Gaza And More

 

I took one of those send-your-spit DNA tests. As expected, it showed me to be 99% Ashkenazi Jewish, because both sides of my family are Jewish, going back past Adam and Eve, probably to Graecopithecus. I've written about why I'm not proud of things over which I had no control, born Jewish among them. But I'm glad of it.

When I meet Jewish people, I feel unspoken kinship. Jews have contributed disproportionately to the arts, technology, science, medicine. If I'm not among those contributors, I admire them from closer than afar. Jews have survived centuries of hatred. My grandfathers lost family in the Holocaust, which, contrary to the belief of many in the MAGA camp, actually happened. Seeing pictures of those skeletal outlasters of incarceration makes me physically ill. As does the rise of antisemitism under the leadership of "good people on both sides" Trump.

I'm glad for the existence of modern-day Israel, in awe of its research achievements that have benefited humankind. If its re-creation after World War II as haven and homeland for survivors of the Shoah engendered unceasing animus within the countries surrounding it, it was the right thing to do. As have been its wars of survival, like its stunning victory over the outnumbering, attacking nations in the Six Day War.

My point: I'm not someone you could consider antisemitic. So when I say I'm revulsed by what Israel is doing in Gaza, it's not about religion or ethnicity. It's about humanity. If a strong response to the horrifically cruel attacks by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, was absolutely called for, Israel has long-since gone beyond justification. I'm angry over it, and filled with sorrow. If I can't claim pride in being born Jewish, I can feel uneasy - embarrassed, even - to be associated, however tangentially, with the brutality, the indiscriminate slaughter being carried out by Israel. Starvation. Interdicting aid. Killing people, children included, as they scramble to receive what little nourishment is available. Recently allowing some food convoys back in, plus Trump's meager contribution of cash last week: too little, too late.

I abhor what Benyamin Netanyahu is doing and I hate that our "president" openly encouraged him. "Finish the job," he said. "Do whatever you want." No one should be surprised, though, because what Trump is doing to immigrants in America, adults and children, recent arrivals and law-abiding residents for decades, if not causing as many deaths as Israel's, is equally heartless and dismissive of the humanity of his victims. Plus, because Republicans cheer Trump's immigration cruelty at home and Trump facilitates Bibi's abroad, both are being done in our name.

Criticism of Israel's actions does not equate to antisemitism. Nor does it justify Trump's rounding up, imprisoning, and deporting students, here legally, who've been protesting them. (Which he's not doing to protect Jewish students: it's an excuse to subjugate universities to his will.) America has supported Israel since its creation and, as long-term policy, that shouldn't change. To preserve its existence, Israel will likely need America's help forever. But, especially now, it ought not be unconditional. Seeing children of bone and skin, barely holding off death, knowing there were many who couldn't: Enough is much more than enough.

The US could put its aid to Israel on hold. It might not halt the carnage, but it would disassociate us from the inhumanity. It would also, no doubt, cause outrage among many of Israel's American supporters. Matters of conscience, though, are more important than politics or the flow of money that's become indispensable to American politicians of all persuasions. They used to be.

I'd like to believe the majority of Israelis, like the majority of Americans who disapprove of virtually all of Trump's policies, reject Netanyahu's scorching of Gazan earth. Hamas is a barbarous terrorist organization that needs to be eradicated. Surely, though, a country as skillful as Israel could find a way to do it without starving civilians and, like MAGA's BFF Putin, bombing their hospitals and homes. Maybe that's impossible, but it ought to be the goal.

Enough said. If the Gaza tragedy is overwhelmingly awful, the Epstein saga continues to confound. Trump's former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, now an obedient DO"J" employee, has been interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's chief accomplice and pedophilic facilitator, serving twenty years for her crimes. Trump, who never lies, says he hasn't been following it, says issuing her a pardon after she says whatever they get her to say "… is not something I've thought about." Only the most Trumpomagafoxified could consider that, or her spillage, credible.

