Shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh
 

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/27/18032...life-synagogue

A right-wing terrorist shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood (the heart of Pittsburgh's Jewish Community), killing numerous people (I've seen the number put at 11-12 in some places). Somehow, despite shooting at and wounding at least three police officers, he was apprehended alive, which may tell you something about his race.

I'm feeling a mix of heartbreak for the Pittsburgh community and for Jews across America, of terror as I watch my country take step after step in the direction of fascism, of disgust for the fence-sitting centrists who are content to watch it happen while moaning about the "regressive left", and of rage directed at the current administration (and their supporters and enablers, i.e. everyone who retains any affiliation with the Republican party), which has done nothing but encourage and condone this and other acts of terrorism.

These are scary times we live in.

Shooting at synagogue
 

Washington Post puts the number of dead at 11 Aaron.
A terrible crime indeed.
I don't know what to say to alleviate your fears and your heartbreak, except that I feel the same way.
Take care.

It's a horrible horrible tragedy Aaron. And yes, your country seems to be in a hell of a mess. I'm not sure you can argue that people at the centre of the political spectrum are 'content to watch it happen' though. If I were Jewish, I might feel at my safest being represented by the centre.

US politics does baffle me. Where is your equivalent of our 'leader of the opposition'? Do the Democrats have a leader, a figurehead? It seems that all efforts by that party must be in reaching those 40 something percent of people who didn't vote at all in the last election. Trump and his enablers are despicable, but you're a long way yet from fascism.*

Edit: *this is meant to sound hopeful, rather than dismissive of your totally understandable rage. I hope I'm right, rather than naive.

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Mark: "Trump and his enablers are despicable, but you're a long way yet from fascism."

It could be that we are fast approaching a new kind of fascism. A kind of wolf-in-sheep's-clothing kind of fascism. A First World brand of fascism that fans fear and hides behind conspiratorial thinking. A concoction of democracy and authoritarianism mixed with narcism. A traumatic response to the threats of terrorism that ideological conflict can create. It's a traumatic response to traumatic times that many see as necessary. It's a wolf.

Last night he tweeted during the World Series game to say that the manager of the Dodgers had made a mistake to take a pitcher out of the game when he did. This is our president tweeting about the way a baseball game is being played (at its highest level, I might add. Kind of like second-guessing Bobby Fischer’s tactical moves as he played Boris Spassky) on the same day that our country suffered one of its worst mass shootings. It's hard not to be traumatized.
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Jim, if Trump *only* tweeted about baseball, he'd do a lot less damage.

I argue this because they are vocally more concerned about the (rare, overblown) phenomenon of leftists on campus shutting down racist invited speakers than they are about far-right terrorists literally murdering people. I argue this because the press (which is basically centrist, outside of Fox News), continually gives lovely puff profiles to far-right ideologues (just as they did in the 1930s when Hitler was consolidating power, btw). I argue this because they are more vocally outraged about leftists yelling at Ted Cruz when he tries to eat at a restaurant than they are about the Republicans stealing children from their parents and putting them in cages. Do the centrists feel horrified by yesterday's events? I'm sure they do. They're not monsters. Do I have any confidence that they will do anything whatsoever to stop the Republicans, who at this point are a fascist party? It was hard to type that, it's such a laughable idea.

No, they don't have a leader. When they're not busy completely failing to stand up to Trump in any meaningful way (though, granted, Trump controls every branch of government; if they make gains in November maybe they'll be less useless), they're currently doing all they can to refuse to learn any lessons from the 2016 election. They have no identity besides not being Trump. Rather than move at all to the left to win over those who didn't vote in 2016, they'd rather try to win over the white working class votes who switched to Trump from Obama, because they (wrongly) think that was the difference maker in 2016. They'll probably run an empty suit like Cory Booker in 2020, and lose.

The Holocaust historians I've seen analyze our current situation disagree. The philosopher I know who just wrote a book on fascism disagrees. I hope you are right, but I doubt it.

And it's not just that remark about the manager, Jim. On the same day as the synagogue massacre, he went to a speaking engagement and told the audience that he almost didn't come because of the tragedy he was having a bad hair day.

I guess those calls for civility didn't work.

Mark, the difference is our parliamentary leaders are not next in line to be nominated for president. There is a bigger gap between the executive and legislative branches of government. I'd prefer a parliamentary system, but this is what we have. It is conservative in the worst way. Change is almost impossible, which is what the elites who wrote the constitution wanted.

Trump is clearly a sociopath. He became president because of the antiquated Electoral College. What is more frightening is how the rest of his party lined up behind his lying and corruption. They have their masters and all they want is tax breaks. They don't care about truth or honesty--these crooks caring about honesty, what a joke--religion, including abortion, foreign policy, except when it interferes with their business or any other issue. They are the least patriotic people in the U.S. and the GOP is set up to take care of them. So, in order to please their masters, the GOP dropped every illusion of decency and lined up behind our sociopathic president. I'm not surprised after what they did during the Obama years.

Is trying to get the white working class vote such a bad thing? They're a pretty big demographic. I miss the days when 'moving to the left' and 'winning over the white working class' weren't seen as mutually exclusive. Now the latter seems to be a euphemism for peddling bigotry and nationalism. As someone who grew up white and working class (I'm still the first, the second is fuzzier these days) it makes me sad. Being working class used to be virtually synonymous with voting for a left leaning party.

Aren't all those examples of things that centrists are 'more concerned' about than right-wing terrorism just examples of people exercising their opinions about various stuff in a free society? I think it goes without saying that ideologically motivated murder (of any stripe) is worse than, say, left wing silliness on a university campus. But someone writing a story about the latter doesn't have to issue that caveat before they write it.
Do the likes of CNN really regularly give lovely puff profiles to far-right ideologues? If they do, that is indeed messed up.

