IT'S ALWAYS ACCIDENTAL

 

How reassuring to know that no matter what horrendous thing you do it will always be an accident! No matter how many people you kill it's always an accident. Even when you kill citizens of your closest ally, a simple, "Sorry! Didn't mean to," is all you need to slink guiltily away from all responsibility.

On Friday, September 6, 2024, a 26 year old Turkish-American woman, carrying no weapons other than her concern for her fellows, attended a demonstration by Palestinians against Israeli settlers who had illegally usurped land and homes of their Palestinian neighbors in the occupied West Bank. Despite this usurpation being illegal under both Israeli and International Law the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) appeared on the scene to defend,  not law, decency or common sense, but rather the usurping settlers. 

Some Palestinians threw rocks at the armed settlers and armed IDF soldiers who were up to 200 meters away. I think that we can agree that even young David needed to be much closer than 200 meters to Goliath to kill him. Still, the stone throwing became the excuse for IDF members to use deadly force. Part of that deadly response included setting up a sniper on the rooftop of one of the usurped homes. 

The first shot the sniper fired was a little off. Rather than killing a young stone thrower the bullet hit a metal dumpster(?, building?). The sniper then aimed at Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, an unarmed American citizen who was not throwing rocks but was, convenient for the sniper, fully exposed. The IDF sniper then shot Ms. Eygi in the head. 

But wait! That aimed shot was an "accident". It was nothing more than a totally accidental confluence of totally unexpected events. Who could predict that a skilled sniper would bring his rifle to a demonstration? Who would believe that there would be a convenient rooftop overlooking the demonstration? And what are the chances that the sniper would find his way to that rooftop? So, the sniper just happens to be looking through his rifle's scope just at the moment that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi surprises the sniper by deliberately walking into the focus of that scope causing him to jerk the trigger?

CLEARLY AN ACCIDENT! WITHOUT QUESTION!

Of course, Ms. Eygi's "accidental" murder is just one in a line of similar "accidents" perpetrated by the IDF. Time after time Israeli murderers make the slimey, transparent excuse that their crimes are purely accidental. It's rather as if Jeffrey Dahmer were to have said, "Gee, I don't know what could have happened to my neighbor. Would you like this casserole? Some kebabs?"

The toll of Americans murdered by Israeli military, police and settlers keeps climbing.

Ms. Ezgi Eygi murdered by IDF sniper on Friday, September 6, 2024. She was 26 years old.

Tawfiq Ajaq murdered by an off duty Israeli policeman and a settler on January 19, 2024. He was 17 years old.

Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist murdered by an IDF sniper on May 11, 2022. She was 51 years old.

Rachel Corrie, a journalist clearly wearing visible press credentials crushed by an IDF bulldozer on May 16, 2003. She was 24 years old.

And then there is the worst "accident" of all. On June 8, 1967 some IDF planes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, a reconisance ship, killing 34 American service men and wounding 171 more. The Liberty was in international waters, clearly marked as an American ship but the Israeli Navy and Air Force "mistook" it for an Egyptian vessel.

The Israeli government has compensated the families and survivors of the Liberty with  cash but continues to pretend that the attack on the Liberty was an "accident" rather than designed to insure that Americans could never tip Egyptians off to Israel's looming surprise attack initiating the 6 Day War.

The death toll in Gaza is about to reach 41,000 with no sign of abating. The death toll in the West Bank is now over 700 and rising. But, no matter! It is all an "accident". It couldn't be other than an "accident" because Israelis are always the only ever victims of genocide, never, ever perpetrators of it. And, if the citizens of the United States happen to place themselves in the path of genocide, well, ...accidents will happen. She/He/that ship shouldn't have been there in the first place.

..

MY WISH FOR THE FAILED ORANGE FüHRER

 

    So a young man whose motives, as of this writing now weeks past the shooting, are unknown tried shooting The Failed Orange Führer on Saturday, July 13, 2024. Immediately J. D. Vance of Ohio blamed Joe Biden/Democrats/The Left for inciting the violence visited upon his Dear Leader.

    Aw! Come ON!

    First, a Liberal (Liberal, not Radical Leftist) with a gun is almost as believable as kitten with a gun, possible if you really, really stretch your very strange imagination, but all but incomprehensible.

    Second, the shooter has been identified as a loner who is registered as a Republiscum voter. In other words, someone not very likely to be motivated by Joe Biden/Democrats/The Left. Which candidate is it again who calls for jailing and executing rivals? Now where have I heard lots of rhetoric about "bloodbaths", "uprising", "take back our country"? I don't think it was from my Lefty friends, even the radicals.

    Third, I despise The Failed Orange Führer. I do not hate him. I hate everything he stands for but not that despicable scum himself. I have been saying since 2016 at least that the last exhibit in the The Failed Orange Führer Presidential Library should be the jail cell in which he spends the last years of his miserable, criminal life. I do not want The Failed Orange Führer to achieve the martyrdom that he so undeservedly affects. No. This despicable shit stain on American history deserves to live out his life shorn of his golden penthouses, estates, self-labeled buildings and his sleasily accumulated wealth. I want him eating prison food and, in my darker moments, serving as the bitch of a muscled, 275 pound undocumented Mexican lifer - I'm thinking Danny Trejo with young Arnold Schwartzenegger's body - who hasn't had any sexual relief in the last decade except from his own, preferred hand. That is my darkest wish for The Failed Orange Führer. Long life like that to him!

    I am also absolutely certain that the vast majority of my Lefty fellows would giggle a little and then tell me how awful a person I am and disown me emphatically. 

    Now, I ask you to contrast my dark demise for this despicable person with the litany of violent rhetoric spewed by The Failed Orange Führer from "Lock her up!" to "Grab them by the pussy." to "Some, I assume, are good people." to "Stop the steal!" to "poisoning the blood of our country" to "I am your retribution." to "in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote." Let's take that in the context of his proven false arguments that the 2020 election was "stolen" from him when The Failed Orange Führer insisted that his phony election fraud claims "allow for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution." King Donald the 1st anyone? Our successful Führer? His Highness, Fearless Leader, President-for-Life Bone Spurs?

    No, I don't wish him dead...right away. I just want him imprisoned and abused, forgotten and obscure, dying alone in his prison cell noticed by a dwindled cult that often forgets to send a card on his birthday. Were I a religious person, I would find a church in which I could light a candle as I pray for his long, lonely demise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT'S IN A NAME?, BRAINWORM EDITION

 

    Robert Francis Kennedy, Junior has suspended his pointless presidential campaign and endorsed The Failed Orange Führer in that felon's run to become a successful Führer for what would quickly become our failed democracy.

