Do the Jews Not Belong in the United States?

My new column at Salon on that crazy comment from Joe Biden that I talked about the other day. Only now I look a little further into it:

A country that once offered itself as a haven to persecuted Jews across the world now tells its Jews that in the event of some terrible outbreak of anti-Semitism they should… what? Plan on boarding the next plane to Tel Aviv? It’s like some crazy fiction from Philip Roth, except that when Roth contemplated an exodus in “Operation Shylock,” it was to imagine the Jews fleeing Israel for Poland.

The reason no one has been ruffled by his statement, I suspect, has less to do with any special sensitivity to Jewish experience than with an ancient, not altogether wholesome, notion that the Jews are somehow different. Historically, Jews were thought to be indigestible, never fully a part of the polity, exotic, other, with divided loyalties, not deserving or even worthy of the same respect or treatment accorded to other peoples.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with Jews wanting to be separate and apart, or even with their having divided loyalties (my problem with the State of Israel is of a different order). But it’s that issue of respect and equal treatment that bothers me, of the Jew being marked by the state for special handling, even when—especially when—it’s framed as an expression of compassion and sensitivity. I’m as leery of philosemitism as I am of anti-Semitism. While intended to demonstrate his intuitive knowledge of Jewish anxieties and empathy for Jewish concerns, Biden’s comment betrays, in its Bideneseque way, an almost blasé conviction that, in the end, the Jew doesn’t really belong here, that his real home lies elsewhere.

When it comes to Israel, it’s often said, the normal rules don’t apply. When compared to the experience of Malcolm X or the statements of JFK, Biden’s remarks suggest that that’s true. But it’s not just Israel that’s being treated as an exception here. It’s the Jews. And that’s not something that should be applauded. Least of all by Jews.

13 Comments

  1. Joanna Bujes March 29, 2015 at 1:27 pm | #

    I dunno Corey. I see what you’re saying. But I read something different between the lines…and that is that the US owes absolute and unconditional support to Israel. End of story.

  2. Danah Rae March 29, 2015 at 2:29 pm | #

    I’m pretty on board with this perspective. I think you said it best when you mentioned being just as wary of philosemitism as of anti-Semitism.

    I’m also not at all clear on how or why the US would owe absolute and unconditional support to Israel. It’s a complex situation with a lot of moving parts, but I don’t really see anything as being owed to Israel, particularly unconditional support. Unconditional would mean that Israel could do absolutely anything, even something immoral or unjust, and we would be obligated to support them. I don’t feel that way.

  3. jonnybutter March 29, 2015 at 2:40 pm | #

    If I’m reading it right, I actually think this is a good catch on Corey’s part. It’s not about Biden particularly. Biden is just the necessary component to make the chemical reaction happen. He’s kind of person who you can’t trust to shut the fk up, the kind of person who will get carried away and take a little too seriously and a little too literally the pandering and flattering posture *everyone* strikes; when he really gets wound up, which is often, he may take whatever it is to its absurd logical end, as he does here. He is putting his foot in his mouth in a revealing way – it is revealing about how completely out of whack American Israel policy is.

    I don’t know how liberal (or any) zionists rationalize their acceptance of (and even lobbying for) support from US right wing christians, the latter of who’s worldview is patently anti-semitic (albeit in the form of a putative philo-semitism, which is the other side of the same coin). But however they do rationalize it, stuff like Corey’s piece makes the rationalization harder to maintain. I notice there are a lot of very hostile, angry comments under the Salon piece. My my.

    Of COURSE Biden means to say that the US owes unconditional support to Israel (which is weird enough when you think about it – really? ‘unconditional’?!) but he goes farther, and says something more ridiculous – something he probably wouldn’t agree with a high official of the US government saying if you were to put it to him independently. Biden is probably just being competitive – ‘Oh yeah? Look how far I can get MY tongue up their asses! Further than you, skippy!’ But it is revealing all the same, IMHO.

  4. Mushin March 29, 2015 at 3:11 pm | #

    Cory,
    I am assuming you are Jewish based on my reading. One thing that you can always count on with Jewish people is intellectual rigor in conversations. We need a breakthrough before mushroom clouds on the horizon become a reality scaring the children worldwide. I was climbing under my desk and marching to bomb shelters in 1961 and that was nothing compared to this tinder box in the middle east. Where is the biology of love in this calamity?

