Well, the Democrats just gave Linda Sarsour and CAIR exactly what they wanted: a resolution (text here) condemning not just anti-Semitism (implicitly aimed at bigot Ilhan Omar), but all forms of “hate” under the sun, most notably Islamophobia. Of course all bigotry, including that against Muslims, is reprehensible, but there is considerable irony that the same group who—rightly—chastised people for watering down “Black lives matter” into “All lives matter” now engages in exactly the same type of watering-down of a bill intended to call out hatred against Jews. A resolution against “hateful expressions of intolerance” is pretty toothless, while one against anti-Semitism sends a message to the Left that this particular brand of bigotry won’t be countenanced by the Dems, and a message to Omar and her “progressive” colleagues that criticism of Israel is okay, but of Jews, not so much.
This is not to excuse the anti-Semitism of the Republicans, which is even worse (all 23 votes against the resolution were from the GOP, and Republicans like Jim Jordan have demonized Jews while others have issued bigoted and truly “Muslimophobic” criticisms of Omar), but I am a registered Democrat and I am appalled by my own party. Here, for example, is Nancy Pelosi flat-out lying:
Representative Lee Zeldin of New York, one of two Jewish Republicans in the House, voted no, calling the final resolution “spineless and disgusting,” adding, “If a Republican member was pushing the anti-Semitism that Representative Omar keeps peddling, this resolution would name names.”
But Ms. Pelosi told reporters that the resolution was not aimed at Ms. Omar.
“It’s not about her; it’s about these forms of hatred,” Ms. Pelosi said.
If you believe that, you’ll believe that Donald Trump is infused with empathy. We wouldn’t even have this resolution if Democrats hadn’t been rattled by Omar’s anti-Semitism and the public’s pushback against it.
I usually disagree with Ben Shapiro (who’s Jewish, of course), but in his article “Every Democratic excuse for Ilhan Omar’s Anti-Semitism is more vile than the last,” he’s pretty much on the mark. I am ashamed at how the Democrats are backing off their anti-Semitism, finding tons of excuses for it; and I’m worried that my own party is going to slowly take on the anti-Semitic cast of Britain’s Labour Party.
Linda Sarsour and “progressive” anti-Semitic representatives like Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, as well as the duplicitous Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), lobbied for this watering down, and, in the end, they all got exactly what they wanted (see the last paragraph of Sarsour’s FB post below). Pity that Sarsour hasn’t condemned the bigotry of Louis Farrakhan!
Some of the Democrats’ defenses of Omar, after they initially condemned her—and despite her continuing her anti-Semitic tropes—were pathetic, some even infantilizing her as being “inexperienced” and “not understanding how things work here”. Here’s Democratic whip James Clyburn excusing Omar because of her “lived experience” (see below):
Holy shit this quote from @WhipClyburn. https://t.co/EwvOdLAILh pic.twitter.com/OPAdug39zz
— Jonathan Greenberg (@JGreenbergSez) March 7, 2019
And here are Omar, Tlaib, and Carson taking a victory lap after the House Democrats managed to save Omar from a trip to the party woodshed:
Our nation is having a difficult conversation, but we believe this is great progress. pic.twitter.com/gSua9a8mki
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) March 7, 2019
In the meantime, Ocasio-Cortez is using the anti-Semitism to help raise money for her own campaign: the Jews are coming for her! What a cynical and offensive thing to do at a time when the Congress is discussing anti-Semitism!:
And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now raising money by saying AIPAC is coming for her and comparing the bipartisan consensus on the US-Israel relationship to the Iraq War pic.twitter.com/4gvXuiHIhX
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) March 7, 2019
Reader Eli, who sent me some of these links, said, “These events demonstrate the continuing takeover of the Democrats by the far-left and the corresponding mainstreaming of antisemitism. I’m afraid the Dems are on their way of becoming more like the British Labour party” (exactly my feeling, though there are parts of the far-Left platform I share). He added, “I’m proud of my former representative, Ted Deutch, for calling it as it is. At least some Democrats still get it.”
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) from House floor: "It feels like we're only able to call the use of anti-semitic language by any colleague of ours if we're addressing all forms of hatred and it feels like we can't say it's anti-semitism unless everyone agrees that it's anti-semitism."
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) March 7, 2019
I’ve heard it said, and I hope it’s not true, that this kind of division among Democrats just helps the GOP and—Ceiling Cat help us—Trump’s re-election in 2020. But it may. As the NYT reports:
But if Ms. Pelosi believed she was smoothing over divisions among Democrats, another member of leadership — Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the Democratic whip, gave critics a new cause with an interview in The Hill newspaper. In it, he was quoted as saying that Ms. Omar, who fled war in her native Somalia as a child and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya, had more personal experiences with bigotry than those who are generations removed from the Holocaust, the Japanese internment camps of World War II and the other violent episodes of the past.
“I’m serious about that,” the newspaper quoted Mr. Clyburn as saying. “There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her. I’ve talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.”
Mr. Zeldin responded, “Whip Clyburn’s comments are disgusting, making light of the Holocaust and minimizing its massive importance and impact on victims’ families, survivors, and the world.”
