Pharaohs
POST 1203
Who’s the Pharaoh?
WW II resulted in 6 million Jews being murdered. They made up over 36% of all Jews worldwide. But all the Jews in the world accounted for just 0.7% of world population. One result of that was world sympathy for this tiny minority that was the wretched victim of the hatred and brutality of the Holocaust. That sympathy was part of the impetus for the United Nations vote to recognize the new state of Israel.
Israel continued to enjoy world sympathy and support, partly because of recurrent attacks on Israel by Arab and Muslim states in the area. We all love an underdog. Sometimes.
That world support ratcheted up on October 7, 2023 with the horrific attacks by Hamas. But then Israel mounted its offense and now has backed itself into a corner. Its hard line position of ongoing military attacks on the rubble that is Gaza and, far worse, the Israeli blockade of food and medical supplies – humanitarian aid – intended for Palestinians has raised the anger of millions. Due to that cruelty Israel is fast losing world support and making itself a pariah state.
The Children of Israel (Hebrews, not yet Jews) entered Egypt roughly 3,800 years ago. They wound up slaves to the Pharaoh and at last escaped in what was named the Exodus about 430 years later. Passover is a story of redemption from slavery and the universal wish for freedom. Pharaoh kept freedom from the Children of Israel.
But now Israel is the pharaoh, oppressing Palestinians.
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Today’s Other Pharaoh, If We Let Him
Chicago radio personality Patty Vasquez (WCPT, 820-AM, Chicago) has managed to connect the dots into a clarity that you’ve felt in your bones but may have been unable to articulate. From her post Everything is For Sale: Trump Turned Democracy into a Transaction:
[Trump is b]uying more political power. Buying favorable testimony. Everything is negotiable when you’re running the country like your personal criminal enterprise.
The Texas gerrymander isn’t about fair representation, it’s about purchasing a House majority. The Maxwell interviews aren’t about justice for victims, they’re about shopping for dirt on [Trump’s] enemies. Every institution, every norm, every democratic tradition is just another item in Trump’s democracy yard sale.
We’re not sliding toward authoritarianism anymore. We’re there. And we better start fighting our way out.
Because now Trump is an American pharaoh.
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Recall Jimmy Buffett’s call to us: “There’s still so much to be done.” Find a way to make good trouble. Find a way to disobey.
We’ll find nobody in the Trump administration or in any suck up red state who will change their evil ways because we asked nicely, so we have to resort to something with muscle.
I’m calling for a nationwide strike – a work stoppage
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– by all immigrant workers. It’s detailed here and it’s no joke.
Rosa Parks refused to obey the order to move to the back of the bus and she became an avatar for courage to fight what was wrong. The Montgomery, AL city officials refused to abandon their racist, segregationist ways. Nothing could sway them until Montgomery’s Black people refused to ride the city buses. They boycotted for over a year and, faced with bankruptcy of the system, the city at last succumbed to the insistent, non-violent pressure of the brave people who, instead of riding the bus, walked miles to create change.
We’re in a similar position now. Trump will never give in to demands for democracy because of our demonstrations alone. Far more powerful will be our refusing to work.
– Let the produce rot in the fields
– Let building construction grind to a halt
– Let restaurants and hotels be unable to operate, including Mar-a-Lago
– Let rich people’s landscaping become overgrown and go to seed
It may be insufficient for only immigrants to strike and it may be grossly unfair, too. So, let’s expand this strike to all democracy loving Americans. Our rights and power to withhold ourselves is something no ICE goons can stop and no Presidential temper tantrum or boundless greed can control.
Let my people go!
Who The Other Side Is
Mehdi Hassan is an impossibly intelligent fellow. He recently had a whirlwind debate with 20 people, one at a time. They were young Trump voters who proclaimed world views vastly different from Hassan’s and likely from yours. Their self-proclaimed identities went all the way from racists and White supremacists to self-proclaimed fascists and Nazis. You know: D*cks.
The back-and-forth is fascinating. As interesting as the debate are the reactions of the group when they are watching others engaging with Hassan. You may be surprised and likely appalled at what they applaud. Watch the exchange here.
Medical News
Scientists at the Center on Brain Dysfunction have isolated a new and powerful bacterium. This has been a decades long effort to identify the cause of self-destructive and often cruel behavior that eventually leads to pronounced dementia. The bacterium has been identified as:
Stupidococcus Stupidoniae
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Stupidococcus readily infects others, especially in closed environments, like in Congressional caucus rooms and in cloak rooms. In early stages a patient with stupidococcus may sound lucid and even confident in making pronouncements, but as the infection progresses logical functions deteriorate markedly.
Speech patterns become increasingly unintelligible, with words garbled and flamboyant phrases repeated many times in a single, overly long sentence. Unsupported superlative claims that adjoin most statements are like nothing anyone has ever seen. That is especially pernicious, as a person suffering from stupidococcus may appear to be confident but actually his internal light is, at best, only flickering. Practitioners should monitor for signs of paranoia, often manifest by violence, like subjects throwing ketchup on the wall.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced last week that he is terminating grants for further research of this disease so that people don’t come to expect anything from government. His funding cuts for mRNA research should close the door on progress toward disease prevention and reduce what he called “socialist aid” to millions who suffer from this now incurable disease and others. Kennedy declared that his actions will combat waste, fraud and abuse and that he expects the number of new cases of autism to decline, offering no plausible explanation for that.
Upon hearing the news of Kennedy’s financial aid cuts to medical research, former head of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele reminded Americans that, “You can’t cure stupid,” adding, “and now we never will.”
The Deconstructing Trump Corner
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- Office tends to confer a dreadful plausibility
- on even the most negligible of those who hold it.
- Mark Lawson 1992
- Among all the diseases of the mind
- there is not one more epidemical
- or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
- Richard Steele, 1711
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Mid-Term Election
Countdown Timer
Goes fast, doesn’t it?
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