I think a lot of Jews (and particularly Israelis) just can't believe that it's possible for someone to advance a pro-Israel agenda and an anti-Semitic agenda at the same time.

"Look, Trump and his conservative Christian supporters have officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel, which is what we've wanted America to do for decades now! Look, he's aggressively going after people who have expressed support for the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions) movement! Look, he has a Jewish son-in-law! How could Trump possibly be advancing an anti-Semitic agenda?"

They don't understand that many nominally "pro-Israel" Christians actually think that the Biblical phrase "the people of Israel" applies mostly to themselves. Christians tend to see themselves rising from the dead in Ezekiel's "dry bones" vision, and themselves in the jubilant crowds in the New Jerusalem of the last book of the Christian Bible. They see themselves in Jacob--later renamed Israel--who managed to transfer both the birthright and blessing of Abraham and Isaac from his unworthy elder brother to himself. They feel entitled to all of the benefits of God's Biblical covenants, with few of the responsibilities. (Sts. Paul and Peter managed to get Christians off the hook for those unpleasant circumcision and dietary requirements, and even the Ten Commandments seem a lot more negotiable when you can just confess and be totally forgiven. Which is why so many conservative Christian politicians in America who cloak their homophobic policies in the mantle of "defense of marriage" have been so demonstrably bad at honoring their own marriage vows.)

The confusion of some Jews about simultaneously pro-Israel and anti-Semitic American politicians is similar to the confusion of American Christians about whether it's possible for someone to support "family values" and "the family as the basic unit of society" while simultaneously breaking up immigrant families and warehousing children in pens, like so much livestock.

"Look, Trump has given us anti-abortion federal justices! He has defended our [perceived] right as employers to deny our employees contraceptives, and our [perceived] right to deny services to same-sex couples, and he even champions our [perceived] right to have random strangers wish us a Merry Christmas instead of non-specific Happy Holidays! We admit that he's not a paragon of Christian virtue himself, but surely God is using him to promote Christianity. So who are we to stand in Trump's way, if he is the instrument of God's holy will?"

Thanks for answering my question, Julie. That all sounds both utterly insane and yet completely feasible. Thank god I'm an atheist.

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Julie: They don't understand that many nominally "pro-Israel" Christians actually think that the Biblical phrase "the people of Israel" applies mostly to themselves. Christians tend to see themselves rising from the dead in Ezekiel's "dry bones" vision, and themselves in the jubilant crowds in the New Jerusalem of the last book of the Christian Bible. They see themselves in Jacob--later renamed Israel--who managed to transfer both the birthright and blessing of Abraham and Isaac from his unworthy elder brother to himself. They feel entitled to all of the benefits of God's Biblical covenants, with few of the responsibilities. (Sts. Paul and Peter managed to get Christians off the hook for those unpleasant circumcision and dietary requirements, and even the Ten Commandments seem a lot more negotiable when you can just confess and be totally forgiven. Which is why so many conservative Christian politicians in America who cloak their homophobic policies in the mantle of "defense of marriage" have been so demonstrably bad at honoring their own marriage vows.)

The confusion of some Jews about simultaneously pro-Israel and anti-Semitic American politicians is similar to the confusion of American Christians about whether it's possible for someone to support "family values" and "the family as the basic unit of society" while simultaneously breaking up immigrant families and warehousing children in pens, like so much livestock.

"Look, Trump has given us anti-abortion federal justices! He has defended our [perceived] right as employers to deny our employees contraceptives, and our [perceived] right to deny services to same-sex couples, and he even champions our [perceived] right to have random strangers wish us a Merry Christmas instead of non-specific Happy Holidays! We admit that he's not a paragon of Christian virtue himself, but surely God is using him to promote Christianity. So who are we to stand in Trump's way, if he is the instrument of God's holy will?"


Julie, if you could put this whole passage into a pithy rallying cry we might have our message for defeating in 2020 what we had thought to be just a basket of deplorables but has turned out to be a pit of snakes (just sticking to the biblical language).