MAGAs have another challenge to rationalization: Trump only "wins" tournaments at his own golf resorts. From his taxpayer-funded trip to promote his courses in Scotland, there's now video proof of his oft-reported cheating. Defend, worshippers, the character of the man you revere, who cheats at golf and brags about winning. Because character isn't conditional. His explains everything he does.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Sometimes it’s necessary to beat a reanimated horse. The Epstein “situation” is about more than the horrific crimes of that man, Trump’s best buddy for years, who once received a wink-wink birthday letter from him. His denial of sending it floated like a Sherman tank in his birthday parade. The salience of the Epstein affair isn’t only the criminal exploitation and trafficking of young girls. That’s been known for decades. Nor is it news that Trump palled around with him; speculation on the extent of his involvement is understandable, but, for now, unprovable.

What’s more important is that even the most successfully MAGAfied Trumpists can no longer deny he’s a shameless, recidivist liar. Or that he and the people with whom he’s surrounded himself for protection, and his media enablers, are trying, as if everything depends on it, to hide what’s in those files. People don’t do that for something that, according to Trump’s cravenly obedient Attorney General, never existed. MAGAs are starting to notice.

Releasing Grand Jury testimony is a distraction attempt, a scam, more proof that Trump considers his voters stupid. If a judge allows the unlawful release of the testimony, it’ll contain nothing about Trump. That’s why, unlike the actual files, he ordered Pam Bondi to release it. It’s transparent non-transparency. Publishing the MLK, Jr. files, though, is transparent, proving how desperate he is to change the subject.

If Trump didn’t fear the Epstein files, he wouldn’t be calling them a hoax created by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Moreover, calling it a “hoax,” which it clearly isn’t, explains every not-hoax he’s called a hoax. Till now, lies as idiotic as that would be swallowed by Trumpists like cheeseburgers he forces on college athletes. Knowing the lies dropped from the same place as cowpies, Congressional Rs would nevertheless feed them to their constituents like strawberry shortcake. No longer. For once, some seek the truth. 

Trump doesn’t just think his supporters are stupid. He’s saying it out loud. So desperate is he to squirrel MAGA into looking the other way that he posted a fake video of President Barack Obama being arrested by ICE, hauled out of the Oval Office, and imprisoned. And another, akin to his picturing himself as Pope and, later, as Superman, as lead guitar and drummer for the rock band Journey. In addition to proving his dread of the truth, it’s a national embarrassment. For worse and worser, he’s President of the United States, and he’s beclowning himself and his voters. Having gotten away with lies all his life, he’s panicking at the thought of not, changing the subject any way he can.

Other presidents have had scandals that invited investigation. Reagan, Nixon, Clinton, for three. In those bygone days, Congress wasn’t controlled by people intent only on taking the dictations of their president. Those offences had special prosecutors and/or congressional investigations, whereas Trump’s DOJ and his congressional facilitators are doing everything they can to quash his. To avoid voting on a bipartisan demand to release the files, presumably told to do so by God, Holy Mike Johnson shut down the House prematurely, for months.

Via Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, Trump fired the prosecutors and agents who did their job by pursuing his and the J6ers’ criminality. Presumably following orders, Tulsi Gabbard, his obedient Director of National Intelligence, wants President Barack Obama and his team tried for treason, for the crime of investigating how Russia helped Trump become elected. Which, non-hoaxally, it did. Do it, Tulsi. Do it, Pam. Show us what ya got.

Democracy’s survival depends on the willingness of its citizens to follow the rules, for reasons bigger than themselves. It stumbles when people in power realize courts wield only words, not swords, and it dies when they conclude courts have no means to stop them. Trump, who knows nothing about many things, does know what to say when judges order him to stand down: “You and what army?” In increasing numbers, he and his administration are brazenly ignoring judicial orders. 

When will their Epstein-based recognition of Trump’s lies awaken MAGA Republicans to the danger this represents to every American, including themselves? For the good of the country they claim to love, when will they join the effort to vote the current crop of Republicans out of office?

Freed from judicial restraints, Trump is ending more than the rule of law. What looks like cruelty for its own sake, or, maybe, payoffs, he closed the office in charge of combatting human trafficking; federal buildings will no longer need accessibility ramps; HUD will stop investigating housing discrimination; The EPA will end research into dangerous chemicals; Homeland Security will begin deporting child victims of domestic abuse, previously protected as “Special Immigrant Juveniles.” (Links provided on request.) Is this what MAGAs voted for? Are they all as inhumane as Trump?

MAGA has finally stopped hiding its meaning: Make America Go Away. It was always the point.

