I posted about this six months ago but you will have to forgive me for repeating myself. There is renewed talk about Russia using "tactical nukes" in its war against Ukraine. Can we all just please remember that a "5K tactical nuke" is the equivalent in explosive power of 10,000 cruise missiles -- Not 10 or 100 or 1000 but 10,000 cruise missiles. What possible battlefield target would even be appropriate for a weapon of such horrific magnitude? Several of them could completely destroy Kyiv and everybody in it.
This is the nightmare that led me more than 60 years ago to start speaking publicly about matters of politics and war. It is not how I thought I would end my life.
RPW: There is renewed talk about Russia using "tactical nukes" in its war against Ukraine.
ReplyDelete"There is renewed talk"? Who is doing this talking? What are their objectives?
Did they mention that the war could have possibly drawn to a close months ago, when Zelenskyy was ready to meet and negotiate with the Russians but was told by Boris Johnson that he should not?
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/
Could whoever they are that are doing this talking possibly be part of, intentionally or as useful idiots, the US/NATO disinformation campaign that is intended to propagandize Western nations into supporting continued military activity in Ukraine?
It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions....
Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the U.S. is just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-declassified-intel-fight-info-war-russia-even-intel-isnt-rock-rcna23014
Richard Stengel (Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in Obama admin; also former editor of Time, MSNBC analyst, and fellow at the Atlantic Council): My old job at the State Depart was what people used to joke [was the] Chief Propagandaist job.... I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it. And they have to do it to their own population. And I don't necessarily think it's that awful.
https://twitter.com/williamcraddick/status/995026256214179840
Besides what Eric is urging us to keep in mind--that we're enveloped in propaganda from all sides, which makes it very difficult to know what's really going on, among policy makers, on the ground--it's also seemingly the case that going nuclear isn't solely a Russian possibility. As I recollect, Zelensky was quoted (in the NYT?) as urging that should Putin even "think" about going nuclear his nuclear capacity should be taken out. It is, I think, a term of the nuclear dark arts, that it takes nuclear weapons to kill nuclear weapons.
ReplyDeleteThere is much to be afraid of at this moment, Prof. Wolff.
RPW: "But then I thought, even in such an Eden, it would still take a well-paid unionized Amazon worker 3 million years to earn as much as that lesbian Native American “Bezos” would be worth today. It would still be the case that the grotesque inequality of income and the vastly more grotesque inequality of wealth would remain. It would simply no longer be the case that the inequality was color-coded or gender coded. We would be no closer in that imagined ideal world to the collective ownership of the means of production that Marx correctly identified, a century and a half ago, as the essential next step in the social relations of production."
ReplyDeleteProf, you're following the wrong sources. There have been countless discussions and memes in social media addressing this problem for the past several years. Surely you saw some of the memes of US drones painted with LGBT flag colors last year when the CIA posted a recruitment video featuring a Latina intelligence officer who described herself as an "intersectional" "cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder."
https://jacobin.com/2021/05/cia-recruitment-ad-social-justice-language
And here is Herbert Marcuse more than 50 years ago:
Certainly, the fight against pollution, noise, ugliness is good and even productive. However, at stake is not the beautification of the existing environment, but its total reconstruction. And this implies elimination of the sources of the far larger pollution--the mental and physical, the political pollution in the system itself. A clean and beautified General Dynamics plant is still a General Dynamics plant producing the same stuff. And a clean hydrogen bomb is still a hydrogen bomb. And although it is good and vital to breathe cleaner air, it would still be the air of violence and exploitation on a global scale....
The struggle is not anymore fought in terms of parliamentary business, parties, votes, lobbies, whatever it may be--but it is waged from outside...the establishment and in terms alien to the establishment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ipNmdpTHo
Eric,
ReplyDeleteWhy should anything published in Pravda about this whole matter be considered particularly credible? If the US/NATO are engaging, as you charge, in "disinformation," the Russians certainly are also.
RMcD,
You seem to think that Eric urged one to keep in mind there is propaganda "on all sides." That's not what Eric wrote. He referred only to US/NATO "disinformation." He did quote the former State Dept. official saying that "all countries" engage in propaganda, but Eric, in his own voice, did not say that.
LFC,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you are confusing pravda.com.ua (the cited source) with pravda.ru?
Or do you also not trust Правла ("truth") on these matters when it comes from a source that is aligned with the Ukrainian state?