    “Global politics and economics is driven by patriarchal cultural’s mistrust and control, through manipulation and appropriation, through domination and submission, interferes with the biology of love, pushing human relations away from the domain of collaboration and mutual respect towards the domain of political alliances, mutual manipulation, and mutual abuse. As the biology of love is interfered with in our lives, our social life comes to an end; we become blind, deaf, mute and unreachable with respect to our children, and we instrumentalize them for the perpetuation of our alienation in mistrust, manipulation , and control, in life of mutual negation.

    This is not a trivial concern. With the loss of collaboration in the loss of mutual trust and mutual respect, political relations prevail, and the acceptance of the legitimacy of the manipulation on the biosphere in general, and of the human life in particular, becomes the norm in the service of technology though the blindness on non-systemic thinking. If technology becomes the most fundamental and central feature of human endeavors, then indeed it does not matter that in in the technological expansion and complication of human activities human beingness as HOMO SAPIENS AMANS should be lost to be replaced by the conservation of some new beings like HOMO SAPIENS AGGRESSANS or HOMO SAPIENS ARROGANS, for example. The conservation of some new Homo sapiens identities will change the course of human history, and human beingness as Homo sapiens amans shall disappear, or it will remain hidden in some distant pockets of primitive life. Poets of science fiction have played with this idea. But, if loving humanness remains important and valuable for us human beings, then technology will not determine human life, and the biology of intimacy, will continue to be the source and the fundament of the psychic identity of our descendants as human beings of the Homo sapiens amans kind. But, how can it happen?

    The biosphere does not care about human existence in general or about our existence as loving human beings in particular. Nor does the earth or the cosmos care. It is only us Homo sapiens amans who care, or can care about humanness, or about the biosphere, or about the earth as our living space as loving human beings. And we shall care only as long as we conserve our loving humanness by living in care for ourselves and other living beings in the biology of love, because that is what makes us loving human beings.”
    (The Origin of Humanness in the Biology of Love” Maturana, Verden-Zoller, 2008 Chapter Our Present page 119-120)

    There are no special Homo sapiens-amans in my final analysis just a growing arrogance and aggression of patriachality’s demand for obedience negating loving humanness in social reality as an educational political economic possible possibility. The reason I freely choose to be Lakota “Primitive” is to fuel my deep rooted ecological knowing as a Homo sapiens amans and because of the insanity of especially western religions that I parachuted into as a cognitive agent at birth. My mother never signed up for any these behaviors in my upbringing and has nothing to do with gender rather becoming a human being. Patriarchal culture over the past 2,500+ years has enslaved the entire world in this patriarchal Cartesian nonsense of sacrosanct political economics now threatening WW III in technological arrogant aggression based on being special or chosen or some other ideological indoctrinated philosophical belief system based in patronization by power on the free recursive requisite variety in authentic spontaneous loving humanness constituting primitive matrix of human existence. This isn’t an imaginary ungrounded claim of reality because there are thousands of persistent native cultures through out the world resisting this politicalization process of patriarchy. This condition in patriarchal culture in the present moment of truth in human history is making the entire world ill, sick, distrusting, confused, resentful, resigned and despairing that any future for Homo sapiens amans is even possible in such collective psychotic leadership in education of political economic future praxis. The notion that man was created to be either a robotic transactional configuration in economics, or a warrior on battlefields, or famous cordial hypocrite in political discourse is absurd. Young people are tired of it and there are barbarians at the gates of the city ready to burn Rome, USA and Israel. Ubunta “I am because we are.” The suffering of one person is the suffering of all peoples, and the honor of one person is the honor of all peoples. This isn’t rocket science and children get it.

    A few additional quotes:
    “We claim that this is what has happened over the last 7,000 years with the origin of our Western patriarchal culture, as it arose through the change in the living of our ancestors from the emotioning of love and trust to a living in the emotioning of mistrust, appropriation and control. And this is so much so, that in our daily involvement with our living in patriarchality we have even come to develop theories to justify our political living, pretending that we do so in agreement with our biological conditions to justify on others to comply with the manner of living that we want them to live. Moreover, we are so immersed in the emotioning of mistrust, control, and appropriation that we use our great consenual capacity (namely, our intelligence) to transform those particular aspects of our community living that are the networks of conversations that constitute relational domains such as science, religions, philosophical theories, or money into instruments of political use…..Political existence destroys intimacy, as it is founded on relations of domination and submission, not on relations of love. Whatever trust there is in it, or appears to be in it, is transitory, either because it is hypocritical, or because it is an instrument of political design. Thus, in a political coexistence sex stops being the foundation for intimacy and the most basic source of pleasure in human relations, and becomes an instrument for political manipulations. Political life endangers the conservation of the mother/child relation as a relation of total trust and mutual body acceptance in play, and interferes with proper child upbringing in the emotioning self and social respect that constitutes the fundament of our human identity….political life instrumentalizes all relations, it also instrumentalizes child upbringing by making it a function of designs in the future….in our historical present the expansion of the patriarchal emotioning, that leads to the utilization of all human relations as political as well as commercial instruments, makes it almost impossible for a child to grow spontaneously in a manner centered in the biology of love… (few quotes from pages 88-94)