    I think it is not unreasonable to say that Bobby's father, Robert Francis Kennedy, Senior would have hired Sirhan Sirhan before endorsing George Wallace or Richard Nixon.

    The bulk of the discussion following RFK, Jr's announcement has centered on what he brings to the current presidential campaign other than shame and embarrassment.  Let's consider that for a moment.

    Bobby, Jr. made his name as an environmental lawyer who has now endorsed the poster child for polluters.

    The scion of the family most associated with the Democratic Party has endorsed The Failed Orange Führer whom even many Republicans can't stomach.

    What could possibly inspire this bizarre turn of events? A brain worm, if you'll pardon the pun, comes to mind but that seems too facile an answer. I am going to speculate since I don't know RFK, Jr and have no evidence for my speculation, yet it seems that he has an animus toward the Democratic Party. Why might that be? Perhaps it could be that RFK, Jr harbored some thought that he should be the party's nominee for the presidency. Perhaps he feels that he has inherited a leadership mantle that he didn't deserve. Has he ever paid attention to the term "nepo-baby"? Up-starts like the Clintons and Barack Obama capture the notice of party members in preference to him and the boy-who-would-be-king is left with a speaking problem, anti-vaccination conspiracies, a brain worm and some weirdness with a dead bear. Perhaps it seems unfair to him. Perhaps it seems to us that we have dodged that lunatic bullet.

    In 1980, RFK, Jr's uncle, Edward Kennedy, drove a resounding nail into the coffin of the Kennedy family's political ambitions by being unable to make an extempore case for his candidacy. The untimely death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. drove in another nail and now RFK, Jr. has killed the political careers of every member of his family for at least another generation. Personally, I'm sorry to see that. Every large family is allowed one crazy member whom they usually keep locked in an attic. RFK Jr's failing is that he's been allowed to roam free. Yet it does allow a future generation of Kennedys to chart their own courses perhaps one of which may be leadership in the Democratic Party. I wish saner members of the Kennedy family well  but that nail he's driven so firmly home today seals RFK Jr's own coffinas well as the family's immediate fate.

    In her acceptance address, Kamala Harris noted, quite correctly, that The Failed Orange Führer is an "unserious man". Today, RFK, Jr has announced that he is even more of an "unserious man" than the fascist he's endorsed.

August 30, 2024 -

    More information came to light in the past week that moves me to pity RFK, Jr. a little, only a little. In endorsing The Failed Orange Führer, RFK, Jr. or his worm-damaged brain has allowed himself to be conned by The Failed Orange Führer. First, he's been offered a possible cabinet post. The offer itself is probably bullshit. We all know how quickly The Failed Orange Führer renegs on promises. Still he made Ben Carson HUD Secretary so it's possible that RFK, Jr. could find some hope in that.

    What has moved me to pity is that The Failed Orange Führer apparently promised to release all the government files on the assassinations of RFK, Jr's father and uncle. I see that as a baited lure just as it is also a wild goose chase, The murders of President John and Senator Robert Kennedy have been investigated and reinvestigated most importantly by the Congressional Committee led by Senator Frank Church in the 1970s. The likelihood of some dark secret lurking in those files is pretty slim but is an undeniable draw for a loyal, disturbed son and nephew who is inclined to conspiracy fantasies. That I find sad and pitiable while also finding RFK, Jr's endorsement all the more appalling because it's been bought by false hope, mental distress and vicious manipulation.

BY DEFINITION

 

     Donald John Trump, Failed Orange Führer and former United States president, is now a convicted felon. He has been a felon for decades but, heretofore, was not convicted. His fervent supporter, Lauren Boebert (R-Total Insanity) opined that her Führer was a victim of "communism". Trump himself has claimed that he is a victim of "fascism". In both cases the terms are misapplied. Boebert uses "communism" as a dirty word because she does not understand what communism is. She also does not care to find out given her consummate willful ignorance. Trump uses "fascism" because he fully understands what fascism is and continues his congenital accusation of claiming that his current object of derision is guilty of what he is and intends.

    I'll get back to "communism" shortly but first I want to clarify what fascism actually is. According to Merriam-Webster, "fascism is a political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized, autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of oposition."

        Trump has specifically claimed that he intends to exercise dictatorial powers should he be elected president again. He regularly speaks of imposing extreme economic controls through limits on trade and reducing taxes on the wealthy people of which he is one. He also demands limits on his opposition such as demonstrators and opponents (e.g. "Lock her up!"). Also worth noting at this point is Trump's penchant for claiming that others are guilty of crimes of which he, himself is actually guilty (e.g. claiming that he is the victim of the fascism which he intends to impose on his opponents).

    Now, let's return to communism and the Merriam-Webster definition which identifies it, as beginning with a lower case "c", "a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed." And, as  beginning with an upper case "C", "a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production." The communism which we see today was codified by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto published in 1848 and subsequently modified by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and others associated with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequently, the Soviet Union.

    For decades American Evangelicals have been indoctrinated with the farrago that communism and fascism are the same. That false concurrence starts with the fact that both philosophies are totalitarian. Also, these contemporary Christo-Fascists make much of the fact that what we commonly call the Nazi Party's actual, official name was the Nationalsozialistische Arbiterpartei (National Socialist Worker's Party. The evangelical fascists want their congregations to notice that the Nazis called themselves "socialists" and ignore the fact that any person or group may call itself what it likes while its actions determine its true nature. The claim to be a "Worker's Party" ignores the fact that its general membership came from the working class but that it's leadership and financial backing came primarily from the old, established classes of the nobility and very wealthy. The promoters of Christo-Fascism, like Trump, want to erase the idea that their fascist, ultra-right wing movement is nearly identical to that of the German Nazi Party of the 1920s through 1945 and it's remnants down to today. American White Supremacy, promoted by Trump, is almost indistinguishable from the German racial purity, Aryan Supremacy promoted by the Nazi Party.

    Thus we have the Failed Orange Führer naming his opponents "fascists"when he is, ipso facto, himself an actual fascist. We have, too, a woman and Congressperson of unfathomable depths of ignorance naming her Führer a victim of "communism" when it's obvious that all she knows of communism is that it's a "bad word".

