Stupid and Disloyal

This week the President of the United States suggested that I and many of my friends are  dumb or disloyal because we vote for Democrats.  While a stunning thing for a President to say, it may not make his top ten of ridiculous or slanderous statements he has made since his election.  But many were confused as to being disloyal, to what?  He clarified that some how if we vote for Democrats we are disloyal to Israel.  

The thing is I still don't know what he means.  The United States has always been a strong ally with Israel.  Both Republican and Democratic Presidents and members of Congress have worked hard to support Israel.  Democratic Presidents (Carter and Clinton) helped broker deals that have led to eras of relative peace in the region.  The current argument is that Jews should support President Trump because he moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, as if that was some how an important issue for world Jewry.  In fact I think that might be counter-productive in the long run when it comes to peace with the Palestinians.  But my Jewishness and my love and commitment to Israel are not about American partisan politics and shouldn't be.  

I am loyal to values and the Constitution of the United States.  For me throughout my entire voting life I have felt the Democrats have upheld my understanding of those better than the Republicans.  It is even more striking with this particular administration and GOP leadership.  There are days I don't believe the President fully understands the role his playing and how the Constitution works, but what is worse are those in the party who enable this insane behavior despite their duty to the Constitution.  Why would I as an American Jewish or not vote for such a thing?  

I know there are liberal voices that are not pro-Israel who are part of the Democratic party.  I also know that there is a fair amount of ignorance on the part of some current members of Congress when it comes to the current situation in Israel.  But regardless of what the GOP says those voices are not the mainstream of the party.  In fact recent events have given some of those members more power as the President not only punches down to them but asked the Israel government to do the same.  But the beauty of living in our country is that I can challenge them on those issues with the hope that they might see the broader world view on the issues.  Frankly it would have helped Reps Omar and Tahlib to have visited Israel and see through the eyes of the people on the ground how complex the issues are and what role the US could play in peace.  But the short-sighted nature of both our President and Bibi Netanyahu allowed for the missed opportunity.  

But what is truly amazing in this discussion is the notion that American Jews have to have a lock-step view of Israel.  One that is more associated with the right wing politics of Christian Zionists who use Israel and the Jews of the world as part of their eschatological endgame without much care for us as people.  I choose not to live in Israel for many reasons.  But I also feel a strong connection to the country.  I feel that I should not have a say in how Israelis choose their leadership or the direction of the country because I choose to live here.  That doesn't mean I shouldn't be critical of the government if I feel they cross a line.  (Frankly I feel I should be critical of any country that crosses a many a line).  But I feel without reservation that the State of Israel should exist as a Jewish State.  I will deal with my own internal struggle of what that might mean in the long run.  So while I don't have a dual loyalty there is a special place in my heart for Israel.  I want it to continue to thrive and I want it at peace with its neighbors.  I don't think that this President, nor the current leadership of his party share that vision.  So the assertion of the President is ridiculous on its face.  

What is even more troubling is that people have been writing about how there are bad Jews who don't support this President, specifically because of his standing with the current government of Israel.  They, like the President, conflate Israel and Judaism.  President Trump once told a group of American Jews, talking of Netanyahu, that he was "your Prime Minister".  That is where I think this whole debate goes off the rails.  This is where I get the most frustrated.  I love Israel as a nation, but I have neither sworn an oath to the country and certainly Bibi Netanyahu is in no way my Prime Minister, nor the leader of all things Jewish.  

Jewish Americans, like every other sub-culture of Americans, vote their personal values.  Mine are informed and shaped by my understanding of my Judaism and what it calls me to do.  I see the Democratic party upholding the values of Judaism that are dear to me as well as what I have always believed and was taught America stood for.  Many of those values are shared between my faith and my country.  That doesn't make me dumb or ignorant, nor disloyal.  It makes me an American, using the my rights to think for myself, choose whose voice I want to speaking for me in government and standing up for what I think is right.  Mr. President if you think that makes me disloyal in your view then I worry you don't understand the greatness that is this country.  That sir is a pity.   