I never understood how HRC's depiction of the Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables could have been her fatal mistake. It was an understatement. (Her big mistake was in her campaign strategy). And to think of all the egregious things Trump has said and done during his campaign and presidency that have confirmed his (and their) venomous intentions yet doesn't poison the pit they lie in.
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I agree, Jim. I had big problems with Hillary, but voted for her anyway. Which I think was the biggest problem for her. Voter turn out. The combination of Trump can't win and the well, I don't like Hillary so much is what, imo, cost her the election. That and taking the Great Lakes states for granted.

Added: Unless Democrats do something especially boneheaded, which is very possible, Trump will lose in a landslide. (And he'll still contest the election, mostly because of his ego and the later stages of syphilis, and partly because it's keeping him out of jail.) The same dynamic simply isn't there. Everyone keeps referring to his fucking base. We have a base too, and I'd say he activated it.

What Julie said, Which could be my mantra.

Cheers,
John

Thanks, Julie. That's the most succinct explanation I've heard of the otherwise totally baffling phenomenon of pro-Trump Christian zealots. As Mark put it, "both utterly insane and yet completely feasible".

Hillary Clinton's use of the phrase "basket of deplorables" was fully justified - and at the same time a tactical error. Similarly when Trump voters ask if we think they're stupid we can say yes, but a politician probably shouldn't.

Hey Gregory~ I don't know why we are tiptoeing around the deplorables thing. It was tough, honest and direct. If anything, Hillary needed more of that, not less. Especially with the pig who occupies the white house now who says whatever to keep his base ginned up. Bibles and guns didn't trip Obama up. Trump's an idiot. Slap him around more and then see what comes out of his mouth.

I don't know. I still think the deplorables line did little to motivate Clinton supporters to get out and vote, and did quite a bit to motivate the Trump base. It was also kind of coy - it sounded to me like they'd tested it in a room full of Clinton staffers, who all thought it was cool. Not in the wider American marketplace. But then, her whole campaign made that impression on me.
She was, of course, robbed. I think a missed opportunity was when Trump crept up behind her as she spoke in that debate. She should have smacked him hard. He's a bully and a predator, and a coward, to put it succinctly, and that was a golden opportunity to crush him IMO. It's very tough being a woman candidate in the US though. And hindsight is 20/20.

Cheers,
John

Yeah, John, you're right. That was a missed opportunity. What an unbelievable creep. She should have turned to him and put him down at that moment. Ironically, Bill took that opportunity, with Bush senior. Another situation, another time. In Hillary's defense, as much as I'm critical about America, my god, I didn't think that thing would get elected.

Calling a deplorable a deplorable is a tactical error because any hope of converting someone from deplorability vanishes the moment you make that person feel personally attacked.

Making people feel that they are really being despised for their identity (which they can't change), rather than for their attitudes and behavior (which they can), just strengthens their bonds with the rest of their tribe, who will praise their brave martyrdom for the cause of free speech, pride in "our" Christian/Southern/American/manly/working-class/white "heritage," etc.

Trump privately regards his supporters with contempt, too, but so long as he doesn't do so openly, as Hillary did, the riffraff will continue to think the guy who craps in a golden toilet is one of them.

I respectfully disagree, Julie. You're not going to persuade a Trump voter based on how you put it. You might actually win more support from the other side by how belligerently you make your own point. Sad, but I believe that to be true.

*Deleted the rest. Not funny enough to not add to the discussion.

Do not support The New Criterion as a matter of conscience, not nomenclature.

That description does not fit most of the Trump voters I know, James. Just the ones who also voted for Congressman Duncan Hunter.

[That's a joke, of course. I don't personally know anyone who will admit to having voted for Congressman Duncan Hunter. Or at least they won't admit it to me. But I'm sure Hunter did some research into his district's literacy rates before he printed up so many Islamophobic campaign flyers. Even if his team misspelled "Israel" on the last one.]

Hahaha, ok ok, fair enough Julie. Of course you're right. I was mostly messing around there, but my god, voting for that man is beyond my understanding. You know, even outside of ideological considerations. Thanks for the article on Duncan Hunter. What were they thinking, at any point (the crimes to the legal proceedings)?