    “For in the final analysis, our most common link is we all inhabit this small planet, we all breath the same air, we all cherish cherish our children’s futures and we are all mortal.” John F. Kennedy

    I don’t expect a response it’s too deep and meaningful. Most people I know live to avoid and deny the black swans in favor of enlightened entertainment. What a shame!

  5. walt March 29, 2015 at 5:40 pm | #

    Gore Vidal had something to say on this ‘unconditional’ support of a theocratic state that lies to the East of Egypt :

    I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel’s unlikely patron. Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a ‘homeland’. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than two per cent has bought or intimidated seventy senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying support of the media. In a sense, I rather admire the way that the Israel lobby has gone about its business of seeing that billions of dollars, year after year, go to make Israel a ‘bulwark against communism’. Actually, neither the USSR nor communism was ever much of a presence in the region. What America did manage to do was to turn the once friendly Arab world against us.

    • sol neeman March 29, 2015 at 9:05 pm | #

      Gore Vidal,
      The amount of hatred hidden towards Israel in the piece cited, can exceed only its stupidity.
      The MAJORITY of the US population supports Israel and this is what every government should do- they simply follow that majority. If you see the majority of the congress and the senate standing with ovations when the Prime Minister of Israel give a speech and they pass legislation to support Israel, you need not be a genius to understand that they are fulfilling the will of the people who selected them for their position. It is only delusional degenerates who’s hatred blind them to realize that Israel is there and will be there and will be supported by the US because it is the only country with western values in the region.

  6. sol neeman March 29, 2015 at 8:51 pm | #

    Corey,
    What Biden had said is a profound statement that unfortunately is true. Most people are short sighted, with a perspective that spans just a few decades and obscured by the comfortable circumstances they live in.
    Look back at the last 2000 years of Jewish history to understand that the Jewish people is different from any other people, black or Irish. Think about the enormity of the convoluted psych that Christianity created in the christian world regarding the Jews, a psyche that seems to stay regardless of time, culture or geography. A psyche that was at the basis of some of the worse atrocities again any people. The fact that Jews enjoy equality in the US in the last 50 years or so is not significant at all. Even now you can find in US campuses the kind of irrational, insane and frantic hatred for Israel that anyone with a sound mind can see its roots are in anti- Semitisim. And this hatred is not limited to the uneducated, poor or rich. It comes in different disguise, sometimes more blunt than others and sometimes in such a sophisticated disguise that it is not easily comprehensible. This hatred can materialize at any point of time. It can happen tomorrow or the next day that the circumstances in the US will change in a way that no one can predict or imagine, and the the scape goats will be the Jews. In this respect, anyone who makes any comparison of the Jewish people to any other people, has no understanding of the uniqueness of the situation of the Jewish people.
    And so, with all the unpleasant, inappropriate, even frightening connotations of what Biden said, he only stated a truth, one that Jews have to remember at all times: Wherever you are, don’t feel too comfortable because it may be only temporary, and yes, it is only in Israel that this irrational, crazy hatred towards Jews does not exist. So, if you are a Jew, make sure to protect and defend Jewish state since this is the only place that will be there for you when calamities and atrocities against Jews will burst out, as they did all along during the last 2000 years.

  7. Dean Rosenthal March 29, 2015 at 9:10 pm | #

    What a preposterous article, baiting anyone, especially Jews, who may already be semi-paranoid of persecution and anti-Semitism at every turn, as many brethren Jews can be…I hadn’t come across your writing before, but this facile, blatantly soporific article has now permanently
    convinced me you are not a serious thinker. Geez, next you’ll tell me that John Boehner secretly worshiped satantic tax dividends as a teenager and why should we let him run for public office in this great country? Pick a better Jew-bait target next time than Joe
    Biden, who also once described his boss as “clean and articulate”. Proof that Salon does indeed publish trash from time to time. You probably don’t care about this feedback, but I hope you take to heart, from a Jewish individual, that what you’re attempting is not only cheap slander, but also tacky pap dressed up as casual smarts – in the world of what is now very obviously a way to make a few bucks, write about Jews and the latest. Christ.

