Israel Aid Bill – an Anti-Semitic Hobson’s Choice

Mike Johnson’s Israel aid bill is anti-Semitic.  There, I said it.  And here’s why.

Israel, our close ally, needs our aid in its fight against the terrorist Hamas.  It is traditional for the US to supply such aid without strings attached and without playing political games.

While it made sense to disengage the Israel aid bill from a bill to provide more aid to Ukraine, that should have been done without the attachment of a poison pill. 

But Johnson has made aid to Israel contingent upon cuts to IRS funding that will pay for the bill.  That is, he has made aid to Israel contingent upon a vote for a Republican partisan cause.  This is purely political; this bill, if passed, is dead on arrival at the Senate and thus whether passed or not in the House, it will not provide any aid to Israel.

Never before has this country made emergency aid to a close ally directly contingent upon a cut in other government spending.  While I personally oppose, for many reasons, the IRS and other funding in the Inflation Reduction Act, this is not the time or place to cut that funding in order to provide aid to Israel that is fighting a war for its very existence.  This is not the time for political gamesmanship.

Johnson’s first act as Speaker was to pass a resolution in support of Israel.  But when it comes to actually providing aid that Israel desperately needs, he turns the problem into a political game where he can grandstand for the Right wing of his party while putting Israel last.

The bill sets up a Hobson’s choice in which Congressional representatives are put in the position of accepting one of two choices, both of which are equally objectionable.  There is really no choice or alternative to having to select a completely objectionable result.

No American should vote for a bill which puts emergency aid to an ally contingent on passage of a partisan and political funding cut elsewhere.  This is a horrid and frightening precedent to set.

Congressional Representatives are asked to vote for a bill that is bad for America in order to vote for necessary aid to our ally.  If they choose to vote for this important aid to Israel they in effect must vote against America and if they vote for America they end up existentially hurting Israel.

This is not right.  And in my mind it is just another form of anti-Semitism.  Shame on the Speaker and shame on anyone who stands with him on this bill. 

This bill should and must be immediately amended to simply provide to Israel the aid that it needs as it fights for its very life against terrorism. 

Israel

Saturday morning when the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas began, the world changed.  There is the world before Simchat Torah 5784 and the world after.  And there is the transition zone which, sadly, is where we are now.

We are not only on the brink of World War 3, but we have people cheering for annihilation of not only Israel but of all the Jews.  Pro-Palestinian protestors around the globe, including right here in the USA, shout “Kill the Jews”, “Gas the Jews”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (meaning that the entire State of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be destroyed). 

The history and facts of Israel from times before Christ to the present, do not support or justify the claims by Palestine against Israel.  An objective recitation of this history is hard, but not impossible, to find these days and I wish that more people would study it.  But, even assuming that the claims against Israel were true, even if one chooses to see Palestinians as some sort of victims of Israel, and even if they choose to mount pro-Palestinian protests, it does not justify supporting the heinous, violent, and inhuman acts committed by the Hamas terrorists.

We have totally lost our moral compass.   The bleeding hearts, who want to excuse every offense and create offenses where none exist, still cannot bring themselves to distinguish a terrorist from someone with an alleged grievance.  To do so would disrupt their utopian false truth; they cannot see that their utopic vision is not and never will be a reality.  And yet their hearts are cold as stone towards the atrocities committed against Jews.  That, in my book, is clear antisemitism.

The Current Dysfunction

How did we come to this point?  The answer to that has many layers.  We can start with the present which includes the current administration’s completely dysfunctional international policies and actions. America has gone from a strong international voice for, and beacon of, democracy to a weak and dysfunctional shadow of its former self.

The dysfunction of this administration includes:

• The Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco that allowed terrorists to supply themselves with American weapons.
• A failure to even attempt to understand the Russian view on Ukraine, while pushing Putin into a position where he was left with little choice but to attack Ukraine.
• Supporting not only the military actions in Ukraine but also the corrupt use of American funds to sustain the entire Ukraine economy.
• Failing to support the Abraham Accords and not only allowing but tacitly encouraging the rise in anti-Semitic behavior here and around the world.  
• Providing $6 billion to Iran, knowing that Iran is a supporter of the terrorist acts against Israel.

The press has not been silent, but it carefully edits its words to downplay the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah (also attacking Israel from Lebanon) are terrorist organizations:

• Rather than use the word terrorist they call them simply militant groups.
• The defensive acts of Israel are equated with the unprovoked terrorism of Hamas.
• Israel is blamed for collateral damage of their defensive strikes, but there is little notice that the terrorists intentionally targeted innocents, children, and babies and further that the death they imposed upon those innocents was prolonged with pain and horrendous suffering.
• The media mostly fails to report that while Israel attempts to avoid civilian and other collateral damage, Hamas actually uses civilians and especially children as shields as they place their military sites directly under or above places such as hospitals and schools.

