Well, I’ll be. The group of interns at the left-wing The Nation have objected to the magazine’s recent endorsement of Kamala Harris and published their gripes. Now why would that happen? We all know that many editors and reporters at the Washington Post objected to the paper’s failure to endorse Kamala Harris, but this kind of reversal is unexpected. Well, sort of—unless you know how “progressive” young Leftists are beginning to change journalism.
So why the beefing? It’s Israel, Jake!
Here, from the “activism” section of the magazine (!), is the long gripe by The Nation‘s interns (click to read for free):
An excerpt giving the tenor of their rage:
We, The Nation’s current interns, find this endorsement unearned and disappointing. We have a different interpretation of the magazine’s abolitionist legacy, one that says a publication committed to justice must refrain from endorsing a person signing off on genocide. We do not support Donald Trump, but to champion Harris at this moment is to ignore the atrocities that are being carried out with weapons supplied by the Biden-Harris administration.
The Nation’s endorsement notes that on foreign policy the “positive case [for Harris] is harder to make,” adding that “she has failed so far to offer anything more substantive to the millions of Americans…desperate for an end to America’s unconditional support for Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.” Yet it goes on to endorse her anyway—implying that domestic concerns are somehow more important. We disagree. On the grounds of Gaza alone, Harris should not have received The Nation’s endorsement.
In the 12 weeks since she effectively became the Democratic nominee, Harris has failed to differentiate her policies from Joe Biden’s blank-check support for genocide. Instead, she repeats the same bland pronouncements about the need for a ceasefire and uses the same passive-voice support for the idea of Palestinian “freedom and self-determination.” Again and again, she has been asked by Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim voters, along with a broad coalition of Democrats of conscience, to offer an alternative, and again and again she has refused. She would not even allow a pre-vetted Palestinian supporter of hers to speak at theDemocratic National Convention.
We have watched this abdication of moral responsibility by the Democratic nominee with a growing sense of dismay. As young journalists, we think of our colleagues in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 175 journalists in Gaza since last October—and right now, with US support and the Western media’s indifference, Israel is effectively issuing hit lists of reporters in Gaza. During the last year, The Nation has published dispatches from Palestinian journalists, from 14-year-old Lujayn to the journalist Mohammed Mhawish, both of whom have survived air strikes, most likely from US-made weapons. We cannot advocate for a person who is complicit in the murders of fellow journalists and the bombing of colleagues whose pieces we have fact-checked.
Even when they try to leaven Harris’s position as a perpetrator of genocide with her “good” domestic policies, they can’t resist bringing up Gaza again and again:
Harris, for instance, promises to provide tax credits to families with newborns and to sign a law to restore the right to abortion nationwide. Yet her commitment to the welfare of children doesn’t extend to the more than 17,000 kids killed in Gaza, hundreds of whom died from inadequate postnatal care like incubators. She will fight for reproductive care in the United States, but in Gaza, tens of thousands of mothers have or will give birth without access to doctors, pain relief, hospitals, or food and water.
Harris also pledges to strengthen our healthcare system. But in Gaza, as many as 1,000 healthcare workers have been killed, 30 of 36 hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, and fewer than half are even partially functional. People routinely die from the blockade of basic sanitary equipment, ordinary medicines, and vaccines.
Harris’s plans to relieve the housing crisis in the United States ring hollow next to her support for Israel’s destruction of homes in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. With the Biden-Harris administration’s full knowledge and aid, 90 percent of Gazans have been forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands of homes have been damaged and destroyed. Nor has the administration done anything to stop the demolitions of houses and illegal expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
So who do the interns think the magazine should endorse for President? Nobody, of course. It’s curious that the Washinton Post would get slammed for not endorsing anybody, but the interns haven’t been slammed (or so I’ve seen) for the same action. Of course accusing Israel of genocide is perfectly okay with the “progressive” Left. One more bit from this execrable whine:
There will be people wondering whom we would endorse, if not Harris. Our answer is that we choose not to endorse any party’s candidate for president. We know that a second Trump presidency would be a disaster, but we believe that we cannot vote our way out of this genocide. And while some of us will be voting for president in November—and some of us will not—we all reject the idea that democracy will be safe under a Harris administration.