In the meantime, Omar will continue spreading the hatred (and raising money for anti-Semites) that she just voted to condemn, for the Democrats are too weak to keep their own people from spreading bigotry:
Hear, hear, Jerry.
In other slightly-related news, Sunny Hundal has pointed out the support by British fundamentalist Christians and Jews for the bigoted Brummie Muslims at Parkfield school. They actually spoke from the van opposite the school.
The pattern of faith-coddling and opportunistic solidarity is predictable and replicable.
Funny that Linda Sarsour accuses Pelosi of “doing the dirty work of powerful white men” when she’s a gleeful groupie of Louis Farrakhan, a misogyntistic and very powerful black man.
Linda Sarsour is purest poison.
The Anita Bryant of Islam.
B-b-b-ut it’s not bigotry when it’s Linda Sarsour’s kind of bigotry. Both sides or something.
sub
Believe I covered this enough yesterday and would just be regurgitating to continue. I’m still wondering about the demented judge in yesterday’s Manafort sentence? An otherwise good man, this Manafort. Except for 60 million or so in fraud and income tax evasion.
And how much of that will he serve?
It’s kinda like how Hollywood celebrities never seem to get the punishments us little people would get for their repeated drug abuses. And will Alec Baldwin see jail time for punching a man in a parking dispute? Doubt it…
I am amazed at how easily the ‘Left’ (whatever it may be now) self destructs time and time again. That’s how you make it likelier a second term of Trump, among other nasty things.
You don’t even need an astute alt-righter applying the old “divide and conquer” strategy. Leftists do that already on their own.
Sub. (Hitch: “Some behaviors do not require further reinforcement.”)
Turns out people on “the left” are people, too! Who knew?
(You may not have noticed fractures happen on “the right”, too.)
No, that’s an impression you get if you only go to websites which do nothing but aggregate negative stories about the left. If I went to Squawkbox or Mother Jones or Daily Kos or any of those unreadably inane pro-left sites I’d be convinced that the right are on the verge of imploding. Likewise, from reading WEIT you’d think that the entire liberal-left was falling apart at the seams through fervent hatred of Jews and identity politics.
This is why balance is a good thing, otherwise without realising it you slip into a world where only one side exists, and the perfidies of the other side, however vast and significant, simply don’t register. A lot of people _want_ to live in that kind of world, which is why they go and read nothing but Breitbart or Huffpost, but I’d hope(in fact I know) that most people here aren’t like that.
I don’t think “the left” has a monopoly on self destruction, but they do seem to have a special sort of it . They promote themselves as being all things to all people,which attracts groups with conflicting interests.
LGBT activists and Islamophiles, as an example.
Any group of people with fundamentally incompatible priorities is inherently unstable.
There are people in the democratic coalition who have not just incompatible goals, but opposite ones.
There is a lot of duplicity on all sides of this issue. Dispassionate intellectual exchanges are hard to find. Here are my thoughts.
1. Is Omar anti-Semitic? Yes. I think she was raised in an environment where there was no distinction made between Jews and Israel.
2. Some progressive Jews have defended Omar. One such person is Paul Waldman, an opinion writer for the Washington Post. He argues passionately that Omar’s comments regarding “dual loyalty” did not refer to American Jews, but rather to Congress. He states: “Now, back to Omar. Here’s the truth: The whole purpose of the Democrats’ resolution is to enforce dual loyalty not among Jews, but among members of Congress, to make sure that criticism of Israel is punished in the most visible way possible. This, of course, includes Omar. As it happens, this punishment of criticism of Israel is exactly what the freshman congresswoman was complaining about, and has on multiple occasions. The fact that no one seems to acknowledge that this is her complaint shows how spectacularly disingenuous Omar’s critics are being.” I think this argument is absurd.
3. An unfortunate consequence of this incident is that genuine criticism of Israel may be muted. The Israeli government under Netanyahu (who may be criminal, just like Trump) has done its best to alienate American Jews, who are much more liberal than Israeli Jews. American Jews find their support of Israel tested with Netanyahu in power. He should be criticized. I don’t like the man, including his cozying up to right-wing American evangelicals.
4. I do not know if AOC is anti-Semitic. I do not like that she has gotten so close to anti-Semitics such as Sarsour. But, her criticism of AIPAC is not evidence of anti-Semitism, per se. This Israeli lobbying group is very close to Netanyahu and his right-wing government.
5. That the Democrats had to settle for a watered down resolution should not be surprising. An explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism alone and an implicit censure of Omar would have been the surprising act considering the nature of the Democratic coalition. In contrast to the Republicans that consist largely of one group (religious white people), the Democrats consist of many different interest groups (or identity groups for those who get excited about it). The agenda of one group sometimes conflicts with that of others. The Democratic leadership has to assuage all groups for the purpose of keeping the coalition together. Hence, the watered down resolution. That’s politics and it doesn’t particularly upset me. Moral courage from politicians is rare. Staying in power to attain desired goals is what counts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/05/dishonest-smearing-ilhan-omar/?utm_term=.93776b95ee60
Very good review of the matter. I might compare Trump more favorably with John Gotti than Netanyahu but that’s just me.