    Calling the Democratic Party "communist" or even "socialist" is incorrect, a misnomer. If nothing else, one must consider the overwhelming Federal resources that the Biden Administration has offered to business interests for job creation, to manufacturing in businesses new and old. Still, I would suggest that, in one tenuous sense, Rep. Boebert is correct. If the communist axiom of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" may be applied to the American justice system at last, the New York jury's decision in Trump's hush money trial shows that Donald Trump, according to his ability to violate law and tradition, received the conviction that he so absolutely needed.

    I fervently hope that the Failed Orange Führer continues to fail and is rejected on next November 5th even more overwhelmingly than he was in 2020. His rejection is essential for the United States to continue as a democracy. I also fervently hope that, once again rejected at the polls, his most vicious, lunatic supporters do not repeat the insurrection of January 6, 2021. Further, I fervently hope that Trump's sycophants on the Supreme Court and Judge Aileen Cannon allow his other Federal trials to proceed to whatever verdict his peers deliver. Despite what the Failed Orange Führer and the fools who follow him would have everyone believe, Donald John Trump is not a victim of any philosophy or conspiracy. Donald John Trump is, by definition, not a victim of fascists or communists. He is, by definition, the victim of his own crimes and now adjudged a felon by the American people.

    It's about damned time!

"WHAT'S I A NAME?" POOR PLUTO AND ANTI-SEMITISM

 

    Not so long ago we learned in school that our solar system contained 9 planets which, in order from the sun outward, were as follows:

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn - these were all the planets known to everyone up through Galileo's time

Uranus

Neptune

Pluto

 Then, in 2006, some well-informed, well-educated and very anal-retentive astrophysicists decided that Pluto was really a "Dwarf Planet" (Little People of America take note!) and no longer deserved to be classed with it's bigger, gassier, ring-ier, moon-ier neighbors. Thus were disappointed many an elementary school student, executives at Disney and knee-jerk defenders, like myself, of "the little guy" despite the best efforts at explanation by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

    We must remember that Pluto, regardless of technical definition, is a rock out in the Kuiper Belt, orbiting our sun and acting very planet-like in all matters except size. Pluto is a solid fact regardless of what definition and name we apply to it. Personally, I think we should redefine it as a full planet but rename it Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I like Mr. Tyson though I have never met him, making my landing in his presence about as likely as my landing on the planet Neil DeGrasse Tyson (nèe Pluto). In any case, the point is that nèe Pluto is an incontrovertible fact name and designation notwithstanding.

    Such is also true of the current designation of many statements, words and phrases called anti-Semitic. The major difference, however, is that words are ephemeral and fungible regardless of our technological ability to record them and collect them. For example, the phrase "From the River to the Sea" is only anti-Semitic if you presume that Palestinians have no right to the lands on which they have lived for at least 1,950 years or possibly since Abrahamic times. The Palestinian State, which preexisted the 1948 recognition of Israel as a Jewish Homeland, held the lands from both sides of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. 

    The great Anglo-Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, wrote an extremely short vignette in response to The Balfour Declaration which culminates with the declaration from Shaw himself that Balfour had created "another Belfast". With 75 years of history in hand, I think that we can say that Shaw was spot-on prescient. Israeli Governments from 1948 onward have laid claim of the lands "From the River to the Sea" based in the thin promise of a book of mythologized history

     For the whole history of the modern Israeli nation the world has presumed that both Israeli and a Palestinian nations would exist side-by-side in the old protectorate of Palestine. That is the presumption of the United Nations resolution that created Israel in 1948 and the presumption of successive agreements since. It is the presumption that both nations would exist "From the River to the Sea". However, the Anti-Defamation League has now decided that Palestinian supporters chanting "From the River to the Sea" are inherently calling for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel. Inherently the phrase is nothing of the kind but now the ugly creature, Context, raises its objectional, 2-faced head. 

    If you're a true anti-Semite, like the Tiki Torch carrying scum that marched in Charlottesville,Virginia in 2017, "From the River to the Sea" does mean the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel. Those "good people" are now the darlings of the Republiscum Party here in the United States. If you are shocked by wanton murder, genocide and suppression of an entire people, "From the River to the Sea" means creation of an autonomous, contiguous Palestinian homeland that extends along side Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean coast. If you are intent on suppressing the Palestinian people by denying them their own homeland, one that preexisted modern Israel, of the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean coast you will define "From the River to the Sea" as an anti-Semitic phrase as vile and noisome as the "Arbeit Macht Frei" inscribed above the entrance to Auschwitz or the "Jedem Das Seine" above Buchenwald's gate. That definition is no more valid than my suggestion that we make Pluto a full planet again and rename it Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

    The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has defined "From the River to the Sea" as an anti-Semitic curse because they feel that anything that fails to support a restoration of Biblical Galilee, Samaria and Judea from the time of Kings David and Solomon must ipso facto be anti-Semitic. That is, of course, special pleading nonsense. It is the same sort of special pleading nonsense that inspires the American ultra-right wing claim of validity to Constitutional "Originalism". In Constitutional "Originalism" right wing extremists cherry pick evidence, regardless of how specious, from the past to support their predetermined opinions. Likewise, the ADL cherry picks authority from a book of myth, legend, fiction and history filtered through myth, legend and fiction to claim ownership of a land in which they had no ownership for 1,900 years.

    Criticism of Israel is not ipso facto anti-Semitism. If it were, thousands of Jewish Israelis, who have spent months, both before and after October 7th, protesting the policies of the Netanyahu government, would be considered anti-Semitic, something that is, on its face, utter nonsense. It is possible to criticize the policies of any Israeli government while being a staunch supporter of a Jewish homeland in the former protectorate of Palestine and even one that stretches "From the River to the Sea".

    Protests against the wanton murder of 35,000 Palestinian civilians justified by outright lies and blatant obfuscaction in pursuit of the farrago of "eliminating" Hamas is ipso facto genocide despite the number of times that Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters object to that definition. Both the lies and obfuscations seem predetermined to cover the Israeli government's evil intent. When, I would ask, did the "conference" of the Netanyahu government take place to codify the "final solution" for the Gaza Palestinians? Who, if not Benjamin Netanyahu himself, presided at this "conference" in the role of Reinhard Heydrich? You, dear reader, if you find this comparison of the current Israeli government to the Nazi scum at the infamous Wannsee Conference appalling, I would ask you to explain to me any difference other than one being held for genocide perpetrated on Jews and the other being perpetrated for genocide by Jews.

    Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust establishes, as definitively as possible, that the ordinary Germans, who might not have been Nazi Party members, were sufficiently anti-Semitic as to support the rounding up of Jews in their communities and not care what happened to those same Jews. I would agree with Goldhagen's most negative assertions that those ordinary Germans knew or suspected that the Concentration Camps were actually murdering Jews. I do so from an incident from my teens.

