THE PICTURE ON THE RADIO

I have 3 daughters. All 3 are now successful, amazing adults. The oldest was almost 7 when the youngest was born. My middle daughter was almost 6 then. I listen to the radio for my news because I find myself getting too emotional when I watch most news on television. Sometimes, however, the reporter on the radio paints so vivid and disturbing a picture with mere, momentarily unambiguous words that those words conjure up is more vivid than any photograph or film from the greatest of masters. No masterpiece by Diane Arbus, Robert Caps or W. Eugene Smith could be any clearer.

Where I live the day was sunny, a harbinger of early spring. Perhaps it was also like that where the father the reporter described sat. This father sat wailing on the littered ground near a hospital. He cradled in his arms 2 children, a boy of 7 years and a girl of 2. He kept trying to open his daughter's eyes in vain insistence that she remain alive. This toddler was as dead as her older brother. 

According to the war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his genocidal government, this father and his dead babies are Hamas. According to the murderous scum who currently govern the nation of Israel this father trying to reanimate his dead daughter with some impossible magic from his tears is a terrorist.

No such horror ever befell me or my daughters but once my youngest nearly died because she'd caught a flu. I woke one Saturday morning late when she was just 9 months old  because she hadn't cried for a diaper change and feeding. For a week she hadn't been able to keep anything down, not Jello water, not Coke syrup, not even Emetrol. Now she was a listless ragdoll, eyes open in a motionless body. I got her to, first, a pediatrician and then to a hospital where an IV line ending in syringe larger than her delicate arm pushed fluid and life back into her. 

I was too enfolded in frantic efforts to save my daughter to fall to falling tears. I don't remember whether I spent that night in the hospital with her or just many of the other nights during her stay but I did stay by her crib about half the nights of her stay. She is now a nurse practitioner who works in hospital Emergency Rooms. She has 3 daughters of her own. My experience is in no way commensurate with that of the father in Gaza wailing over his 2 dead children after Netanyahu's resumption of his genocide in Gaza. Still the fear and distress I felt 45 years ago came streaming back to me as I heard of this poor father on March 18th. 

I can also honestly state that we're I cradling my children murdered by a war criminal more concerned with retaining his political power than in pretending to understand the least mote of human decency, I would be a terrorist from that moment on. I would find no space in my heart for any Israeli father or mother and his or her children. The next time a terrorist act by some Palestinian parent unconscionably murders some Israeli children don't place the blame on the Palestinians but rather lay those  children's bodies on Benjamin Netanyahu's doorstep. 

For each grieving parent of Palestine should there not be a matching, grieving parent in Israel? Should there not be a tear-filled Israeli eye for each tear-blinded Palestinian eye until, as Mahatma Ghandi observed, the whole world is blind?

It should be obvious to anyone with even a small amount of human decency and commitment to logic that to stop the murders the murders must stop. People on both sides of the Gaza border must have sufficient food and water and medical care and supplies. People on both sides of the Gaza border must have the right and ability to govern themselves in a way that is responsible to themselves and to their neighbors. People on neither side of the Gaza border should be subjected to some lunatic's pipedream of a casino infested beachfront resort unless it is their own will to do so. People on neither side of the Gaza border should be required to bow down before the statue of some golden calf, especially if the statue is of a golden bullshitter.

The Netanyahu government and Bibi himself are terrorists just as surely as were those Palestinians who attacked on October 7, 2023. Eliminating the murderers of Hamas is a useful goal as long as the murders of the current Israeli government are eliminated too by shipping them to the International Criminal Court and letting them rot in prison cells. Maybe Netanyahu and his equally criminal right-wing cronies could be forced to share cells with murderous Hamas criminals so they could express their blind hatred against one another while decent Israeli and Palestinians work out how to peacefully share the land of their father, Abraham.

Finally, I want to make one other point clear:

Peacefully demonstrating opposition to any government is NOT terrorism.

If you pass through a park, quadrangle, hall or room in which someone you don't like is advocating something you dislike you and only you are responsible for your feelings. Unless those you oppose accost you in some way you have not been harmed. Seeing something or someone from a distance and disliking it is nothing to you so long as you can leave the place and no longer see it. If you are free to leave or just turn your head and not see it and you claim this item is assault, it's you who need counseling and potential removal from society rather than someone else.

If someone shouts, "From the river to the sea!" from across a college campus in your direction that might be anti-Semitism but it's not any kind of assault until and unless that someone is shouting again when you are both toe to toe and nose to nose. Unfortunately, in the United States of 2025 shouting, "Support Ukraine" could get you deported regardless of your citizenship status or your distance from some neo-fascist either home grown or from South Africa.