Gotti was a much better dresser
As usual, sir, your comments are spot on.
“Some progressive Jews have defended Omar. One such person is Paul Waldman, an opinion writer for the Washington Post. He argues passionately that Omar’s comments regarding “dual loyalty” did not refer to American Jews, but rather to Congress”
Considering Omar’s past comments about Jews and about how support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins,” among other things she has said, this position is absurd.
“I do not know if AOC is anti-Semitic. I do not like that she has gotten so close to anti-Semitics such as Sarsour. But, her criticism of AIPAC is not evidence of anti-Semitism, per se.”
No, her criticism of AIPAC isn’t antisemitic, but her attempt to raise money by saying that “AIPAC is coming for” her and Omar and their buddies comes dangerously close and closely adheres to antisemitic tropes. She knows exactly what she’s doing, as does Omar.
“That the Democrats had to settle for a watered down resolution should not be surprising. An explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism alone and an implicit censure of Omar would have been the surprising act considering the nature of the Democratic coalition.”
I call BS. If this was a resolution about violence against women, or police brutality against the black community, etc., we would not at all expect this to happen. This has happened because it was a resolution against antisemitism. If you go and read the resolution, it’s not just watered down, but has become a resolution that’s much more focused on other things, and Islamophobia in particular.
I read the resolution. It condemns hatred of all kind, including anti-Semitism. I do not find it objectionable. Also, the House has 25 Democratic Jewish representatives. They all voted for it; curiously, they do not seem as vexed about it as you are. What we are seeing is politics in action. The purists are upset, but that’s the way it goes.
I guess the difference between you and I is that I don’t think politics as usual is a good thing, nor do I think it’s helpful to the Democratic Party these last few years.
Also, you did not answer most of my points.
“Politics as usual,” meaning the give and take between the various interest groups is what has kept our society on an even keel. It is a good thing. Trump does not respect politics as usual. In 1860 and 1861, the South did not respect the results of a democratic election, resulting in a catastrophe. There was no politics as usual there.
In a pluralistic democratic society, politics is the realization that you can’t everything you want, but you get something. It’s the growing rejection of this concept by purists, regardless of ideology, that represents a threat to democratic governance. Perhaps some exceptions can be cited, but the ascendance of purists to political power almost always results in a disaster to the society.
Well, you’ve still managed to avoid all of the other points I made to concentrate on this one, but I again ask: if this was a resolution regarding violence against women, or against police brutality toward the black community, would we see this “good thing” of the “various interest groups” in the Democratic Party (not our democratic society; let’s not change the playing field here) coming together to water down the statement? This was a resolution against antisemitism based on the fact that some members in the Party made antisemitic remarks. It’s now been watered down into a statement against all bigotry, with antisemitism taking a back seat to Islamophobia and the cherry-picking of statistics to make it seem like Muslims face more hate crimes than Jews. And this is all a good thing? All keeping our democratic society on an even keel? Please.
This is exactly what Labour has done under Corbyn, again and again, and look where it’s gotten them. Sure hasn’t worked out over there.
You don’t seem to understand how politics work. The Democratic Party is made up of many different interest groups, as I discussed in my original comment. In the last few years the Party has moved towards the Left, but less than some people fear. Party leaders are attempting prevent a takeover by the far left. I hope the effort succeeds because the contrary would result in two parties on the political fringes with no place for the Center. Time will tell if the Center can hold in the Democratic Party. Ultimately, elections will determine the makeup of Congress. This resolution was an attempt by the Party leadership to co-opt its small, but vocal radical element into the mainstream. This effort may turn out to be futile, but it was worth the try. Again, if the American people don’t like the radicals, vote them out. But, if these radicals gain in numbers, blame the electorate. Pelosi is doing her best to keep the Party center-left. I hope she succeeds.
What I fear is the confusion I see right now in the Democrats. While it might be convenient to use the usual “far left” to “center” labels, I fear they don’t really work very well right now. Some consider their forays into socialism as far left but they aren’t really socialists, though some call themselves by that name. They just want the government to provide health care and/or college education. Some others are also called “far left” are the SJWs which I am not interested in. On the other hand, people use the “centrist” label for Dems that merely laud capitalism, free trade, and globalization which make sense to me, though I would like to see government take a stronger hand in managing them. These left/right labels aren’t useful.
I understand exactly how politics work, and I also understand how certain factions suddenly gain a foothold and it spells disaster for their party. You could make the same arguments you’re making for the Tea Party back in 2010. The way to stop a takeover isn’t to consistently placate the (for now) quite small faction, but rather to show them who’s boss. But why am I telling you? You’re the only one here who knows how politics works.
BJ, this comment came through email as a reply to BJ, making the following funny:
“But why am I telling you? You’re the only one here who knows how politics works.”
Oh, and you’ve still failed to address the other points I made in my original comment.
LOL Paul. It reflects the ongoing arguments between the voices in my head.
Why does WordPress have a five comment limit on nesting? It makes no sense.