This is, to my mind, ridiculous, and exemplifies the Jew-hatred that is permeating young people and gradually working its way up into journalism, government, and corporations. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that, in fact, the genocide is on the side of Hamas, which put into words (and acts repeatedly on) its desire to eliminate Israel. It is Hamas that deliberately tries to kill Jewish civilians, while Israel does its best to avoid killing civilians (its ratio of civilians killed to terrorist fighters killed is one of the lowest of modern times). Does Hamas warn Israeli civilians to get out of the way when it fires a rocket? No, it wants to kill civilians. It targets civilians, both with rockets and, of course, personally, as the October 7 massacre and subsequent acts of terrorism attest.
And, of course, we all know that part of Hamas’s strategy is to ensure that Gazan civilians get killed as a way of winning the world’s sympathy. They do this by embedding their fighters and rocket launchers among civilians and even in hospitals and humanitarian zones. That guarantees not only that civilians will die as “collateral damage” (I hate that phrase, since all non-combatant human life should be preserved), but also that journalists, who have to be close to the action, will die as well. As the saying goes—and you know it’s true—”If Hamas put down its weapons, the war would be over. If Israel put down its weapons, all the Jews would be killed and Israel would disappear.” The reason Israel sustains fewer casualties is that it has more weapons than do the Palestinians as well as defense systems against rockets fired by Islamist terrorists.
I regard it as a touchstone of ignorance (willful ignorance, not simply “failure to know”) when someone accuses Israel of genocide when it’s palpably clear that Israel is not engaged in a program of eliminating all Palestinians, whose population has grown rapidly in the last decade. And of course where are the accusations of genocide against Hamas? I haven’t heard any lately, except, perhaps, by Israelis, but even then I can’t think of any.
I can’t print here what I think of these ignorant interns since this is a family-friendly site. Just let me say that I hope to Ceiling Cat that they don’t take over journalism and politics. Harris is already weakening American support of Israel by repeatedly calling for a cease-fire, which if effected now, would simply allow Hamas to regroup and continue perpetrating terrorism. If I were a paper and had to endorse a candidate (of course I don’t think papers should be endorsing candidates), it would of course be Harris. But to withhold that approbation because of a supposed “genocide” is sheer stupidity.
The abiding sin of the interns is their failure to blame Hamas rather than Israel for the deaths of Gazan civilians. If beginning in 2005, a subset of Palestinians was not intent on killing Jews and getting rid of Israel, Gaza would now be a Mediterranean paradise, rich and full of big-spending tourists and beach resorts.
I canceled my subscription to The Nation several decades ago when their clear biases against Israel (about which I knew or cared very little) became apparent. This sort of thing has been going on for a LONG time in that publication.
So ALL interns at The Nation feel this way? Then I blame the Human Resources Department for failing to find intelligent personnel.
Dunno; the signature looks as if it’s a statement of all the interns, but I wonder if any dissented. If so, they should have noted that.
I saw this. Their argument is false. Maybe this kind of ignorance among the interns can be cured by time and experience in the world, but I doubt it. I was a subscriber some thirty years ago (a gift subscription, as I hadn’t even heard of the magazine before then), but my respect for The Nation evaporated long ago.
To me, the irony of this is that the Harris campaign believes that they need these young Nazis to vote for her if they are to beat Trump. That is why she equivocates so much in her voiced opinions regarding the war; it’s never “we support Israel in her defense of her people and sovereignty, full stop”. Rather, it’s that she supports Israel’s right to defend itself (would any country NOT have this right?), but also that she supports a ceasefire and a two-state solution.
I’d love for her to come out an clearly say that she supports Israel and that those who advocate for the destruction of Israel have no place in the party, but she can’t bring herself to say that.
On the other side, Trump and his supporters get called Nazis, even though he attended a memorial service on Oct 7 in observance of the massacre a year ago and has strongly supported Israel consistently. Israel flags were displayed at many of his events, including the Republican national convention and at the recent rally at MSG. Now that is some real media spin!
If I were a single-issue voter focused on this issue, it is clear who my choice would be.