    As a high school senior is was taking German as my foreign language. I then planned a life in politics for myself and felt that a central European language like German would situate my skills well for the on-going conflict with the Soviet Union. My German teacher, Herr Kaslaukas, had been a translator assigned to a commanding officer in the 3rd Army. Herr K, (a Kafka reference was not lost on me) had been, as my Uncle Eddy was, at the liberation of the Buchenwald Death Camp. One day one of my classmates asked Herr K about his World War II service. Quickly the discussion came to his experience with the Nazi Death Camps. Herr K told us that the officer (Colonel?) to whom he'd been assigned had entered the Buchenwald Camp and entered one of the barracks in which men too weak to walk lay. Herr K said that his officer had been in Europe since D-Day, that he'd seen men in his command "blown apart by shells and, literally, cut in half by machine gun fire". Then he added that his officer, "came out of that building, went behind it and threw up." 

    Herr K went on to say that what I remember as the next day an higher ranking officer arrived at Buchenwald. That officer ordered that his troops enter Weimar, immediately across the river, round up every person they could find and march them over to the camp. These good, ordinary Germans from Goethe's city, were marched through the camp. As they exited Herr K was tasked with stopping them individually to ask what they knew of this camp and the horrors there. What was most remarkable was that Herr K was relating this story to us but for most of it he had clearly been back at Buchenwald on a cold, April day in 1945. He had taken us with him. I, for one, was seeing this story play out with his eyes which is why, nearly 60 years later, the hairs on the back of my neck still rise remembering his description. So he asked those ordinary Germans of Weimar what they knew of this camp. The smell must have blown into town when the wind was right. They must have heard the screams of men being tortured in the nearby "Screaming Forest".  Herr K told us what those ordinary Germans answered, "We didn't know. We thought they were making soap. We didn't know." He paused. "They knew. They knew."

    Today, there are Israelis who are appalled by the actions of their government because "They knew." Other Israelis are happy that Al Jazeera is being closed down so they can avoid inconvenient truths. "They knew." There are leaders of Israel who claim that they never would consider genocide of the Gaza Palestinians. "They knew." There are members of the Israeli government who deny any atrocities by the IDF. "They knew." The IDF members who deliberately murder jouralists, doctors and humanitarian aid workers then claim it was all an accident. "They knew." The Israeli air force pilots who bombed and sank the USS Liberty with all hands on board in 1967 then claimed it was an accident. "They knew." The leaders of the Anti-Defamation League here in the United States who claim that bombings that have murdered thousands of Palestinian children are just the old, anti-Semitic "Blood Libel". "They knew." The politicians, Israeli and American Republiscum who define anything anti-war as anti-Semitic for their crass personal gain purposely ignore or encourage the inhumanity perpetrated on the people of Gaza. "They knew." Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman General C. Q. Brown have denied that Israel is committing genocide with U. S. weapons. "They knew." My President, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., for whom I will vote again in November, who has supplied this genocidal Israeli government with the means to wholesale murder of the Palestinians of Gaza has only lately moved to rein in the Netanyahu government. He knew.

    One of my Jewish grandsons has stayed away from both anti-war and pro-Palestinian demonstrations on his college campus. For his decision to stay away from both sides he has been called anti-Semitic by fellow Jews and vile names by pro-Palestinians. He is personally appalled by the Netanyahu government. I couldn't be more proud of him.

    The Holocaust has not prevented Jews from perpetrating the Nakba which is on-going in Gaza. The genocide of Jews does not, appallingly, preclude a genocide by Jews. Pluto may be a "Dwarf Planet" to astrophysicists but it is the 9th planet in our solar system to most of us. The war on Gaza may be an action for Israel's defense to some but it is manifestly genocide to most of us. The Hamas attack on October 7th was horrible and appalling to most of us. The genocide in Gaza is horrible and appalling to most of us. Rachael bitterly weeps for her children but by her side Hagar weeps full as many and as bitter tears for hers too. It is long past time that we should allow both Rachael and Hagar to dry their eyes. We all know that.

DRONING ON

    Chef José Andrés' World Central Kitchen (WCK) has been lauded over most of the civilized world for feeding the hungry in disaster and war zones. Chef Andrés is fulfilling, whether intentionally or not, one of the essential aspects of human decency, a Beatitude perhaps, voiced by some itinerant preacher in the Middle East a long time ago when he said, "...for I was hungry and you gave me food...and for as much as you have done this unto the least of these, my bretheren, you have done it unto me." 

    I think that guy meant that the simple human decency of sharing food with the hungry transcends all the pettiness of this world and shows some exceptional greatness. But that's just my opinion and what do I know? I'm just an over-educated old man and an atheist too. Maybe that itinerant preacher just meant "Screw the hungry, feed me!" Regardless, Chef Andrés deserves some serious plaudits for the charity he has organized.

    The other day, some of Chef Andrés' employees and their guide and translator were in a convoy amid the war in Gaza. Surrounded by gratuitous death and destruction these 7 World Central Kitchen workers were going about the business of saving some civilians from starvation. The convoy was moving at night along a route specifically arranged with and agreed upon by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The cars in which they were riding were clearly marked as World Central Kitchen vehicles on their roofs to make any air units of the IDF aware that the vehicles carried neutral, non-combatant aid workers.

    As this aid convoy made its way along this allegedly safe and pre-cleared route one or more IDF drones appeared overhead. These drones were equipped with U. S. provided Hellfire Missiles. They also were equipped with cameras specifically used for targeting, cameras which sent their images back to some one or more IDF pilots controlling the drones from a chair some safe distance away. Because cameras need to see in the dark, these drones had either conventional lights or night-vision sensors or infra-red sensors on board to give their controllers specific information about the vehicles and their passengers.

    Before we go further, let me make clear, the person or persons controlling the drone or drones above the WCK convoy could see the vehicles blow those drones.

    What happened next has been clearly attested to and explained. A drone fired a Hellfire Missile at 1 of the convoy vehicles. The survivors of that missile strike got out of the wreck and ran to the the next vehicle. When they arrived at that next vehicle another Hellfire Missile hit that vehicle. The survivors of the 2 Hellfire Missile strikes then ran to the third vehicle in the convoy. When they reached that third vehicle a third Hellfire Missile destroyed this new vehicle finally killing the rest of the 7 WCK employees who had survived the previous 2 missile strikes.