You cannot equate the aggressive and horrendous actions of Hamas with the self-defensive acts of Israel!  Yet too many, whether with or without knowledge of the actual facts, do.

Beyond the Surface – Humanity, Purpose, and Amalek

The misguided and dysfunctional political and media actions only touch the surface.  We live in a country where the people have a voice.  Yet, that voice remains either silent or simply a thoughtless mouthpiece for the buzz words, phrases, and memes of the Left.  How did the American people lose not only their voices but their minds?

An Israeli soldier currently fighting in Gaza referred to his enemy as Amalek.   In the Hebrew Bible, Amalek is both a nation and a nomadic tribe seen to be the arch-rival of ancient Israel.   While the Amalekite nation no longer exists, Jewish wisdom holds that the memory of the devious enemy Amalek lives on in in all forms of antisemitism carried out against Jewish people.

According to Midrash (Hebrew Biblical interpretation) Amalek represents the belief in chance, of the haphazard dictates of “fate” and “destiny,” which oppose the Jewish belief in Divine providence. Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity or to creation itself, again the antithesis of Jewish philosophy.   Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.

Regardless of whether one believes in or has even read Judeo-Christian scripture and teachings, I think this description of Amalek provides a wonderful way to characterize and personify much of what we see around us and the causes of this void and valueless place in which the world finds itself today.  

Let’s just take the phrase, “Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity.”  All around us we see that human life has become or is becoming meaningless, with no value.  It has become disposable.  Why is it so easy to kill another human being over such simple things as who gets a parking spot?  It is easy if one believes that humanity is meaningless.  And if one’s life is meaningless, why would several lives suddenly have meaning?  Mass shootings, if life is meaningless, then are themselves meaningless; they are easy to carry out if one need feel no guilt about killing what one sees as a purposeless nothing nor compassion for meaningless corpses.  It becomes easy to be only concerned with satisfying one’s own urges at any one moment if anyone who might be hurt by that satisfaction is nothing but meaningless and valueless.

That sentence continues “or [no purpose] to creation itself.”  If there is no purpose to creation, no need to find meaning in something greater than oneself, then, again, there is no need to even have a moral compass let alone consider whether performance of some heinous act might violate it.  Indeed, “Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.” 

The influence of Amalek is seen well beyond Israel and the Jewish faith.  All around us we see people leaving their faith, people who have a huge void within themselves because they have nothing greater than themselves to believe in.  This loss in faith, this loss in human purpose is killing us all.

Will the world awake; will we save ourselves?

What has happened to us as a nation and a world?  We have listened to the voice of Amalek who has led us to doubt who and what we are.  But it is not just our belief in something greater than ourselves that is doubted and lost.  With a loss in faith we have lost all the values that come with that faith.  Our whole culture now leads us to doubt and deny everything that has made us the great nation that we are.   We are led to believe that we can and do take the place of God; that we need nothing but ourselves.  And with that seems to come the belief that we are entitled to whatever we desire regardless of whom that may hurt.

Those who see this as the Utopia they dream of do not want it questioned. They take command over what we learn.  Schools no longer teach children to use their minds to think and critically assess an issue.  We erase history, ignoring not only the sage wisdom that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” but also the fact that “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” 

We evolve as a society and civilization in part because we learn and grow from the past and in part because we value our purpose as one individual within humanity at large.  And when one has a purpose, one generally sees that purpose as a part of a greater good.  As such, one values human life beyond one’s own selfish being. 

Today’s leaders leave much to be desired.  But we the people also leave much to be desired.  We have stopped thinking.  We have stopped caring.  We have stopped believing.  We are being led by false but devious dreams created by Amalek and many leaders along with their followers whom he represents.  We have lost our purpose and our soul. 

There is time.  The terrorist attacks on Israel have shaken the world as have the reactions to those attacks.  The question is:  Are they enough to shake us all awake from the nihilistic nightmare future that the devious tactics of Amalek have put before us?

Joshua fighting Amalek, A print from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations in the possession of Revd. Philip De Vere at St. George’s Court, Kidderminster, England.  CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Two Truths

“Everything faded into mist.  The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

               -George Orwell, 1984

I look about me and think to myself that maybe, in today’s world, there is not one, but two truths that are trying to but cannot coexist.  At least, while likely not true for universal truths, it seems that people are willing to adjust their definition of daily truths to one that coincides with their wishes and desires.

We often like to say: look at the facts, the evidence, because it cannot lie.  And while that is true, it may not necessarily be the truth of our daily life.  For some, truth is absolute realism.  Picture a painting of a table on which stands a wilted bouquet of flowers.  That may be what indeed a photograph would capture at that moment. 

Now picture the same painting but with a glorious and bountiful bouquet of freshly blooming flowers.  The painter may be thinking that if he tends to his garden, that will be the bouquet that he can paint next week.  It does not exist today, but for him it absolutely exists in the future and hence is part of his truth today.