It would not be the party that is afraid of alienating antisemites.
You put words to *the* irony of this election. Strange, indeed.
I hope for the sake of our nation these folk are a small minority of young liberal voters. The one-sided viewpoint, the self-righteousness both angers me and worries me for the future. My hope is that the experience that comes with age will open their eyes- not just to this issue- but to the complexities of most issues.
Emily, these young people are the opposite of liberal. I think “Nazi” is a more accurate descriptor.
I’d go with “Stalinist”. Read Vasilii Grossman’s long novel “Life and Fate” for many emotionally searing similarities between those two regimes. (VG was a journalist, who among other things was embedded with the Red Army during the conquest of Berlin).
Thanks Barbara.
Thanks for mentioning this novel. I just added it to my “for later” list at our library. It sounds intense. I’m particularly drawn to historical fiction from that time and place.
The memoirs Eugenia Ginzburg come highly recommended. See “Journey into the Whirlwind” by her.
Many, many years ago, the USSR invaded a small country in east-central Europe called Hungary, violated a cease-fire by arresting the Hungarian negotiators, and then seized Budapest with overwhelming force and imposed a puppet government. This entire episode was almost entirely ignored in The Nation, and for years afterward, the magazine paid remarkably little attention to anything that happened in east-central Europe. In short, The Nation has been a near-perfect player of the pop-Left tunes of the day for many, many years. No surprise if its interns, humming this year’s jingle, probably want The Nation to endorse Jill Stein, or even affiliate directly with RT.
Very well said, Professor Coyne. I continue to be dumbfounded by the absurd monolithic mindset adopted by these ignorant but destructive children–a description they deserve regardless of their biological age. Only one thing seems to matter to them, but they won’t be bothered to actually understand the conflict.
Also, even if they disagree with Harris’s Gaza policies, they will let that trump (a word I use advisedly), and cause them to ignore, all other concerns? Since Trump won’t help them on Gaza and he will damage many other progressive priorities, exactly what do they think they are accomplishing? Ah yes, retaining their self-proclaimed moral purity.
As with the lunatics on the right, there’s no talking with these people. They do not know, much less understand, understand history and they cannot see the cognitive disconnect, and yes, moral bankruptcy, in their argument.
The people on the “right” are not all lunatics. I started on the left but the left has now gone insane on a variety of issues and I’ve abandoned it.
In Canada the Conservative Party is rather like the US Democrat Party of a generation ago. Not lunatics at all.
As far as who these young people support, it’s probably Jill Stein (Green Party). Even though she’s Jewish she’s completely on board with the “genocide” accusation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein
Sorry, I wasn’t saying that all conservatives are lunatics. I was mostly referring to the MAGA crowd, and I understand that they do not represent all conservative constituencies. Of course there are many sane, thoughtful conservatives (Bret Stephens springs to mind), and even if I don’t always agree with them, I can respect their arguments.
Similarly, there are many sane, thoughtful liberals. Sadly, the left has its own version of MAGA, as represented by the “progressive” wing. These are the folks who have lost the plot, or gone “insane” as you put it. I have and continue to be as vocal as I can in what sometimes feels like a futile attempt to ensure that the distinction between traditional liberals and the progressive (or woke) crowd is recognized. Sane conservatives have also had this problem in distancing themselves from the MAGA madness. It’s a fraught time for those of us, whether left or right, who want civility and reason in civic discourse.
As for Jill Stein, if anyone thinks that she is the answer, or that voting for her will actually register a meaningful protest, then they’re just wasting their time. Or worse.
Also, just a nit, but the proper name of the party in the US is the Democratic Party. Right wingers began calling it the “Democrat Party” sometime back as, I guess, a juvenile attempt at belittlement. Either that or a willful failure to understand the difference between formal names, adjectives and nouns.
However, the RWNJs do understand the grammatical use of pronouns….
I’m aware of that “Democrat” business and I try, as a foreigner, to be aware of its shibbolethic power and avoid being unintentionally antagonistic. But if Republicans belong to the Republican Party, why can’t Democrats belong to the “Democrat” Party?? Should Republicans be called “Republics”? Liberals belong to the Liberal Party. Conservatives belong to the Conservative Party, Fascists belong to the Fascist Party and Communists belong to the Communist Party (not the Communistic Party — now that would be a slur.) Yet our New Democrats belong to the New Democratic Party. What is it with Democrats?