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/columns/
You seem to think that Eric urged one to keep in mind there is propaganda "on all sides." ... but Eric, in his own voice, did not say that
It has been a recurring theme in Eric's posts in the comments.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteok, my mistake on the source.
"It is, I think, a term of the nuclear dark arts, that it takes nuclear weapons to kill nuclear weapons."
ReplyDeleteHardly. One doesn't need a nuke to kill a submarine, sink a ship, or demolish stores of tactical nukes. NATO has lots of options.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/B-52H_static_display_arms_06.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FdoAdhHWIAgSny7?format=jpg&name=large
Also I believe Xi and Modi have expressed their opinions to Putin.
OMG, here is a pic of the first round of new conscripts arriving in Ukraine. This is just wrong!
ReplyDeletehttps://images.dailykos.com/images/1117530/story_image/GettyImages-1243542815.jpg?1664294259
Almost exactly 40 years ago I took to the streets because NATO, in response to SS-20 missiles of the Warsaw Pact, made the so-called double-track decision. Not half an hour from where I am writing now, Pershing II missiles and cruise missiles were deployed. The so-called warning time, the time between the detection of the missile and the impact was (and is today) 8-10 minutes. Germany was at this time, in the context of the strategy of "massive retaliation" formulated by John Foster Dulles in 1957, "ground zero" for World War 3. In other words, we were the ones who had to be sacrificed in any case to secure as much European territory as possible.
ReplyDeleteThis sheer cynicism is what "politicized" me in the first place at the age of 22. (By the way, I claim that the so-called "anti-Americanism" of many "leftists" of my generation was not triggered by the Vietnam War, but by this insidious open secret that could only be conceived far away in Washington DC).
When the so-called "Budapest Memorandum" was signed in Budapest on December 5, 1994, in the context of the CSCE conference taking place there, it was a world-historical event. States in possession of nuclear weapons voluntarily returned them in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the USA and Great Britain. Along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, Ukraine handed over its nuclear weapons in return for the signatures of the major nuclear powers.
For me, the Budapest Agreement was the only conceivable way to solve the problems that culminated in 1982. Many did not take note of this agreement at the time, hardly registered it or simply forgot about it. One CSCE agreement among very many. Of course, the quality of the memorandum is not guaranteed by the credibility of the guarantor powers, but only by the fact that all 3 states actually delivered the weapons.
It is in this context, among others, that one should consider Russia's barbaric invasion of Ukraine. The outcome of this conflict will determine whether it will ever be possible to minimize the threat of nuclear war. It is completely irrelevant how Putin defines success or failure for himself. What is important is that all other states that rely on nuclear strategies to secure their interests realize that they have nothing to gain by doing so.
While the focus is on Ukraine, it's worth noting what's happening elsewhere, such as Myanmar.
ReplyDeleteFrom a recent WaPo article:
"As fighting rages on in Myanmar, its citizens are faltering under the losses they’ve incurred in a year and a half of violent conflict. Entire villages have been razed; loved ones have been executed in secret; and 1.1 million jobs have evaporated from the economy. International attention has waned, drawn away by crises such as the war in Ukraine. But the costs of the military’s takeover — and the ongoing desperate push to resist it — have continued to mount."
The article contains an account of a teenager involved in protests who was shot and killed by the military, no doubt one of many.
Here's the link:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/myanmar-conflict-coup-takeover-junta-pdfs-military/
just a reminder...
ReplyDeleteToday is the IPO of Porsche AG. Despite a tense situation, analysts think it will be a great success. One expects 9 billion euros for Volkswagen and the Piech and Porsche families will be happy about their blocking minority of 25% + 1. Warren Buffet is also getting in, of course. McKinsey has determined in a study that luxury is a very safe investment. According to this, the number of millionaires has grown from 40 million worldwide in 2016, to 100 million today.
Long live capitalism. If this continues, there is perhaps a small chance that I will become a millionaire during my lifetime and then drive a Porsche, provided I can pay for the electricity to fill it up. That could be a problem in the future, even for millionaires, unless your name is Piech.
I came across this piece in the New Statesman that offers a very interesting-looking list with brief descriptions of 'the 14 best books to help you understand Putin's Russia': https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2022/08/14-best-books-understand-putin-russia.