Early in the Soviet era writer Maxim Gorky counseled a young writer that it is not enough to say “I wrote the truth.”  Rather, the author must ask himself two questions:  Which truth? and Why?  At that time Gorky was referring to the truth of pre-revolutionary Russia versus the truth of what Russia was becoming.

Much the same may be going on in today’s America.  Those who would have America remain true to her core values and the Constitution see truth as the descriptions, facts, and evidence that are true to that America and the traditional beliefs/values of its population.  Those who are looking for great social change see truth in the picture they paint of what we can be and are becoming.  To them it is true that a person can choose their gender or shift it as they please, resulting in statements such as “men can become pregnant”, a statement which is factually and scientifically inaccurate and thus not a truth to the realists, but something which those trying to recreate a future see as a realistic future truth and hence a truth to them today.

Obviously, these opposing truths and many others cannot coexist.  Laws are affixed to one reality.  Opposing truths result in opposing laws or just anarchy.  Education – its needs, goals, and how to achieve them – is similarly at odds.  How one manages everything, from the food one puts on one’s plate to international relations, suffers.  The concept of opposing truths is currently on full display in the reactions to the terrorist attacks on Israel:  those whose truth is the factual history of the region are in opposition to those whose truth is the factually inaccurate but desired narrative that Israel is a guilty oppressor.

If the revolutionaries (and that is perhaps a good term for the progressive Left and its truth) prevail, then their narrative which is their truth, while not the reality of today, will become the reality of tomorrow.

That might not be so if we retain a pathway to current and past truths of this country and its values, accomplishments, and failures.  But if they are not retained, even if only as part of history, then they will be lost, and the revolutionary truths will be the only truths.

Interestingly, some would argue that part of the reason for the fall of Soviet Russia is that it retained and revered its prerevolutionary classics.   The works of the great Russian authors – Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov, etc. – retained a picture of the prerevolutionary reality and the values it conveyed, values that were in direct opposition to Communism.  At least some have traced the intellectual force behind Gorbachev’s glasnost to be the youthful reading of Russia’s great literature.  “The Bolsheviks did not realize that by having their children read Tolstoy…they were digging the grave of their revolution.” (Slezkine, The House of Government, quoted in Morson, Wonder Confronts Certainty).

Perhaps today’s Progressive Left learned from that Bolshevik mistake.  Perhaps it is for that reason that they feel the need to cancel and destroy anything that represents the past and current truth of America and how they justify their openly asserted belief that free speech must be canceled.  If there is no other truth, then their revolutionary truth that is yet to be can become the only truth. 

The analogy is not completely misplaced because for the Progressive Left, the destruction and reimagining of America is as obsessive a cause as was the Russian revolution to the Bolsheviks.  As the Russian people discovered, when the revolutionary lie becomes the truth then the reality is not that of the glorious utopian vision, but a very ugly existence. 

But the Russian people had access to their past truth, a truth that was actually more real than that within which they lived.  If today’s Progressive Left Cancel Culture has its way, we and future generations will not have that access.  We will not know what else was and could have been, and our truth will be as hollow as the unachievable dream narratives of the Progressives.

Like Gorky we must ask: Which truth and Why?  The truth that has been America for 247 years, or the truth that the Progressive Left believes will become the new truth.  A vision is not a truth but a narrative dream.  America’s truth is fading into the mist.  We must not allow America’s truth to be erased and the Left’s revolutionary dream to become a nightmare of false truth.

(Image AI Generated in response to prompt “Two Truths in Opposition")

Three Approaches that Make America

Since we seem unable in today’s world to carry on non-partisan political discussions about important policies and societal concerns, perhaps it is time for a new way of looking at things and at our fellow human beings.  Perhaps the following is a way to do this, or to at least assist us all in understanding our society and those who view it somewhat differently than do we.

While the animosity and disruption in our society today is most frequently identified as Red vs. Blue politics, I think that conflict is simply the way something else is manifesting itself.  I think that we are actually seeing a struggle between three different approaches to existence that are all struggling to find their way in the rapidly changing world of today. 

These three approaches are:

1. The Progressives who are for social change.
2. The Conventionals who are for the established institutions.
3. The Populists who are for the people.

The three approaches are actually all interrelated, and we all use all three approaches from time to time, but we generally lean more heavily toward one approach.    These leanings are resulting in support for or opposition to particular political policies and approaches as each approach struggles to become dominant. 

Approach	Progressive	Conventional	Populist
Primary Concern	For Social Change	For Established Institutions	For the People
Role	Starters of Action	Holders of Status Quo	Concluders and Transitioners
Political approaches	·        Socialist ·        Big government ·        Little individual freedom	·        Conservative ·        Democratic republic ·        Restricted freedom	·        Pure democracy ·        Minimal government ·        Individual freedom with minimal restriction
Role	Starter/Instigator/ Visionary/Disrupter	Stabilizer/Inflexible/ Defender/ Institutionalist	Enforcer/Fluid/ Finalizer /Majority
Today primarily	Progressive Left	Traditional moderate Republicans and Democrats	MAGA Republicans
Interactions	Need Populist support to enact social change; if change is effected, need Conventional support to defend and stabilize it.	Will fully embody Progressive vision once convinced to support it and/or once it becomes established.  Slows impulsiveness of Progressives and Populists	Mutability creates vulnerability to new Inspirations. Effectuate/complete a vision and lead transition to new change.

