We are heading to that critical moment when Israel's Arab population is larger than its Jewish. When we hit that moment, Israel no longer has legitimacy as a Jewish state. Period. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The only way it can become a Jewish state again is through ethnic cleansing, the forced deportation of Palestinians to... who even knows where... believe it or not there are worse fates than ethnic cleansing, does anybody really think it's doing Palestinians any good to stay in Gaza? But who in their right mind can support with any enthusiasm a state so morally compromised that it deports longstanding populations with impunity? Again?</span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My support of Israel is unshaken, but my belief in Israel is getting very thin. No liberal can believe in a country that has a far right government in near-perpetuity, whether elected or imposed.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-size: 0.9375rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm not so naive to believe that the world can't support all manner of dictatorships, but my support of Israel draws ever closer to becoming the support of an authoritarian state. I'm beginning to view it as a partnership of convenience little different than support of Saudi Arabia. I obviously see the necessity of heavy operations in Gaza, I can even be convinced of the necessity of Rafah, but the longer this war goes, the less convinced I get.</span></span></div><div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; overflow: hidden;"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6" style="position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x1ejq31n xd10rxx x1sy0etr x17r0tee x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-radius: inherit; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All reactions:</div></div></div><div class="x1c4vz4f x2lah0s xci0xqf" style="color: #65676b; flex-grow: 0; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; white-space-collapse: collapse; width: 7px;"></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; white-space-collapse: collapse; z-index: 0;"></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-5564301942580280652024-02-01T23:42:00.001-05:002024-02-01T23:42:20.324-05:00Very Brief Piping Hot Israel take<p> </p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">On the one hand, BDS (boycott, divestment, sanction, not K-Pop band) is antisemitic. If you believe in it, I won't stop being your friend, but I will yell at you very loudly and you will probably stop being my friend. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But until Israeli settlers stop lynching Palestinians in the West Bank, settlers should temporarily be barred from travelling to any country in the world, no matter their beliefs. The fact that Netanyahu is not insisting on prosecuting this to the fullest extent would be an impeachable offense in any functional government, but Netanyahu has a vested interest in keeping Israel as dysfunctional as he can. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It's one thing if you live beyond the Green Line because of affordability, you've become collateral damage and I'd feel sorry for you in whatever population transfer eventually comes, but any person who'd believe in the necessity of Israeli settlements has long since become nearly everything the world accuses Israel of being.</div></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-14028889961259430972024-02-01T23:35:00.004-05:002024-02-02T22:04:15.617-05:00 Park School <p><br /></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">To talk about the war today, I'm going to talk about a local story taking place at a school I didn't go to. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And we begin by talking about its location. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">If Park School's location didn't exist you couldn't make it up. It exists at the border of two very particular realities: right where Old Court Road meets Falls Road. Drive just a block down Old Court Road and you get to Pikesville - Jewish Baltimore, where something like 90,000 Jews are said to live in a 5ish mile radius. Turn onto Falls Road in either direction and you get to goysiher Baltimore - not just goyim as in non-Jews, but goyim as a very particular subspecies of white person: upper middle class WASPS and Anglo- Catholics, and of a more recent vintage, Irish and Italians and Germans who want to live like WASPS. By now, this definition of goyim has grown so broad that it comprises people of color who like WASPy ways, and even Jews who marry out. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Park has always been the place for Jews who didn't want to Jewish, and goyim who didn't want to be goyish. Miserable at my first high school, I wanted to go to Park School for my second half. Park was the kind of progressive school where creative, individualistic, different drummer kids went, and a full third of those kids were Jewish. It was a school for Pikesville Jews who wanted to be defined more as liberals and universalists than as Jews - and therefore a place many Jews-with-a-capital-J looked at with extreme suspicion. In their minds, Jewish families sent kids to Park as a means to betray their Jewish heritage; but it should have been clear years before that that I badly needed a school like that. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It was too late for me to turn that ship around for a hundred reasons - principal among them being I was a bad student: learning disabled and emotionally discombobulated, I applied and didn't get in. The admissions director commented from my essay that I'd be one of the school's best writers, but one of my own teachers recommended I not be accepted in their recommendation letter. Another friend of mine transferred at the same time and he got in. He didn't even tell me he was applying. I remember going to his graduation party two years later, feeling completely dejected among all these high achieving kids who were about to go to the best liberal arts colleges in the country: places like Swarthmore, Williams, Bates, Mount Holyoke, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, to say nothing of the Ivies... </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I don't know if Park School is a place that sees the world with any sense of reality, but I'm certain Park School's reality would be quite nicer for me. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">A quarter century later, Park is grabbing local headlines. To show you what's happening, I'm going to reprint part of the story here as reported in the Baltimore Banner (please, everybody subscribe to it): </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">---------------------------</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"Students at The Park School of Baltimore were five minutes into a Zoom call with two Swarthmore College professors on Friday when the screen went black. School leadership had shut down the internet.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The video call was an attempt by some students to take matters into their own hands when school leaders abruptly canceled an assembly on the war in Israel and Gaza. Angry with the decision, student government members contacted the professors who’d been scheduled to speak — Sa’ed Atshan, a Palestinian, and Moriel Rothman-Zecher, a Jewish Israeli citizen — and announced in a schoolwide email that the talk was on.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The school’s leadership wasn’t having it.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Park School is the latest local institution where passionate discourse about the conflict in the Middle East has turned to controversy. </i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Students walked off campus in protest of the school’s recent action, with the support of “many” faculty, Paradis wrote to the school community Sunday.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>“While the students’ goals and rationale — and indeed their commitment to advocating for what they believe they and their fellow students were ready to experience — were clearly articulated, their actions countermanded my cancellation message of the previous day,” Headmaster Paradis wrote.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The originally scheduled talk had been canceled because the speakers “express views and use rhetoric that are not in keeping with what we understood to be their planned program,” Paradis wrote in a Thursday email explaining the decision. He said he wants students to be engaged in difficult conversations but added, “We must find ways to do so that yield constructive, not corrosive or harmful, dialogue.”</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Atshan and Rothman-Zecher had been scheduled to speak in person to the campus’s Upper School, or high school, at 9:45 a.m. Friday. But the school emailed the two on Thursday afternoon informing them that the event was canceled, Rothman-Zecher said, telling them “some of your rhetoric does not align with what our community currently needs.”</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The email singled out Atshan in particular, but did not make it clear what rhetoric of his was deemed objectionable.