    • sol neeman March 30, 2015 at 7:40 pm | #

      Dean Rosenthal, Excellent description of this article.

  8. Mushin March 31, 2015 at 4:05 pm | #

    Interesting confluences in a real time pure play conversations happening!

    I refuse to back away and become complicit in not speaking in this conversation anymore.

    To begin I must admit that the most interesting story in the old testament was the “Book of Job” in my Christian indoctrination. Here is the definitive definition of a person being scapegoated within an emotional contradiction and a double bind in the biases of the Jewish culture where the creator is gambling with the devil and ignoring the goodness of Job’s Heartfelt behaviors including his family in theological insanity. This poor man was a perfect example of “loving humanness in natural law” and was tested by some private psychological splitting by the creator himself entertaining the power of evil over man’s ancestral nobility in Natural Law of Loving Humanness. I always appreciated Job’s arguments with both his neighbors and god. Job never claimed to be god and had the nerve to press the issue of injustice that occurred out of nowhere and in the end proved the goodness of man in Genesis before the so called fall of man.

    I was raised under the Franciscan Habit and by the time I was seven years old, I ran into this same problem as Job only I had a few Nuns who were actually raised in hell, and had Ph.D’s in the subject matter of discipline demanding the right answers to epistemological questions that were not trivial to this child; such as death. I am a Scorpio and these mysteries of death and Hades have always fascinate me. The notion that there is God that on one hand loves me and on the other hand is prepared to throw me into an eternal fire for eternity was simply an unacceptable emotional contradiction I refused to live with. I didn’t care how you where dressed or how many crosses, Rosaries or people kissed your a$$ and you had hanging around you like a god. I actually had parental authorities who found my curiosity amusing, laughed at my melancholy cynicism, and most of the time agreed I was not a threat to the social fabric of civilization. I was a premier clown, rebel, disruptor and testing the limits of any and every authority. The more I was struck in patriarchal disciplining which included spankings, humiliations and standing in the corner of the classroom being shunned, the more indignant and testing I became in demonstrating publicly anti-social behaviors, and refusal to go along and get along in group herd thinking mentality hurting children. Myself was the lab rat in the swept along drift, waking up and deciding what is reality? Needless to say it is a play~in~progress to today.

    By High School (1964-68) the Book of Job was literally a furious testament to challenging pontificating status quo indoctrinated patronizing belief systems, ungrounded representational assumptions, and it was more humorous to my circle of queen and king philosopher’s than any book in the deck. The Christians should of cut it to remain safe. We were having fun. Especially after we researched the historic effects of the “Spanish Inquisition” where god’s jury in black robes only stopped the questioning in the ultimate judgement day and outright despicable persecutions of humans after running out of flammable material to burn. Priests were teaching religion everyday in HS not Nuns. We drove then out of barnyard in grade school. In our new found freedom as children to question reality? I admit I had become a dangerous leader in the pack of rebels. Priests required medication before entering the classroom and opening their mouths. We were through listening to bullsh$t and had become beginners and semi-rational human beings.

    You see the 60’s in America was a moment when us boys and girls enjoyed kissing more than fighting, dancing and singing more than becoming jocks or boxers, and we loved the freedom of our cars which provided a private room away from the home room, and the family prisons from WWII. Catholic children were tearing back the curtain on sexuality in an open manner insulting the sexual nonsense of religiosity status quo in the Vatican. It was real! The problem wasn’t sex and kissing one another like it meant something? The real breakdown was the status quo patronizing father figure with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other claiming we were bad and they were good. Of, course we experienced this indignity directly when the Church demanded us to fight in the Viet Nam War. How does anyone raised in a notion of human dignity square up using weapons of mass destruction unleashed in that holocaust? Catholics are refused the right to being a conscious objector. We were exploding turning questioning on the questioner’s and demanding the meaning of human dignity, feminism, social injustice, civil rights, economic slavery and family planning using contraception and abortion which served our purposes of making love not war. Our class debate team won the school debates even in abortion based on the rationality of our ontological arguments as sensible human beings. When you have the judges laughing you are actually making headway in the old worn out mantra’s saying nothing in dead speech acts not knowing how to even think.