But, as usual, I digress.

Neither Gaza nor Israel nor the world need another grieving father holding his dead children. The clear way to stop more such horror is to stop the murdering of civilians. The clear way to stop the genocide in Gaza is to remove Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet of fascist fanatics from government. By elections would benefit everyone but removal is the imperative and I'm open to suggestions as long as the remover isn't Palestinian.

HEY! WE CAN'T FIND THE FOREST BECAUSE ALL THESE TREES ARE IN THE WAY!

Ever since Luigi Mangione was arrested at a Pennsylvania McDonald's in connection with the murder of CEO Brian Thompson reporters in all media have been shocked - shocked terribly - by two aspects of this suspected murderer's case. First is the popular public perception that Mangione is both a hero and handsome. The second universal reaction of print and electronic media in amazed disbelief that this scion of wealth, privilege and exceptional education could be a cold-blooded murderer.

Let me address the first perception now. Mangione is no hero. UnitedHealth Care is, by all accounts,.the heartless, cold-blooded killer of many.people whose medical care might reduce UnitedHealth Care's profits by a few pennies. That is vile. That is wrong. That is capitalism. Unless we are ready to stringently enforce an humane moral code on medical insurers, the heartless capitalism of UnitedHealth Care will continue to be the norm. Killing is inherently wrong. Killing one CEO blindly intent on increased profits only makes room for another of his ilk with better personal security to take his place. Not only is the Thompson murder inherently wrong, it was entirely pointless.

As for Luigi Mangione's attractiveness, that's undeniable. The men and women attracted to him must answer for their own compromised morals and their lack of decency and clear thinking.

What concerns me most is the second matter, theaà media's comprehensive inability to understand how Mangione could become a murderer. The first mistake lies in that word "become". How, they ask, does a young man of wealth, privilege and superior education become a murderer? The media ask this as if wealth, privilege and education inoculated one against illegality, crime and sociopathy. The answer is in the question. We have examples of great sociopathy from the educated and rich all the time though we choose to reward the sociopaths with wealth, privilege and educate them to be more antisocial than they already are.

Take as current examples both Donald John Trump and his bosom buddy, Elon Musk. Neither man has the least scintilla of decency, sense of shame or feeling for humanity at large. Trump can vilify destitute people who come to our borders in the hope of earning an infinitesimal piece of what we call "The American Dream". For their temerity in begging for a crust from the great American feast, Trump.would separate them from their children, send them to vile, for profit camps and then deport them to countries that they fled in fear of their lives  Musk would minutely examine government with an object of slashing the largely mythical "waste, fraud and abuse" in all areas excepting the military where actual "waste, fraud and abuse" is truly rampant and also excepting the billions of taxpayer dollars that have massively enriched.him. Musk would ravage USAID (U. S. Agency for International Developmen) because some branches found that his SkyLink was involved in some shady practices while, in Trumpean fashion, calling the Agency investigating Musk's criminal organization a "criminal organization".

We have had examples aplenty of Luigi Mangiones/Elon Musks over more than a century, at least since Harry K. Thaw shot Sanford White in Madison Square's Roof Garden in 1906 and probably as far back as when, during our Civil War, wealthy people could hire a substitute when drafted for military service. Money and social standing always trump (a term from games of cards though apt in our political context too) duty and justice with money trumping all.

What is remarkable is that there aren't more handsome sociopaths committing crimes out on our streets. But then again, they have corporate boardrooms in which.their crimes are muffled by actuarial tables and defended by highly paid.attornies adept at making the law conform to the desires of the highest bidder. One might think that Lady Justice often peeks beneath her blindfold to be enchanted by a pretty face while collecting cash in some fulsome fold of her flowing skirts. We shall see what peeking and profiting will make of Luigi Mangione's case as this dreadful year drags on.

The ultimate point here is that plenty of people are brought up in famous and toney private schools, ivy League colleges and business schools to believe in their blackest of black hearts that they are a perversion of the Nietschean Superman. Their every whim and act are above reproach because they are handsome, well connected, monied and privileged regardless of any crime they commit, regardless of the number of ugly, friendless, poor or underprivileged who die or are afflicted with the hell of unremitting poverty. 

Are we truly so jaded, unfeeling and selfish that we will follow in the footsteps of Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk and Luigi Mangione? Can those amongst us charged with speaking truth to power truly not see the dense forest of criminals hiding behind the pretty face of a Luigi Mangione?