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Atshan is an associate professor and chair of the peace and conflict studies department at Swarthmore . Rothman-Zecher is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing and novelist who teaches creative writing at Swarthmore, a liberal arts college outside of Philadelphia.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>They have similar viewpoints, Rothman-Zecher said. Both are queer pacifists who oppose the war in Gaza and the occupation and believe “that everyone is deserving of justice and freedom.” They were never invited to debate each other at The Park School, he said.</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>“It was a space of openness and curiosity and not a space of pushing in a uniform perspective,” he said. “I was looking forward to speaking with the students [at Park] about the role I see for art and literature in broadening our minds,” he said. “I am still looking forward to that.""</i></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">-------------------------</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I have no idea what the aforementioned 'rhetoric' would have been, though one can guess they'd freely use words like 'genocide', 'apartheid', 'imperialism' and 'settler-colonialism.' I also imagine that had a speaker from the Israeli embassy come to Park School they would be escorted off the premises before they got past that weird mansion you see from Old Court Road. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm sure there are pro-Israel parents and alumni at Park who threatened to withdraw their donations, and I'm sure there are pro-Israel students who feel completely isolated right now. No private school's administration is so stupid that they don't know on which side the bread is buttered; and if firing over an Israel issue can happen to an Ivy League president, it can certainly happen to high school administrators. But Park is the sort of place that creates radicals and the cutting edge. The very fact that being anti-Israel's actions is subversive enough to create an event like this will make the cause all the more appealing to students. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I also have little doubt at that as a 17-year-old Park student I would have lead that walkout and happily given my parents a coronary. It wasn't because of my vast comprehension of foreign affairs and statecraft when I was 17. It's because was utterly fed up with the parochialism of Jewish Baltimore, which I saw as an impediment to my being able to lead a quality life. Like so many 17 year olds, I was going crazy with understanding what seemed beyond my elders: not understanding of politics, understanding how we were all dying a little from the rigidity of a religious upbringing. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The heavy burdens of my youth are a quarter-century ago. I'm almost 42 now, and I don't put as much premium on quality of life anymore, but I'm still fed up with Pikesville's bullshit. I retain a small measure of contempt for the rigidity my community of origin espouses. My life alone doesn't mean much, but there is a direct line between that rigidity and the gathering authoritarian storm that threatens us all. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Correspondingly, there's a line between that rigidity and the opposition to it. Both have authoritarian roots. The latter sympathizes with Hamas in all but name, the former sympathizes in all but name with Putin. None of them may realize it, but that is the result of their beliefs. It's all the same desire to simplify life to the point that whole classes of people are the enemy. That's not the truth. The truth is that the world is made up of billions of complicated people doing the best they can in the face of sociopaths telling them that the world has billions of villains rather than thousands. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So even if politics is a lot more complicated than I realized, having sympathy for people who are different than you is complicated too, and few people are better at simplifying their eccentrics into non-persons than Jews in Baltimore. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But this is about Park, not Pikesville's bullshit. Every city in America has a Park School: a school for the kids of upper-middle class parents who think that unlike them, their kids should be free to minimize life's bullshit and not compromise their personalities or interests for life's demands. Hell, most cities in America have two of them, because while I didn't get into Park, I got waitlisted at Friends. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But inevitably, with the minimizing of bullshit comes the belief that life can and should be free of bullshit. Should it be free? I'm sure that's true, we're all sure that's true. Can it be free? Come on, we all should know better by now. Life itself is bullshit. It's bills to pay and bosses to assuage, children to entertain and parents to appease. Getting rid of capitalism won't change that, neither will getting rid of government, neither will getting rid of religion, neither will sweeping science's findings under the rug. 98% of life is the process of what we have to do to keep life going, and if you spend your time contemplating life rather than doing what's expected of you, you go far more crazy than you would if you just spent your life fulfilling your responsibilities. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This surfeit of opportunities, this conviction that life does not mean to insult us, this belief that life is something better than one foot in front of the other in a world that roots for our failure, is precisely what leads to life being exactly that. Accept that the world sucks, we can make the world somewhat better, shake your fist at the world and tell it that it's not good enough, the world gets much, much worse. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">20th century Europe was littered with the verbiage of intelligentsia who supported totalitarian regimes because they promised utopia against all evidence that intellectuals were the first to be shot. If they were from 21st century Baltimore, the majority of them would have come from schools like Park or Friends, or magnet schools like Carver and BSA. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Don't misunderstand, these places don't produce naive radicals by coddling their students, but they do exactly what they're charged with doing: they protect their students from knowing just how bad the world has it, and therefore when they develop some vague idea of how bad the world is, they think a transformative solution will make it better rather than worse. And in thinking so, a disproportionate number their students fall into ideologies that root for totalitarians as much as any fundamentalist Christian education would. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Schools for quirky kids like Park, and the quirky liberal arts colleges they feed into, lead to better lives for their students where smart kids can grow up to be innocent of the mendacious ways of the world. I would have paid any price, born any burden, to live in that kind of innocence, and I'm painfully jealous of the hundreds of millions worldwide who have it. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But that freedom comes at a price for the rest: the world these people think they fight for doesn't exist. They go off to college ready to embrace anticolonialism and radical critical theory, not realizing that the organizations they advocate for would throw them into prison the moment they achieve power, then throw the rest of us too. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Gaza is not the USSR under Stalin. Russia is the world's largest country, whereas Hamas controls one of the world's smallest, but had Hamas a territory as big as the USSR, they'd be just as murderous as Stalin ever was. There is no civil rights struggle in Gaza until Hamas is gone and Fatah is reconstituted from the ground up. Until then, the only hope is Israel's success. Their quarrel is not against Israel, their fight is against Netanyahu and Likud, but so long as they're encouraged to mouth half-quotes from cultish radical theorists whose entire theories exist to be brainwashing, the world of the Left will continue to fight the wrong fight, and the triumph of the Right is a foregone conclusion: be that Right Christian, Islamic, or Jewish.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Unless the left keeps allying with the same causes as Hamas. So if you win, good luck enacting your agenda with those allies.</span></div></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-69955971716457592172024-01-30T16:01:00.003-05:002024-03-04T16:55:18.435-05:00A brief comment on casualty numbers<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Hamas's current tally of the killed is around 26,000. Israel's current tally of combatants killed is around 9,000. Neither total is reliable, and both sides have reasons for exaggerating the totals on their sides, but since both totals are probably exaggerated, we can assume that the percentages between the two are roughly correct.</span></span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That means a few things: </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. As barbaric as it is to speak in these statistics, let's register that Israel kills less than two civilians for every 1 combatant. That is an unprecedentedly low total, even in spaces much larger than Gaza. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">2. Supposing that Hamas is counting with some integrity, what does Hamas count as killing? Are people who die of bad sanitation killed by Israel? Are patients already terminally ill killed by Israel if they die a few weeks sooner because they don't have sufficient medical care? Are Palestinians accidentally killed by Hamas soldiers killed by Israel? You'd think these are academic questions, but when the totals are so murky, everybody is left to speculate how they came up with the totals they did. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">3. Supposing the Israeli army is reporting correctly that 9,000 Hamas combatants were killed, who then is considered a combatant? An army takes all kinds. An army of 30,000 soldiers takes just as many people to run weapons to them, to convey messages, to manage the payroll, or to do simple things like putting out fires (assuming Hamas wants them put out...). Are these people combatants, or is it just the people who fire the weapons. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ultimately, we have no idea what's going on in Gaza, and that old phrase, 'the fog of war' means that nobody knows what's really going on, even the people fighting it. There's a Heisenberg uncertainty principle that goes through every aspect of war. The full truth is never meant to be known by human perception. Whatever the objective truth, we will never know it except in outline. What goes on in war is entirely in the perception of the mind's eye: everyone brings their own beliefs to war, and everybody affects how a war is conducted through the decisions they make based upon their beliefs. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Machiavelli wrote much about how a leader must be virtuous in his conduct of state affairs, but obviously Machiavelli did not mean 'virtuous' as we understand 'virtue.' A closer English translation might be 'virtuosity.' Statecraft requires an awareness of a thousand different challenges at the same time: all the ways war threatens to break out, all the ways war alters the mind's perception, all the ways diplomacy can work to your advantage, all the ways force must be threatened, all the ways you have to understand your competitors' threats, all the ways your competitors' can be exploited: both in their excessive desire for peace and their excessive desire for war. </span></div><div dir="auto"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-size: 0.9375rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-size: 0.9375rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What's required is a virtuoso's dexterity to stay afloat amid thousands of challenges, surviving only by instinct because there are so many challenges for which one can never know until it's too late to prevent their explosion. Netanyahu has obviously proven that dexterity in peacetime, but while he's invaded Gaza in the past, he's never truly faced a war until now: no Israeli Prime Minister truly has since Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin 50 years ago. The challenges of peacetime are very different, and in putting your own political survival above your state's, you may have caused your state to spill over into war.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1n2onr6" style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-color: initial; border-radius: inherit; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All reactions</div></div></span></div><div class="x1c4vz4f x2lah0s xci0xqf" style="color: #65676b; flex-grow: 0; flex-shrink: 0; white-space-collapse: collapse; width: 7px;"></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; white-space-collapse: collapse; z-index: 0;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-21613674773845015432024-01-25T02:53:00.002-05:002024-01-25T02:53:27.509-05:004 Mini-Essays on the War: #2This is a more difficult post to write, emotionally, because it gets into questions no one wants to think about. It takes a bit of courage to make these points among liberals, and it will inevitably make people who read it angry. <div><br /></div><div>Honestly, what could you possibly think would happen if Israel left Gaza to its own devices? </div><div><br /></div><div>It already has. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm no fan of the New York Times's in-house conservative, Bret Stephens, but he had a very good column that everybody ought to take into consideration. </div><div><br /></div><div>The column is about tunnels: </div><div><br /></div><div>In a territory that is 25 miles long, there are somewhere between 350 and 450 miles of underground tunnels. Fathom that for a moment. The London Underground (its subway) is 249 miles. There are 5,700 entrances to Gaza's tunnels discovered so far. The central node with the most entrances is Gaza's main hospital. In other words: the very doctors who can best treat the wounded are human shields.</div><div><br /></div><div>Israel recognized the need for a Palestinian state in 1993. Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005. The Palestinian Authority was given literally $40 billion in the years after 1993. What's been done with this money? Among other things, a city of tunnels. </div><div><br /></div><div>What is done with these tunnels? Well, some of them are for smuggling in provisions, but considering the state of Gaza, even before 10/7, it's worth asking what provisions are being smuggled in. For years, we heard that we should let these tunnels be because they were used to bring in food, textiles, household chemicals, all of which Gazans can acquire in a black market that is almost literally underground. And clearly that's part of the tunnels' purpose. I even advocated that for a while. </div><div><br /></div><div>But when you have 40 billion dollars in initial seed money, you don't need tunnels. Even a generation after that initial $40 billion, you don't need tunnels. Even if Gaza had not received a cent of international foreign aid in the decades after 1993, and it's received billions, there would be no need for the tunnels. If there had ever been leadership in Gaza that was even semi-corrupt or semi-authoritarian, leadership that occasionally prized the common good over their own acquisition of more power, there would be no need for tunnels like this because life, however difficult, would be semi-bearable. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is no constructing these tunnels without a significant chunk of that initial seed money and an equally significant chunk of all the foreign aid thereafter. How many billions of dollars went into paying Gazans to dig these tunnels? How many billions went into construction equipment? How many billions went into paving the tunnels with concrete and metal? How many billion went into making the weapons the tunnels housed? How many billion went into building underground depots to store weapons? How many billion went into building underground training facilities so that Hamas's soldiers would know how to use them? </div><div><br /></div><div>It's just too easy to say 'there is no prosperity in Gaza because Israel hasn't allowed it,' or 'there's no prosperity in Gaza because Israel's destroyed it,' that's no less unfair than saying 'there should be no accountability for Israel's war actions because Palestine's actions are barbaric.' Part of the responsibility is on themselves, not the whole responsibility, but part, and a significant part. </div><div><br /></div><div>Everyone in the world is simultaneously acting in the context of their surroundings, and also responsible for their actions alone. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just as Israel persists in the illusion that it can fight a perpetual war for its security without eventually losing, Palestine persists in the illusion that it can fight a perpetual war for its liberation without eventually having no state left worth fighting for. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-30769437454855080462024-01-24T17:48:00.005-05:002024-01-24T18:28:24.040-05:004 Mini-Essays on on the War: #1<p> </p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There are two types of people who believed Netanyahu's threat to wipe out Hamas. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- Stupid people. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- Wait, there's only one. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The point was never to wipe Hamas from the face of the planet, the point of saying so was to convince stupid people that Israel has the willpower to do so and the capability, so you'd better not get any ideas from what Hamas did. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The problem is that stupid people have always believed that Israel is so powerful and so impervious to world opinion that it has both the capability and the willpower to wipe out whomever they want to wipe out. They're not. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So there are four (actually four) problems with this strategy.