Anyway, I don’t get email alerts because I don’t have a WP account, so I never knew how they show up, or even to whom. I always assumed they only show up to the person to whom you’re responding.
“between you and I” — Really, Beej? Don’t make me pull out my red pen and go medieval pedant on your ass, son. 🙂
Old habits die hard! “Between you and me.”
To break myself of that habit, I have to consciously think about the sentence as if only I was involved, and then determine whether I’d be using “me” or “I.” I was always taught in school to use “I” in all such formulations, but I know that’s wrong.
I had to get even, since my ass is still burning from that time you called me for misspelling Tristram Shandy. 🙂
I am a gentleman with opinions and was not going to let one of my favorite books go misspelled. It was either a correction or a duel (then we would have seen whose red pen is bigger!).
I don’t know if this really counts as getting back on the scoreboard, but your comma is technically superfluous. It’s not wrong, but…
Anyway, I’m sure I make far more grammar mistakes than you do. I never actually learned proper grammar, but had to pick it up through various readings. For some reason, it wasn’t taught in middle school (maybe that’s because half of the day was devoted to Hebrew/Torah), nor in high school. This might account for why most college students can’t write a coherent essay, which I found out when I was a TA to my sociology professor in my senior year.
Hey, did you ever watch The Lobster? I just watched The Favourite today (it was great), so I was reminded of your promise to do so.
I’ll watch it tonight. They’ve been running several programs at the local art-house, so I’ve spent a lot of time watching movies there.
Will let you know on the morrow.
“The agenda of one group sometimes conflicts with that of others.”
Also, if the agenda of condemning antisemitism conflicts with the agendas of some others in the Democratic Party, that’s a problem for the Democratic Party, not a feature.
It’s a problem for Jews worldwide, and for America.
I think it’s appropriate to charge “dual loyalty” against individuals where there’s evidence to support it. (Hell, I’ve accused Donald Trump of having something less than undivided loyalty to the United States.)
But “dual loyalty” applied to a group is noxious. It was used against patriotic German-American US citizens during WWI, and against patriotic Japanese-American citizens (“Nisei”) during WWII — and as a slur against Jews, pretty much always and everywhere.
The world would be a better place were we quit of this nonsense for good.
Yes. Dual-loyalty is a definite and dangerous slur.
What a travesty. Literally.
I hate to say it, but that Ben Shapiro editorial was the perfect response to what I’ve seen so many people saying on the left (even in comment threads on this very site) and in the Democratic Party. It lays it all out perfectly: the whataboutism; the excuse-making; the going along to get along. Ben Shapiro is, for a change, right on the money.
It is a sign of the times that both of us have to give disclaimers when we agree with Ben Shapiro–because he is a Republican conservative. Shouldn’t we be able to agree with him at the times he’s right without having to always give these disclaimers like “I hate to say this” and the like. (I do it too, as I did above.) It’s a sign of the times that even bipartisan agreement has to come with an apology.
I don’t think it particularly reflects “the times” as much as the good old fashioned desire not to be associated with people you generally disagree with. I think we all do it and always have… at least those of us who are open-minded enough to agree with something from “the other side” from time to time.
I agree completely. I often feel the need to say things like this, not because I think I should, but because I worry that my point will otherwise be dismissed as coming from someone who always agrees with “those people.” I have to prove that I’m not completely ideologically impure before saying I agree with someone like Shapiro.
I think ideological impurity should be a badge of honour. I’m interested in truth not ideology.
You and I always seem to be on the same page, Donna. I worry there’s nowhere for people like us to go these days, politically. Caring about truth over politics and objectivity over tribalism is no longer an acceptable position in either camp 🙁
That’s “Diana,” dude.
Her parents named her for the Paul Anka tune, not the Dion tune. 🙂
Brain fart. Of course I know it’s Diana. She’s one of my favorite commenters 🙂
Scanning for sarcasm….it’s clean!
Ha ha – I always hated that Paul Anka song because my parents made a big deal out of it & expected me, a small child, to be overjoyed somehow. I think this was the beginning of me refusing to clap along at concerts.
Yeah, mine, too. But I figured, what the hell, any excuse to link to some early teen-idol pop rock’n’roll.
Your sarcasm scanner is properly calibrated 🙂
Had just read the resolution: a shameful perversion of the original intent. By mentioning every group in history to express anti-semitism — with the glaring exception of Islam, by devoting more words to ‘islamophobia’ than to anti-semitism, and by avoiding any mention of Omar, this resolution may have well been written by CAIR or Omar herself.
Disgusting and cowardly.
They watered down the resolution because the Democrats felt like they couldn’t directly chastize Omar after she was likened to 9/11 terrorists in ads in West Virginia.
Well, when you fundraise for goons who are on record advocating the annihilation of the entire Israeli people, that’s not too much of a stretch.
I agree with you in principle, and wish to hell the resolution had been passed as a straight-up anti-antisemitism measure, but don’t view the situations as identical. Black Lives Matter is a movement, and the “All Lives” reaction to it was meant as an FU to blacks.
