A PLEA FOR PRO-DEMOCRACY UNITY

 I am confused and worried.
We cannot, under any--I repeat, any--circumstances countenance a second Trump term. For one thing, it's very likely to be a life term, after which Junior will have himself crowned emperor of North America.
And once that happens, democracies around the globe are likely to start falling like dominoes.
We have seen the rebirth of right-wing thuggery which Trumpelthinskin and his henchmen continue to encourage. We have also, most recently, seen the same pattern on the left as I remember seeing in the late sixties and early seventies, back when I was in junior high school. It starts with nonviolent resistance to injustice; well and good. When George Floyd was murdered, any burning or looting was mostly courtesy of right-wing moles! But then, neo-Marxist and/or Islamist fringe groups worm their way in and start to add violence, especially, now, anti-Jewish violence so that protests that started nonviolently wind up as pogroms, or the next thing to them.
I hope, in the current mosh-pit of protest ostensibly on Gaza's behalf, one thing is not forgotten: Hamas began this war, without any excuse. They also care nothing for the Gazans except to use them as human shields and to make as many of them into shahids (martyrs). Without their utter and total defeat, there can be no new day for the wretchedly unfortunate Gazans! Even many advocates for Palestinian rights say so; Bassem Eid for one!
A cease-fire may stop the shooting, but will it leave Hamas clinging to power or not? Can any honest-hearted protestor against the current Israel-Hamas war give me, or anyone else, an answer to that?
I can tell you straight up, a cease-fire which does leave Hamas clinging to power will not--repeat, not--end the killing! It'll just be Hamas doing the killing of more Gazans who have had enough of Hamas up to their gullets! And many such corpses are now coming to light!
One wicked (and probably Islamist) fool said he thinks he can get along better with an openly hostile president (Trump) than one 'who pretends to be our friend' (Biden). Listen, you slave-trading fool, and listen good! Yeah, you and your minions survived one Trump term--but you won't survive another!
I promise you that! Why not, say you? A few reasons: when Trumpelthinskin first came in, there were still guardrails. There were still some 'adults in the room' (and you ain't one), as we say. This time, those guardrails are gone or wrecked, there will be no 'adults' to hold Trump back but only those willing to be even worse than he is!
Now, wicked, precious, self-important infidel fool, contemplate an executive order, constitutional or no, which strips all recent Muslim immigrants of their citizenship and renders them liable to immediate deportation! Think that's impossible? Think you have friends who will fight that? Even after you do your part to bring down the free world? Allow me to suggest, even you--heck, I'm not sure that even Trump--cannot concoct such lies as will save you from the consequences of you helping to end democracy over the globe!
Your former allies will remember your part in killing democracy and you will not be saved from being deported to, say, Yemen. You will have no allies then!
You're not the first ethnic group to see their tax dollars used to kill their cousins. Talk to those Americans of German, Italian, or Japanese ancestry. Clear out your head if you can, and be sure to put all the pieces together.
I've said this before and I'll say it again as often as I think I need to: vote Democratic this fall, and then you can think about candidates, within the party or independent, for offices in 2026 and 2028. Stay home or help Trump win in other ways and there may well be no free elections again within our lifetimes and no point in thinking about future candidates. And you, and many others like you, may well be deported.
And I for one will point you and your flock out as traitors to democracy. Nor do I expect to be the only one doing so. Think about that, too.
Think you're ready for that? I say, yeah, suuuure you are!