Give Us Your Tired and Poor Meant What It Said

When Emma Lazarus wrote her poem The New Colossus, to raise money for the pedestal of the what is now called the Statue of Liberty, the statue was new and a gift of France.  A representation of the Libertas, the  Roman Goddess of  Liberty and was initially intended to represent the freedom that comes with the rising of republican style of government and the growth of democratic ideals.  The broken shackles on her feet were there to represent the very recent end of slavery in the United States.  But it served more as a different symbol for many, a symbol of hope. It was a symbol to the waves of immigrants who came to New York Harbor as their first stop to a new life and when Ellis Island opened it was the milestone that many on ships entering the New World saw and felt like they made it.  While it still stands for Liberty, Freedom and Democracy it also was transformed when Lazarus' poem was added to the base.  She liken the statue to Greed colossus of Rhodes, another great statue of the ancient world.  She went on to give her maternal attributes as if to suggest that she welcomed to a new home those who were tossed away by their countries of origin or fled from fear or famine.  Lazarus showed a new vision of the still young country to welcome the stranger and we will help them realize their better selves.  That was sometimes not a common sentiment in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Much like today, Immigration was a hot button issue.  But in the last few weeks we have seen the Trump administration try to rewrite Lazarus' poem or completely dismiss it because of their own hatred of immigrants and seemingly immigrants of color.  We must remember who we were when we the statue rose over the New York Harbor.  We have heard administration officials, like Steven Miller, say the poem had nothing to do with the statue.  This radically insane take tried to bring out the idea of the original intent of the statue, but that was a soon faded reality.  But without the poem, the statue can't be a symbol of who we are as a nation, a nation of people who have worked together from many different places in the world.  A tapestry of traditions, cultures, faiths and races.  Something that seems to scare this administration.

Worse than Steven Miller's notion that the poem is meaningless was a recent series of interviews with Ken Cuccinelli, the acting Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service.  First he said that the poem was better written to say "give us your tired you poor your huddled masses who can stand on their own two feet".  Later he said that Lazarus' poem was only about European immigrants.  First of all history doesn't agree with Cuccenelli's first statement.  While there was a test that people immigrating to the US were not simply going to be wards of the state, that was not a hard and fast rule.  In fact the first immigrants through Ellis Island were unaccompanied minors.  If there was someone to reach out to people and they had potential they were allowed into the country.  Cuccenelli was seemingly trying to suggest those immigrants on the southern border were going to simply be wards of the state.  But like Ellis Island, if they were allowed in, they could work and build themselves up.  Many did, look at the businesses built by immigrants, who like today's immigrants, were fleeing dangerous government supported or allowed violence.  Only about 2% of the people who entered the country after passing the Statue of Liberty, were permanently turned back.  

But the second piece is a growing worry for many people, both people living here in the United States and those who may some day want to make this country their home.  The President has said in the past he would rather have immigrants from a place like Norway, something he has repeated.  Cuccenelli said that Lazarus and thus the immigration expectation of the time was for Europeans.  This appears to be code for white people.  Again, this is just nonsense as the poem references that the Mother of Exiles From he beacon-hand glows world-wide.  I think it is clear that Lazarus' call was for all those suffering under the governments of the world that hurt more than helped their people.  True the vast majority of people who immigrated through Ellis Island were Europeans, but it was also the closest port of entry for Europe.  America's open doors did not have a White Way to enter.  We were open to all. 

We might say that this is just a little election rhetoric to gin up the base and make people feel we liberals just want open borders and an immigration free-for-all.  But there are real world issues when this thinking influences executive action.  We have seen it in the inhumane ways that people on the border have been treated.  In fact it took a federal court judge ruling to push the Trump administration to provide simple, everyday hygiene products and opportunities to detainees.  Think about that, a judge had to rule on whether the United States of America can avoid giving people, including children, an opportunity to wash themselves and brush their teeth.  But those federal courts could rule in other ways in the future if we aren't diligent.  President Trump has nominated Judge Steven Menashi to the Court of Appeals one step down from the Supreme Court.  He wrote in a law journal that a country cannot function unless it was a monoculture.  I won't bore you with the details but the argument was that a country with many sub-culture cannot find a common link to focus on and thus will fail.  This is an old racist argument that we must all be the same in order to survive and it was used in countries that oppressed minority populations by not giving them rights or status.  That is the antithesis of the American experiment.  This is not normal and not okay.  

I truly believe our government is broken, and while the adage from Game of Thrones, that the small folks care little who sits on the Iron Throne that should never be the case for our Republic.  The government is us.  When we elect people they act in our name.  If you believe that immigration has made this country stronger, if you believe that there was a time when we welcomed the stranger and if you believe that we are better together it is time to rise. This is the direction our country is going.  If you believe we should be purged of diversity, that we should close up our borders, that we should only allow people to thrive who are of a single culture, you really need to explain that to me.  Either way take a moment to read what a young woman in the 1880s wrote about a symbol Americans seem to love and are being told it doesn't stand for what it stands for: 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

As you read this think about your own ancestors, how and why they got here and what they might say to a country that right now, at this moment, is demonizing the other.  I don't think they would like what they see.  