This, OTOH, was a one-shot resolution and retained a provision expressly denouncing antisemitism. (To the extent it was meant as an FU to anyone, it was to Republicans who failed to call out Trump after Charlottesville rather than Jews.) It’s not unusual for congressional resolutions to have amendments and riders and whatnot tacked onto them — it’s how our legislative sausage gets ground.
I was disappointed, though not surprised, to see two dozen red-assed Republicans voted against the resolution in its final, anodyne form. And I gave a hard, bitter laugh when I heard that white-supremacist Iowa representative Steve King voted “present.”
I don’t find anything wrong with “All Lives Matter”. To me, it means that blacks should not be given privileges, which is exactly what the BLM movement wants.
That is simply not true.
Yeah, black folk been getting special treatment in America going on four centuries now — most of it of the shit-end-of-the-stick variety. The BLM began to protest a rash of high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police, some of ’em executed for no crime other than being black. The “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” and “White Lives Matter” are movements for which there’s never been any screaming need.
The killing of Michael Brown that precipitated the BLM movement turned out to have been initially reported in a very distorted way. A protest against this killing is, to me, a protest against police using force (lethal or otherwise) against suspects when, and only when, the suspects are black. This is asking for the highest privilege that could exist in a state, a privilege that should not be given.
In 2016, BLM organized rallies that looked like shows of force and intimidation. I suspect that this contributed to the election of Trump.
Which ones were ‘executed’ for no crime other than being black?
Such a strong statement would indicate some strong evidence.
Say examples where there is no similar case involving a non black person.
Two to three times as many Whites are killed by cops every year than Blacks. Yeah, no need for “All Lives Manner”
Full Disclosure: In 1998, a teen I knew was shot dead by the police in Bellaire, Texas. He was White.
The cops were no billed by a Grand Jury in Harris County, Texas. The City of Houston, on the other hand, considered it a homicide.
I also knew his family. I stood with them when Andy Kahan, Houston mayor Bob Lanier’s Crime Victim’s Advocate, planted a tree in his honor in the park across the street from where I lived at the time.
But none of that matters, does it ???
A basic class in sampling might help.
Anecdotes are not data. And if you don’t take population sizes into account comparing percentages is meaningless.
+1
It still raises the question: if 2-3 times as many (unarmed) whites are killed by police as blacks, why do those killings not get any media coverage? There’s so little media coverage that comedians can actually make jokes like ‘you’d think cops would kill a white kid every once in a while just so they can pretend to not be racist’, and members of the public can make all kinds of statements like “If they ever did this to a white kid…”
Why are police killings of blacks “high-profile” as Ken said in the first place, while the far more numerous police killings of whites are no-profile? Perhaps their lives aren’t considered to matter?
I generally agree that killings by police – including of blacks – are tragedies preventable through better training and sometimes outright murders. But I think it’s clear that there’s a narrative being pushed here: by the media and by the political left both. Just look at what gets coverage and what doesn’t…
+1
Well, the data is that 26% of police shootings involve a black suspect, and 24% of violent crime is committed by someone from that community. The data says that the proportion of police shootings does not seem to be based on race.
You do mean sampling the crime rates, don’t you?
Doesn’t matter what you are sampling. If there are 50 white fish caught by fish-catchers and 50 black fish, the fishers are still showing substantial bias in fishing if the 90% of the fish population is white.
+1
I seldom disagree with you strongly, Ken, but your take on BLM is a case in point. Black Lives Matter is a movement all right; it’s a movement to perpetuate the illusion, dear to the left, that black lives don’t matter to a majority of the American public, which is bushwa.
The Dems, traditionally being the party of the disenfranchised and minorities, have a huge stake in maintaining that racism is not only the most serious issue of our day but that it is as big if not a bigger issue than it was in, say, the ‘50s and ’60’s. Anyone old enough to remember those times knows that this too is bushwa. (The most serious issues of our day are, IMO, the educational system and, after that, compaign financing.)
Yes, racism exists, and blacks themselves might be excused from perpetuating the racism-is-worse-than-ever myth on the grounds that identifying as victims is often their only source of leverage. But the Dems need to jettison this plank of their propaganda if they hope to salvage any vestige of credibility. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening any time soon, not even if Trump gets re-elected, which is one of the saddest outcomes of folly on the left that I can imagine.
The republicans voted not in protest of the censure becoming “a sham”.
Steve King, in particular, had been censured and stripped of his committee duties for making offensive remarks.
This whole situation is bizarre. A handful of new congresspeople, with little apparent knowledge of civics or how government works are sort of controlling the House of Representatives and the Democratic party.
I cannot see an outcome that is good for the nation as a whole.
Across western democracies the left get more radically left and the right more radically right while the middle has nowhere to go.
😀 We at the center need to become extreme centrists.
And from what I’ve read, that’s most of us – stuck in the middle while the minorities of the radical edges get the attention and resources to promote something most of us don’t buy into.
It’s hard to get people excited about the center. There’s usually nothing to be found in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and roadkill. 🙂
The first rule of politics is that the action always moves away from the middle (though it sure would be a relief to have a boring, good-government, centrist technocrat in the White House right about now).