It's Almost Here

 

Example number infinity that FOTUS can do or say whatever he wants and he’ll get no resistance from the MAGAfied, much less Congressional Republicans: Speaking of Rosie O’Donnell, Trump said, on unTruth Sociopath, “I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship. She is a Threat to Humanity, and should remain in the wonderful Country of Ireland, if they want her. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” You’d be excused if you thought that can’t possibly be true, even considering the sort of bizarrity he bleats hourly. 

As dismissive of the Constitution as he is, Trump might believe he has that right. We know he wouldn’t be informed otherwise by A.G. Pam Bondi, whose only legal concern is doing whatever Trump demands, unlawfulness notwithstanding and immaterial. Nor would his base stop to think about the implications, if a Democratic president were to assert that power. They hate everything Ms. O’Donnell is as much as Trump does. It’s a major motivator for their votes.

Thinking of thinking, think how much better off America would be if Trump hadn’t hired, and Congressional Rs hadn’t bent over to them, nothing but arrogant incompetents. According to him, it’s “evil” to ask questions about Kristy Noem’s requirement to get her permission for FEMA expenditures over $100 thousand and how it delayed critical responses to the devastating Texas flood. That’s but one of many accouterments of dictatorship we’re seeing: suppressing probing questions, demonizing dissent. Inklings of a nascent police state have become inkblots, but MAGAs see only butterflies. 

Under Trump’s Bogus Belligerent Budget Bill, ICE will soon have more funding than the FBI, making it America’s largest and most well-financed “law enforcement” agency. Unlike the FBI, which requires college degrees and puts agents through months of training, including teaching what the law does and doesn’t allow, ICE, by rapidly increasing its numbers, will require practically nothing; not even a high school degree. With those enthusiastically brutal arrests by masked, anonymous ICE agents so widely publicized, people who apply must picture themselves doing it, and want in.

In addition to personnel, ICE’s budget includes billions for building new “detention” camps, modeling MAGA’s new objet d'amour, “Alligator Alcatraz.” And what of the hoped-for millions of undocumented residents to be incarcerated, who, according to law, are entitled to bond hearings for release until adjudication? Not under Trump. Millions, his acting ICE director says, must now remain incarcerated until trial, which means months or years. To that end, he just fired seventeen immigration judges. 

Other than arriving illegally, fleeing mortal danger, many are law-abiding, productive contributors to society. Until Trump’s supremely obedient courts allow him to disappear the Fourteenth Amendment, they’ll have children who are American citizens. But maybe they’ll be allowed out during daytime to join Medicaid recipients working as slave laborers on farms. 

The reason Trump, his henchfolk, and MAGAfied Americans countenance these outrages is simple. They see non-white migrants as less than human. They’re “the other,” and othering is a time-proven method dictators use to sneak their way to unchecked power. If “sneak” is the right word. Trump and MAGA’s lack of empathy, their penchant for undisguised cruelty, couldn’t be more obvious.

What people with any claim to righteousness would stand by as the Trump administration orders the incineration of 550 tons of food intended for children starving in war or disaster zones, as part of their heartless ending of USAID? They couldn’t let another organization distribute it? How confident is Trump that his base of believers will never push back? The White House, no joke, recently published this. Why is House Speaker Holy Mike Johnson, who waves his so-called Christianity like panties at a rock concert, silent on any of this?

Since it’s an increasingly hot topic, let’s not ignore those Epstein files which disappeared from Pam Bondi’s desk so thoroughly that they never existed. It’s not speculation to say Trump was in them. For years, by both of their accounts, they were bromantically involved. Because I’m not into conspiracies, I’m just asking. Which is more likely: Epstein hung himself to avoid trial and just happened to do it when cameras weren’t working, or that word got out that he was ready to tip over the bean jar to get a light sentence? Kowtowing to Trump instead of doing what’s right, per usual, House Republicans just voted down a Democratic effort to require release of the files. Might they know there’s there there?

Which makes the MAGA revolt over Ms. Bondi’s claim of nothing there puzzling. One assumes they expected dirt on the Clintons, the Bidens, and more. Because all lefties are pedos. MAGAs must assume Trump is featured, too, but, like everything else Trump, they’d manage to excuse it. He’s playing 4-D checkers. But he sure wants it to go away.