I know, I know, it just is.
The issue turns on the actual name of the party. In the US it has been the “Democratic Party” since circa 1828. For better or worse, that is the formal, proper name of the party. Calling it the “Democrat Party” is simply incorrect.
However, a member of the party cannot be a “Democratic”, which is an adjective, not a noun. So a reference to the person would have to change to the noun “Democrat”. It’s not complex. For comparison purposes, the word “republican” can be both an adjective and a noun. As can “conservative”, etc.
Why wasn’t the party originally named the “Democrat Party”? No idea, but I assume it was because whoever chose the name preferred the sound of the adjective.
“Never attribute to malice, insanity, or feeble-mindedness that which can be adequately explained by strongly-held priors.”
“Bayes’ razor.”
If you think Jill’s nuts, check out her VP. Not only is he a California academic (of course), he made a pro-Hamas rap album. These people are beyond parody.
https://www.jta.org/2024/10/28/politics/report-green-party-candidate-jill-steins-running-mate-celebrated-the-oct-7-attack-on-israel
Wow! I also see at that article that she’s so anti-Israel that she’s attracted an endorsement from ex-KKK leader David Duke.
Horrible, telling of course, but not a problem for the magazine – which is so insufferably leftist I wonder who is doing the translations to English when the text arrives from Pyongyang.
But… not a problem because interns are wonderfully disposable.
Interns who defame their employer aren’t the type of interns an org needs anyway.
Fire them and deny them their precious references. “We have no record of ____ who says they worked here in the dates you specify.”
Don’t empower idiots or narcissists who will bite the charitable hand that feeds them.
Their stupidity on Israel/Pal is one thing, their disloyalty and narcissism is another.
D.A.
NYC
I suspect The Nation’s interns would be relieved to learn that there is no genocide taking place in Gaza but of course, my suspicion is based on the false premise that they are capable of learning at all. As for me in my non-swing state, I wrote in Ritchie Torres for President.
Why did The Nation choose to publish the intern’s dissent?
Is there maybe a sizable chunk of staff who, while agreeing with the Harris endorsement, also agree with destruction of the state of Israel?
It is interesting that the Nation did endorse Kamala Harris, as the magazine has in the past been pro/Russian anti/Ukrainian. Its pro-Putin slant goes back to the role of Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel as editors/publishers.
The genocide slander against Israel is an obvious and blatant case of psychological projection.
If you are any kind of Social Justice acolyte in the West—from a professor of Victim Studies to a student to an activist etc—it is socially impossible to support or even defend Israel. Israel is their Great Satan whose existence is an intolerable evil and supporting Israel in these circles immediately transforms you from ally to enemy. (Remember that Judith Butler, the great priestess of Left transgression, gave her edict here: ”Hamas and Hezbollah are social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.”)
So what do you do if you wake up one day to find out Israelis were the victim of a brutal massacre filled with mass rapes and torture? And that your allies Hamas not only committed this massacre proudly but proclaim their desire to do so again? And that if you take a peek at their founding charter it calls for the murder of all Jews and the total erasure of the “Zionist entity”?
As you risk losing your social and professional life by admitting the obvious truth, the only possible response to save face is to try to reverse the moral stigma and claim that it’s Israel all along that is committing the genocide. (Many of them claimed this even before Israel responded to 10/7!) I think this also explains the frenzy of tearing down all those missing hostage “Bring Them Home” fliers. People committed to the “Israel is evil and Palestinians are helpless victims” narratives cannot allow Israel to have even one speck of moral authority, they have to be painted entirely as oppressors who deserve to be hated and attacked—it’s the only way for their enemies to avoid reality and pretend they’re not cheerleaders for mass murder.