    Our secret ammunition launching powerful RPG’s in live speech acts as children (a Jewish enactive embodiment of Jobber’s within Christian coercive deceptions) was biological awareness of human goodness. We were actively digging ourselves out of the wood work in this “One Size Fits All” political indoctrinated belief system. What added extreme cosmic fueling to the fire was a Jesuit scientist, planetologist, archeologist, biologist and poet named Father Pierre de Chardin who had died in 1955 drinking a cocktail in NYC; probably with a host of Jewish intellectual friends at the party. Father Pierre had written the “Phenomena of Man” and was reframing ontological arguments. The Vatican had rightly prohibited this heretical biological doctrine of evolutionary reality to be published while he was alive and were praying nobody found out about him. The first act in patriarchy is silencing live speech acts in dead institutional discourse as a demand for obedience in mutual negation based in power to control. After his death a 3rd party had published his writings and of course we found this notion as heroism in the counter-culture’s curiosity of patriarchal nonsensical stupidities. It was a popular read for my circle of philosophical queens and kings challenging orthodoxy. After reading and discussing an evolutionary biological perspective of humanity, us Jobber’s were biologically empowered, and at this point started convincing Priests and Nuns to leave the church, and quit acting like silly stupid puppeteers in a mistaken observer error of this notion of Christ in our world hood. I think Carl Jung answered the question correctly concerning Job and this notion of a punishing God. God owed the world a make up. So, I get the beauty of being Jewish as a Jobber.

    This morning reflecting on the “Biology of Love” which Father Pierre would enjoy and any loving human being can understand because it is our nature in Natural Law in the Garden of Eden, and constitutes, sustains and maintains the Tree of Life in One World Hood, not two. The Kabbala in Jewish mysticism is fascinating to say the least to anyone willing to study the tree of life. The symbolisms are universal and unite all faiths in my studies from years ago. My view is there is no power in dualistic Cartesian thinking. Whatever arose in our specie had to have arisen in love not hate. We prefer love over hate in our daily lives. This devil notion is a mistaken observer error in the mind of a mythological god man created. And after George Bush’s conversations with god I submit we leader’s need EMT’s not political patrons. I don’t believe there is any such figure head in cosmic reality as an agnostic. I experience the contra variant that the creative generative beauty in the surrounding universe is everywhere, it has no name and never was an object anything, and man is not special in the scheme of things. According to the Christians this god killed his only son.

    I am a pacifist and refuse to use military means to solve relational conflicts since I was 19 years old in the US Army. I was an expert shooter and loved ballistics. I refused to enter Kent State University on May 4th 1970 with a gun and shoot my friends going to school at KSU. Jobber’s put real skin in the game in spontaneous authentic moments as a passionate decision maker deliberately intending to create justice, equality and equanimity in social relations, regardless of the personal costs to oneself. The notion was insane. Saying “no” was easy I had been prepared in my educational experience with threatening eternal hellfire and the most they could do was shoot me. Unknowingly, out of nowhere and with nothing to support my decision as a singularity in this insanity, I decided to say “no” to an indoctrinated blindness in arrogant aggression as a political act and once again the clown had the whole barracks laughing as I was handcuffed.

    The deep rooted political pet peeve I have is no one is ever held accountable in leadership for the genocidal attitudes, behaviors and activities in human justice with people being held accountable for what proceeds from their mouths. I went to jail and Nixon gets pardoned for secret wars and the worst violation in human privacy and shocking scandal in American history. The lack of oversight has now morphed through King George into the CIA, FBI, NASA, AT&T and Google etc wondering what color your sh$t is and what are you reading when you take a dump, and let us sell you more magazines in the process as a robotic transactional configuration. American TV is actually toxic programing endangering your health and well being. 91% of Americans currently distrust social media, corporations and governments after the Snowden Effect whistleblowing experience and this poor guy can’t even get a fair trial living in exile. Needless, to say the rest of the world is viewing us as a Nation in collective psychosis leading nowhere. We are actually turning cannibalistic and learning how to eat children as our regressive Christian epitaph on the tombstone of WASP selfhatred. Can I move to Israel? Is a Jobber a Jew? What constitutes a Jobber? Having 47 Republicans cheer you and disgrace the office of the President and global negotiations today is not a winning strategy in my assessment. Israel needs to reign in this Likud terrorist in my assessment. He walks, talks and barks like an American Republican War Monger.

    Before we tar and feather Cory for raising appreciative inquiry and dialog in a rather complicated historical encounter for everyone I know including my eastern friends. I suggest stepping back from the current flames of racism, anti-semitism, zionism, isms in general, and any forms of regressive fundamentalism where this so called Almighty Father God is being used to justify genocidal suicide in the name of humanity, by anyone and for any political economic justification. Let’s call a time out on the immature arrested adolescent behaviors on the playground. Let’s try validating one another’s niche experiences of human suffering first before creating regulatory capture rent control of humanity. We are so blind, deaf and dumb that this is the Tower of Babel in real life. Cory is courageous in my assessment and it has nothing to do with right or wrong and who gives a sh$t about Salon. I don’t even care. I am a nobody and don’t want to be anybody. I do want peace period.