The Progressives

These are the starters, the visionaries.  They have an idea, and they want to see it implemented.  They believe their vision is a good one, though others may disagree with that assessment.  Their goal is to generally upend what currently exists and replace it with what they view as something better, whether that is for society/the world at large or simply in regard to a particular problem.

These are the socialists who seek a bigger government to support and control the societal changes which they advocate.    Socialism, according to Marx, is a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.  

But these can also be the Progressive Republicans who would similarly dismantle some of our longstanding institutions in favor of Populist dreams; their method is not socialism but pure democracy which in essence is simply mob rule.   Mob rule, whether in conjunction with or in opposition to a Progressive vision, can upend existing conventions in the hopes of replacing them with something better.

The vision of the Progressives is fragile.  That is, the goal is to demolish what exists and then build anew.  This is not something that people easily jump on board with.  The vision of the Progressives needs the Populists to lend support.  Only with that support will they be able to alter the fixed society of the Conventionals.   Once the Populists take control and convince the Conventionals to support their cause, society will shift as necessary to make the institutional position conform so that the vision of the Progressives can be realized.

The Conventionals

These are the conservatives, not necessarily in the common political connotation, but in the sense that they are reluctant to change.  Rather than jump to support current popular trends or policies, they will instead support longstanding institutions that are a part of the current societal status quo.

This gives stability to a society, but it also encourages a slower evolution as the Conventionals will need both time and strong evidence supporting any need to change that upon which their society is based.  Once a particular society is established with its culture and its underlying institutions, this group will fully embody and defend it.

The problem that the Conventionals face is that once the Populists become the majority, they will either prevail by simple mob rule or, if their populist view conforms with the vison of the Progressives the two will become an almost invincible force.

Today these are the establishment Republicans as well as the traditional moderate or “lunch bucket” Democrats.  While these groups find much to be lacking in our current government, they are more likely to blame the individuals rather than the underlying institutions.  These are often today’s Independents or those who feel that their party, be it Republican or Democrat, has abandoned them.

The Populists

These are the people who believe fully in the individual and oppose large government and/or extensive regulation of behavior.  Populism by its own definition involves a large group of the populace who, by their mere size, are able to sway society.

The Populists are not the visionaries, but they will adopt a vision and bring it to the fore, in essence concluding the work of the Progressives.  As such they are vulnerable to manipulation by the Progressives who need the support of the masses.   If their vision is adopted by society at large, it will be the Conventionals who will end up supporting the altered institutions.  The mutable Populists will be ever ready to adopt a new vision and, as such, while they may aid in bringing about changes, they will also be the group that will end one vision and help bring about the transition to yet another new society.

Currently, the Populists most frequently identify as MAGA Republicans, yet in many ways the rank-and-file Democrats are working as Populists as their majority supports the various identity groups and causes that the Progressive Left uses to further its Progressive goals for societal change.  Yet, in another way neither group is truly Populist because each supports only a popular majority of one political group.

Interactions

These three approaches and their interaction manifest on all levels from individual to global issues.  While having leanings towards all three, we will primarily exhibit one approach on any given issue. Believing that our approach is the only one is what causes much friction in today’s world. 

Moreover, we may exhibit one approach on one issue while having a different approach on another.  For example, on the environment one might be a Progressive, but on taxation and governmental spending one might be a Conventional or a Populist.

Identifying as any one of these three types of actors is not permanent.  Once a Progressive’s vision becomes the established reality, that individual may then become a Conventional who supports that reality or perhaps will join a new Populist cause that will lead to a transition away from that vision’s reality to begin the establishment of a new vision.

This is where I think we get into trouble.  If one holds a Progressive or Conventional or Populist position on one issue, the tendency is to assume that they hold the same type of approach on all issues and that such an approach is a permanent personality characteristic.  That assumption makes it hard to find common ground on anything.

The strength of the Conventionals

I think that America needs all three types, but it is the Conventionals upon whom we must count to preserve the Democratic Republic form of government that makes America what it is.

America is an ever-evolving country.  Generally its evolution has been slow but positive.  We need the visions of Progressives to push us forward.  But, in the face of those exciting visions, we need the Conventionals to slow us down, make us think and carefully put one foot in front of the other with deliberation as we move forward.  It is the Conventionals who will ensure that we make positive changes without totally upending those institutions that allow us to have visions and to make changes in the first place.

Populism is also exciting.  But as a form of pure democracy, the bottom line is that it is really mob rule.  Again, it is the institutions of our Democratic Republic that have protected the minority from the negatives of a mob rule where the majority gets its way regardless of what that may mean to our institutions or the individuals whom those institutions protect.