But as the Social Justice cult seems to do all the thinking now for America’s liberal classes, especially on upscale campuses, they have been enormously successful at both propagating their dishonest narrative but also at enforcing it as a mandatory moral belief for anyone in their circles. I’m afraid that just like other uprisings of revolutionary hatred and bloodlust, the truth will only be obvious sometime far in the future, but Leftists will never ever admit their complicity, just as they never admitted their support for Stalin and Mao etc.
What the . . . ?
Coyne writes: “I regard it as a touchstone of ignorance (willful ignorance, not simply “failure to know”) when someone accuses Israel of genocide when it’s palpably clear that Israel is not engaged in a program of eliminating all Palestinians, whose population has grown rapidly in the last decade.”
Well, let’s concede that Israel is not engaged in killing ALL Palestinians, including (for example) those who live in New York City. If genocide must, by definition, clear this very high bar, then you are right–that’s not what they are aiming at. But it’s very hard to deny that they are not engaged in ETHNICALLY CLEANSING Gaza. To spell it out: their aim is to rid Gaza of its Palestinian majority by killing or maiming enough of them to encourage the rest to flee to refugee camps away. Senior members of the Government have said this quite openly. (To give you a hint, the name of one starts with ‘Smot,’ of another with ‘ben-Z’.)
You know this, Professor Coyne. You know that one does not have to be a “jew-hater” to condemn Israel’s actions, AND to characterize those actions as directed against Palestinians as a class, not just against Hamas. You know that the killing of 50,000 cannot be characterized as the surgical targeting of Hamas. It is not “wilful ignorance” to recognize these facts.
I come to this blog on occasion for its enlightening takes on evolution, education, religion, and many other things. Today, I came to find references to my recently deceased friend, Michael Ruse (with whom I disagreed about his opposition to the “new atheism.”) I was thoroughly disheartened and dismayed to find this bigoted nonsense here. From its tone, I assume it’s not a one-off. There must have been a lot of this kind of propaganda here before.) And judging from the comment thread above, with no dissent from its many readers. Does one have to be a IDF apologist to read this blog? Well I’ll be, indeed
With respect to the Nation and Kamala Harris, it could be a matter of cynical political judgement whether one should support her, despite her administration’s providing Israel the weapons to pursue their evil campaign. I’m not American (thank my lucky stars) but if I was, I might support her in preference to the fascist she stands against. And I’ll even confess that as a South Indian, I am sentimentally attracted to her Tamil ancestry. But even if I did vote for her, or campaign in support of her, I wouldn’t be parading my support of Israel’s bloodthirsty Gaza campaign as my reason for voting Harris.
p.s. Your bigotry is showing when you say that you are glad you are not an American. THAT is bigotry.
This is the sole comment you get, just to show that the benighted sometimes get to post here, too. If Israel wanted to drive out or kill the Palestinians, they could have done so years ago. Instead, they offered them a state–about five or six times. The Palestinians refused because they want to wipe out the Jews. As for that 50,000 figure, you are 1. buying the figures of Hamas and 2. completely neglecting the fact that probably half of those killed were terrorist combatants.
is Israel ‘s intent was to commit genocide, they sure are doing a shoddy job,despite having the means to do so. I wonder whats taking them so long?
I notice you dont mention Palestinian terrorism, the attack of October 7 that started this whole war, (and, of course, the attacks by Hezbollah; must be a second genocide!) or the fact that no other Arab state wants to take the Palestinians. You mention one sentence uttered by an Israeli official in anger in anger and ignore the many things the IDF does to avoid killing civilians. What other army warns civilians before a strike, or allows in tons of food? Not the usual way to commit genocide!
You have things ass-backwards here, ignoring what caused this war in the first place. Did you read the first charter of Hamas, or know anything about Hamas taking billions away from their own countrymen to build terror tunnels, or firing rockets at Israel for decades? Apparently not–you are a fan of the terrorists.
So, after you have your say here, I will let the readers deal with your sorry carcass and urge you to go post a Pharyngula, which is really the place you should be parading your ignorance.