    The IDF and the Israeli Government have brushed this horror off as a terrible mistake. Let me ask you, is that denial of responsibility credible? Is there any iota of truth in that denial?

    Remember that the convoy was on a prescribed route pre-cleared by the IDF. Remember that the vehicles were clearly marked specifically so that they could be identified from the air. Now remember that aid workers who survived the first missile strike weren't targeted until they reached the second vehicle and again weren't targeted until they reached the third vehicle in the convoy. Finally, I would ask you how utterly full of shit are the IDF and the Israeli Government? How clearly, I ask you, is it that those WCK workers were targeted over and over again. 

    Two ships laden with food for those starving in the Gaza Strip turned back to Cyprus and WCK withdrew from Gaza following the murders of their fellows thus insuring that more Palestinians would die of starvation, a horrible, lingering death that takes children first. How, I must ask you, can the malignant, meretricious and mendacious IDF and Israeli Government of Benjamin Netanyahu retain any scintilla of credibility. And finally, I ask you to look up or call to memory the piles of emaciated corpses in the Nazi death camps, the skeletal survivors in the Nazi death camps, the destruction of Lidice and Ležáky and the Warsaw Ghetto and then I ask you how can the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who suffered those horrors can consent to visiting the same horrors on any of their fellow human beings?

    All Palestinians are not Hamas. I would suggest that even as honorable and decent Jews (I am excepting Stephen Miller who is Jewish but otherwise neither.) oppose the Netanyahu Government, so are there Palestinians who oppose Hamas. Just as there are Hamas fighters who dehumanized Jews to commit the atrocities of October 7, 2023 so there are some Israelis, the drone operators in this WCK case for example, are no better than the vilest of Nazi SS officers, non-coms and camp guards. I have spoken with and respected survivors of the Nazi death camps. I have known men who liberated the Buchenwald Camp, one of those being one of my uncles. I find it incomprehensible that Israelis have dehumanized Palestinians as the Nazis did the Jews. I find it incomprehensible that Israelis, no matter how threatened they may feel, would sink so low as to dishonor the the 6,000,000 murdered in the Shoah by becoming like their murderers.

    I do find those things incomprehensible yet there is plenty of room left to rend my heart that my country, my government, my president is willfully complicit in the on-going Palestinian genocide and in the wanton murder of the 7 workers of the World Central Kitchen.

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING GOOD FROM 1942?

 

    On May 27, 1942 Czech and Slovak partisans assassinated one of the vilest of the Nazis, Reinhard Heydrich, the chairman of the Wannsee Conference that systematized the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and all other conquered or peoples otherwise considered "inferior" by Hitler's Third Reich. When Heydrich ultimately died of his wounds on June 4, 1942 Hitler ordered revenge for the assassination by razing to the ground the villages of Lidice and Ležáky whence the partisans may have come. In the attack on those villages, every male 14 years-old and older was taken to a field and shot. The women and younger children were sent to the extermination camps and "disposed of" there. In all, 572 men, women and children were murdered in the 2 towns while 7 children were given to SS Officers' families to raise as Nazis.

    On October 7, 2023 Hamas Terrorists from the Gaza Strip attacked Southern Israel killing about 1,300 Israeli citizens and taking over 200 hostages. Embarrassed by the failure of his anti-democratic and ultra-right wing government to detect this attack before it happened, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the razing to the ground of the Gaza Strip. First, by indiscriminate bombing of the area under the excuse that Hamas fighters hide amongst the general population. Second, to complete his revenge on the Palestinian population of over 2,000,000 persons and with little or no regard for those 200+ hostages, Netanyahu ordered a ground invasion of Gaza to complete the razing of the Palestinian enclave. At the time of this writing somewhere over 31,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces largely through aerial bombing. Israel excuses this horror by claiming that Hamas "terrorists" live amongst the general population. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a paroxysm of Orwellian rhetoric, has claimed that not "eliminating Hamas" means that Israel is weak and open to further attack. That is no more nor less than his excuse for a blatant genocidal attack on civilian targets.

    I support the existence of a safe and secure Jewish Homeland in the Middle East. I also support a contiguous and free Palestinian Homeland in the ancient land of Palestine. It is possible to have both if the murders on both sides stop for the most part, the parties respect one another's rights and allow the fury that reciprocal murders generate to die down without excesses on either side over the coming 75 years.

    What I do not and cannot support is the Netanyahu government of Israel inspired by its fanatical approach to land rights based on a book of mythology mixed with history. Though the Jewish peoples held much of what we call Palestine in the ancient past, that hegemony was broken after the Roman Armies won the Jewish War in 70 CE. Until the 1880s when Zionism began its defense of persecuted Jews by suggesting a home in Palestine, Arab and Bedouin peoples lived in and ruled over Palestine. Despite their ancient claims and mythology, modern Jews were and are interlopers in Palestine. Those Jews have established a homeland that they definitely need and should have but only as good neighbors to their fellow Semitic brothers and sisters.

    The none-too-soon death of Reinhard Heydrich brought about retribution 579% greater than the loss of that one vile Nazi.

    A death toll 579% greater than the 1,200 Israelis murdered on October 7th would yield a Palestinian death toll of 694,800. Thankfully, Israel's genocidal attacks since October 7th have not reached that horrific toll yet the attacks on Gaza stink of Hitler's response to Heydrich's assassination. Before we get anywhere nearer the 35,000 mark of Palestinian deaths, the bombing, the invasion, the blockade and dehumanization of Palestinians must stop.

    Unlike Netanyahu's Orwellian attempt to distract from his government's failings, further attacks are not a demonstration of Israeli strength. This frenzy of genocide is an admission of weakness. What would show strength by Israel is a ceasefire, withdrawal of invaders and a demand that Gazans, the majority of Gazans who are not Hamas, surrender all hostages and also surrenders the leaders and planners of the October 7th attacks. A truly strong leader of Israel could demand that the Gazan people surrender weapons, including rockets, in exchange for opening of border crossings and importation of materials for rebuilding homes, medical supplies and food aid as soon as the surrenders began.

    And my President could be the godfather to an incipient peace by demanding this much of his friend and client, Netanyahu. 