ReplyDeleteI had a nightmare, but it was about wearing a 3 piece suite and blue hair teaching a graduate level course out of an old phone booth with a syllabus laminated and bedazzled that just says "F*** HOMEWORK" in bold gothic sans font. Because grades and tests are just a means of stifling creativity and confining ones thinking to cultural norms in order to serve the bourgeois.
ReplyDelete'Can we all just please remember that a "5K tactical nuke" is the equivalent in explosive power of 10,000 cruise missiles -- Not 10 or 100 or 1000 but
ReplyDelete10,000 cruise missiles.'
How much explosive power is that? But I'm not trying to become an international security scholar.
I might be more interested in such matters, if I wasn't assuming that Russian and US nuclear strategies focus on deterrence, and so involve large-scale retaliatory nuclear attacks in the face of any
first-nuclear weapon use. In other words, under any reasonable strategy, using the weapons is unthinkable and so threatening their use is by definition a bluff.
Also, I'm not sure what, historically, the cruise missile burst upon the public consciousness with, but my guess is that there is such a thing as what they do as strategic offensive nuclear weapon carriers. So okay, are we comparing here with 1,000-pound-warhead cruise missiles, or what? Maybe we're thinking of the Tomahawk cruise missile? But The B-1 buzz bomb was a cruise missile, used by the Germans against England in World War II. Quite respectable cruise missiles, with a range of 125 miles and a payload of nearly a ton — almost twice as much as a Tomahawk. I believe, actually, that the Tomahawk is longer in the tooth than one might think, such that it began as a nuclear weapons system.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing to me that as a teen I was petrified that a nuclear war would destroy mankind. However at that time there were in actuality only two players who realized MAD was not worth it.
ReplyDeleteNow with tactile nukes and multiple other players I think a nuclear disaster is more likely.
As to Putin’s willingness to negotiate, one should read Snyder’s A Road to Unfreedom to get an insight to Putin. He never would have withdrawn even if he got a big chunk of Ukraine as reward.
Professor, I'm sorry to interject a topic that does not fit the post you made, but I wondered what your thoughts might be about this piece from the NY Times on the prospect of a Trump conviction: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/opinion/trump-fbi-republicans.html. I know you are hoping for a Trump conviction but I'm inclined to believe, like this NY Times writer, that a conviction would likely only galvanize the worst elements in the Trump movement and support the Trumpian narrative that he is a political martyr fighting for the people and persecuted by the elites running 'the deep state' (FBI, DoJ, CIA, etc.). There can be no juridical solution to what is, at its core, a political problem, the problem that a powerful coalition in the American citizenry has banded together in devoted support to the image and politics of Trump. I would be curious what your thoughts are, Professor. Doesn't Marx teach us not to pursue our solutions in the juridical but in the political field?
ReplyDeleteSo, in your opinion, should "the political" become an asylum for criminals?
ReplyDeleteWhen Trump is convicted, a criminal conviction, not political, two things will happen: A substantial number of folks will abandon him for DeSantis, and a significant number will not vote out of disillusionment or hopelessness that their messiah hasn't delivered them unto Right Wing Paradise. Good for democracy.
ReplyDeleteI finally got around to reading the NY Times guest essay referred to in Anonymous’s comment above.
ReplyDeleteThe author, Damon Linker a former correspondent for the Week, makes some valid points that are worth considering. His main concern is that if Trump is indicted, whether convicted or not, it will set a dangerous precedent for future administrations which lose an election, with the winner’s DOJ seeking ways to prosecute the loser.
Indicting and convicting Trump will only energize his base. Even if he does not obtain the nomination, this will only improve DeSantis’s prospects of getting the nomination and winning the election. In which case, his first act will be to pardon a convicted Trump.
His solution. Don’t indict and don’t put Trump on trial. He will likely lose the election anyway. And if he doesn’t, and gets elected, the Democrats have learned from dealing with him the first time how manage his indiscretions and abuses of power. He ends his essay stating: “There is an obvious risk: If Mr. Trump runs again, he might win. But that’s a risk we can’t avoid – which is why we may well have found ourselves in a situation with no unambivalently good options.
The situation is fraught with uncertainties – will prosecuting set a bad precedent of serial prosecutions after every election? If he is prosecuted and still wins the election, can the Democrats prevent his future abuses of power? If he is convicted, and does not obtain the nomination, will this only improve DeSantis’ prospects, ending in a certain pardon of a convicted Trump?