Partisanship Should Stop at the Edge of the Police Line

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a partisan.  I truly believe that the ideas of the Democratic party are better for the country as a whole than the Republican party.  That is not to say I would never vote for a Republican.  In fact I have.  If the candidate is Republican they have a higher bar with me, but there are times that the GOP candidate is a better fit, mostly in local elections.  That said there are things that shouldn't be partisan in our approach.  So last weekend the country failed that test miserably and this weekend we did it again.  Or at least some of us are.

When the horrific news of the El Paso shooting and over 20 dead started coming across the internet, it didn't take long until there was a response from the lunatic fringe of the right wing noise machine to try to make the shooter into a Democrat.  Like clockwork, these fringe websites posted false information like they had in every major shooting event in the last decade.  But we soon learned that the shooter was a person who was inspired by the language of a Mexican invasion that is championed by the President and others in the Republican party. The shooter was a White Nationalist wannabe.  That uncomfortable notion was quickly mitigated by the fact that in a few hours another shooter killed 9 people in Dayton, Ohio.  It didn't take long until it was learned the Dayton shooter had retweeted posts by Elizabeth Warren, Antifa related people and liberals across the spectrum.  For some the whataboutism was a relief.  Even the New York Times ran a piece suggesting that if we are to hold the President's rhetoric as partly responsible for the El Paso shooter that we must hold the left responsible for Dayton.  That of course is nonsense but it sells papers and promotes clicks.  The bottom line is that we shouldn't immediately look to see if the shooter in a case like this agrees or disagrees with our political positions.  In fact if that is your first reaction, there is an issue that needs to be addressed.  But if the political rhetoric drives an act of violence, we must acknowledge it and move to end it.  We must think in a way that ends violence, not look for excuses to ignore the reality.   For many they see the shooting up of a synagogue, a Wal-Mart or where ever the putting into the actions the words of the President.  That cannot be ignored and shouldn't be.  The rise of White Nationalism needs to be met head on and those who can must point out the President that his angry rhetoric feeds their desire for action.  But just because someone likes a politician doesn't mean that their actions are inspired.   The Dayton shooters actions are still a bit of a mystery but he had a history of misogyny, which is not usually associated with progressive politics, but they are not mutually exclusive.  So if in the end there are voices on the left that helped drive him then we must clearly repudiate them as we do Trump's.  But as of this writing it doesn't look like the Dayton shooter had a political agenda. 

Looking for an angle to stories can bring out so much anger and thus feed further acts of violence.  But sometimes it seems like just a cheap attempt to score points.  Jerry Epstein's suicide clearly is an example of this.  Epstein, being held before trial for sex trafficking, including of under-age girls, was found dead in his cell.  This came less than 24 hours after the release of documents in one of the cases against him that named famous political figures as having sex with under-age girls.  Epstein was linked over the last few decades to political and celebrity figures that crossed many ideological lines.  Like Harvey Weinstein, there are pictures of him with many and varied people.  So conspiracy theories are bouncing around the net.  People have revived the long debunked Clinton kill list, others say Trump's justice department had him killed, still others say he isn't dead just being help somewhere and this is all a hoax for some nefarious reason.  False information for political gain has been spread all over the net and even the President retweeted a crazy conspiracy theory about the Clintons.  This is a problem.  Until there is evidence to the contrary I can only believe that a man who lived the life of royalty, faced with being alone and in a drab cell for the rest of his life, facing potential inmate justice, and losing all his political support chose the easy way out.  He wasn't on suicide watch, he had material to form a noose, and he is not hard to kill yourself even in custody.  But it seemed that the body was still warm when the partisan extreme made so many accusations. 

Partisanship is not evil in an of itself.  It helps define the parameters of your political world.  Being a partisan is not a straight jacket.  But if your partisanship has you manipulating reality and promoting nonsense because it fits your political positions then you are not really just partisan, you are a propagandists.  Rethink before you retweet. 

It Happened Again

Last week I started writing this post after the attack on the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California.  A young man with a legally purchased weapon killed 3, including a small child, and wounded 9.  But yesterday it got worse.  In El Paso, Texas a young man drove 600 miles, put on protective gear, and took a semi-automatic weapon and fired into a crowd at a mall complex with the intent to kill Mexicans, in his own words.  Twenty dead and 26 injured.  Then over night a man in Dayton, Ohio killed 9 and injured at least 16 in a nightclub area.

In a little over a week 3 individuals, at least two of which driven by far right ideology, have killed 32 people who were simply go about their lives.  These kinds of killings should not be normal, but sadly they are becoming just that.  The responses are almost fully programmed.

We hear thoughts and prayers from politicians whose thoughts are limited to attacking anyone who wants to even look at perhaps limiting access to military style weapons and prayers that something else will push the story off the front page.