There's that old quotation people attribute to Voltaire, perhaps rightly: "If I can make you believe the impossible, I can make you do the unthinkable." To my mind, that may do something to explain recent GOP voting patterns - for instance, 85% of Alabama's white evangelicals voting for Roy Moore. As they did. My own theory is that Trump came into office insisting on his gibberish inaugural crowd theory because his lizard brain knew what that would do to his supporters' minds - i.e., turn them to mush. Lying eyes, as a poem of mine said a while back. Hence also the daily spoon-fed diet of self-evident falsehoods. It reflects an agenda, and in that, it is evil.

Cheers,
John

The Duncan Hunter Reality TV Show keeps finding new ways to jump the shark. My eyebrows have been getting quite a workout, from his vaping in Congress to his kids' flying rabbit to blaming his wife for the misappropriation of campaign funds, when some of the misappropriated funds were spent on five of his extramarital affairs (you've gotta give him chutzpah points on that one) to his defending the SEAL accused of war crimes by saying that he was guilty of the same thing.

Hunter may seem to be a fluke, but he's actually a convenient illustration of the Republican Party's tried and true strategy of remaining loyally united behind Republican incumbents, no matter what. Few Republican candidates want to throw their hats in the ring to challenge a Republican incumbent, because the Party leaders really discourage disunity. Republican voters will cheerfully forgive Republican candidates if they are unfaithful to their wives, but they will never, ever forgive them if they are unfaithful to the sanctity of their party's endorsement and can thus be blamed for dividing the vote and allowing a Democrat to win. Given that California has an open primary system--the top two finishers for all state and federal offices except US President advance to the November General Election--Hunter's Republican-dominated congressional district should have had two Republican candidates to choose between in November 2018. But the Republican Party leadership in San Diego County insisted that all of its members needed to unite behind Hunter in the primary election, so the top two finishers in the primary ended up being Hunter (by a landslide), and the Democratic candidate.

Several [Edited to say: Okay, four] Republicans I know in that district, including one who had run against Hunter in the primary, told me that they could not in good conscience vote for either of those two choices in November 2018. And it's not possible to vote for write-in candidates in run-off elections. So they just skipped that contest on their November 2018 ballots. Three of them told me that they had done the same for the Presidential contest, too.

The local Republican Party's strategy might be different in the March 2020 primary if Hunter actually goes to prison, as seems likely--his trial is in September 2019--but I wouldn't count on it. And I won't be at all surprised if Donald Trump pardons Hunter. Out of loyalty, again. Hunter was one of the first two Congressmembers to endorse Trump in 2016. (The other? Chris Collins--also in hot water legally, for insider trading.)

Like Trump himself, Hunter is yet another poster child for the Prime Directive of the modern Republican Party, which is "Never, Ever Apologize or Admit Fault for Anything." (Unless it's "When Caught in a Lie, Just Keep on Lying, and Then Say That the Media's Fact-Checkers Are Biased Against You.")

Yes, back in the Bush days, I wanted a bumper sticker to read, "Being a Neocon Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry." This was after publications like The Weekly Standard positively ridiculed anyone who thought the Iraq War was a big mistake . . . until (whoops) TWS did too.

A close relation of never having to say you're sorry is the good old-fashioned Freudian defense mechanisms of denial and displacement, as in this episode of McConnell and Graham playing Wheel of Misfortune.

Fair enough, James, it's very difficult. But I think it's part of our job as poets and human beings to try. As soon as you start seeing millions of people as an irredeemable mass to be demonised rather than as flawed individuals, you've kind of lost the argument imo * People love a good redemption story, when they can empathise with the individual: rehabilitated murderers, jihadis and white supremacists give TED talks. And yet it sometimes seems the same possibility for change is afforded less to people who put a tick in a box three years ago. This struck me reading Ashley's poem just on met. Moving that poem clumsily into the real world, I imagine we might be in the world of Trump voters there, victims and abusers alike (many apologies to Ashley if that's incorrect). There's absolutely nothing in this line of thinking that is mutually exclusive with greater sympathy for the more obvious victims of Trump's administration. And nothing in it means you shouldn't fervently oppose what they believe and the government they voted for.

