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This is not America


The House will go into Day Three of Jim Jordan trying to wrangle the votes to become Speaker. 

Representative Rashida Tlaib held a pro-Hamas rally yesterday where she again repeated the lie that Israel was responsible for the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.

Donald Trump keeps running his mouth like a crazed baboon.

This is not America.

And yet, it is.

This is the America we have now, created by a confluence of forces which want to see this experiment fail. These forces are both internal and external, and the external forces help the native fifth columnists.

This is the America many want, at home and abroad: neutered, at each other's throats, impotent, torn by the loudest and stupidest voices. (One can write in flowery language, as the student groups issuing statements in support of Hamas do, and still be irredeemably stupid.)

Has it always been like this? Perhaps. But while social media is not the font of all our ills, it does give voice to those who would otherwise either keep their opinions to themselves, or bray them out in mimeograph pamphlets which they slide beneath a library's door, expecting it to be displayed. (I speak from experience, as someone would regularly shove their screeds through the library door after hours, expecting their genius to be posted on the public bulletin board.) Social media has emboldened the worst elements to be brave keyboard warriors, knowing that their anonymity screens them from consequence. (To quote the meme, social media has made people way too comfortable disrespecting others and not getting punched in the face for it.) There is not one single, solitary social media site which is fit for purpose. The quest for engagement valorizes all engagement, good and bad. And it's the bad engagement in which we are awash. 

The irruption of antisemitic evil since the beginning of the Hamas-Israel War is disheartening, but not really unexpected. For a few days after the Hamas sneak attack, everyone was on Israel's side, aghast at militant barbarity. But as soon as Jews dared defend themselves, then the usual suspects fell back on the usual tropes. Oppressed Palestinians! Israeli atrocities! From river to sea, Palestine will be free! Tribalism is humanity's great, existential shortcoming; and the thing all of the various tribes can agree on is that Jews are anathema, dirty, and to be eradicated. As Tom Lehrer sang:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.
"I have dear friends who are Jews. But Israel shouldn't exist." Those two statements are at contradictory poles. And yet I hear and see that all the time. As if the State of Israel is a cancerous aberration, and everyone would love Jews were it simply to vanish. History paints a different picture. Not even ancient history. 

So. This is America. But this is not my America.

In my America, moral clarity is paramount. I am against antisemitism. I am against racism. I am against Islamophobia. I am against all bigotry and hatred. These are not positions which are at odds with each other. These are positions which all right-thinking and decent people should and do hold. And I believe we are the majority. Silent, because the noise and vitriol are so prevalent. Silent, because decency doesn't sell ad-space. We need to not be silent. I'm not saying be a social justice warrior on social media. No, far from it. As I've said, social media is a failed experiment, which will become clearer as time passes. It should be relegated to the dustbin containing other failures of the Internet Age. As it exists now, it does nothing but generate dysfunction.

My America, and, I hope, your America, speaks as President Joe Biden did in Tel Aviv, standing shoulder to shoulder with Israelis under unspeakable horror, standing for civilization against barbarism, standing for good against evil. Remaining neutral is an option, but it's a bad option. The lines are clear. This is not a case of "a pox on both your houses." The battle for civilization is taking place overseas, and is taking place right here at home. It's all one war. Some are calling it World War III. We all thought such a war would involve nuclear annihilation. But with America's overweening power, no one wants to take us on directly. So they do it by stealth. They do it by subterfuge and subversion. They seek to break the will of civilized humanity, to make things so awful that we give up.

We will not give up. We will not surrender. We will see this struggle to its conclusion. And the conclusion will be the victory of the forces of light over the darkness which ever seeks to return humanity to its base roots. No. Not this time. Not on our watch.

I close this by posting that speech by Pres. Biden. Once again, I'm grateful that he is in office at this perilous time. The man whom he defeated having the reins doesn't bear contemplating.
Be well, friends. We have a world to save.
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