That reminds me of this episode of Futurama.
“If I don’t survive, tell my wife ‘hello'”.
My gut tells me maybe.
Reminds me of my favourite Python quote — ‘There’s nothing an agnostic can’t do if he really doesn’t know whether he believes in it or not.’
Here is an interesting little fact from this resolution found by a blogger http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2019/03/bigotry-resolution-fudges-anti-muslim.html
“Whereas in 2017 the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a 37 percent increase in hate crimes against Jews or Jewish institutions and found that attacks against Jews or Jewish institutions made up 58.1 percent of all religious-based hate crimes;”
and
“Whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that hate crimes against Muslims or Muslim institutions in the United States increased by over 99 percent between 2014 and 2016;”
Why are FBI stats for antisemitism only quoted for 2017, comparing to 2016, while the stats for anti-Muslim hate crimes are only quoted for 2016 compared to 2014?
Because anti-Muslim hate crimes actually went down in 2017, while antisemitic hate crimes soared! So the resolution authors cherry picked statistics.
In 2014, there were 609 anti-Jewish incidents and 154 anti-Muslim incidents.
In 2016, there were 684 anti-Jewish incidents and 307 anti-Muslim incidents.
In 2017, there were 938 anti-Jewish incidents and 273 anti-Muslim incidents.
But a 77% increase in anti-Muslim incidents from 2014 to 2017, bad as it is, doesn’t sound nearly as bad as the 99% increase from 2014 to 2016. In raw numbers, the increase in antisemitic incidents in 2017 dwarfs the increase in every other kind of bias incident.
Well done. Thank you for this. It really demonstrates just how much this resolution went from a rebuke toward people like Omar to a resolution practically crafted by them.
Looking at those numbers, I would say it’s simply because the authors chose the worst comparison for each case. If they’d confined themselves to 2014-2016 then antisemitism would ‘only’ have gone up by 12%.
cr
I actually wrote the Dems over this. FWIW, I’m not a member of either party, but I vote for the Dem just because the GOP is too tied to conservative religion, and the party seems too willing to pooh-pooh the bigotry of the bigots among them.
But now when we’ve got Trump and Steve King on the one side versus Omar and Tlaib on the other, I’m definitely reassessing my views of the Dems as relatively free of bigotry.
What does it mean to “write the Dems”?
Send an email to them, for example.
But who is “them”? I’m a Democrat. You didn’t send me an email! 😉
I’m getting grade 2 flashbacks from math when I’d say that the answer was “38” or some number and the teacher would reply “38 what, eggs?”.
Ahaha, maybe it went to your spam?
More likely your message to bounced.
I have the same trouble when I send email to the French.
The left doesn’t understand the anti-semitism because the remarks are so common in their circles that they have become banal. Israel/Whites/Men/Heterosexuals/Christians are evil. The sun rises in the east. Arabs/Blacks/Women/Gays/Trans/Muslims are wonderful. Sugar is sweet. Republican are evil. All of these are obvious, common truths in the Ctl-Left.
BTW, I think this also applies to many conservatives who do not recognize the bigotry in their circle.
I hear you. *But* part of the reason I am not thrilled about the direction *some* of the Dems/US left seem to be taking is that they’ll privilege the sensitivities of nonwhite/non-Western people over the rights LGBT, women, and Jews. The WM’s embrace of Farrakhan more or less confirms my suspicions.
I saw a Politico article claiming that Omar gave Trump a huge gift (in part, by distracting from his latest string of embarrassments). As a Democrat, this has been deeply disheartening.
The core of my party recoiled at Omar’s remarked but now has caved to the regressives and adopted the All Lives Matter resolution.
Let’s point out the evil of Aipac, but ignore CAIR.
Let’s cite the (false) statistic that “anti-Muslim hate crimes are 99% higher” but ignore the fact that anti-Jewish hate crimes are invariably higher (in the US and Canada).
Let’s call Pelosi a “typical white” feminist, ignoring the fact that this is overtly racist.
Let’s condemn all forms of hate, but hang out with Louis Farrakhan who unapologetically espouses hatred against Jews.
Let’s stand with Ilhan, a BDS supporter who peddles in tropes about American Jews who secretly subvert our government to help a foreign one.
If this is what “progressive” looks like, then I’m not sure I want to progress any more.
This whole episode makes me sad. If we thought that the Dems were ALL going to represent the high road, then that balloon has been busted. Perhaps more importantly, it means that the Authoritarian Left has made the jump from college campuses to our politics. Trump and the GOP are going to jump all over this. Let’s cross our fingers and hope it doesn’t escalate.
I was going to suggest that it will all blow over and not affect the Dems ability to replace Trump in 2020. After writing this, I am less sure.
Perhaps expecting ALL Dems to do anything is expecting too much? You have to remember Will Rogers:
“Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they’d be Republicans.”
I don’t mind that the Dems don’t agree if the subject is policy. It shows that they are motivated to govern well and actually solve problems. The GOP used to do this too but now they mostly care about ideology and allegiance. What policy they still defend is out of habit more than reason.