    I must at this point look at the use of the term "genocide". Israelis broadly and even the wider Jewish community have a special connection to that term. The Shoah perpetrated by the Nazis culminating the centuries of discrimination, pogroms and individual murders is most certainly the attempted genocide of the Jewish people. However, that does not make "genocide" a term uniquely applicable to Jews. The Bible tells us that the Abrahamic Tribes committed genocide against the Midianites. Crusaders of the Middle Ages carried out genocides of anyone who held beliefs at odds with their own regardless whether those they murdered followed Islam or a different Christian sect. The Ottoman Turks carried out a genocide on the Armenian people. The Nazi's genocidal machine devoured 6,000,000 Jews and additionally included gays, communists, socialists, and the Roma condemned to the ovens or mass graves. The Rwandan majority Hutus carried out a genocide of the minority Tutsis in 1994. Genocide as a term and a fact is not the sole property of any one people or group. Genocide continues today against the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma) and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. The Netanyahu Government's indignation at being called out for genocide in Gaza is only slightly less indecent than the genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza that it is currently carrying out.

    Amidst the genocide disguised as counter-terrorism we have organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) egregiously conflating criticism of the Netanyahu Government with the broader evil of antisemitism. Those are somewhat different issues though they do have some overlap. The important fact to recall is that they are not entirely the same. Being an antisemite and opposing the Netanyahu Government is almost a given while opposing the policies of the Netanyahu Government does not make one, ipso facto, an antisemite. Just ask the thousands of Israeli citizens who spent months demonstrating against Netanyahu's attempts to co-opt the Israeli judiciary in his attempt to evade conviction for massive corruption how antisemitic they are.

    Further, opposing the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza to further an unjustifiable land grab does not make one a supporter of Hamas. It does make one an humanitarian who opposes genocide. Amongst those who oppose the genocide of Palestinians there are, undoubtedly, members of and sympathizers with Hamas militants but just as the larger Venn Diagram of those opposed to Natanyahu's Government includes some antisemites, so the Hamas faction is a smaller subset within the larger throng of humanity appalled by the Gazan genocide. In fact, one can justifiably argue that the Israeli Defense Force under Netanyahu is the most effective recruitment arm of Hamas that has ever existed. The senseless murders of Palestinian civilians since October 7th has unquestionably brought many survivors of this horror perpetrated by Israel into the Hamas militant fold. 

    We here in the United States have listened eagerly to interviews with Palestinian survivors of incomprehensibly great losses who see that only forgiveness and reconciliation can stop the continuing killing on both sides. The forbearance and decency of those rare souls shames all of us lesser mortals even as we praise their nobility. Yet I cannot help but believe that each of those few great souls has more less forgiving and justifiably angrier counterparts who, even now, plot revenge against the state and people who have murdered their loved ones.

    I would suggest to the right wing Israelis eagerly cozying up to the Christian Evangelical neo-fascists of the United States that they question that support more closely. A significant majority of the Christian Evangelical Movement sees Israel as a major step toward the Armageddon, the return of Christ in glory and the genocide of all who refuse to accept their perverse version of Christianity. These Christian Evangelicals need Israel to exist as one step in their bizarre train of prophecies, a red calf without blemish to resanctify the Temple, Armageddon and the subsequent mass execution of Jews, Islamists and other "unbelievers" in the ashes of the destroyed world. Perhaps allying with those who look forward to your people's ultimate genocide is not the wisest alliance one might make. But that would require some thought to the future rather than for just immediate gain, commitment to intelligence rather than willful ignorance and forgiveness rather than revenge. In short, being humane rather than minimally human.

     Unfortunately, because of those who cannot understand that peace and security do not follow from anger and revenge, I write of a world that could but stubbornly refuses to exist in which weak, authoritarian leaders refuse to see anything beyond their own advantage, people dehumanized by a majority of others turnabout and dehumanize those that are a minority in their sphere and revenge for real and imagined wrongs incite more revenge from the revenged upon. It is a cycle of vengeance, a perfect circle that grows ever smaller as neighbors devour one another leaving nothing but horror, resentment and ashes generation after generation.

    I see little or no hope, little or no sanity and unsurpassed amounts of weeping. Still, the weeping can stop if the first step is a ceasefire.

 

WHICH SHEPHERD IS A GOOD SHEPHERD?

 

Long ago I was very committed to my Methodist religion. One of the parables that the great teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, gave to his friends and believers posited a "Good Shepherd". This shepherd was rather well to do. He had 100 sheep but, one day, he found that one had gone astray so he took the rather perilous step of leaving the 99 sheep that had stayed in the flock to go find the 100th sheep that had gone astray. While he was hunting for the strayed sheep anything could have happened to the other 99. Nothing, as far as we can tell from the parable, happened to the 99 that stayed together while he was away. In any case, this "Good Shepherd" so cared for that 100th sheep that he rejoiced on finding it, brought it back to his main flock and drove the whole hundred home. Generally this parable shows god's love and forgiveness for the sinner who goes astray while ignoring some very risky behavior by the "Good Shepherd".

I mention this parable, this little bit of New Testament lore, because there's been a lot of very odd talk about "sheep" lately.

In January of 2020, the United States began to see the effects of a new, deadly and unique virus designated as Covid-19. The then President of the United States, our Failed Orange Führer, decided to take this global pandemic personally and said, out loud, that it was a hoax designed to make him look bad. Of course, we all know that viruses know somewhere in their cytoplasm who is President of the United States and have a bias against neo-fascist Republiscum. Also, this predicates that it would somehow be possible for anything or person to make the Failed Orange Führer "look bad" given all that mighty work he himself had done to make himself and the nation "look bad". That "hoax" took over 600,000 American lives before the Failed Orange Führer left office.

The "hoax" of Covid-19 upended the lives of millions of Americans and continues to do so. Since the beginning of this year, 2021, we have safe and effective vaccines against Covid-19. Over the past year we have been told to take some reasonable measures to avoid spreading the virus or contracting it ourselves. Most of those measures have worked reasonably well in places where they have been generally adopted. Once the Failed Orange Führer made preventing Covid-19 a political act a lot of his followers made it their duty to protest and flaunt measures to reduce the virus' spread. The result has been that many of these Anti-Vaxxers and Anti-Maskers and Covid-Deniers are now clogging the emergency rooms and Intensive Care Units of the hospitals in the states where this madness is most rampant.

I generally ascribe to the view of the great John Donne:

...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Yet I have reached a point beyond which my forbearance does not reach. I am heartened by each tolling of each death's bell.

There is a joke about the Baptist/Christian/Evangelist faced with a flood. At successive levels of the waters' rise a canoe, a motorboat and a helicopter come to his rescue but each time he waves the rescuers off because his deep and unshakeable faith always insists that, "The Lord will provide!" Of course he drowns in the flood and, coming before his god he demands to know why he, a man of great faith, was allowed to drown. His god answers, "I sent you a canoe, a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?"