    CHEER UP!

    TIME 3.30.2015 “This Country is About to Offer Citizenship to 2.2 Million Jews” is an act of restoration in a Sephardic Ancestry Bill in Spain addressing the 523 year old expulsion of Jews by the Catholic Spanish Inquisition claiming it was the worst error in Spain’s historical political history. I find that live speech act as the single most generative political decision I have ever heard in my entire lifetime. Maybe it is the beginning of a human virus in an emergent asylum of sanity moving into self-correcting decisions that created genocide and poverty in patriarchal cultures. I agree the Jews have been scapegoated in human history and have the wounds to prove it, and many others as well. Jews are not alone. The Spanish Inquisition not only expelled Jews from Spain in this Vatican political economic empowerment based on christ who never wrote a word, its all hearsay. That probably is the smartest human act as a human being next to never opening your mouth and saying anything, and living in silence. The Vatican is an institutional discourse based in patriarchy and caused more problems than it ever solved in reality. The Spanish Inquisition included every persistent native peoples in the entire world especially the 120+ million natural Homo sapiens amans living in the Garden of Eden in the America’s. I assert there is a linkage in languaging between the Jewish race and the Lakota Oyate as Homo sapeins amans. I touch it, taste it, feel it, hear it, smell it and intuit it. They understand Jewish people saying they talk backwards. Being Jewish is about an interactive social integration in societal knowledge making activities in customary manners of behaviors in human dignity. Tel Aviv proves democracy works in conserving Homo sapiens amans in the post modern world and is a hallmark of ingenuity in the Arab world today. Palestine is also a homeland for native peoples and everyone arose from Abrahams. So let’s have a family therapy conclave before launching the next war.

    American Christian Insanity ~ Especially 47 Treason Republican Senators

    There is a stinking rat somewhere in this USA Israel regressive fundamentalist discourse and it takes two to tango in coercive deceptive power making in politics. I cried when Sadat was killed. I cried when Rabin was killed. I have a 5 year old grand daughter crying seeing children dying today after being bombed asking what is this going on? Of course baby polar bears are in first position. Revenge is not a luxury I can ever attend to in the injustices of human personal history that started at 7 years old. Once you start firing a gun it never stops until everyone is dead.
    שיר לשלום‎
    הזכה שבתפילות אותנו לא תחזיר
    שאו עיניים בתקווה, לא דרך כוונות s’u
    שירו שיר לאהבה, ולא למלחמות
    אל תגידו יום יבוא
    הביאו את היום
    כי לא חלום הוא
    ובכל הכיכרות
    הריעו לשלום
    הריעו לשלום
    הריעו לשלום

    I knew Father Edward Flannery personally (who walked on in 1998), another Jesuit radical reformer and humanitarian, who wrote “The Anguish of the Jews.” Father Edward Flannery was the first director of Catholic-Jewish Relations for the U.S. Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, a position he held from 1967 to 1976. Flannery’s famous statement … “it is little exaggeration to state that those pages of history Jews have committed to memory are the very ones that have been torn from Christian history books.”

    So, cheer up friends the wheels of our asylum of sanity will never arise by any political pundit fanning flames of patriarchal power in governance through violence. I refuse to deny the sacramental notions of human dignity in this Christic notion born in the heart of this Jobber’s loving humanness in the midst of being tested by notions of a devil in conflict with the tree of life like a maniacal barking dog in the village. This human mistaken observer error has morphed itself into a demand for obedience in mutual negation of our common goodness and possibility of becoming human beings, and ending familial disputes that make all of cry on too many fine beautiful days. I am humbled knowing my life doesn’t amount to a fly on an elephants a$$ in comparison to the generative creative beauty of the surrounding universe that is an eternal experience of “AWE” and “NOT FEAR” of anything. We are mothers, fathers, grandparents, we are all related, and artists, poets, farmers. scientists, craftsman, cooks, sculptures, educators, merchants, doctors, humanitarians and primarily global virtuous citizens becoming human beings in communitarianism as Homo sapiens amans~amans.

    We are the one’s refusing to drink the economic political cool aid of arrogant aggressions in regressive fundamentalism worshipping patriocracy’s insanity. What saves us is our mutuality of loving peace as human beings. I refuse to step aside and deny the historical fact of parachuting into this institutional discourse at birth and intend to save the baby jobber and throw out the bath water. Which at this point stinks to high heaven in the genocidal behaviors of a mistaken observer error in the politics of one size fits all based on thousands of godless notions claiming violence is his will.