We need all three, but sadly today the Conventionals are being lost, crushed by the visions and popular support coming from both sides of the aisle.  The Progressive Left and its Populist supporters would deny and destroy our Constitution along with many of our laws in order to create their Socialist utopia. The Populist Right, in the name of individual rights and popular rule would disband many of our governmental institutions and agencies that, while perhaps currently bloated or mismanaged, are key parts of the Democratic Republic and the America that these Populists claim to hold dear.

If we could only talk with one another, we might find that there are pieces of the Progressive Left agenda that are worth considering while at the same time the voice of the Populist Right needs to be listened to.  And we need the Conventionals to sustain the scaffolding that will hold all this together as America continues to evolve while remaining the America that is the shining star of democracy for the world.

 

MAKING VICTIMS, DESTROYING SOULS

 My New Found Victimhood

Recently I received an email from the university from which I retired and where I still mentor and teach students.  The email was seeking to “gather a list of First Gen faculty” who could be called upon to mentor “First Gen” students.

Being unfamiliar with the term “First Gen”, I did some research and learned that the U.S. Dept. of Education defines a First Gen or First Generation student as:

An individual, neither of whose parents completed a baccalaureate degree;

or

An individual who, prior to the age of 18, regularly resided with and received support from only one parent and whose supporting parent did not complete a baccalaureate degree.

or

An individual who, prior to the age of 18, did not regularly reside with or receive support from a natural or adoptive parent.

If your parent(s) and/or guardian(s) attended college but do not have a bachelor’s degree (i.e., did not graduate), you are considered to be first-generation.

This is the basic definition used by most colleges and universities, although some further explain that it does not matter about your siblings or any other family members.  That is, one only looks to the parent to determine if someone is First Gen.  Additionally, some schools expand their definition to include individuals whose parents, while having a degree, received that degree from an institution outside the United States.  The Dept. of Education tends to group its discussions of First Generation students with low income or otherwise disadvantaged students.

Think about this.  You could have highly successful parents who, for whatever reason, do not have a college degree, you might be a graduate of an outstanding prep school, have older siblings who are students or graduates of the finest colleges in the country and yet still qualify as a First Gen student and thus be qualified to receive whatever special benefits your college chooses to provide.

When I went to college, I did not consider myself disadvantaged.  I had parents who, though lacking college degrees, were well educated and encouraged education.  I went to good public schools with a high rate of graduates attending college.  My older siblings went to college before me.  Yet, lo and behold, I now discover that I had the disadvantage of being able to label myself as a First Generation student.  Wow.  I too can be a victim.  Actually, I found this thought quite offensive.

Realizing how ridiculous this is, I replied to the email and related my discovery that I am a First Gen.  I further explained that nonetheless, I would not be volunteering for the First Gen mentorship program.  Specifically, I stated, “In my humble opinion, such labels hurt rather than help individual initiative and success.  Obviously, I will not be volunteering as a First Gen mentor though, as you are well aware, I am always ready to help our students as individuals, regardless of whatever label our Woke world might want to place on them.”

I expected to get no response or simply a “thank you for your input” email.  But what I got was an email the total substance of which read “Was that really necessary?” to which I responded with one word:  Yes.   This interchange is not really relevant to the point of this essay, but it does serve to point out that those who are onboard with the Woke practice of labeling and creating political victimhoods are not inclined to want to have a discussion with someone of differing views; indeed, they don’t even want those views to be voiced.

Creating One’s Victimhood “narrative”

On the same day that the above took place I read an article revealing that Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has fabricated his story of growing up poor, then becoming a successful entrepreneur.  He tells the story that he “didn’t grow up in money” and yet was able to create multimillion dollar companies out of nothing.  It turns out, however, that his parents both held graduate degrees and were highly successful professionals.  Vivek went to an elite prep school and had his own stock portfolio created for him by his parents that was “bringing in hundreds of dollars in dividends before he graduated high school and thousands by the time he attended Harvard, according to his 2002-2004 tax returns.”  Moreover, he accepted a scholarship “he previously said he needed in order to pay for law school.” The year he accepted a $90,000 award for law school, “Ramaswamy reported $2,252,209 in total income, according to his tax returns. He reported a total of $1,173,690 in income in the three years prior.”  You can read the full article here:  Vivek’s Background 

Why would someone as successful and seemingly intelligent as Vivek Ramaswamy create this false rags-to-riches narrative?  Why would he or anyone think that in order to be truly successful, to be “approved” by our culture that they need to first be a victim?  Why would anyone choosing to go into the public arena think that his deceptions would not be found out?  And, on a moral level, why would someone choose to deny who his parents really were and the positive help that they provided as they supported their son in his educational and career journey?  Is that not a slap in the face to his family?