WHAT WE COULD LOSE IN NOVEMBER--AND A QUESTION

    What could we lose?
Well, of course, our individual freedoms of speech, faith, etc. We could set democracy worldwide on a downward path. We could lose the rule of law to the rule of the biggest and nastiest bullies.
We could lose hope of seeing a more multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith democratic republic--a first in human history--within our lifetimes, if ever.
Certain people are so angry now that they are, apparently, ready to bring all these hopes crashing down for the rest of us and, yes, for themselves as well.
Never mind us: don't these spiteful, splenetic critters understand that a fascist Trump government would probably revoke their citizenship and then deport them as potential terrorists? And that Trumpelthinskin would also give The Cheltenham Kid, aka Netanyahu, the green light to obliterate and largely depopulate Gaza? Do they care that little about those they claim to care about? Or are they preparing for something else? In such anarchy, do they really think they'd prevail and establish Sharia here and in Europe?
Sorry, dudes, got really bad news for y'all. We're at least as good as scapegoating as are your relations, and if we lose these precious articles come November, would you like to know who will be in the sights of many of us as scapegoats? Y'all, that's who. Y'all ready for that?
Think, and think hard. First, if you feel Israel has no right to defend itself, then GIT! Right now!
We neither want nor need YOU!
Second, I want to believe most of you don't feel that way but you feel Israeli retaliation has gone too far. Most military men--that is, those who know what war is--who have been observers in Gaza tell us that no army has ever done, or does, as much as the IDF to avoid civilian or other unnecessary loss of life. I hope you're not just furious at armed, victorious Jews. Because if you are, you got some serious internal work to do! Not to mention, of course, that Hamas uses its own people as human shields like the cowardly filth they really are! And more dead Gazans actually please them because they use even those Gazans murdered by Hamas as 'examples of Zionist savagery'. As Rachel Maddow says, bullpuckey!
Third, on-camera war is never a happy sight. But tear yourself away from the grisly images for a while, and do some serious thinking. I'll also mention in passing that this is really what MAGA is all about: nursing real or imaginary grievances to the point where they want to burn down democracy's house without regard to how even they will suffer (or lying to themselves that they won't) just so long as those they hate at least look like they're suffering at least as much!
Well, if we lose democracy and all its benefits, and target you as scapegoats....who do you think will suffer most? Think about that! So should your on-Spring Break sympathizers!
You might be disappointed in Biden and the Democrats, but what else can we do but vote for them? That is, if we want real elections, democracy, etc., to continue at all, let alone grow stronger?
So, uninstructed and uncommitteds, think about these things and do what, in your minds and hearts (and NOT in your spleen, where angry pride was thought to reside once) you know to be right. And not just for all of us, but for you and your families as well. And for Gaza too, for that matter.
Parting question: today, just about half of Jewish Israelis have either returned, or their parents and grandparents, to Israel from elsewhere in the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) region. Most of them have, and still do, vote Likud or further right. Many of the descendants of the first Ashkenazic returnees still incline to the center or the left. Why do you think that is? Don't the Mizrahim know Arabs better, having lived among them for centuries? Think about that too; take all the time you need.

THE NYT PUNDITS: RIGHT OR WRONG?

Most of the Times's columnists this morning have been panicking over President Biden's age and, rather worryingly, about how obvious his age is. This is where I hope that they only think they know some things the rest of us don't. The fact that I never hear back from any pundit with whom I've shared what I hope is some useful information in my own writings seems to support that hunch. No feedback, no nothing. Kind of makes me wonder how much of an echo chamber they inhabit. Certainly much less of one than the fascist Faux News and networks further right have constructed, but still without much said by people like you and me.
For myself, I hope my fellow citizens may have learned a hard lesson or two since too many of my 'fellow' Boomer palefaces fell for the soothing tones and the hair dye of a Grade B Dr. Feelgood in 1980 and opened the door to the rollback of too much of the New Deal, Fair Deal and the Great Society!
I hope my fellow citizens can see beneath the seeming vigor of Orange Julius Sawdust Caesar and that they hear how seriously he garbles his thoughts and words. I hope my fellow citizens can understand that our current president reserves his vigor for the quiet and largely unheralded work he does on behalf of all of us and for democracy all over the globe.
I hope my current fellow citizens can see and hear beneath the surface of the (actually really panicky) shouting and roaring of O.J.S.C. and that it connotes panic for himself rather than vigor on behalf of all of us. I hope they can see the good works that the Biden administration has begun and how important it is to all of us that they continue.
And I also hope that they haven't given up on being the linchpin, albeit a very humanly imperfect one, of democracy across the globe. Besides which, here's a tasty tidbit for some who might be reading this: re-elect Biden and vote straight Democratic all the way down the ticket and you will have proven many of the Times's pundits as being much mistaken about you because it seems as though many of them expect many of y'all to repeat your 1980 mistake and vote for appearance rather than the actual reality.
I can't really blame the Millennials and Zoomers for being fed up with old white men (So am I, if truth be known, and I'm an old white man myself) but your choices, however distasteful, are before you: will you vote for the appearance of 'vigor' and the reality of creeping and malignant senility, and the probable dissolution of the Free World, or will you vote for the old fellow who works long, hard and quietly for all of us and who will keep democracy alive and, one hopes, flourishing worldwide?
All hands to repel fascists here; let there be no one still on the sofa and not having voted come Election Day! To stay on the sofa will be a vote against democracy as will be all votes for anyone--repeat, ANYONE--known to be a MAGAt!
And I venture that any vote against democracy is effective, although, unfortunately, not technical, treason against not only the United States, but against the entire Free World and indeed against the very planet on which the Creator has placed us! And however 'Christian' such folks might think themselves, by voting for one who will reconnect religion and state they show themselves Judases as well!
Remember, when Jesus heard that a crowd wanted to force an actual regal crown onto his head, he hightailed it into the mountains to pray! Think about that too!
Let's show the Times's pundits how mistaken they are this time (many of them will be relieved to be thus mistaken) and show that we understand that our diversity is a major strength of ours and that a primary purpose of our country is to be pioneers of democracy, to listen to the so-far unheard! Vote MAGA fascism down so low that they creep back under their rocks!