These are all uncertainties, with no definite answer. But there is one thing which is not uncertain – if the evidence supports the conclusion that Trump, beyond a reasonable doubt, violated one or more federal laws – by purloining classified documents for his own personal use, or by inciting a mob to attack the Capitol – failure to prosecute will have one certain outcome – it will indicate that one person is above the law, and that anyone who succeeds to becoming President in the future is also above the law, which in turn will have this certain result – thousands of Americans, many of whom have commented on this blog, will lose faith in America as a democracy in which no one is above the law. And this certain result, in my book, effectively rebuts all of the uncertainties Mr. Linker raises, and indicting him, and prosecuting him, are worth the risk of those uncertainties.
First of all, I don't know if Linker's narrative is true, but I'm going to assume that it is for the sake of this conversation.
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of variables involved here, but the most important variable, I believe, is preventing Trump and De Santis from being elected. Both are climate-change deniers and we need leadership who not only guide the U.S. towards sustainable environmental policies, but also inspire action in other nations as well as promote policies which stimulate other nations to take steps towards ending dependence on fossil fuels.
Neither Trump nor De Santis should be president of a superpower for lots of other reasons, but the environmental crisis seems to be more important than "faith in America as a democracy in which no one is above the law", a faith that, if I ever had it, I lost many years ago.
I myself don't really care if Trump ends up in jail or spends the rest of his days watching porno videos in Mar a Lago. I do care whether he or others like him, for example, De Santis, become president.
One of Satan’s greatest artifices has been to convince people like s. wallerstein that the United States is not a democracy and that preventing climate change is more important than making sure Donald Trump is prosecuted and convicted for having violated federal law and jeopardized the future of the non-existent democracy. (Paraphrasing Baudelaire)
ReplyDeleteI am confused. Was the last Marc Susselman post from Marc Susselman, or was it from someone satirizing Marc Susselman?
ReplyDeleteMarc Susselman: thousands of Americans, many of whom have commented on this blog, will lose faith in America as a democracy in which no one is above the law
ReplyDeleteNow that's a howler.
If you're part of the privileged class, you may be deluded into believing the justice system is fair and no one is above the law. The rest of us know that all of that is just a fairy tale.
https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/news/2022/04/survey-of-civic-literacy-2022.pdf
What about Maryanne Trump Barry? What justice is there for defendants who were imprisoned and/or required to pay fines in cases she prosecuted as a federal attorney or in which she sat as a judge?
I agree with Wallerstein that the environmental crisis is far more urgent than maintaining faith in the rule of law. This is perhaps in part because I do not believe that the rule of law is maintained in the US, whether Trump is prosecuted or not. Not just Trump, but members of Congress and bankers on Wall Street regularly engage in activities that either are already or by any reasonable standard should be illicit with utter impunity. (Consider, for example, the reckless financial speculation leading up to the 2008 crash, the fraud perpetrated by upstarts with enormous backing by hedge funds and investment firms like WeWork [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-rise-and-fall-of-wework], or the payouts given to the likes of Joe Manchin et. al. to block regulations of carbon emissions, [https://www.salon.com/2021/10/02/joe-manchin-has-made-52m-from-his-coal-company--and-gets-big-donations-from-fossil-fuel-industry_partner/] i.e. what under any reasonable definition ought to be considered bribes.) Moreover, now that the Supreme Court has been captured by the far right, the law will be bent to suit right-wing ideological agendas for decades to come (e.g. to enable bans on abortion or to prevent the federal government from regulating climate emissions or to determine election results, as in Bush v Gore). Moreover, the presidential power to pardon in itself makes a mockery of the idea of the rule of law. For all these reasons, I view what will be politically and tactically effective, rather than what will uphold 'the ideal of the rule of law', to be a far more important consideration and priority in judging what course of action is best.
ReplyDeleteI googled "is the United States a democracy?".
ReplyDeleteI already knew that Chomsky says it's a plutocracy, but to my surprise, even Jimmy Carter now says it's a plutocracy, although with democratic forms.
"According to Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter, the modern United States resembles a plutocracy though with democratic forms.[6][7] A former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, also believed the US to be developing into a plutocracy.[8]"
From Wikipedia.