    We need a unity bundle for scapegoats, rebels, comedians, orators and clowns through out the world! Especially for the children everywhere caught up in this insanity of blowing yourself as terrorist in self hatred. Who among us would ever propose such nonsense to any child? And furthermore what black robe clanging symbol would have the audacity to justify it in the name of god. Count me in as an accidental activist within the Lakota Nation mounting our horses to ride into the middle of this battle for human dignity as Homo sapiens amans amans with no armaments other than the truth in this moment in human history recovering our oral languaging that needs no interpreter, mediator, lawyers, arbitrators or judge in black robes representing the sovereignty of the spirit-common-sense and sees clearly the lawlessness of a 1492 Spanish Inquisition that created poverty throughout our world.

    Have a good day! Let’s begin making history consciously rather than suffering in the political fools dividing us!

    References for those interested in getting real about scapegoating in 1492 Spanish Inquisition?

    TIME 3.30.2015 World News Spain’s Sephardic Ancestry Bill
    http://time.com/3763381/spain-sephardic-jews-citizenship/?xid=newsletter-brief

    Lew Weinstein’s post on Father Edward Flannery 2.25.2014 http://lewweinsteinauthorblog.com/2014/02/25/father-edward-flannery-christians-must-come-to-full-recognition-of-the-huge-crime-committed-by-christianity-against-the-jews-research-for-lews-novel-in-progress/

    Thank you for hearing my viewpoint,
    Jobbering is a fearless joyful concern,
    Mushin

  9. Mushin April 3, 2015 at 9:56 am | #

    Excerpt from My Brother’s Keeper:

    “My family ties have been very strong indeed. My children and grandchildren are spread all over the world. Yet with great effort by all of us, we get together for a week–twice most years–for a family reunion. Here Eli (from Seattle) beams and shrieks with joy as he rushes to hug Shira (from Tel Aviv). Danielle flies into the arms of her four uncles. We play enough board games to drive new members of the family to distraction. We play sports, from group mountain biking to fielding an Etzioni water polo team. We have long one-on-one conversations and “family council” meetings. There is nothing like family in either the academic or the public realm.

    One gathering especially deserves recounting. Here is the way I journaled it at the time: The family assembled in Amsterdam for a most unusual Bar Mitzvah, that of Daniel, the severely autistic son of my niece. We are delighted to find each others’ arms, and pleased that we made the trek to honor the Dutch branch of the family and the gargantuan efforts we hear the staff made to teach Daniel a few line of the essential prayers for the occasion. Some of us doubt that even given these efforts, Daniel will be able to meet the minimal requirements of ritual that turns youngsters into members of the Jewish community. My mother has no doubt. “No way, never, not in this life. I wonder why they are even trying? The poor boy.” The synagogue is packed. Daniel climbs on the bima with much effort, his parents supporting him on the left and right. On the bima, he is unstable on his feet, drooling on his suit. He smiles apologetically. I wish I could whisper into his ear, “its ok; no matter.” The ritual is started by others, but when it is Daniel’s turn to bless the reading of the Torah, he looks like someone who has a huge egg stuck in his throat, straining to get it out, but he is able to cough up only a little. He flushes as he tries to speak, eking out one or two legible words. He becomes flustered; strains harder, but now only grunts can be heard. We all wish we could just go up there, hug him, say the prayer for him, and end this wrenching scene. Indeed, two members of the congregation who stand on his left and right, chime in. An embarrassed smile occupies Daniel’s face. His body twitches. He is perspiring profusely; his mother keeps wiping it off, which seems to trouble him even more. I am searching desperately for what one could do to spare him even another minute of this very public ordeal. Someone else reads the portion of this week’s Torah the Bar Mitzvah boy is supposed to chant. During the following rounds of prayers Daniel is a bit more relaxed, able to utter a few words he has rehearsed scores of time. The congregation joins in a song praising the Lord, and Daniel hums along; somehow he finds it easier to sing than speak.