*Edit: I'm not saying you're doing this — speaking more generally here.

One problem with "converting someone from deplorability" (and a reason not to completely right off the humanity of all Trump voters) is that we've all got our own facts. As an example: It was widely reported how surprised some of Justin Amash's constituents were “to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump.” How would people represented by Republicans who don't have reason to educate them (or by Democrats they've been trained not to trust) learn the truth? And why will they believe me about facts that contradict what they've heard from Fox News and elected representatives?

Trump's wobbliness, his eagerness to satisfy his own short-term emotional needs, may actually strengthen the walls between realities. For instance, voters can now see video of Trump supporters chanting "Send her back" and of Trump calling those people patriots. They can also find video (recorded between the other two) of him saying he didn't like that chant. As news feed algorithms give us what supports our views, a voter won't necessarily see all three. (I know of all three because Trump's self-contradictions support my view of him.) So Trump may be able to give the racists what they want, and satisfy voters who want to think he's trying to discourage racism.

It’s also worth remembering that our poor tsar and his bad advisors is a very old trope.

Cheers,
John

I don't feel any particular obligation to get into their minds as a poet, Mark, but I would agree that understanding why is important if we want to try to change things. I don't think it's actually beyond my understanding, but keep in mind that getting to the reason behind it may not be all that comforting. I think much of his support comes down to hate, prejudice, and of course ignorance. Often, willful ignorance because they need things to conform to their worldview (ie, fake news). Both the racism and the dismantling of the truth are extremely dangerous and call for robust pushback. And that's where we probably disagree. And that's ok. If you could be suddenly transported to Germany in the 1930s (and no, we are not there yet), you're not going to think 'I don't want to lump all these Nazis in with Hitler. Some of them are probably very fine people and I'm sure they have their reasons.'

I don't think you're obliged to write some sympathetic persona poem, James. That isn't what I meant.

What on earth makes you think I disagree with this??

And when, even slightly, did I suggest some Trump voters, let alone Nazis, were 'very fine people'?? The highest praise I gave them was being 'flawed' and 'not irredeemable'.

I apologise. I'll leave my contribution there, before I get compared to Trump after Charlottesville.

Wasn't my intention to do that, at all, Mark. Weren't we talking about "deplorables" ?? And how we shouldn't refer to millions of people this way (lump them together)? I'm simply saying you can. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Yeah it's hard to make Nazi references...

We were talking about any Trump voter. I started by quoting you, 'voting for that man is beyond my comprehension'.

It's fine, James. I'll leave it there. Big big love.

I'd never think that about you, Mark, and, again, sorry if I gave you that idea. (And just to be clear about my point above, I'm not talking about people who happened to vote for Trump. I'm referring to his hardcore supporters.)

Thanks, James. Maybe I was over-dramatic. We're good, as they say over there. I should probably stick to events on this side of the Atlantic. ;)

Cheers.

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This conversation cascaded much too quickly for me to keep up and now it’s slowed to nary a trickle... I have been compiling notes but have not been able to condense them -- though I doubt they turn over any new stones or may not even shed any light -- but that's up to others to decide. I just want to unload them : )

Here goes.

Until someone here comes forward who sees things differently than us, we are the choir debating about whether we are singing a C sharp or a D flat.

Mark: And when, even slightly, did I suggest some Trump voters, let alone Nazis, were 'very fine people'?? The highest praise I gave them was being 'flawed' and 'not irredeemable'.
I apologise. I'll leave my contribution there, before I get compared to Trump after Charlottesville.


There is no doubt in my mind, Mark, that you are following events here as closely if not closer than most. I like all of your observations. Compared to most, you are well-informed and judicious in your remarks. (Is Boris as horrible as is reported? Perhaps for another thread...)