What if Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza? What would be so wrong with that (assuming it doesn’t gratuitously kill them), given the circumstances? (One immediate practical problem is that there is nowhere for Gazans to go, as no country, not even Canada, wants 2 million unskilled troublemakers who won’t assimilate and will try to destabilize their hosts’ government and civil structures.). We in North America, before and after European contact, ethnically cleansed the regions we advanced into. Nomadic hunter-gatherers simply can’t co-exist on the same land with ranchers and farmers, or with rival hunter-gatherers. Somebody has to find somewhere else to live, and that is determined by superior force (or through inter-mating.) Ethnic cleansing happens all through history all over the world. Sometimes it’s a euphemism for genocide but not necessarily.
A philosopher friend of mine, who studies war as a discipline and is no apologist for Israel, tells me that when a defeated polity can’t lay down its arms and peaceably (if resentfully) cooperate, integrate, or assimilate with its conqueror, the only options available to the conqueror are expulsion or genocide. If expulsion is out of the question (other than in boats to take their chances with the humanitarian instincts of Mediterranean mariners since antiquity), what then? Hint: “two-state solution” is not on the menu.
A third alternative is apartheid of a particularly stringent kind. Gaza does need to be the concentration camp it is often characterized as, to keep the dangerous away from Israelis. (This is in the original sense used in the Boer War. The British penned up Boers in small, easier-to-police compounds just to incapacitate them, not to starve or work them to death.). This might not be what the residents of Gaza imagined for their statelet but that is what it has had to become, because of the actions of the gangs that run the place. The vulnerability here is revenge of the cradle. If women are fed and have idle men in abundance they will reproduce abundantly. So “mowing the lawn” will probably always be necessary, even though this requires that a certain threshold number of Israelis have to die before the IDF fires up the lawn mower. There also has to be a certain critical mass of leadership allowed to accrete and become amenable to decapitation for military force to work efficiently.
The most sensible solution would be for the residents of Gaza to think rationally, as the Japanese did in 1945 despite the Emperor Cult, and accept that peaceable cooperation is better than any of the truly awful consequences they face from continued violence. Are the Palestinians up to it?
Where I think Mohan Matthen goes wrong is in thinking that Israel (uniquely) should be condemned for doing what it needs to do for its survival just because her enemies die in what seem like large numbers in the process of being defeated and her own people have not, not in a year or so, anyway. He of course has no evidence that Israel is gratuitously trying to kill enough Palestinians that they will take their chances in the sea en masse. (If this was the goal, it doesn’t seem to be working. NGOs aren’t crowing about how many escapees from Gaza their ships are picking up clinging to wooden rafts and delivering them to the welcoming bosoms of Italy and Greece. So that claim seems far-fetched.)
Mr. Matthen and others like him should just say they are doing what they can to bring about Israel’s defeat and destruction. Their reasons need not concern us if we don’t accept the goals.
“You know this, Mohan. You know that one does not have to be a “Pal-hater” to condemn Hamas’ actions, AND to characterize those actions as directed against Jews as a class, not just against zionists. You know that the rape & killing of 1200 and the kidnapping of hundreds of others cannot be characterized as resistance.”
Walking home from work a couple days ago I passed a posterboard with photos of dead Gazans. I was filled with grief. Thousands of tragic deaths. I include not just the deaths of women and children in Gaza but also the deaths of Hamas militants: if their leaders had not plunged Gaza into war with Israel they would still be alive too.
But for two reasons I don’t blame Israel: Because to prevent another slaughter like October 7th the IDF should kill every member of Hamas they can find. And because, no matter what stupid things might have been said by bad actors like Smotrich, all of this would stop if Hamas would surrender and free the remaining hostages.
FFS! I despair of young people. Once again they’d be happy to throw their country to Trump and all the awfulness that facism will bring for the majority (women, non white people etc) because the Democrats haven’t presented the absolute ideal candidate! So, what, they’re just not going to vote or something??
The Green parties of Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Ukraine have written to Jill Stein, asking her to suspend her campaign because of its obvious help to Trumperie, and to endorse Harris. She has, of course, refused. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/01/jill-stein-refuses-pull-out-white-house-race-green-party/
If Ms.Stein’s presence on the 2024 ballot clearly tilts the election to Trump next Tuesday, I wonder if the Global Greens will expel the US Green Party. That should be no problem, of course, as Ms.Stein & Co. can then simply affiliate themselves internationally with United Russia and Hizballah.
