From the Department of Plain Speaking Politicians

 

A career foreign service officer, Bridget Brink served as US ambassador to Ukraine under Biden. Now she's running for Congress in her home state of Michigan. It seems possible that having been witness up close to a genuinely existential struggle leaves this observer with "no fucks to give" in a political race. 

Over images from the Russian assault on Ukraine, Brink declares: "Appeasing a dictator will never achieve a lasting peace..."

The House district is competitive. There will be other Democratic contestants. I have no idea whether this approach will "work" for Brink, but I find it refreshing.

• • • 

As we watch helplessly while Donald Trump playacts the strongman in the most volatile arena in today's world, it doesn't hurt to be reminded of what war, even a "small" war, looks like.

Agonies in Gaza, Israel, and the USofA

Jewish leaders have turned our commitment to one another into a moral sedative. ... By seeing a Jewish state as forever abused, never the abuser, we deny its capacity for evil. Before October 7, I thought I understood the dangers of this way of thinking. Turns out I had no idea. From Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning

Peter Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. In the late '90s and early '00s, Beinart was associated with an annoying cluster of bright young intellectuals at The New Republic magazine who eagerly sought to differentiate themselves from the historical liberal traditions of their perch. Their cheerleading for America's invasion of Iraq was boundless -- until that set of fantasies collapsed amid broken American and Iraqi bodies and a broken society.

Of those folks (mostly men I think) Beinart seems the one who truly turned from ignorant, self-important cleverness toward engagement with deeper verities -- in his case through Orthodox Jewish tradition and practice. He has made himself a committed, honest observer of his world. Integrity requires of him to engage with Palestinian truths and living people as well as with his own Jewish community.

This book is his cri de coeur occasioned by the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, the subsequent Israeli war of extermination against Palestinians in Gaza (and parts of the Palestinian West Bank), and the apparent extinction of a moral compass within his own small-minded and frightened American Jewish community. He surveys the history of Israel forming itself as a Jewish state, Israeli and American attachment to a victimization mindset, the erasure of Palestinian history and lives, and the failure of all parties to see a way forward without genocide.

I am not the intended audience for this book; he's not writing to a loosely-lefty Christian American lesbian. This book speaks neither to my particular struggles nor my particular terrors. Yet I am inspired by his unstinting choice to look directly at awful realities.

Beinart's concludes:

... it’s worth remembering that the Bible considers states—which in its time meant kingdoms—very perilous things. While they may be necessary to avoid chaos, they can easily become instruments of oppression. When the Israelite elders ask the prophet Samuel for a king, God instructs him to both grant their wish and list the many cruelties a monarch will inflict. Kings are most dangerous when they view themselves ...  as inherently holy and thus infallible.

In Jewish tradition, states have no inherent value. States are not created in the image of God; human beings are. States are mere instruments. They can protect human flourishing, or they can destroy it. ... The legitimacy of a Jewish state—like the holiness of the Jewish people—is conditional on how it behaves.

... Treating a state as a god is a very frightening endeavor. It confers upon mortals a level of veneration that we do not deserve and will always abuse.

... To defend Israel, American Jews are harming our community and our country. More than half a century ago, the writer I. F. Stone noted that “Israel is creating a kind of moral schizophrenia in world Jewry.” Jews whose welfare in our own countries “depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial, pluralistic societies” were championing a Jewish state “in which the ideal is racial and exclusionist.”

And now all humans between the river and the sea will be further afflicted by the antics of our own orange-faced toddler real estate mogul ... what more could go wrong?

One year later, somebody has to break the cycle

Can the back and forth, the trading of atrocity and revenge, go on until they are all dead -- until we are all dead? Perhaps. Certainly nothing in the news -- from Palestine, from Israel, from Gaza, the West Bank, from Lebanon, from Iran -- suggests any end ...

Maybe these folks -- Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians working together in Standing Together -- seem the only sane voices around. Or maybe they are charlatans. But if so,  they are the kind of charlatans the world needs.

... For as long as we can remember, people who called for peace and non-violence were considered “naïve,” stupid, or even traitors. If the past year has taught us anything - it is that there is nothing more naïve than believing that this cycle of bloodshed and wars is sustainable. There is nothing more naïve than believing that the path we have been on until now is a path we should stay on.

The truth is that on this land live millions of Palestinians and millions of Jews, and nobody is going anywhere. Working toward a sustainable peace that guarantees everyone freedom, safety, equality and independence is imperative for anyone in this land who wants to see a future here. The fates of Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, are tied. So no, we are not naïve, and you are not either.