To the Anti-Vaxxers, Anti-Maskers and Covid-Deniers, I say, "Fuck you!" You were told to social distance. You were told to wear a mask to limit transmission. You were given multiple safe and effective vaccines and you were too fucking stupid to take those reasonable precautions so when you end up in an ICU on a ventilator for the last days of your miserable, ignorant and self-indulgent lives, tough shit! Die already and stop draining resources better spent on people who had 2 brain cells to rub together.

Frankly, if it weren't a violation of a medical professional's most basic oath, I would say that there should be some triage in the Emergency Room: if you've been vaccinated, you get the best care available. If not vaccinated, so long! Go home to die you pathetic imbecile! Don't overwork the medical staff or waste a bed in the hospital when the outcome you tried to achieve so assiduously is upon you.

As a good Liberal/Lefty I feel bad that I feel that way. I give about 15 minutes per day to mental self-flagellation for being so callous. The remaining 23¾ hours each day I shall smile at the removal of one more idiot from American society.

That said I will return to the parable of the "Good Shepherd" because the Anti-Vaxxers, Anti-Maskers, Covid-Deniers like to think of those who mask up, are vaccinated and take the deadly Covid-19 virus seriously as "sheep" even as they themselves follow the Judas Goats of the Failed Orange Führer and their evangelical preachers to death from Covid. So who are the "sheep"in this situation? Are the sheep the millions who are vaccinated against a deadly virus and who are, therefore, able to resume a semblance of a normal life? Or are the "sheep" the gullible imbeciles who are filing through the chute to the slaughter because they are so utterly and unalterably stupid that they can't see they will meet their end at the slaughter house blades shining before them? I'll give you 1 guess as to how I define "sheep".

Having written this I think I can smile ruefully for the next 96 hours before I need to do a 15 minutes of penance.

Praise the Lord And Put More Money In The Slot

 

I shouldn't be surprised. After all televangelism is all about putting money in the slot...sorry...collection plate to get the jackpot of salvation from your "big imaginary friend in the sky"©*. The other night I was watching a movie that someone else had put on the television when a Caesar's Casino ad blared forth (blare is a modest term for what they do) with the news of the...I am not making this up "The Jesus Slots". Now we have one-armed bandits to match the two-armed bandits like Creflo Dollar, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, Greg Locke, and their Simoniac ilk.

I thought that I had seen the ultimate when I saw the Jesus on the cross flicker picture that Cheech and Chong so effectively satirized. I also, years before that, saw at Easter season a chocolate-marshmallow crucifix, your sweet, chewy way to consume the body and the blood together. Yet "The Jesus Slots" bring us to a whole new level of religiose absurdity, I fear.

I have said before that Evangelicals have given Christianity a bad name what with their incessant money grubbing, not to mention their using religion as a pretext for tax avoidance and expounding and encouraging neo-fascist politics. Evangelicalism is the untreated sewage of Christianity. In fact, the marriage of Evangelical CHRISTIANS and the neo-Nazi Republiscum Party is a match...dare I say it?...made in heaven (the one that's only a myth like Santa Claus). Evangelicals will swallow whole and in amazing quantities any bullshit that the con artists posing as pastors and prophets feed them. The Rapture? Sure! Qanon? You betcha! Then there are the old standards like anti-Semitism, white supremacy, religious bigotry and hate of anyone who doesn't adhere to a lifestyle that they find glancingly referred to in some passage of the inerrant Bible that Jim Bakker or some other charlatan has just edited for his own flock of bleating sheep. The Republiscum Party is for "the little guy"! Sure!! That's why so many million and billionaires fork over a chunk of their quarterly dividend payments to keep the sheep thinking that nonsense.

But wait, you might say, most of these "bleating sheep" are simply good people, good, simple people. There's no need to insult and denigrate them. To which I say, your standards of "good" and mine differ widely. I exclude from "good people" the racists, the xenophobes, the hate-filled fools who rail against the gay or lesbian or transgendered, the religious bigots who insist that only their religion worships their particular and special, one and only "big imaginary friend in the sky"©* properly and that all others must be converted or destroyed, any "good people" who insist on following a "prophet" none of whose predictions come true, who insist that demons possess anyone not playing a part in a movie, who insist that women do not have a right to choose what happens within their own bodies or an education or work outside the home or refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands ever or report their husbands to police when the husbands abuse either the women themselves or their children. Such folks are not ever included in my definition of "good people".

These same insane people who insist that women have no individual right to choose abortion now rally to insist that they have the individual right to go maskless and infect others as well as refuse to take a safe and effective vaccine which could save their lives, the lives of those in their families, their neighbors, fellow congregants and also prevent the Covid-19 virus from mutating into more dangerous and deadly forms. To call these people insane and imbeciles is not hyperbolic. They can't discern that their refusal to get vaccinated and masked is as inimical to human life as they claim abortion to be. If they can't figure that out they are either insane, imbeciles or insane imbeciles or, worse yet, insane imbeciles who credit Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair or OANN.

Too harsh?

Let me put it to you this way: vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna, and several other companies, including Johnson & Johnson, have proven safe, effective and have reduced both infection and death rates in the United States and around the world. Those vaccines have allowed many areas' businesses to reopen, sometimes fully, and encouraged economic growth but that doesn't matter to the insane, the imbeciles, insane imbeciles and, to be redundant, Evangelicals among us whose latest snake oil cure-all is horse dewormer. The con men selling Ivermectin to their audience of fools will tell you that the Covid vaccines can make men sterile. They can't and don't but when have the facts ever stopped a con man? In place of the actual effective vaccine, they tout a veterinary medicine that actually can sterilize humans. When the con men know they have the attention of the insane, the imbecilic, the insane imbecilic and, to again be redundant, the Evangelicals their villainy knows no bounds. Yet a part of me thinks that sterilizing these fools is a thing devoutly to be wished.

We should not be surprised at this. Evangelicals are so steeped in the idea that this life is a "world of sin", "a veil of tears", a world so deeply flawed that their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* has decreed that it should be destroyed and that we are thus in "The End Times", that their great joy is the total destruction of their "big, imaginary friend's" handiwork. It never occurs to these fools that planning your life for the destruction of your god's creation might be offensive to that very god they claim to worship.