I don't want to argue. And it's not really my place. I just think you (and by 'you' I mean America) need to vote him out. The Democrats need to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

[nvm, I don't really want to keep debating this]

Aaron, me neither. We agree far more than we differ, I'm sure and bickering about minutiae is unseemly given the circumstances. My apologies.

No, Mark, you did nothing wrong. I just realized I was continuing our disagreement out of habit and not out of any desire to do it. Cheers, friend.

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Online debate on social media is as close to hopeless as it gets in our current social and political environment. (Though it's better here than anywhere else I've seen.)

I say: Listen. Think. Vote.
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Shooting at synagogue
 

I’d like to throw a poetical gauntlet down.

People who do stand up to Trump are skewered. One person dismissed John McCain with “Oh well, he’ll be dead soon.”
This is the reason why I wrote POTUS 45: Concept of Operations . The news outlets are being used to manipulate the narrative(s) in this country rather than informing them of issues that will gravely affect them. I don’t have a big audience (obviously) nor does that poem dazzle (even more obviously), but it was a way for me to plant a flag about something that I observed and wanted to articulate.

Anna Akhmatova wrote in 1961:

No foreign sky protected me,
No stranger’s wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
Survivor of that time, that place.

I wanted to bear witness to what is happening in my country – even a poem that isn’t that great.
I don’t know if writing a poem will help the situation in the U.S., but I do believe in the power of poetry – and the freedom of speech which I am determined to exercise while I can.
Now for the gauntlet – if you don’t like the situation we’re in, why not write a poem that bears witness to what you see?

I look forward to reading them.

McCain didn't stand up to Trump.

I can never get on the right thread. My apologies.

And yes Aaron, McCain f@#ked Trump.

Aaron, well except that McCain defied Donald Trump from the grave, as in life, thus: If this article from The New Yorker for instance is to be believed,

John McCain’s Funeral Was the Biggest Resistance Meeting Yet: Two ex-Presidents and one eloquent daughter teamed up to rebuke the pointedly uninvited Donald Trump.

Or, say, this one from the BBC for starters,

John McCain: Five times he clashed with Trump.

McCain did some notable things, like vote down the "Skinny Repeal," but he voted with Trump 83% of the time.

He clearly hated the man, but the lionization of McCain masks a conservative person willing to hold his nose and vote for conservative policies.

Oh sure, Andrew. I would have never voted for him. But, except for swinging way right during his presidential campaign (and picking Palin), I think he generally did what he wanted. Of course I don't believe in the same things he did, but I liked him.

People seemed to have forgiven the Keating 5 bit because of McCain-Feingold. Perhaps--perhaps!--that's a fair trade.

Selecting Palin is a direct line to Trump.

I agree. I watched Game Change not too long ago and that seems to predict that direct line. It was my understanding (partly from that movie) that he wanted Lieberman. Not a big fan of his either, but it would have been a bold move crossing party lines. And almost anything is better than Palin. Almost.

I do not even necessarily like him myself, but simply think it not fair or factual to say he never stood up to Trump when he did on these occasions mentioned in the articles to name a few. That is all.

I mean, that's true, which is why I can't seem to find anyone in this thread claiming this.

If you must know. He did as a matter of record. If I were the claimant of this, I would think it sufficient, for the sake of veracity, to simply add enough.

The thumbs down was a big fucking deal, to steal a little from Joe B. It was morally responsible. It's a low bar these days, but hey, that was important.

True, it is a low bar nowadays. As far as Republicans are concerned, a very low bar indeed, he was a cut above the rest insofar as he showed himself capable of considering each issue on its merits and of taking moral responsibility; even if that meant defiance of the ideological lockstep of his own party, he did defy. I think that is something.

I agree that if you lower the bar to the point where it’s literally on the floor, McCain absentmindedly stepped over it a few times.

Why absentmindedly? Does inattentive or forgetful of what one knows or to do what one should not a contradiction in terms make with considering each issue on its merits and taking moral responsibility? What allowed McCain to remember, not conveniently forget so as to appease the ideological table-keepers, what he knew and to do what he should is the reverse of absent-mindedness. He would be absent-minded on the occasion wherein he failed to cross the line for what was right by conveniently forgetting what rightness required. But when he did step over, it was rather in mindfulness than absent-mindedness. I do not mean to sing a fanfare but, as a fan of fair, I am loath to deny that which is only fair to any, even to whom I would not vote for in a hundred years, and there’s an end on’t.

So saving heath care doesn't rank high on your list, Aaron? For me, it's a big issue, so could influence my reaction/opinion.

Never mind.

Aaron, I just want to extend credit where credit is due. As I mentioned, there's no way I'd vote McCain. But he was civil. And reasonable at debate, at least in terms of where we are now. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily reminiscent and misty. But he represented an old foe. He did personally ask Obama to speak at his funeral. Just saying...

James, I get where you’re coming from. The health care vote was good. But, overall, he is given way more credit than he deserves, and, beyond that, I dislike (intensely) the way Trump is making Democrats nostalgic for Republicans (like McCain and Bush Jr.) who killed abd harmed people, but civilly.

I get that too, Aaron. I'm a hawkish liberal, so maybe that explains something. Though I'm proud to say that not just myself, but my whole family (those I talk to anyway) protested the Iraqi invasion. My lord. It just keeps getting worse and worse on the right. But, yes, sometimes you have to fight.

On the overall point of the killings, I don't understand the so called liberal media's take on this. There's always someone hanging by a thread. Responsible? Christ, of course.