In the face of decades of bloodshed and a year of unfathomable violence and destruction, we are insisting on Jewish-Palestinian solidarity, and insisting on calling an end to the bloodshed once and for all. We are calling on our society to fight for life, in the face of our leadership that only speaks of death. We are calling on everyone around the world to pick a side - but for that side not to be Israelis or Palestinians - for the side to be all of us, the Israeli and Palestinian people on the ground who all deserve a real future, against our leaderships that are only dragging us further into the abyss.

There can be no justice, but can there be peace?

We forget at our peril

Seventy-nine years ago today, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the city and people of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later we dropped a bomb of slightly different design on the city and people of Nagasaki. Two hundred thousand people were killed immediately. Survivors, a dying cohort, live on with varying degrees of disability.

The New York Times has produced a sensitive introduction to the remaining hibakusha. Here's a gift link.

 

The arrival of the Atomic Age had intense impacts on the childhoods of my age cohort, American children of '50s and '60s. We knew we might be blown away if the powers-that-be miscalculated. We practiced absurd "duck and cover" drills in elementary school. Most of us knew these exercises were what we later learned to call "security theater." (Did the adults put us through this to push back against their own secret terrors? I wonder.)

 

Now we scarcely think about the Bomb at all. The kind of people who specialize in these things fear we're in as great danger of blowing ourselves up as we've ever been.

But the worst hasn't happened yet. Seventy-nine years ...

A labor union take on Christmas

To be watched at full screen size if at all possible. If you get some annoying ad when you click on this, you can get rid of it after 5 seconds.

A simple homily from a great

For a long time, and perhaps still, anyone listing the greats of the National Basketball Association would quickly name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Now 76, and having overcome several health challenges, he's still doing what he's done since retiring at 42: working for a better world. 

These days, Abdul-Jabbar writes a carefully constructed newsletter which is well worth your time. Here's an example of the sort of message he posts.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. – Jesus, Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12

This quote is often referred to as The Golden Rule because almost all religions and philosophies can be distilled into this one universal idea. To follow this is to have achieved full potential as a human being. There are hundreds of similar sayings from every religion and most philosophers throughout history, many from hundreds of years before Jesus or the Bible. (For a comprehensive list, check out The Golden Rule Project.) For example:

• “Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BCE), Analects 15:23 (Confucianism)

• “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” Tripitaka Udanavarga 5:18 (Buddhism)

• “Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.” Socrates

• “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others that which you wish for yourself.” The Prophet Muhammad Hadith (Islam)

The reason I chose to highlight the [Christian] biblical version over the other variations is that most of the others approach the concept as a warning about what not to do. But the biblical quote frames it so that we should diligently “do unto others,” meaning not just avoid harming, but intentionally going out and doing good. The Islamic admonishment— “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others that which you wish for yourself.”—has that same vibe. One should wish for others what we would want. But that still stops short of actively doing. That little difference is what makes the biblical teaching the most challenging to follow.

So simple—yet, so hard. Sudoku for the soul. The main challenge to living by this teaching is that we can MacGyver it whenever the going gets tough. We find a sneaky workaround that allows us to ignore the rule, but still feel virtuous: “That person hurt me, therefore they don’t deserve my doing unto them.” “That person doesn’t follow the teaching so why should I follow it with them?” And so forth. We’re ingenious when it comes to tricking ourselves.

The thing is, the teaching doesn’t say “do unto some others” or “do unto deserving others.” Just others. That’s the point. By following the teaching, two practical things happen: First, you are overcoming your own biases and emotional roadblocks to become a better person. This will lift a lot of burdens from you and make you happier. Second, through your selfless example, you are helping to create a world in which everyone follows this teaching. You’re creating “others'“ who will also do unto you.

Sadly, this is the most popular and least followed teaching. Part of the reason is that many people can’t distinguish between doing unto others and imposing on others. Doing unto others is to treat others as they wish to be treated. However, some prefer to impose their beliefs and value systems on others instead. Which would be the opposite of the teaching. The goal of these people is not to do good, but to feel good about themselves.

I think of this quote whenever my pettiness, ego, stubbornness, or biases nudge me to be rude, dismissive, or even cruel. To deliberately inflict emotional pain on another is shameful. It is a transgression we have all committed, but to pull out a Richard Wilbur quote I recently wrote about, “The past is never past redeeming.”

We can do better unto ourselves. We must do better unto others.

Yes, Abdul-Jabbar also has plenty of opinions about how the powerful act in the world, always tending to highlight both the need for more justice and striving for more peace. He's still a great among us.