The bleating sheep who trust that their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* will protect them from a world-wide pandemic are dying like flies. In states run by the Republiscum Party, the infection and death rates soar while their preachers and radio blabbers tell them that their god is angry at the United States for allowing (take your pick from the following list):

• Abortion
• LGBTQ rights
• Black Lives Matter
• The Anti-Fascist Movement known as antifa
• Eliminating prayer in schools
• Feminism
• Not reelecting The Failed Orange Führer
• Rigging the 2020 election to defeat The Failed Orange Führer
• Allowing anyone to even think about Critical Race Theory
• Teaching Evolution 
• Liberalism
• Communism
• Any "ism" that your preacher says is bad
• Some cabal of politicians, celebrities and folks they don't like that are actually reptiles who steal the essence, blood, pheromones, something from babies and children and wear red, high-heeled shoes
  
• All of the above

They never seem to wonder why their "big, imaginary friend in the sky"©* is taking it out on his worshipers of the "one, true faith" and not killing off the nasty people included in the list above. Could it be that the disasters inflicted on these "good people" happen randomly, or because of climate change (oops! I almost forgot. It's not climate change it's Chinese weather machines and Jewish Space Lasers!") or maybe, just maybe, if their is a god looking out for his special planet, those disasters get visited upon the "good people" because their god is pissed off that they are so utterly stupid and wants to sift the Evangelical chaff from the Liberal grain so that creation, with all it's nasty flaws, can continue to chug along without their bullshit?

We'll just have to wait and see who gets the jackpot from the "Jesus Slots" of life.

To close, let me quote Maxwell Anderson's lyrics for the title song of the musical Lost in the Stars:

Before the Lord God made the sea and the land

He held all the stars in the palm of his hand

And they ran through his fingers like grains of sand

And one little star fell alone.

Then the Lord God hunted through the white, night air

For the little dark star on the winds down there

And he stated and promised he'd take special care

So it wouldn't get lost any more.

Now a man doesn't mind if the stars grow dim

Or the clouds roll over and darken him

As long as the Lord God's watching over them

Keeping track how it all goes on.

But I've been walking through the night and the day

'Til my eyes get weary and my head turns grey

And sometimes it seems maybe God's gone away

Forgetting the promise that we heard him say

And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars blowing through the night

And we're lost out here in the stars.

Little stars, big stars

Blowing through the night

And we're lost out here in the stars!

*©George Carlin

The Idiot Opposition I Can Deal With; It's the Assholes Who Are With Me That Are The Problem

 

As a high school and college student, I was expelled from many left wing groups. I was not some right wing gadfly in their lefty ointment. Actually I was expelled or simply not invited back because I kept seeing the absurdity or outright wrong in their positions. Often I was too far left for the group. Even more often I'd get nixed because I pointed out some nonsense they were spouting by laughing it all the way out the door, that is my exit, not that of the stupid idea.

Back in 2016, as a delegate to my county's Democratic Convention, I was involved in a debate over a party platform plank regarding discrimination. A lady from one community was adamant that the plank had to delineate ad nauseam every sub and sub-sub-group of those who could be discriminated against unfairly. Her heart was in the correct place but she was engaging in a kind of rhetorical overkill. Another woman, a solid Democrat (else why would she be a convention delegate?) rose to object saying, "But I don't want to outlaw all discrimination. I want to discriminate against the people I don't like." Without meaning to she had summarized the whole history of discrimination in 2 sentences. I did my best to stifle my shocked guffaw and took the microphone to say that her caveat was not exactly what we want in the platform. I wasn't thrown out but she did look daggers at me.

Now we have a lunatic fringe that denounces public health on the very thin reasoning that they should not be required to...

...wear a mask in public if they don't want to

...get vaccinated against a deadly disease if they don't want to

...avoid large gatherings if they don't want to

...do anything they don't want to

I have 3 daughters all of whom are long since grown to adulthood with families of their own. Yet when my daughters were 2 and 3 years old I didn't tolerate that behavior from them nor should we tolerate such 2 and 3 year old attitudes from people who are posing as adults. In fact, I told one of my daughters, when she was almost 3 years old and throwing a tantrum because she didn't want to do something that the rest of the family was about to do, "I love you. Daddy will always love you no matter what but you are 2 if you want to be 3, do what I tell you." She didn't quite understand how I could prevent her up coming birthday, but it puzzled her enough that the tantrum stopped and she complied.

Here we are in the second year of a pandemic with a renewed surge of a new variant of the virus and the 2 and 3 year olds among us are throwing tantrums over being asked to wear masks in public, get vaccinated and avoid large gatherings with strangers whose vaccination and infection status they have no way of knowing. These willful and stupid infants don't think clearly enough to understand that their overwhelmingly idiotic behavior is what is causing the Covid-19 virus to spread and mutate. They are the reason that masking and avoiding large gatherings is necessary.

These petty, selfish infants, regardless of age, have come up with many excuses for not getting vaccinated. They insist that the vaccine has made them magnetic, made men sterile by killing of sperm, includes a microchip so that Bill Gates can personally track every one of the millions of people who've been vaccinated, isn't safe because it hasn't received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration which, by the way, they think is in thrall to satan worshiping, child sex trafficers who steal the child's 1)essence, 2)blood, 3) vital organs, 4)something else unspecified while wearing red high heels so that the FDA can't be believed even when they do fully approve a vaccine after millions of harmless injections have been made.

It's like the 2 year old screaming, "You say we're going to get ice cream but there isn't any ice  cream I like in the whole wide world except strawberry that NOBODY HAS!" Objecting that the supermarket down the street has freezers full of ice cream including strawberry makes no difference in the mind of that 2 year old who stubbornly won't take a cone of strawberry ice cream offered because it's "not the right kind of strawberry."

To get to the point, I now believe that our society is well within its rights to protect the majority of the population by chase down every anti-vaxxer 2 year old of any age, restrain him or her and pump that person's arm full of vaccine. I am also for crazy gluing masks to the faces of those brats when they are in public.

Also, to bring this diatribe full circle, I am for gagging my friends on the left and craven dunces in the mass media for giving any credence to the infants' arguments. No more pussy footing around the unestablished rights of individuals to put the health of community after community at risk simply because these idiots look like rational individuals when they regularly demonstrate that they are not.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote that, "My right to throw my fist ends at the other person's nose." The idiot 2 year olds right to go unvaccinated and unmasked ends at the virus I might inhale. To that end, I think that the anti-vaxxers and unmasked have no special rights at all and that good Liberal folks who might think that the idiots have a point, should shut the hell up and help hold the idiot down while someone vaccinates them.