That’s why ol’ Will and I aren’t members of any organized political party; we’re Democrats.
This infighting within the Democratic party is just starting. The SJW wing thinks that they’re the reason the Dems won the House.
Yes, I agree. And the SJWs rightly think they’ve managed to elect some of their own to Congress. Normal Dems better get a handle on this before it too far out of hand. In 2015 the Trumpers pretended that the SJWs were the face of the Democratic Party. Now these Dems are fulfilling that prophecy.
I’m wondering what Omar’s district think of her now. It sounds like she hid her SJW leanings somewhat in order to get elected. Now that she’s more or less shown her true colors, does she have the support of the majority back home?
In reality, the SJWs are one of the reasons that Trump is in the White House.
Jonathan Haidt says the SJWs arrived on campus suddenly in 2013. I do not think it is coincidence that Trump won 3 years later.
I have read an alleged Trump’s quote praising Ocasio-Cortez for her good work since joining his re-election committee. I suppose the text was apocryphal; its English was far better than Trump’s. But its essence, unfortunately, ringed true.
Make no mistake: the ‘SJW wing’ are revolutionaries. They engage in provocation & agitprop and are uninterested in incremental changes to the Overton Window. Persuasion is an alien concept to them: they believe in the inevitability of their cause and the infallibility of themselves. They seek nothing less than a radical, abrupt upheaval.
They are also completely delusional, which makes them especially dangerous.
In regard to the superstitions about AIPAC and the legendary “Israel lobby”, here is a Tablet article documenting the exact expenditures of different lobbying groups in Washington, and the expenditures on political campaigns. Needless to say, it demonstrates that the fabled “Jewish lobby” injects many fewer Benjamins or notes of any denomination into American politics than such sinister forces as the AARP, Indian casinos, AT&T, Fed Ex, Facebook, the CPAs’ organization, the Toyota company, etc. etc. etc. etc. .
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/281477/how-influential-is-aipac
Sure, but I don’t think direct political contributions provide an accurate measure of AIPAC’s influence. It has a very prominent voice, and many private donors follow its lead.
It’s rightfully regarded, for good or for ill, as one of the most powerful lobbies in our nation’s capitol.
Let’s see whether its power can prevent the Democratic party from going full-Labour on antisemitism. My prediction: no.
“capital” — what a yutz I am.
Their lobbyists probably spend much time roaming the halls of the capitol.
Another of the great many double standards that Jews are subjected to is the that criticism of Israel by Jews is used as a standard for everyone else. As an Australian, I’ve criticised the Australian Government more strongly than any other over the years, but it doesn’t mean that Australia is the worst human rights abuser. But Jews and Israelis who hold Israel to a higher standard find that standard being adopted by supporters of Iran and other theocrats.
I wasn’t a big fan of Bernie Sanders in 2016, but I admire him for being the only current candidate with the courage to support Omar’s comments. He called out House Democrats for “stifling” debate about Israel while also warning against equating “anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel.”
More at Politico
Excuse me, but Omar wasn’t criticizing the Netanyahu government; she was criticizing lobbying by a Jewish group and the fact that these groups seem to buy American loyalty to Israel. And don’t forget her tweet that Israel is hypnotizing the world to overlook its evil doings.
The House Democrats weren’t stifling debate about Israel, they were stifling Omar’s anti-Semitic comments. Where did she (or they) say anything about Netanyahu’s government?
Please look at her tweets again and then get back to me.
Sanders was responding to Omar’s comment when she said that pro-Israel lawmakers are under “a political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” which he said he does not consider it to be anti-semitic. He said it was was “fair criticism” of the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I would agree.
As I mentioned on an earlier thread, if you add all three comments together, she has painted a caricature of a “political force” that hypnotizes and buys off American support for Israel. That’s wildly anti-semitic
Anything taken far enough out of context can be justified. Tribal politics at its best.
She used the word “hypnotize” in reference to Israel, not in reference to Jews. But who doesn’t immediately read that and think of the old tropes about Jewish mind control and back-door dealings. It’s sick, it’s obvious and it’s unequivocally anti-Semitic. Bernie is just pandering to his base.
More charitably, I think Bernie is trying to hold things together and keep Dems focused on winning in 2020. It does Bernie no good to wade into this controversy.
I do remember that it was a Big Deal when Bernie decided not to attend the AIPAC conference during his primary run. I remember reading a number of articles about how now he’s doomed because you can’t cross AIPAC and survive as a politician. True or not, it does seem to be the case that many people believe AIPAC has great influence on politics and Bernie has some standing to say that there’s legitimate discussion to be had over AIPAC’s role in our political system.
That said, I’m ignorant about the scope of his support for Omar’s comments. I still believe he’s a good guy and not one to follow the anti-semitic crowd.
So Sanders couldn’t actually believe what he says, he’s only saying it for some base motive. Pandering and sick, really.
Hating the acts that someone commits is not the same as hating that someone. Why is this concept so difficult to grasp?
I disagree. When I hate people, it is invariably because of their acts; and when someone does hate-worthy acts, I start to hate him, except when he is too incapacitated to realize what he is doing.