The Consequences of Victim Labeling

Our Woke culture, our world of identity groups/politics, demands that we all be either victim or victimizer.  (I have fun wondering how my new-found victim status due to being a defined First Gen fits with my defined – due to my being White - status as victimizer.  Perhaps I should fall into some schizophrenic fugue.)

But seriously, we are all more than one label.  Each of us is an individual, not a two-dimensional cardboard cutout that can be labeled and then either applauded, condemned, or ignored.  We are all multi-dimensional and those dimensions include both positives and negatives, but all are uniquely ours.  They are what make us the INDIVIDUALS that we are.

If we are nothing more than the labels that some group has decided to place upon us then we lose our individual identity.  Not only who we are, but whom we may become is predetermined for us by someone else who may or more likely may not have our individual best interests in mind. 

If all we can be is what the label says we are, then why have any initiative?  And personal responsibility becomes meaningless because our actions are simply the result of our label.  If we are a victim, then we have our victimhood to blame for anything that goes wrong in our life.  After a fall we need not go through any self-examination or attempt to learn lessons for the future; we need not pull ourselves back up and try to do better or improve things for next time.  Rather, we can simply blame our victimhood and those labeled as our victimizers. 

Labeling is nothing more than a way to control us. People have always to some extent labeled others, and probably always will.  But today we have a political power movement that uses Wokeness to label and divide us and as a result take power over us.   You fit this label so you belong in this box.  No need to try to get out – to improve yourself or to go after your individual vision.  We have decided that this is you and therefore this is whom and what you will be.   And too many simply accept such labeling (or mislabeling) without question or, worse yet, seek it out.

Candidate Ramaswamy fell for the Woke labeling and believed that in order to be “successful candidate” he needed to have an appropriate backstory.  He chose the “rags to riches” narrative.  He became something he is not but that which fits within a particular label.  I chose to question my new label and was chastised for such questioning. 

Sadly, labels, and their subsequent import of victim or victimizer, are a part of our culture today.  We seek out and apply labels to both ourselves and others, and in so doing we diminish our humanity.  Accepting societal labeling grants power over us to those who create the labels and apply them.

The question is, are we playing victim, or is the need for victimhood playing us?  Because in the end, we are nothing but our own victimizers if the need to label, to be a victim, destroys us.  As Sophocles wrote in Antigone, "Who is the Slayer? Who is the Victim? Speak."

We need to answer this question for us, for today, for our civilization and our lives.  But we cannot truly answer it without shedding our need for labels, taking back the power over our being that we have granted to others, and becoming each our own unique individual.

Human Dialogue, Freedom, and Censorship

 

As facts start to come out and scandals start to close in, I am reminded of the following phase that stems from Soviet era Russia:  “There is no news in the Truth, and there is no truth in the News (В Правде нет известия, и в Известие нет правды).”

Actually, this stems from the two Russian newspapers – Pravda and Izvestiye.   Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, was considered to be filled with lies even though its name translates as “truth”, while the name Izvestiye, the other Soviet newspaper, translates as “news” and was the official newspaper of the Supreme Soviet.  The saying, at the time, was a joke because all good Russians knew that they could not get the truth or the news from state-controlled media.

Today Americans also have difficulty obtaining news or truth.  The government is too often involved in dissemination and editing of what should be accurate news and truth.  The state of the American media and Americans’ access to news, facts, and truth can be summarized as: 

Let me define truth, for the purposes of this discussion, as that which is in accordance with fact, evidence, and reality.  News I will define as new or noteworthy information in which an audience will likely be interested.

Editorial Discretion has become Political Censorship

The mainstream media today is less interested in providing facts to its readers, viewers, and listeners than it is in pleasing government and elite powers by providing their narratives to audiences rather than facts of a situation.  And audiences are often more interested in the entertainment rather than factual aspects of a story.    Hence, the truth (factual recitation) is not the news, and the news, because it is not factually accurate, is not the truth.

I am not talking about editorial discretion which has always been part of news dissemination.  What to print, where to place a story, how much time/space to give a story – these have always been decisions for editors and have always been colored somewhat by their biases, both conscious and unconscious. 

But today these decisions go far beyond and are far removed from simple editorial discretion.  We now have concrete evidence of state involvement and control of what is/is not “truth” and what information will be disseminated or hidden.   Such involvement has permeated both the actual “news” media as well as social media platforms. 

For example, House investigations now provide documentation that Facebook confirmed to the White House that it was working to accomplish “the administration’s directives” on suppressing content that clashed with its COVID vaccine agenda.  There are processes by which the government can flag certain content on social media and request it be suppressed.  There is also evidence that the White House wanted social media to change its on-line algorithms so that users would see more information from sources supportive of the White House agenda.

The News or Mainstream Media is now also beholden to powers outside of the news itself.  While news editors, as noted above, have always made editorial choices, those editors ensured that the stories presented in their news sections were factual; they left opinion for the opinion pages.  Not so anymore.