By the real Marc Susselman
ReplyDeleteMy Baudelaire paraphrase also applies to Eric and Anonymous. They both missed my express qualification, “if the evidence supports the conclusion that Trump, beyond a reasonable doubt, violated one or more federal laws,” failure to prosecute him will undermine the rule of law and the principle that no one in the United States is above the law. As an attorney who has practiced law for now 44 years, I have certainly seen my share of what I regard as travesties of justice – where a District Attorney has failed to prosecute a corporate executive whom I believe violated the law; or where a jury acquitted someone whom I believed was clearly guilty (e.g., the teen-age shooter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who killed two unarmed individuals, claiming self-defense). Regarding the first example, prosecutors will often decline to prosecute where they do not believe the evidence they have is sufficient to persuade a jury that the individual committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In the second example, the individual was prosecuted, but a jury was not convinced that the accused was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Neither example is a counter-example to my assertion that, if the evidence that Trump violated federal law demonstrates his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he should, and must, be prosecuted in order to preserve the rule of law in our country.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteThe comment at @3:08 p.m. is clearly someone satirizing M. Susselman. (Posting under someone else's name, i.e., impersonation, is, I think, a no-no in the blogosphere, even when it's clearly satire, but this person may not be aware of what I've always taken to be an informal norm. That would be the charitable view, at any rate.)
On second thought, maybe it wasn't impersonation...
ReplyDeleteSorry LFC, I was impersonating myself, and I do not retract a word.
ReplyDeletes. wallerstein, Eric, and Anonymous,
Can any of you name any government which has existed since the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations until the present day where wealthy citizens had no influence over the government? Do wealthy citizens in the icons of social democracy in Sweden and Norway have absolutely no influence on the policies which are implemented in their countries?
A plutocracy is a government which is controlled exclusively by the wealthiest people living in that country. It is undeniable that America’s billionaires – Gates, Bezos, Buffett, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. – wield outsized political influence in this country, but the do not “control” it. What has happened is that voters have ceded power to them by failing to show up at the polls on election days. The United States has one of the lowest voter participation in the world. As I have written on this blog numerous times, we have the right-wing Supreme Court convening this October because too many voters sat on their asses and did not vote in 2016 because Hillary Clinton was not the perfect candidate for them. (Yes, I know, Hilary was no better, since she accepted corporate donations, ya da, ya da.) To the extent that plutocrats have too much influence in this country, it’s because middle-class voters have handed it to them. Because too many blue collar and service workers have voted against their interests in union organizing drives. As Pogo said, “We have found the enemy, and it is us.” S. wallertein, whose to blame for all those poor voters in Chile rejecting a progressive new constitution? Blame the plutocrats, or blame their own gullibility?
The Economist, which no one can accuse of being ultra-left, publishes a yearly democracy index.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
You can see that Denmark is a full democracy (according to the Economist), that Canada is a full democracy, that the United Kingdom is a full democracy and that the United States is a flawed democracy. By the way, Ukraine, whose democracy "we" are supposedly defending isn't even a flawed democracy. It's rated a "hydrid regime".
All this from the Economist, not from Jacobin.
Marc Susselman, what good is blaming voters? Were voters perhaps lazy and lacking in civic virtue in their voting habits over the years, or was power stripped away from them through, e.g., the acceleration of partisan gerrymandering, the careful management by the two-party system of most genuinely popular politics, the Citizens United decision that opened up unlimited corporate spending on political campaigns, etc. etc.? I think the answer to this question is fairly obvious, but really it does not matter who is to blame. What matters is whether political action should be oriented towards protecting faith in the rule of law and democracy over pursuing tactical political goals like climate action and political (rather than juridical) defeat of the Trump movement. And if there is no faith in rule of law and democracy left, because these were destroyed by whomever you would like to blame, then they cannot be meaningfully 'protected'. If there is outsized influence by the wealthy on our politics, I don't care whose 'fault' it is, I care that this is true and must be assumed whenever we decided what is to be done.
ReplyDeleteMarc Susselman: Can any of you name any government which has existed since the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations until the present day where wealthy citizens had no influence over the government?
ReplyDeleteI believe this is what is known in the trade as a straw man.
And even at that it's not a particularly persuasive one. The issue isn't whether wealthy citizens have any influence in government.
(See Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything for discussions of plenty of societies with completely different ways of conceptualizing wealth and of deciding how to balance various parties' influence in government.)