The SJWs have made being pro free speech and opposing anti-semitism become right wing issues. That took talent.
I think Ilhan Omar is the small picture that reflects a bigger picture, and the bigger picture is the US’s attitudes toward Israel and AIPAC (Andrew Sullivan wrote part of his weekly piece about this today, btw.) Unfortunately, I think people increasingly see Israel as a liability, even a dangerous liability, for the US. And as the US’s star has risen ever higher on the “last world superpower / global police / etc.” scale (as opposed to the dynamic when Israel was first formed, which was quite different, as the US’s status was not what it is now,) national views have shifted regarding what political alliances should look like. You could read Sullivan’s piece as saying “After all Obama did for Israel, they made him look like an absolute schmuck. Seriously?!”. Or, alternately, you could frame it as the US going “We’re too big for that kind of criticism now, and if you want us to be your friend, you had darn well better suck up a little.” It depends on how you look at it – but again, I think that is the basic dynamic of the intuition shift. Also consider that:
– To someone born in 2000, the Holocaust happened over half a century before they were born, while the bombing, war, and dronings within Middle Eastern countries would have been a defining event of their childhood. Concentration camps would be something that not their grandparents but their great grandparents would have viewed on the news first hand, while scandals like Abu Ghraib and the rise of ISIS in the ashes of a broken Iraq would have unfolded in front of them in real time.
– The Left and Right increasingly define themselves by secularity vs. religiosity, and Israel is not only a religion-based state itself, but is also supported ferociously by the Evangelical Right, who the secular Left generally abhors, at least politically.
– While Israel was once seen as a sort of starting island of democracy in the ME, I think after the Iraq Wars, the idea that democracy can be exported in such a manner is over and done with in many people’s minds. So now instead of a starting point it’s viewed more as a perpetual island situated in hostile territory.
This is meant as a dispassionate analysis, not any kind of judgement on the topic. I think that, sad as it is, people’s moral intuitions often change faster than they want to admit based on expediency. I don’t think it has much to do with anti-Semitism or gut-wrenching concern for the Palestinians (who have been in the same situation for decades now, it isn’t as if they suddenly appeared out of nowhere.) I think it mostly concerns self-interest, albeit self-interested sometimes dressed up as other things.
It seemed to me that Obama seemed to rightly push back on Netanyahu’s excesses and now Trump and pals are using that to portray him as anti-Israel. While Netanyahu is not a strongman like Trump’s other buddies, he is close enough for Trump to go all-in. Nothing is going to get solved as long as Netanyahu or Trump are still in power.
I feel like everything in this country is polarized right now – if one side is for something, the other side is against it. I think the perception of Israel as being a far Right issue is hurting their public perception a fair bit on the Left. That Netanyahu gets along so much better with Trump than Obama, who is absolutely beloved on the Left, only adds to this.
It is often the right leaning governments who favour Israel openly (though in practice, I’m not sure that it’s much different with how the parties feel about/interact with Israel). Israel was a big fan of Canada’s Conservative PM, Stephen Harper because Harper was openly supportive. I’m not sure what they think of Trudeau but I often see open glee when a Conservative gets in in Canada because it appears “good for Israel”.
When I was in college back in the very early 2000’s, students there were already lobbying the Board of Trustees to divest from all Israeli companies/stocks, tearing down Israeli flags, holding BDS protests and doing anti-Israel “theater activism) (e.g. stopping students at the cafeteria door so they could “see what it’s like to be a Palestinian), etc. Four of my professors (and I was only at this college for two semesters) told Israeli and Jewish conspiracy theories in class as if they were fact. This is not a new phenomenon on the Left.
“I think Ilhan Omar is the small picture that reflects a bigger picture, and the bigger picture is the US’s attitudes toward Israel and AIPAC”
No, the bigger picture is tons of people like Omar being pushed by Western governments down the throats of their voters, an abuse of power with long-reaching consequences
“Israel is not only a religion-based state itself, but is also…” Not really. The proportion of Israeli citizens with a secular outlook is undoubtedly higher than that among US citizens. Moreover, the development of Israel from 1948 into the 70s was dominated by the resolutely secular Labor Zionist movement, represented by the Mapai Party. It was also social-democratic, as illustrated by the Histadrut labor federation.
True that Israeli governments have indulged its pious orthodox minority excessively, just as American and in some ways British society indulge religiosity of different sorts. But Israel is no more a “religion-based” state for this reason than the UK is.
There are indeed overtly religion-based states on the planet, and all of them are Islamic. Merely taking note of this risks the charge of “Islamophobia” from the pop-Left—the same quarter from which emanate calls for the destruction of only one state, namely Israel.
A technical question from a non-American: Has the Democratic party any means to prevent Omar’s re-election?
She could be “primaried” (challenged by an opponent supported by the party brass), but other than that, no.
She could be denied financial support for reelection from the Democratic National Congressional Committee and denied endorsements from her fellow Democrats.
Other than that (or by running a primary opponent against her, as darwinwins points out), we Yanks like to leave it to voters to pick their own poison.