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- Israel can only bluff so many times before the bluff catches up with them. Just like their enemy combatants, the more they threaten destruction, the more urgent it is to meet their threats with force if anyone is going to believe them. If Israel continues to pursue this policy, eventually it is going to have to actually decimate one of its enemies. To decimate the enemies, they would have to decimate everywhere the enemies hide, and that means decimating hundreds of thousands of civilians Hamas and Hezbollah soldiers hide within. For the moment, that is extremely unlikely, but if a WMD is ever fired into Israel, that is precisely what would happen. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- So many "stupids" around the world believe that Israel is a unique confluence of evil and power that, for the moment, they thoroughly believe Israel intends to wipe out Hamas, whatever the cost. Therefore, they act as though this is what Israel will do, and it results in Israel being isolated around the world, and eventually would result in Jews being isolated too. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- Netanyahu's coalition testifies to the fact that there are at least a couple million Jewish 'stupids' too, and view it with approval. Netanyahu has always straddled that line between true believer and realist, but he so values his own power that he inevitably chooses realism. But if a true believer ever becomes Prime Minister, like Finance Minister B'Tzalel Smotrich, he might truly believe Israel can accomplish what Israel's establishment knows is a threat Israel can't possibly carry out. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">- Even moreso than the actual damage Israel does, propaganda about the extent of Israeli power is Hamas's best recruitment tool. The unseen is always more powerful to the imagination than the seen, and however cataclysmic the damage done to Gaza, the thought still exists in the minds of potential recruits: "If you think what Israel did to us now is bad, imagine what would happen if Israel visits its full might on us. After all, they say they will."</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The inevitable cost of propaganda is that, eventually, the line between bullshit and reality is so blurred that propagandists come to believe their own propaganda. Hundreds of millions in the rest of the Middle East persist with the idea that you can get rid of the Jewish presence, and because this propaganda is so successful, their leaders inevitably come to believe it too. Israel has relied on the myth of its infinite power and will for the near-entirety of its existence, and every year, more Israelis come to believe it.</div></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-52717246633357379232024-01-19T18:25:00.000-05:002024-01-19T18:25:00.002-05:00Nerve<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">It's been a while since I've written anything constructive. Just the act of putting words to the page causes a kind of low key panic. The panic is not that the words go down but that they'll be read. Words don't exist to be sequestered, they exist to be shared. I don't understand people who write diaries for themselves, sometimes volumes and volumes of them: so much effort purely for their own edification. Perhaps I don't have enough sense of self to take reward from my own doings, but what's the point of a diary you keep entirely to yourself?</span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And yet the thought that people read what I write is more than I can take because when people read what you write, people judge what you write. It's easy to write something relatively personal about your doubts, there are a couple dozen people who will rush to your support - you appreciate them, but we're all doing our best human duty in supporting each other when one of us appears to need it. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But what about when we write our more objectionable thoughts? What about the stuff we really want to write? </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What about thoughts about Israel/Gaza war that both the Israeli side and the Palestinian side would view as unprintable heresy? Well past what they think I think of either... Thoughts I keep to myself because I'd rather not endanger the friendships. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">What about thoughts on other subjects: books, movies, music, the stuff nobody gives a shit about... the stuff that if I stop to think about what I'm thinking about, I'm always get worried I'll be caught in a howling mistake that proves I don't know what I'm talking about?</div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What about fiction? What about fiction that includes descriptions so deliberately disgusting that you'd think twice about associating with a soul who'd write such things? What about the best piece of fiction I ever wrote, which is from the point of view of a trans person in Cleopatra's court? What about the simple fact that if I publish the fiction in any manner, publishing companies wouldn't pay me shit - so I have to keep it to myself, all in the hope that publishing companies will be interested in the kind of difficult, form-disregarding writing for whom they never have interest in otherwise. </span></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I can't find the quote, but in some book VS Naipaul has a bit about how after 40, a man loses his nerve. We won't talk about Naipaul, but nerve is what I'm beginning to lose. We all know that life gets simpler after 40. As you get older, you lose energy, you lose possibilities, you lose opportunities, you lose memories, you lose concentration, if you're not lucky like me you lose your basic health too. Unless you're an exception to the rule, your life story basically has its trajectory. You start to settle in for the long haul of what life will be, and if you really want to expend the energy to change things, expect that you will only have enough energy for that fight and none more. </div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So I guess the only choice is to fight against my waning nerve, and expect nothing out of life but exactly this fight. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">So see ya soon with more controversial Israel writing, more bad writing about subjects you don't care about, and more great fiction none of you will like.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1n2onr6" style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><div class="" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j" style="align-items: inherit; align-self: inherit; display: inherit; flex-direction: inherit; flex: inherit; font-family: inherit; height: inherit; max-height: inherit; max-width: inherit; min-height: inherit; min-width: inherit; place-content: inherit; width: inherit;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-color: initial; border-radius: inherit; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All reactio</div></div></span></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; white-space-collapse: collapse; z-index: 0;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-74660919475893365482024-01-10T01:16:00.006-05:002024-01-10T01:16:36.931-05:00A Brief Comment on Major Depression<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Fifteen years ago or so I used to cast aspersions on people who posted their dirty laundry publicly, and was proud that I kept mine relatively private and at least I didn't vomit it all over social media, then the person I judged harshly became me. I don't doubt many people judge in the same way as I did even now. </span></span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Please understand, I know there's something to be valued in stoicism, but people stopped being the strong and silent type for a reason. It's because it was killing <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;" tabindex="-1"></a></span>millions of people before their time. They turned to alcohol and cigarettes to carry a burden and it took decades off their lifespans. That was me in my twenties. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">When Robin Williams killed himself, I realized that no matter how funny you are, you might be doomed if you keep the fight private (note: I don't see myself as doomed, just quite unfortunate). So I came forward as having suffered from disgustingly severe depression for decades. Many diagnoses were bandied about for it, but none have truly given it a name. Whatever else I am, it is as much me as it is not truly me. And maybe if I come forward, I can help myself as much as I can help others avoid experiences like mine.</span></div><div style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x1n2onr6" style="font-family: inherit; position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><div class="" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j" style="align-items: inherit; align-self: inherit; display: inherit; flex-direction: inherit; flex: inherit; font-family: inherit; height: inherit; max-height: inherit; max-width: inherit; min-height: inherit; min-width: inherit; place-content: inherit; width: inherit;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-color: initial; border-radius: inherit; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All reactio</div></div></span></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; white-space-collapse: collapse; z-index: 0;"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-4852154329343705262024-01-08T20:38:00.008-05:002024-01-08T20:38:56.468-05:00 I don't have much to say about Lebanon<p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">All I can say is that Netanyahu, in his desperate ploy to kill people rather than give up power, is losing control of a situation that's demanded his immediate removal from the moment this happened three months ago. In order to maintain his right wing coalition, he needs to submit to extreme operations that not even he wants to do, and in pursing the most destructive course of action, he better ensures a continued political dominance. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;">Watch whatever happens very closely. This may well be a dry run for the world's future. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"><br /></div></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-91543334020606794772024-01-03T00:23:00.003-05:002024-01-03T00:23:58.876-05:00 Thing I don't care about: Harvard's President Resigned<p><br /></p><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Thing I do care about:</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"> Iran has a warship in the Red Sea. Why? Because the Houthi rebels of East Yemen have turned a bit of their fire away from their Saudi backed opponents and aimed it towards Israel. The missiles haven't hit Israel, but the Houthis have intercepted multiple ships going through the Red Sea's very narrow straits that are crucial for world trade. Of the four (I think) ships captured, one of them ships was owned by Israeli shipping magnate: Rami Ungar. The shipping world is international: every crew is international, every manufacture is international, so it's entirely possible that they captured all four with the intent of finding the Israel-owned one. </span><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">So why is something this vague this important?</span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">First of all, this demands knowing something about Yemen, which I hardly do, and I'm not going to spend the weeks reading up on it unless Yemen's the reason a gigantic war breaks out (and it probably won't be...). Suffice to say, important things are going on in Yemen that you don't know about, with multiple regions, multiple ethnic groups, multiple factions, multiple wars. E</span><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">ven if it's true that 22,000 Gazans have died at Israeli hands, the blood of the Yemenite conflict seems to exceed the Gaza conflict by a multiple of SEVENTEEN. </span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">You don't know anything about this conflict. Why is that? </span><div><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">...you obviously don't want to hear the answer. </span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">But now Iran has a warship in the Red Sea. Why? Because the fact that Yemen's conflict is now becoming Israel's conflict is obviously at Iran's behest (possibly with an OK from Putin or Xi), and Iran wants an excuse to keep this conflict going as long as possible. Tactical maneuvers are easier when you want to keep wars going than when you want to stop them, but this is, sadly, a brilliant tactical maneuver. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"> It serves a triple purpose: </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">1. It demands some kind of response. You can't simply tolerate missiles going into Israel in the middle of a war they're already fighting or else ten other countries or terrorist groups might get the same idea. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Such a response would either come from Israel or the US. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">- If it's Israel, it reminds every Israel-hater in the Middle East that, to their perception, Israel has always been an aggressor, and that if Israel is not defeated, the humiliations of still having an imperial occupier on their land will continue to effect countries whose distance from Israel seems extremely far. </span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">- If it's the US, it reminds every America-hater in the Middle East that the US's reach is everywhere, it can come to your doorstep at any moment, and the US can decide at any moment to upend your country on a whim. </span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">So far, it's the US, and again, thank god for that. The fact that the US can decide to upend a country on a whim isn't news to anywhere in the world. <br /></span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">2. Israel is finally moving into the next phase of its conflict where thousands of ground troops are withdrawn. Thank god for that or every Jew around the world would eventually walk around with a target on our ass. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">The idea that you can end Hamas is a delusion, everybody knew it was a delusion but the delusional; but an even bigger delusion is Hamas's that you can end Israel itself or even end the Jewish people, and the whole point of this war was to bring them closer to this goal of theirs by exposing us Jews to the world as the murderers and torturers we so obviously are. So long as Hamas stays in power and the people who support Hamas maintain their delusions (and don't forget, annihilation of the Jews is in Hamas's own charter), Hamas will find reasons to prolong this conflict. In other words - and stop reading if you're delicate... - you can't stop Hamas from killing people unless the price for Hamas's murders is so high that those who celebrated Hamas's killings would think twice about doing it again. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">In case you haven't noticed yet, Israel/Palestine is a game of inches. Every foot of land has disputed claims and competing stories, every meter is subject to endless disputes, negotiations and battles, and each foot of the battle can last a hundred years. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">There are only two actors in the world who want to see this war end less than Bibi Netanyahu, and one of them is Hamas. Without war, Hamas's entire purpose is run out. There is nothing left for their followers and captives but the obvious realization that so long as they draw a few percent support of the Palestinian electorate, Palestine could have all the apparatus in place to flourish, and it wouldn't take more than a generation for Hamas to remake Palestine into exactly what it already is. All it takes to make a country prosper is one group of practical hard workers and a rich, powerful backer. All it takes to ruin a country is one wing of ideological nuts with a rich, powerful backer. Israel: take note. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">If Israel is unwilling to continue a war in Gaza at a pace that shocks the world, then Hamas, Iran, and all the people who want Israel eliminated need this war to spread. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Where can it spread? To a place already so bombed out and hellish that it makes Gaza look like Dubai. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">3. The biggest quagmires are not wars in which there are two sides, clearly demarcated, where but where there are five or seven. The American Civil War was over in four years, but civil wars have been going on in Syria, Mali, and Camerooon for well over ten years. The 17th century German civil war was known as the Thirty Years War. The 14-15th century English civil war is known as the Hundred Years War. Civil wars too can go on forever with only two sides, but if the conflict takes forever, that's usually a sign that it has many sides, many actors, many belligerents in play - each of which have their own shifting motives, conflicting ambitions, personality tensions, corporate interests, and compete for the same resources; alliances break apart, fighters switch sides, actors within each side advance their own interests at the expense of the groups' goals, and generations of citizens live in a world of chaos. </span></div></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Two factorial is just two, and two sides can fight to a stalemate, but three factorial is six, so all it takes is three sides in any conflict and the complications get beyond the ability of anyone to foresee. </span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">For a thousand years, Jerusalem's been a quagmire for the Arab world, but Israel/Palestine is not a quagmire, it's a stalemate. The main components of Israel/Palestine aren't unpredictable, they're all too predictable. The same situation continues with the same factors: year after year, decade after decade, until the smallest disruptions seem like epochal events. But in Yemen, the largest disruptions barely merit mention in the world's news, and even if world news covered it properly, what was true when written down would change by the time it's published. </span></div><div><br /></div><div>So long as Israel/Palestine never spreads, it stays a stalemate, but in 1982 (really 1979), Israel launched itself into the Lebanese civil war to defend its borders and couldn't get out of it until 2000, ten years even past when the civil war ended.