When someone suggests we have to talk about guns that can be restricted we hear "It is not the time to talk about gun control".  I am wondering when the time will come.  After another 100 deaths, a 1000?  10,000?  Can they just give us a number they are willing to wait for?

As soon as the shooter in all these cases were white men, the calls of mental health issues needing to be addressed.  We know that when a shooter is Muslim, like in the Fort Hood shooting, there is no real call about mental health.  White supremacist ideology and radical Islamist ideology follow the same path leading to a different place.  Both are about purging the world of the other.  Even if the shooters in the rash of the shootings in this country did have a form of mental illness (which I am not sure it is true) it is the carpet bombing of hate that spurs them on.  But here is the chance of all these guys in Congress who call for better mental health support.  I call on Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, Mike Turner, and Rob Portman to write a bill calling for another $2.5 billion in mental health funding, maybe take it from DOD.  I find it offensive that Republicans have been all over the media saying this was a crazy lone wolf, bottom line the President and his supporters are raising a pack.  One does not have to join a labeled group to be part of a terrorist movement.  The internet allows for a virtual collective.  Funny, they say he was mentally ill but he acted with both forethought, preparation, drove for at least 10 hours, posted minutes before opening fire and planned for his eventual capture.  He was making a statement not acting like someone with voices in his head.

The shooting in El Paso also destroys the idea that open carry and concealed carry will protect people.  The Wal-Mart was an open carry store in an open carry state where the shooter could walk around with his weapon totally legally and not break any law until he started firing.  In fact if someone where to try to stop him they would be violating his rights.  So we can only assume the there were armed citizens in the crowd.  They couldn't stop him, it took a group of cops.  While it didn't take them long to get there, it continues to show that armed, untrained citizens do not react well in a mass shooting situation.  There are no heroes.  I can't imagine what would happen if they did.  Dozens of people firing in a public location not knowing who the real criminal shooter is?   The cops in El Paso were there in few minutes, imagine if someone seeing this guy get out of his car with his long gun called the police and they could have come and deal with it before the first shot.

Solutions to these tragedies are not easy, but there are things we can do to make it harder for people to get their hands on guns who can kill dozens in a few minutes.  We can pass a background checks on a federal level with two laws sitting in the Senate that Leader McConnell will not bring to the floor.  We can investigate White Nationalist groups and put back the funding that the President withdrew from Federal law enforcement.    We can hold those who stir the pot of hate to a standard that makes them see they need to stop.  And we can ban certain weapons.

Military styled weapons that shoot many rounds a minute and large magazines can easily be banned.  We did it before and it makes it harder for people intending to do harm to get their hands on a weapon that can kill so many.  Someone actually said in England where guns are restricted that knife attacks are up.  Yes, people who have homicide on their minds can kill in many ways.  I know that for sure.  But it is impossible to kill 20 people in a few minutes with knives on your own.  It is nonsense to suggest it.  Many people suggest that banning such weapons is a violation of the 2nd amendment.  But I have it on good authority that it isn't.  Someone wrote:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

That was Antonin Scalia, the most pro-gun and conservative Supreme Court Justice in the Heller decision that made the 2nd amendment an individual right.  So even the man who wanted to limit local government from regulating guns as had been the case for the life of the Constitution didn't want unlimited access and carry of weapons. 

While guns are part of the equation it is not the entire one.  But it is something we can do, we can do it to not end the individual rights of people, we can do it in way makes is harder for people whose only aim is to kill people to get the easiest way to do it and will not change the ability of people to hunt, fire for sport or defend their life and property. 

I want say one other thing.  I have watched all day as elected and former Republican officials find every possible excuse from not enough prayer in schools, to video games, to the opioid crisis.  Let me be clear, I don't know what drove the shooter last night in Dayton.  What I do know is that the shooter in El Paso was driven by anti-immigration hate.  While he said he had these feelings before the President was elected he spoke in his writing with the President's words.  Words have power.  Words drive people and when the President joked a few weeks ago about shooting immigrants that is a starting pistol for some.  These republicans worried about too much Fortnite or lack of God should spend some time talking to the President about calming down not only his own words but those of his followers online and his supporters dehumanizing so many in quips and chants at his rallies.  Presidents, like all world leaders, are supposed to represent the soul of the country, especially in times of crisis.  Our current President seems to not have the ability to call out the hate because some of those pushing it are his people.  He seems to fear alienating them and in fact feeds them.  Tonight many people will go to bed grieving for lost of life but also loss of safety. We are in the season of  children will return to the classrooms around the country with bulletproof backpacks and planned shooting drills.  This is not the country we have to be, this is not the life we have to live.  We can do better.  I just wish there was the leadership to do it.