Jill Stein…. Jill Stein… Ah, now I remember! She’s the candidate who used to faithfully send me a letter in the mail one week before each Presidential election and ask for $. Nothing about her stands on anything, no reasons, just send money.
I wondered what happened to her…
You cannot make this up.
When I see comments to news reports by pro-Hamas Americans lamenting the Democrats’ alleged support of Israel, I cheerfully “advise” them to vote for GOP.
Cheer up?
History tells us so much, read wearing the right glasses. But sometimes so little.
So what what if the foul mouthed loose truthed old golfer proves a historic masterstroke for democracy, tables it’s biggest win in over a century since the self-inflicted catastrophe of WW1, carves his face on a global Mt Rushmore.
It seems he will win and maybe easily [see the polls gap close significantly over the last month, national and battlegrounds, and bear in mind polls 2016 and 2020 materially undercalled his vote], driven mainly by working people trying to earn a living at the sharp end of life. Near half the country are with him, and most beyond the racist tattooed fur hat randoms.
Yes he ranting comes with nasty Fascist overtones, but just as the arrogant Left comes with its own racist, yes racist cant, the delusory systemic racism nonsense they use irresponsibly to mislead, undermine the people they claim to defend.
Except importantly he is above all not ideological, unlike real Facists, and some others Right and most of the Left.
Read the gap between his mouth and his first term actions.
He’s a gut-feel remorseless lewd life worn wide boy, Barnum and Bailey and rat cunning.
At home he may just deliver a Schumpeterian Mancur Olson themed shake up, a historic re-grounding, like WW2 proved for a couple of obvious cases, only they much more drastic.
And abroad he may be Putin’s worst dream. Yes that war could indeed finish fast, and we could suddnely be living in a vastly different world. Does Zelensky seem too calm lately, Russia creeping west in Ukraine?
Trump understands the prize? And „Excuse me, how big are they again?“
The word ‘genocide’ is bandied about with little thought. It has a reasonably precise definition. Of course, the Israeli war in Gaza doesn’t come close. To use a very real analogy, was the US attempting ‘genocide’ when we bombed Germany in WWII? Of course, not. Did lots of civilians die as a consequence. Yes, of course. Was the US attempting ‘genocide’ when we nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Of course, not. Did lots of civilians die as a consequence. Yes, of course.
It turns out that many ‘genocides’ aren’t. Was Mao trying to wipe the Chinese people with his many failures? He was very deadly, but hardly genocidal. Were the leaders of the Khmer Rouge trying to wipe the Cambodian people with their many failures? They were very deadly, but hardly genocidal.
Hitler’s war on the Jews does qualify. Stalin’s campaigns against the Ukrainians (the Holodomor) might qualify. In another era, the Ottoman empire’s campaigns against the Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians (and Kurds) might qualify as well.
The 1948 Convention was intended to cover only events that occurred after its adoption. The goal was to deter in the future, not to judge the past. This was important because many countries, including the United States, were nervous about their living leaders being criminally prosecuted for historical events that occurred under the laws and customs of the time. That’s the whole point of defining genocide: an international crime that trumps national laws permitting wholesale killing of undesirables in your own country. (The Nuremberg Tribunals covered only acts committed by Germany beyond its Sept. 1939 borders which were already crimes under existing international law.)
In this light, arguing about whether an act committed within a country’s borders according to its laws before 1948 was genocide, even the Holocaust itself which gave rise to the term, can never lead to resolution or agreement. This is why Turkiye has always taken offence at the labeling of the 1911 Armenian affair as genocide by its predecessor Ottoman Empire. Getting something retroactively certified as genocide is a political matter that awards points to one side in a political dispute. Genocide is a crime, a legal term, and can only be settled by a competent Court.
I remember years ago when I knew people who considered themselves part of the “extreme Left” – they were anti-war peaceniks. They’d condemn all wars, all “collateral damage,” and still somehow manage to see every side as basically good.
“All we are saying … is give peace a chance.” Once the scales fall from our eyes and this novel idea takes hold, watch the healing begin. Magical thinking, certainly — but in comparison preferable.