</div><div><br /></div><div>Israel's involvement in Lebanon was the literal poison that set the world against it for all the future to foresee. What might an excursion further abroad do? What might happen were Israel to feel itself compelled to interfere this region 2200 kilometers away, with all its competing factions and competing factions within competing factions, each of which has a whole new beast of chaos to unleash?</div><div><br /></div><div>It all seems unlikely or unbelievable, but consider this (with credit to the Stimson Center): </div><div><br /></div><div>The Houthi movement's founder: Hussein al-Houthi, believed that the US and Israel had plans to occupy no less than Mecca and Medina. In 2021, the Houthis deported any Jews left in Yemen from the mass exiles after 1948. In 2021, al-Houti's brother Abdel-Malek declared his intention to capture the areas held by their Yemenite enemies who 'want to subjugate them [the areas] to the Americans, British, and Israelis. The rallying war chant for the Houthis is said to be 'God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam.' </div><div><br /></div><div>Yemen is, in all likelihood, not going to be a new front in this particular war, but it just might be. This is a bid by a Shia group to be considered part of the Axis of Resistance: stretching from Hamas to Hezbollah to Iran and its militia groups in Iraq and Syria, that have taken put the commitment to wiping Israel off the map into Islamic form that used to be the pan-Arab cry of nearly every leader of every Arab country. What better way than embroiling Israel and its allies in a second front in the Israel-Gaza war that is of an unprecedented distance from Israel by a factor of 2,200 kilometers? </div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-10766835250132386032023-12-30T00:47:00.005-05:002023-12-31T16:54:01.176-05:00A quick listening guide to Leonard Bernstein<br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">We won't get into anything that wasn't his compositions. </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">A+: </span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">West Side Story (obviously. Look, it's probably the greatest theater work this country ever produced. Your life is poorer without knowing it. The best way to know it is to find the Spielberg movie and watch it on the biggest screen you can find. In the meantime, listen to the original Broadway soundtrack, which has still never been bettered.) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-oyVRuPRlY&list=PL2HvIoVJcahcqRssUsnv0g8lV3W-I2TfL&index=10"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-oyVRuPRlY&list=PL2HvIoVJcahcqRssUsnv0g8lV3W-I2TfL&index=10</span></a><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">A: </span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Candide (WSS's companion piece. It doesn't work as a show. It's just one thing, after another, after another, but along with Porgy and Bess, it just might be the most amazing music ever composed for Broadway)</span><br /><div><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span><u><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kovAiSbTyBI&list=OLAK5uy_l84_XoNl81Szssi1_CjfkTqPVENs6x1NQ&index=2&fbclid=IwAR0Rk1eAZIXeEBoLEALQyqz4JJRxe69UA0KUFWdUUVV668JCJlvnPIHq8AQ</span></u></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span><u><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><br /></span></u></span></span><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">On the Waterfront Suite: (Lenny's only movie score. It's one of the all-time movie scores, and here are twenty minutes of the most evocative music ever composed about New York) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojnVIW3wRJo"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojnVIW3wRJo</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Fancy Free: (Bernstein's ballet on the subject of three sailors with a day of shore leave in New York. This is the piece in 1944 when Lenny truly becomes Lenny, that brash, unmistakably New York voice that combines classical and jazz in a third stream fifteen years before third stream jazz was a genre.) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91xB1a2ftU&list=OLAK5uy_nITeKxfMVD1yTTkXKwFZ3piLWwTId5WLw"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91xB1a2ftU&list=OLAK5uy_nITeKxfMVD1yTTkXKwFZ3piLWwTId5WLw</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Symphonic Dances from West Side Story: (just the orchestral music - and a little bit more - that gives as good a sense of New York as anything in On the Waterfront) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_NelA3ZW4g"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_NelA3ZW4g</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">A-</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">On The Town: (That incredible first show of his, based on Fancy Free. Another one of the most incredible shows put on, as a soundtrack the love songs are a little more insipid than onstage, maybe because it never got a great performance.) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t062tjKmK_I&list=PLaEnMuxCkiA4h6JHoYJqRN2H1xQS4Yg7W&index=16"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t062tjKmK_I&list=PLaEnMuxCkiA4h6JHoYJqRN2H1xQS4Yg7W&index=16</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Jeremiah Symphony: (A biblical evocation of the prophet Jeremiah and his lamentations, inveighing against sin and in the middle, a depiction of the orgiastic sinners he so loathes - you may psychologize away, but written in 1942 and knowing the destruction that would soon make itself public, it's very difficult not to be deeply moved) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uic4qcyDmDQ"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uic4qcyDmDQ</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">B+:</span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">(Bernstein's 20 minute sacred piece that sets ancient Hebrew psalms as pure Broadway) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnrZGTmMjYc"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnrZGTmMjYc</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">B: </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Wonderful Town: It's almost pure fluff, but it's fun fluff) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNWpiNPK8tg&list=OLAK5uy_lIqAhr80hXDCsO-WBOrcEPIp_u3fJMFKc&index=11"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNWpiNPK8tg&list=OLAK5uy_lIqAhr80hXDCsO-WBOrcEPIp_u3fJMFKc&index=11</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">B-:</span><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">The Age of Anxiety: (At this point, I think there's only one movement that matters in this symphony: the jazz movement. Oh my god I love this.)</span><br /><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftPNojzZYHw&list=OLAK5uy_nZTOZ1rFILOj3JB2u2hcxygtufuCnAHZ4&index=18"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftPNojzZYHw&list=OLAK5uy_nZTOZ1rFILOj3JB2u2hcxygtufuCnAHZ4&index=18</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">C: Serenade - another work of Lenny in pretentious mode, a musical depiction of Plato's Symposium on the nature of love. It has a lot of exciting stuff, but let's get serious, this is not philosophy.) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpROC4gsZhQ"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpROC4gsZhQ</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">D: Kaddish Symphony: (It's not good... but getting rid of Bernstein's own pretentious text helped enormously, and replacing it with the testimony of Holocaust Survivor Samuel Pisar -Anthony Blinken's stepfather - makes it come much closer to working. It's not a masterpiece, but at least with some moral weight you get closer to what he must have been aiming for.) </span><a class="x1fey0fg xmper1u x1edh9d7" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTAnmHPTKEk"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTAnmHPTKEk</span></a><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">F: </span><br /><br /><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;">Mass: Oh god it sucks.</span></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-31497230540718673742023-12-28T17:15:00.002-05:002023-12-28T17:15:10.856-05:00Free Speech<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">H</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space-collapse: preserve;">ere's a preemptive f*** you to every single person who's ever taken a side in this particular Israel/Palestine debate. </span></p><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course cancel culture exists, it obviously does, it always has, and there is no better evidence than the Israel debate of how both sides use it disingenuously as a political weapon and have for the better part of a hundred years. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The idea that the pro-Palestine side invokes free speech now after having suppressed speech on so many other issues from... to... I don't want to say them because it will get everybody mad and get me ever asymptotically closer to the complete cancellation I've courted for thirty years. The hypocrisy of the pro-Palestine left is so unbelievably outrageous. Your chickens have finally come home to roost and it could not come a moment too soon and one can only hope your behavior results in the same in... any other country in the world. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Meanwhile, the right and center who've complained about cancel culture for years are now doing everything they can to silence everybody who disagrees with them into non-persons. This is... this is... this is... everything you claim to hate, and even if the pro-Palestine side completely controls academia and just about every government in the world, your side literally controls a government that can countermand the will of the entire world. Anti-Israel resolutions can't even get through congress with 20 votes. What more could you possibly need in America? Every attempt to suppress it will just make the oppostion to you worse. </span></div><div style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Who's right in this debate? Everybody is, and everybody is also deeply, deeply wrong. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-size: 0.9375rem;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's understandable. In a war, everybody fights dirty, but for god's sakes, own what you're doing. You don't have righteousness on your side, you're just indulging in the same base slime everybody does who wants their side to win. </span></span></div><div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xzueoph" style="color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space-collapse: collapse;"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-30846623025666218592023-12-27T23:29:00.002-05:002023-12-28T02:29:46.327-05:00ET: Almanac<p> It is on. The Rosenbergs are to die at last. Television networks interrupt programs with the announcement: "President Eisenhower and the Supreme Court of the United States of America have refused to spare the lives of atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg." At the Bernard Bach home in Toms River, New Jersey, a small ten-year-old boy is watching the baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Detoit Tigers on channel 11 when the announcement is made. The score is 0-0, but Yankee first baseman Joe Collins has just beat out a drag bunt in the bottom of the fourth. It is a sunny day and the boy is thinking about going out to play baseball with friends in the neighborhood. That's what Sonia Bach wants him to do. But he's fascinated by the television and can't pry himself away from it. The announcer says the executions are scheduled to take place tonight. He looks very intent and serious. The boy tries to see past him to the ballgame again, but the announcer won't go away. "My Mommy and Daddy," the boy whispers, feeling that someone or something is watching him. But he doesn't know what to add. A prayer? A seventh-inning stretch? At the ballgame, nobody seems to have noticed that the announcement has been made. Yankee outfielder Gene Woodling has come to the plate during the interruption, and he now watches a ball go by. There's something magical about TV, everything seems to happen at once on it, the near and far, the funny and sad, the real and the unreal. Tonight! Collins, taking a big lead off first base, is not thinking about this. He doesn't care. The boy hates Collins for his cheap hit. Just like the Yankees. His Mom and Dad like the Brooklyn Dodgers; the New York Yankees are Judge Kaufman's team. Judge Kaufman is rich and lives on Park Avenue and takes his sons to see them play. The boy feels that awful lump growing in his stomach again. His little brother is out on the front porch with Leo painting a homemade Father's Day card with watercolors. Father's Day is Sunday, a long time away. "That was their last chance," the boy tells himself, trying to picture this new finality in the same way he sees the Tiger pitcher stretch, study Collins at first, then whip the ball toward the plate: <i>ball two! </i>Are the other guys in the neighborhood watching the game, did they hear the announcement? His mom and dad have told him it's not manly to be afraid, but he is afraid, he can't help it. He feels like there are two of himself loose in this world, one who likes to play baseball with friends and come home to Mom and Dad and sometimes push his little brother around, and another one on television and in the newspapers who is threatening to eat the other one up. Both of them, the one eating and the one getting eaten, are frightened, because they both believe the world is not crazy, how could it be? and yet why is it doing these maniac things? why is it killing his Mom and Dad like this, and why is everybody so excited about it, and what is it they want with him, a plain ten-year-old boy who's still learning his fractions and doesn't even know how to fix a television or throw a curve ball yet. "Why don't you go and play catch with Steve?" says Sonia gently. She is being too nice to him. Like everybody else of late. Even Mr. Bloch. Sometimes he feels like shouting at them: damn you all! Woodling slams a one-strike, two-balls pitch clean out of the ballpark, and the Yankees lead, 2-0. The television camera shows people cheering and waving and having a terrific time. If people really loved one another, he wonders, would the world be like this? His poor Mom! What is she thinking? How does it feel? What <i>is</i> love in a world where people behave like this as if it were normal. Woodling circles the bases. His little brother comes in, wearing his Brooklyn Dodgers T-shirt all smeared with paint, and asks Sonia for a glass of milk. "That's it. That's it," the boy says, "Good-bye." "Good-bye." Nobody's listening. </p><p>His folks lawyer Manny Bloch is having the same experience: he and his defense team are flinging themselves frenetically at any judge they can find at home or in chambers, but they all seem to have vanished or gone deaf. A stone wall. Manny fires off a telegram to President Eisenhower, raising the Hugo Black point that the case has not been reviewed by the Supreme Court, but this wire is short-circuited by Special Counsel Bernie Shanley and "transmitted to the Justice Department": Eisenhower never sees it, Bloch, who has fallen unprofessionally in love with the entire family, is beginning to lose his forensic cool and is having flashes of self-destructive temper, as the doors slam shut in his face. He and others plead for a stay of eleven-p.m. executions tonight because of the Jewish Sabbath which begins at sundown. Kaufman, playing it close to the chest, says he has already spoken with Attorney General Brownell about that: the executions will not be carried out during the Sabbath. The lawyers take this to mean a delay is in the offing, past the weekend at least, and relax a moment: at Justice, they exchange knowing winks. </p><p>The Rosenbergs themselves, locked away in the stillness of Sing Sing Death House, are remote from all this noisy maneuvering, but they are not unaware of it. One thing they know: they are not alone in this world. Julius even clings to the mad hope that justice will be done, that they will be vindicated, these walls will come crashing down, and they will ride out of here on the shoulders of their friends, the people, but Ethel, though never more strong and serene, shares her son's mood of grim resignation: that's it, good-bye, good-bye. She sits with Julie, separated from him by a wire-mesh screen, composing a farewell letter to the two boys. What she wants above all is to save them from cynicism and despair, so she speaks of the fellowship of grief and struggle and the price that must be paid to create a life on earth worth living. Julie, watching her, nods in agreement, awed by her radiant tranquility . . . </p><blockquote><p>. . . Your Daddy who is with me in the last momentous hours, sends his heart and all the love that is in it for his dearest boys. Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience. We press you close and kiss you with all our strength.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Lovingly,</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Daddy Julie and Mommy Ethel</p></blockquote><p>Julius's mother, Sophie Rosenberg, turns up meanwhile at the gates of the White House asking to see the President, but they don't even let her get close--her emotional behavior is notorious, and besides, she's not in good health, and people near the end are capable of anything--so she has to do her scene in the streets. Much is happening out there. Demonstrations are building up in Washington, New York, around the world. Riots are expected and police everywhere are put on special alert. Bloch blames Judge Kaufman for stirring up all this trouble through his merciless intransigence: "Tens upon tens of millions of people in this country, in Europe, in Asia, know about this case!" The Boy Judge is not taken in: "I have been frankly hounded, pounded by vilification and by pressurists--I think it is not a mere accident that people have been aroused in these countries. <i>I think it has been by design!" </i>On a crepe-paper banner strung out above the Republic Chop Suey eatery in Times Square, Senator Frank Brandigee's immortal rejoinder to Woody Wilson: </p><blockquote><p>I AM NOT GOING TO BE BUNCOED BY ANY OLEAGENOUS LINGO </p></blockquote><blockquote><p> ABOUT "HUMANITY" OR "MEN EVERYWHERE" </p></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><blockquote><p> </p></blockquote><p>Robert Coover: The Public Burning - Beginning of Chapter 16, will try to copy the whole chapter later. </p>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-23810155947603141282023-12-26T01:17:00.005-05:002023-12-26T01:55:39.407-05:00At best..