Today’s news sources clearly support one or the other political party and every aspect of their “news” reflects that.  Not just the selection of which stories to present, but the manner in which any story is presented. 

The conservative and right-leaning media will slant everything to support right wing positions and politicians while the left-leaning media will slant in the opposite direction.  Stories that cover the front pages of media with one political leaning will be close to non-existent in the media of the opposite political leaning.  Indeed, we now have proof of news sources such as the NY Times and Washington Post deliberately omitting or revising facts of key stories such as the now debunked Russian collusion or the now confirmed story of the Hunter Biden laptop.  Stories that are presented will often be filled with adjectives and other modifiers that, while perhaps appropriate in opinion pieces, are blatant attempts to turn what should be a factual news story into an opinion advocating a particular political position.

Consider the two big stories over the past few days:  the Trump indictments and the concrete evidence of President Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence peddling scheme that resulted in huge monetary payments to the Biden family.    To compare the coverage of these two stories between right and left leaning news media is to read accounts of two seemingly completely different worlds. 

It is next to impossible to find a full and objective account of the Trump charges along with the legal assertions that they are politically motivated and/or a form of election interference.  Similarly, one can barely find the Biden story in left-leaning media, and when one does it is downplayed as simply some sort of Republican witch hunt, while the right-leaning media perhaps over sensationalizes the clearly damning evidence of Biden’s quite likely illegal interactions with foreign countries and the possibility of its compromising of the President. 

The “news” from the left leaning media essentially has already found Trump guilty and Biden completely innocent while the right leaning media takes the opposite view.  This is not news.  This is not truth.  This is bias and propaganda.  And in many instances it is guided by the very people that we elect to protect us and our First Amendment rights. 

Information, Not Censorship, Heals and Sustains America

The First Amendment, a cornerstone of our American democracy, demands a free and objective news media in order that the people can voice and hear a variety of views and make their own decisions.  That others would decide what the people should and should not hear and, worse yet, make judgements about what information is made available in an attempt to do the people’s thinking for them is in complete antipathy to the First Amendment and all it stands for.

When those who should be leading our country become more concerned with their own power than their duty to the country and the people they serve, they find ways to justify their censorship and denial of free speech and the importance of narrative – their narrative – over truth or news.

Suppression of information is often done under the guise of protecting us from “misinformation” though as Robert Kennedy Jr. well-articulated in his July appearance before the House Committee regarding Censorship and Free Speech, the term is often rephrased as “mal-information” – not incorrect but just bad as in information that the government or its lackeys in the media have decided would be bad for the populace to hear, usually because it contradicts the narrative of those in power. 

Our country is split into two camps, and each wants to provide a narrative that benefits them.  To establish that narrative, censorship of truth and news becomes a temptation that is hard to resist.  That, however, is the worst possible reaction.

Words from Kennedy’s opening statement to the House Committee on Censorship are instructive.  He responded to Democrats’ concern about “the need to beat this toxic polarization that is destroying our country today and how do we deal with that?” Kennedy stated: “This kind of division is more dangerous for our country than any time since the American Civil War.  How do we [deal with] that?  Every Democrat on this committee, do you think you can do that by censoring people?  I am telling you, you cannot.  That only aggravates and amplifies the problem.”

Recently Sen. Joe Manchin spoke and wrote about the division in America, stating that the United States is “not designed for” the level of division currently seen within the country, leaving many “common-sense” Americans without a political home.   He wrote:

The extremes on the left and right now control the Democratic and Republican Parties, defining our politics and policy debates. These partisan extremes are in the business of feeding political division and dysfunction everyday – and their business is booming.

They want America divided – because they benefit greatly from it. They want us to see each other as enemies because they feed off of it. They attack our institutions, whether it is our Capitol, our elected leaders or our justice system, without caring about the lasting damage it does.

In America, leadership is not a birthright but instead it’s the choice of voters after respectful debates of ideas. And partisan leaders on both sides of the aisle are increasingly threatened by the growing desire for debate.

To be clear, while both parties are to some extent responsible for resorting to narrative and aggravating division, it is the current Administration and the hard Left that are aggressively pushing censorship and even elimination of First Amendment freedoms.

Dialogue Is Our Humanity

But why does debate and this current censorship matter?  Why not just pick a left or right bubble and live within it?  Or simply allow the government and its media to tell us what to think?  The answer is not only that this contradicts the very core of the 1st Amendment, a necessary cornerstone of our government and our way of life.  It is not only that it furthers a nefarious goal of making the American people enemies of one another.  These, of course, are serious problems, especially to those who believe in American democracy.  But perhaps an even larger problem is that it works to destroy the very core of our existence.

Life in the end is a dialogue.  We participate by speaking, asking questions, listening, writing, reading, responding, agreeing, disagreeing, learning.  A dialogue cannot be open and honest if information is restricted or denied.  With censorship we lose part of the dialogue, and we allow someone else to create a dialogue for us.  We stop learning.  We stop thinking.  We stop speaking.  And we lose part of our humanity.  We become nothing more than a tool for those creating the dialogue for us.