    Then there is a moment of silence. And Daniel suddenly recites, in a clear, though halting voice: “Sh’ma Israel, Adoni Elohenu, Adoni Echad” (Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One). It is the line Jews, who were given the option by the Inquisition, to eat pork and convert to Christianity or be burned at the stake, recited when they chose to jump into the fire; the line Jews repeated when they finally realized that they were being marched not into showers to be deloused but into gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps; the line, that more than any other, captures the Jewish essence. There is not a dry eye in the place. The community rises, without any signal from the Rabbi, and breaks with much gusto into a song of thanksgiving. Daniel’s body stops twitching; he seems drained but beams widely. My mother whispers, “my God, he made it.” I don’t know what made for the magical movement; did God interrupt all he is doing to intercede or—did the community’s love carry Daniel over the threshold. I am not even sure what exact difference it makes. I am sure that there was a presence of a kind I never witnessed before. It was surely the most unique family get together of them all.”

  10. jonnybutter April 5, 2015 at 9:27 pm | #

    More vintage Biden (h/t Tyler Bass)

    Xi unambiguously opposes American democratic notions. In 2011 and 2012, he spent several days with Vice-President Joe Biden, his official counterpart at the time, in China and the United States. Biden told me that Xi asked him why the U.S. put “so much emphasis on human rights.” Biden replied to Xi, “No President of the United States could represent the United States were he not committed to human rights,” and went on, “If you don’t understand this, you can’t deal with us. President Barack Obama would not be able to stay in power if he did not speak of it. So look at it as a political imperative. It doesn’t make us better or worse. It’s who we are. You make your decisions. We’ll make ours.”

    from the New Yorker

    • Mushin April 6, 2015 at 9:36 am | #

      Jonny,
      If the U.S. and Presidents are committed to human rights than let’s see the proof in the pudding for a real change. My claim is American Democracy is an abortion to the notion of “We the People, For the People, By the People.” We are living in a dead Democracy based in elitist regulatory capture and rent control by Corporate Plutocracies consisting of public private RICO collusion in common law. The entire citizenry distrusts the patriarchal political economic condition based in unrestrained short term casino of greed, high risk short term election cycles of insane governance, and narrow minded self interests of leadership across the board refusing to even contemplate the community good as the purpose of governance in society “For the People, By the People, Of the People.” U.S. is an emotional contradiction operating in elite coercive deceptions.

      I’ll believe this V.P. Biden political patronizing rhetoric claiming U.S. Presidents are committed to “Civil Rights” when they get up off their a$$es and redress the 1823 Supreme Court ruling of Chief Justice John Marshall decision in “Johnson vs. M’Intosh” that created corporate plutocracies by stripping American Natives of the right to participate in commercial exchange conversations. This was a blatant human rights violation that has morphed into a U.N. security council of elitist’s controls denying persistent Native cultures worldwide of even having a seat at the table in designing a future world together. I submit they have have more human intelligence and connection to the web of life then all the political rhetoric going on today.

      I am sick and tired of American President’s using civil rights as a global patronizing supreme doctrine of virtue in the U.S. while running RICO mobster activities on Wall Street with a secret revolving door in the imperial Office of the Presidency. To get the picture grounded in terms of global democracy and this disgraceful myth of American innocence please read “Madness at the Gates of the City” Barry Spector. The WASP Faustian dream of the devil has morphed from Indians, Blacks, Mexicans, Communists, Socialists to now poor people worldwide are lazy, ignorant and the devil. Compassion, empathy and caring is considered a sin and speaking publicly on behalf of civil rights may get you shot by Christian militia standing their ground in a perverted adaptive delusional systemic patriarchal notion of democracy.

      As for China what an insane U.S. turn-around strategy for narrow minded neo liberal capitalism from the Nixon Administration breakthrough business relationships. It was heralded as mind-blowing Democratic actions to export our citizenry intellectual assets in neo liberal capitalism. Capitalism profit was a breakthrough of cheap labor in this enlightened renaissance of 18th century MBA business ontologies by elite moguls. Now China has learned the patriarchal casino gaming as a competitor. The U.S. needs a new Enemy of the State for the bully pulpit of elitist coercive deceptions in patriarchal political economics. There is a pattern here that is easily seen when you step back and look at history as flux flow on nothing but broken agreements with criminals.

      Just to be clear I am no fan of any Nation State in the world today. I am Lakota and committed to a Lived Worldhood in enactive embodiment in an ancient manner of nobility called wolakota; peace and friendship. As a person I have had enough of this bullsh$t to last for all eternity. Human virtues aren’t for sale in my lived world. Vices are dead on arrival in the 21st century and powerless because they deny the community good for momentary pleasures and forget humanity is 7.2 billion people. I consider the Lakota Paradigm is a wake up call for humanity especially with Mother Earth’s severity that reaches far beyond this patriarchal political economics of insanity.

      Best regards.
      Mushin

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