<p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Being caught in the middle is a tough place no matter where you are, but when the issues are existential, nobody wants to concede you might be right because that means that their very strong feelings are wrong. This is why I generally insist on not talking about Israel in person anymore except a few close friends and my immediate family with whom I can't avoid the topic. Literally the entire world wants you to tell them what you think privately, and it's always just a smokescreen for them to tell you why you're wrong. What's the point of enduring all this public online heat if we have to endure it person-to-person too? </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; text-align: start;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I have never been completely sanguine on this war, and until the far-right threat is gone from the Israeli government, I never will be. Jews do not endure this ever-present specter of death only to become the death we fear, but I will never apologize for Jews doing what they have to to survive, so long as it's essential for its survival. Well off socialists will never understand what it means to live in a dangerous neighborhood, and neighborhoods don't get more dangerous than Israel's. Doing nothing can get you killed. Doing the wrong thing can get you killed too. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But with the news that Israel has killed a top Iranian official in Syria, my willingness to spill blood for this fight gets thinner until Netanyahu goes. There is no point of killing people except if lives are ultimately saved, and this ends more lives than it saves. </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I could be wrong, but I don't think Israel meant to kill this guy. I don't think it was a targeted assassination. I think he simply happened to be at a Syrian base from where Israeli forces were worried weapons of mass destruction could be deployed, and the whole reason he was there was to inspect the base for its fitness to deploy exactly such weapons. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">They did not know a high Iranian official would be on the premises, and as usual these days, some high ups in Israel fucked up. This time, it would not surprise me if the Netanyahu administration and the military pretended their incompetence was deliberate. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But this is exactly the excuse Hezbollah needs to saturate the north of Israel with missiles, any of which have a much better chance of having WMD's attached than any missile coming from Gaza. Will they? Probably not, not yet at least, but the clock is ticking, and the whole world is getting closer to a point of no return. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span color="var(--primary-text)" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;">What is the point in supporting a war when you can't get rid of leaders who are, at best, willfully incompetent?</span></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="xq8finb x16n37ib x1fqkajt x1aj7aux x1axty5n x1uuop16" style="border-top-color: var(--divider); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 12px; margin-right: 12px; margin-top: 12px;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np x150jy0e x1e558r4 xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4 xwrv7xz x8182xy x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px -2px; padding: 4px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; z-index: 0;"><div aria-label="Send this to friends or post it on your timeline." class="x1i10hfl x1qjc9v5 xjbqb8w xjqpnuy xa49m3k xqeqjp1 x2hbi6w x13fuv20 xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi x972fbf xcfux6l x1qhh985 xm0m39n x9f619 x1ypdohk xdl72j9 x2lah0s xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x2lwn1j xeuugli xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x1n2onr6 x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1ja2u2z x1t137rt x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x3nfvp2 x1q0g3np x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; align-items: stretch; background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-left-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-radius: inherit; border-right-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-style: solid; border-top-color: var(--always-dark-overlay); border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><div class="x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1ey2m1c xds687c xg01cxk x47corl x10l6tqk x17qophe x13vifvy x1ebt8du x19991ni x1dhq9h" data-visualcompletion="ignore" role="none" style="border-radius: inherit; font-family: inherit; inset: 0px; opacity: 0; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; transition-duration: var(--fds-duration-extra-extra-short-out); transition-property: opacity; transition-timing-function: var(--fds-animation-fade-out);"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="xzueoph" style="color: #1c1e21; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space-collapse: collapse;"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-32017151954198448762023-12-26T01:14:00.001-05:002023-12-26T01:14:07.488-05:00Israeli Christmas<p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><p></p><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #050505; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It may be a Jewish state but Christmas in Jerusalem is an extraordinary thing. Thousands of pilgrims around the Old City flooding churches of every denomination and language that are hundreds of years old, sometimes thousands. It is one of the great events of the Israeli year, and life without it feels empty. I'd imagine a lot of it is still going on in Jerusalem even if at nothing like that scale, but Christmas without pilgrims would be unthinkable in Bethlehem and Nazareth, and one has to assume there is no such pilgrimage there presently. Just emptiness and sadness in places where thousands experience the most profound joy every year. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; text-align: start;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: inherit;">War depopulates, not just life but all the things which make life worth living. </span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: var(--primary-text); font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: var(--primary-text);"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wish every Notzri out there a Merry Christmas. May you get your time in Jerusalem back, and may we all figure out a way to share this place while letting all our best traditions thrive. Life itself depends on it.</span></span></div><div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; overflow: hidden;"><div><div><div><div class="x1n2onr6" style="position: relative;"><div class="x6s0dn4 xi81zsa x78zum5 x6prxxf x13a6bvl xvq8zen xdj266r xktsk01 xat24cr x1d52u69 x889kno x4uap5 x1a8lsjc xkhd6sd xdppsyt" style="align-items: center; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px;"><div class="x6s0dn4 x78zum5 x1iyjqo2 x6ikm8r x10wlt62" style="align-items: center; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; overflow: hidden; white-space-collapse: collapse;"><div class=""><span class="x4k7w5x x1h91t0o x1h9r5lt x1jfb8zj xv2umb2 x1beo9mf xaigb6o x12ejxvf x3igimt xarpa2k xedcshv x1lytzrv x1t2pt76 x7ja8zs x1qrby5j" style="align-items: inherit; align-self: inherit; display: inherit; flex-direction: inherit; flex: inherit; height: inherit; max-height: inherit; max-width: inherit; min-height: inherit; min-width: inherit; place-content: inherit; width: inherit;"><div class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1o1ewxj x3x9cwd x1e5q0jg x13rtm0m x1n2onr6 x87ps6o x1lku1pv x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xnl1qt8 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x1vjfegm x1lliihq" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; border-color: initial; border-radius: inherit; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: none; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div class="x9f619 x1ja2u2z xzpqnlu x1hyvwdk xjm9jq1 x6ikm8r x10wlt62 x10l6tqk x1i1rx1s" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; z-index: 0;">All rea</div></div></span></div></div><div class="x1c4vz4f x2lah0s xci0xqf" style="color: #65676b; flex-grow: 0; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; white-space-collapse: collapse; width: 7px;"></div><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem;"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np xykv574 xbmpl8g x4cne27 xifccgj" style="align-items: stretch; box-sizing: border-box; color: #65676b; display: flex; flex-flow: row; flex-shrink: 0; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px; position: relative; white-space-collapse: collapse; z-index: 0;"></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></div></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></div>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5120202207964289878.post-8929845790458446612023-12-24T16:14:00.003-05:002023-12-24T16:14:32.320-05:00I wish I hadn't defriended so many anti-Israel people<p>I could totally use their posts to refute them now. </p>Evan Tuckerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04552209699238979904noreply@blogger.com0