But wait!! Evidently, the files DO exist. Trump, fonda Bondi, is now saying she should release "whatever she thinks is credible." Because that’s how transparency works: his yes-lady will tell us what to believe, and Drump the rest. Pure as the melting glaciers.

America, We Hardly Knew Ye

Fantasy: If every voter knew and understood everything that was in Trump’s Big Bad Bogus Belligerent Belied Bereft Baleful Budget Bill, seventy percent of them would vote out of office every Republican who voted for it. It’s safe to assume, though, that those who get their “news” from the White House official media outlets, Fox, Newsmax, OAN, or their talk radio equivalents will never know. Add together Democrats’ signature inability to produce a coherent and clear message and Republicans’ Machiavellian methods of vote suppression, it’s a bad bet.

What did it take for the performatively recalcitrant but predictably foldable “holdout” Republican Congresspeople to fall in line? A trip to the Oval Office featuring Trump-signed tchotchkes and presidential puffery. To paraphrase the old saw, they know what they are; they were just arguing about the price. 

Those legislators are so sure their constituents care more about punishing immigrants than they do about their own healthcare or food security that they’ll overlook what’s being done to them. If not to them, to millions of others about whom they don’t care. They’ll have been convinced that the billions dedicated to DHS for incarceration and deportation are worth it, even though, of the people now being rounded up, fewer than ten percent have committed violent crimes. 

Now, most of the incarcerated are people who’ve obeyed the law since they arrived illegally, who’ve been here for years, contributing to society and our economy. People whose absence will put businesses out of business. But to MAGAs, it seems, the more immigrants are rounded up, the worse the conditions in which they’re imprisoned, the more gratified they feel.

In addition to the disinformation from rightwing media, Trump’s voters will have seen video of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the El Salvador mimicking concentration camp in Florida’s Everglades swamp. Cages, admired by jocular, visiting Trump. They’ll have seen the tasteless, unbecoming gloat from Kristy Noem’s Department of Homeland Security. They’ll have loved it, taking selfies by the tasteless, unbecoming signs outside the gulag. They’ll buy RNC-approved merch, while chuckling over Trump’s favorite adviser Laura Loomer’s sadistic commentary. Approval of the inexcusable: Team Trump counts on it.

As one who once considered this country fundamentally good, this is stomach-turning. Few, if any, disapprove of deporting murderers and rapists, the committers of violent crimes that constituted Trump’s least inconsistent campaign promise. But what’s happening now is cruelty for its own sake, spearheaded by Stephen Miller and his racist desire for an all-white America. In the future, will we be remembered not for building great things, but for stalags and gulags?

The BBBBBBBBB contains more intentional cruelty. There are, no doubt, people receiving healthcare and food benefits who take advantage of the system, but they are relatively few. Most people on Medicaid are working or can’t. Now, they’ll all have to fill out paperwork at least twice a year; some as much as monthly. Why? Because today’s Republican Party has long since internalized Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” vision of people in need.

According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “There are no change (sic) in benefits. There’s a change in requirements to get the benefits.” Translation: “It’s there. We’ve just made it hard to get, which we hope you don’t.” The same applies to food stamps, the cost of which is less than that now allotted to incarcerating or deporting migrants, and of which more white people partake than black or brown. Because of the same upside-down, Robbing-Hoodwink priorities, funds for school lunch programs will be eliminated. Climate change is a hoax, as we know, so tax credits for alternative energy will phase out. Because oil. Adapt or die.

Tariffs? Who knows? Trump has flipped, flopped, and flipped again. The bizarre letters he wrote to leaders of Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, and Tunisia thud somewhere between Mafia threat and freshman writing assignment. 

Between now and the election of 2026, it’ll be a battle of words. Truth vs. lies. Straight talk vs. deflection. What characterization applies to which side will be retinized by the beholder. As usual, burdened with a predilection for factuality, Democrats will fight with their hands behind their backs, against a virtual state media conglomerate within which lies and deflection are what bring and keep their viewers and listeners.

We can’t depart before changing the subject to the – what to call it? – strangeness of the DOJ, whose words are its Bondis, announcing there’s no Epstein client list after all, having previously said it was on General Pam’s desk being reviewed. And that Epstein definitely, absolutely, no question killed himself. Nope, not at all suspicious. The DOJ is independent and liars don’t lie.