Currently the government and others in power through pressure on private platforms are trying to shape our dialogue.  The media gives us the stories they want discussed in a way that will create preordained narratives.  But our information is limited and therefore our dialogue is limited and we are ultimately limiting our individual humanity as we delegate our power to dialogue to the state.

To retain our humanity and our freedom we must remember that goals of personal comfort and protection from negative narratives are not in the end in our best interest.  Free thought and free dialogue are.  We must remember that good dialogue requires others and their possibly differing and uncomfortable viewpoints.  Those others are not enemies.  Silencing and censorship are the enemy as is a state-controlled media. 

As the mounting proof of censorship and silencing becomes both truth and news we must demand that our news media actually provide us with news that is truth and truth that is news.  All of it.  Only then can we dialogue as fully engaged free people.

A Brief Note on Biden’s State of the Union Speech and Sanders’ Response

 I always watch the State of the Union speeches.  Since I first began to understand America in my Junior High Civics class I have believed it is my duty as a citizen to listen to these often boring, angering, or sometimes joyful events.  I want to hear and see the entire ordeal rather than take various reporters’ interpretations of the event.  I also watch the opposition’s response.

Last night’s affair was in many ways not unusual (even if it sort of looked like the start of a real affair when the first lady and the second gentleman had a good smooch on the lips, but then I guess that’s Washington today).  Below are my brief reactions to the President’s State of the Union speech and to Governor Sanders’ response.

Biden’s speech

At some point during Biden’s long and mostly boring speech I decided that the President engages in some sort of magical thinking.  So many lies, misleading statements, and half-truths came out of his mouth that I quickly lost count.  I think that Biden gave us a litany of things he wishes to be true.  The problem is that he states these things as fact - he believes what he says and he expects us to believe it too

I am not a psychologist, but is this the pattern of a pathological liar?  Joe’s lies go back at least as far as his law school plagiarism days.  On the campaign trail he has related tales of things he has done which prove to be entirely false.

So the lies did not surprise me.  I actually expect them from this President.  I realize that all our presidents have lied to us about some things, but Joe’s lies are different.  He lies about things that he doesn’t have to.  A president might lie about something because he must, as for example when Kennedy had to keep secret the discussions he and Khrushchev were having about the Cuban Missile Crisis. A president might lie or obfuscate if he has committed some offense (think Nixon and Watergate or Clinton and Monica Lewinsky).  And of course, on the campaign trail, candidates puff up their accomplishments and records.  But Biden lies about things that don’t matter as well as those that do and about easily proven falsehoods (why has he told us he was a truck driver when he was not; why has he lied about trips to the border?).  

I really think Biden can’t help himself, and he certainly gave us a parade of untruths in his speech last night.  The fact checkers are busy and if you google the fact checks of last night’s speech you will find few statements labeled as true, some will be labeled as false, and the majority will indicate that significant context has been left out, thus making the statement misleading at best.

Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that the President “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

I do not really think that what Biden gave us was an honest description of the state of the union.  It was more of a speech that took credit that was not due for past activities and a wish list of what he would do if re-elected.  That wish list included sideways attacks on Republicans who we can be sure he will blame if the many government and socialistic programs he outlined do not come to pass.

Perhaps because I expect the lies, however, what bothers me more is that people don’t question Biden’s statements.  Indeed, Americans seem to have forgotten that they can and should question what they are told.  They should at least ask for some proof of the claims being made.  But they do not.  And that indeed troubles me more than the lies themselves. 

People are grading Biden’s speech; I would give him a C.  The content of the speech was probably below that, but the fact that it was delivered in such a way that most Americans will just accept what he said without question raises it to the C level.

Sanders’ Response

Overall, I thought Sanders’ response was not effective.   I was disappointed and had expected more from her.

The speech sounded like a generic Republican campaign speech.  I was looking for a response – a rebuttal to Biden’s lies and false promises.  

Clearly Sanders had prepared her speech in advance and she delivered it with compassion, but I wondered if she had even listened to Biden’s speech.  She certainly had time to insert some specific and pointed rebuttals during the time between the end of Biden’s speech and the beginning of hers – the time while the mainstream media commentators were lavishing Biden with praise, buying all his lies without question.

But no, she gave us a campaign speech that really said nothing new.  Her story of her secret trip to Iraq with President Trump was very moving, but in the end it did not really relate to Biden’s speech.  She repeatedly told us that Republicans are the good guys and Democrats bad (or crazy).  But we hear that and its reverse every day depending on which news outlets we visit. 

Biden’s speech was open to so many attacks based on both factual inaccuracies along with political philosophy.  This response missed a huge opportunity.  My grade for this one is a D.

In conclusion

I would have liked to have seen the honesty of Pres. Ford (see below)  in Biden’s speech and a true rebuttal from Sanders.