MERCY ME?

 I ponder what was said by a trumpolater on television about how he thinks we need a dictatorship which will 'give us a good paddling'. I'd admire to ask that fool, who does he think needs paddling and why?
If he thinks big corporations who have all but entirely bought up our political process so they can become even more obscenely rich and never have to clean up the lethal pollution messes they love to make are the ones in need of chastisement, then the man's onto something real. But he's dangerously mistaken if he thinks Trump will ever paddle that lot; for that we need Bernie or one of his acolytes.
On the other hand, he might be brainwashed enough to want the 'Myrka of 1953 back again and nailed into place permanently. Well, we certainly should up the tax rates and union-belonging percentage of the working people to what they were back then. But we neither can nor should cement the social relations to what they were back then. I suspect that's really what that fool and his like yearn for!                                   

I wouldn't call myself a merciful man by nature. I also always ask myself, is it wise to extend mercy to those who will almost certainly see it as weakness and will break the peace as soon as they think they can get away with it? My hatred for bullies may well be pathological and my initial impulse is to wrench a horse-doctor's dose of their toxins down their own throats. But at least these days, somewhere in the middle of all that and probably Deo Gratias, I ask myself: What else have these poor lumps of mostly unbaked dough ever known but such brutality? And why am I reinforcing it?
Then the question becomes, what else can I, and others like me, do? One ugly fact of life which my fellow liberals and progressives have been, and may still be, reluctant to face (except, for some of them, when Jews appear to be 'bullies') is this: we need to insist on good order and everyone being given a chance to speak--and the flip side of this is no one, and no group, gets to crowd out anyone else--and that those norms need to be enforced, at times harshly so. We've been far too reluctant to do that. And we also need to show quite plainly the 'tinfoil' quality of the 'arguments' of those who are either maliciously self-interested or, to use one of my dad's expressions, don't know their a**es from holes in the ground!

Also, at the same time, we need to insist that part of the education of experts (if it isn't already) must be the ability, as Lord Rutherford said, to put their knowledge into language understandable to all, or as near to all as we can get. I suggest this is necessary to restore trust in experts.
Finally, if we are not to use worse brutality in reinforcing and expending democratic norms, we need to find other ways. Arguments are one; so too is asking questions of those who have either lost, or never really had, faith in democracy. We need to say, often and loudly, that God, Who is Love, is no bully, too many 'religious' leaders to the contrary. For one thing, doesn't God choose the smallest and ostensibly weakest to hear, speak and live His message on a seriously consistent basis? And for another, did not he who is named the Word made flesh agree to die like an uncommon criminal (the Romans employed crucifixion only for political and economic rebels or those who arguably spoke such rebellion) as part of drawing all of us to God?
We also need to say loudly that God favors the honest questioners and that those covens where questions are frowned upon at best cannot be where His Spirit is. And let's keep asking honest questions of those who have turned their backs on democracy. If they continue to insist on their own Great Importance, Dunning-Kruger style, let's remember something said by Martin Luther:
"The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts or Scripture, is to jeer and flout at him, for he cannot bear scorn." 

 We need to keep our powder ready and dry even while we hope we'll only need some custard pies. Trump knows the power of ridicule; why else would he want to stomp anyone who tosses eggs, tomatoes OR custard pies at him? By this, perhaps more than anything else except his unceasing lying, he shows who he follows and to whom he leads his idolaters.
We need to repeat all this endlessly, possibly for years until the anti-democrats among us are (again?) a tiny, insignificant and powerless minority.