Another: Now that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in US custody, why haven’t we seen pictures of the MS13 knuckle tattoos that Trump assured us were absolutely, definitely, pinky-swear not fake? 

Independence?

 

Independence Day. May it trigger a desire for freedom from the cult of MAGA for enough people to restore America’s greatness. May those waving Old Glory do so while shedding the chains of Trumpism, weighing them down, unrecognized. May they join in furthering the day when America regains its defining goodness.

Pride, according to Christian teaching, is a deadly sin. I’ve never been proud of things over which I’ve had no control. I’m tall. It has given me undeserved advantages, for which I'm not proud. I learned to be a surgeon; I think I did a good job of it. Should I be proud of not being bad? I’m not. No more than having never robbed a bank.

I’m glad I was born in the USA, but, having had no part in it, it’s not a source of pride. Nevertheless, for all its faults, I admire how, as it evolved, America hasn’t denied them, but has worked, if imperfectly, to correct them. Until about ten years ago, I believed our democratic republic was the most moral, ethical, generous, and productive form of government there’s ever been. I’d bet our founders had pride in their product. Then again, most of them were Deists, not Christians.

Because it all happened without me, I’ve never felt proud to be American. If I ever had, though, I couldn’t now. For the same reasoning as pridefulness, I shouldn’t feel shame on this day of celebration, either. I didn’t create nor would I ever join MAGA. So, not ashamed. Deeply disappointed. Sad. Embarrassed. And very, very worried.

It’s not just the unkindness into which America has descended, as if on a down escalator, at the hands of Trump and his punitory cabineteers. It’s that so many Americans – a people I’ve always considered generous, welcoming, and mostly moral – are not only fine with what we’ve become: they’re proud of it.

At every Trump rally, “Proud To Be An American” is played while the congregants sing along. Their pride must be real, but for what? Clearly not for America’s eventual commitment to civil rights for all: they’re glad to see it disappear at the hands of ideologically blinded Justices. That, except for Native Americans, we’re a nation of immigrants is obviously not a source of pride.

Nor, incredibly, are our world-leading institutions of higher education, or the advances in science, technology, and medicine for which their American creators, until Trumpism, were admired gratefully, worldwide. MAGA loves his attacks on them and his attempts to dictate what’s taught.

Are they proud to see immigrants, following the rules, outside courtrooms awaiting hearings for citizenship, snatched by masked, unidentifiable men, sent to prisons abroad? Does it shake their belief that immigrants are “moochers” when it’s workplaces being raided? Does pride burst forth, knowing children are starving and, according to a study in The Lancet, millions of people will die as a result of ending USAID, America’s world-leading beneficence? Not in me. Did our nation’s lifesaving generosity mortify them?

What fireworks are best to celebrate Trump’s undisguised corruption? Are they singing their pride for handing world leadership in research and development to China? Or for America’s role in the resurrection of measles? Do they agree with JD Vance that millions of Americans losing health insurance under Trump’s just-passed Big Bogus Bill is “immaterial”? 

Maybe not. Endungeoned within news sources that ignore those horrors, they probably haven’t heard of them. So they require no proof the election was stolen, that Democrats want to change their children’s gender, that they plan to replace Caucasians with illegal, brown voters. They accept that migrants who fled danger to come here decades ago and have made a better life for their families deserve unadjudicated deportation.

Perhaps not all set out to believe Trumpism’s falsehoods, but they chose news sources that provide nothing else. Telling them diversity in a population destroys it, equity of opportunity diminishes theirs, inclusion of people not like them means exclusion of them. So they find nothing ominous in Trump’s banning of words and books that refer, even obliquely, to those values.

MAGA pride must include seeing reporters who told the truth about Trump’s paltry bombing of Iraq accused by Trump and his belly-baring Cabinet of “demoralizing” the troops who carried out the raid. Like all Trumpish phantasms, they believe it.

On Independence Day, they'll profess pride in America, founded on free speech and the right of assembly, happy that, under Trump, those rights no longer apply to liberals; glad that institutions designed to rebuff authoritarianism are caving to his autocratic threats. Who can be surprised, though? Their movement was founded on Kenyan birth and “Lock her up.”

Surely, many under the spell of MAGA retain reachable decency. What will it take to bring them back? They could start by watching this. And, to understand the appeal, hear this. 

On July Fourth, I’d be proud of those who break free.