Still, to call those hardcore Trump supporters “flawed” --the ones that fill his arena rallies and chant slurs and spew hatred -- is euphemistic. You overlook the matter of to what degree they are flawed. Playing off a few tropes (not the least of which is religion as one of Trump’s most potent playing cards), if the devil is in the details, then Trump is that devil in the details. Flawed? I’m flawed. Your flawed. We’re all fucking flawed. Excuse me… We are all flipping flawed (there, I feel better). But the deplorables are more than flawed. In fact, they are more than deplorable. More than despicable. They are deplorably, despicably dangerous when we have a president who empowers them to achieve his own narcissistic cravings.


Julie: “...Trump… is [a] poster child for the Prime Directive of the modern Republican Party, which is "Never, Ever Apologize or Admit Fault for Anything." (Unless it's "When Caught in a Lie, Just Keep on Lying, and Then Say That the Media's Fact-Checkers Are Biased Against You.")

Yes, that’s the situation in a nutshell. Though full disclosure would show that the overwhelming majority of politicians follow the same directive. (It must be in the congressional campaign handbook).
But may I cram two more things into the Prime Directive? Money and lawyers. They (Trump and his thugs) employ all the strategies that you say (lying, etc.) -- all of which are made possible by money and lawyers to warp and pervert linear time into a never-ending morass of deceit, circular arguments and gaslighting that foil the conventional/constitutional safeguards our nation put into place to prevent just such a scenario. Money and lawyers: the safety net of the rich. (Look at Jeffery Epstein).
I think we here are over-analyzing things; plotting the dots as they are appearing to us and trying to connect them, thinking when all the dots are connected people will see. But it only serves as a Rorschach Test. What must happen to end the madness and restore civility and maturity and 21st century thinking to our American psyche? We must vote. And get others to vote.

Last night I watched documentary video footage of the 9 days of the Apollo 11 moon landing and was overwhelmed by the resolve of our nation to accomplish something for the betterment of our planet. Yes, the devil is in the details, and no, things were not perfect back then either -- But the kicker of it was that it was not that long ago yet it seemed like another world. I was overwhelmed. Now here we are. (Where are we? Where have we gone? Is this still Earth?)

About the Community of Deplorables... They are a four-headed monster: there are the deplorables that camp out for days to get inside the toxic circus tent of Trump’s rallies (The Kool-Aid Deplorables) and then there are those deplorables who, for various deplorable reasons, support him to advance their special interest at the expense of all others (anti-abortionists, NRA loyalists, fossil fuel conglomerates, etc.). Then there are those who are either apathetic or unmoved by his gross incompetence and lack of integrity and monstrous greedy narcissism. They don’t vote. Deplorable. Finally, there is a significant number -- I’d guess 5% -- who are closet deplorables. They don’t want to be in any way associated with the stereotype Trump Deplorable, so they feign indifference, claim they are non-political, remain in the closet. But when the time comes they will enter the voting booth and vote Trump. He has stupefied them. The deplorables sneer at our indignation with them. Trump knows how to keep them under his wing. Collectively they are a pig with lipstick on.

Trump has turned us away from global awareness. His support remains strong, not only because he conceals his contempt for his own voter base (which I think you are absolutely right, Julie, is saying he (Trump) also considers them deplorable but valuable at the same time) but also because he is narcissistic, amoral/immoral product of a bygone “Madman” generation of men and the women who fawn over them.

The good and bad news is that our economy is strong (thanks to rollback of regulations that were put into place to safeguard our economy from another great recession, a disregard for our commitment to climate change and our commitment to our allies, a turn away from investment in renewable energy and towards fossil fuel, and a disdain for the international institutions (UN, etc.) that have worked so hard to construct a global vision of the world). It makes me sick; it hollows out my heart.

I firmly believe his/their day will come. This will be the theme song.

One more thing: I firmly believe that Putin’s motivation for meddling in our elections was because he believes HRC meddled in their elections during her tenure as Secretary of State. See here. Putin’s motivation was not because he liked Trump, but because he despises HRC. He did it to prevent HRC from getting elected. He and Hilary are arch enemies. The devil, of course, is in the details. Namely, Trump. I don't like him as a person, as a man, as a leader.

From the beginning I was rambling.
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