Lloyd and John Rapko,
ReplyDeleteI began reading Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom, but I can't even get past the first few paragraphs of the prologue, where he is writing about the Katyn massacre. There are alternative interpretations of the history that he is clearly not going to engage with.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI very much appreciate the warning about Snyder's book, which I thought I might look at, and probably still will. The Katyn forest massacre is one of a few hundred things that I find so painful to read and think about that I mostly stay away from any but the most general accounts, but I would be interested in knowing the range of historians' interpretations. A close friend of mine who spent a great deal of time in Poland in the 1980s, with many visits since, thinks that Poland, Olga Tokarczuk notwithstanding, has never recovered from that massacre, as it annihilated the brightest and most dynamic young men of an entire generation. I've wondered about that during and after many viewings of Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds and Kieslowski's Dekalog.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteTimothy Snyder is not going to be to your taste, I feel fairly confident in saying that to you. He is an accomplished historian, which is not to say I wd nec agree w everything he says. His specialty is central and E European history, 20th cent.
My strong impression re the Katyn massacre is that there's no serious question but that the Soviets were responsible. They never admitted to it, but my impression is that the historiographical consensus is pretty clear. (Perhaps I am wrong, that's often a possibility.) The Katyn massacre doesn't mean much of anything any more to the proverbial person in the street in the West. It did get a passing mention in the recent Burns documentary, fwiw. (Snyder was one of the historical consultants on the program.)
The Soviets never admitted to the massacre? That’s not quite right; as per Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete“An investigation conducted by the office of the prosecutors general of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004) confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres, but refused to classify this action as a war crime or as an act of mass murder. The investigation was closed on the grounds that the perpetrators were dead, and since the Russian government would not classify the dead as victims of the Great Purge, formal posthumous rehabilitation was deemed inapplicable. In November 2010, the Russian State Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for ordering the massacre.“
Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThank you for the clarification. It was both a war crime and an act of mass murder, so the refusal to classify it as such by the prosecutor's office might have had something to do with shielding the Russian govt from reparations claims or similar action. Just a guess.
For you classical music lovers out there (are you listening Prof. Wolff), a new movie, Tàr, about a female German conductor, played by Cate Blanchett, is being theatrically released on Oct. 7. Blanchett had to relearn her elementary school German, and learn how to conduct, for the role. It portrays her rehearsing, and then conducting, Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. She conducts the Dresden Philharmonic, and Elgar’s cello concerto is also performed. The movie has received a 97% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
ReplyDeletehttps://election.princeton.edu/articles/democracy-moneyball-2022/
ReplyDeleteI see Lula got 48% of the vote and Ciro got 3% so there will be a runoff. Both are on the left so...
ReplyDeleteWhen we consider that the history of Ukraine has been centuries of authoritarian imperialism, totalitarianism, and authoritarianism, a "hybrid" score is perhaps something to be optimistic about. Meanwhile it seems Putin has lost another couple of chunks of that new Russian territory this weekend including a collapse of the front in northern Kherson.
Dealing with climate issues isn't going to happen outside of democratic institutions and the rule of law.
Marc Susselman: thousands of Americans, many of whom have commented on this blog, will lose faith in America as a democracy
ReplyDeleteFirst Monday in October.
Chief Justice Roberts: [Y]ou don’t want public opinion to be the guide of what the appropriate decision is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/us/conservative-supreme-court-legitimacy.html
John Rapko,
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say not to read Snyder's book. I just doubt that it would be worth my time for me to read it.
There is no disagreement that the Katyn massacre is one of the many tragedies of that period. The historiographic debate is over whether the Nazis or the Soviet Communists were guilty of (the vast majority of) the executions/murders. The anticommunist party line that LFC refers to, and which Snyder dutifully recites without question, is that the Communists committed the murders on the direct orders of Stalin. Independent researcher Grover Furr is, to my knowledge, one of the very few (? the only) scholar writing in English who has rejected that interpretation, concluding that the the balance of the evidence strongly implicates the Nazis, not the Soviets. His book-length treatment is "The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre."
More bad news for Democrats. Biden has screwed up big time.
ReplyDeleteI was watching TYT (The Young Turks) this morning, and they reported that Biden has scaled back the student debt relief program in response to the lawsuits filed by the Attorneys General of several Red States.
I had not hear about this in any of the news reports on the major commercial stations, so I Googled the question, Has Biden Cancelled The Student Debt Relief Program, and found this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/30/student-loan-forgiveness-ffel-perkins/
How stupid! Why couldn’t Biden have just told the Attorneys’ General, Go screw yourselves, and we’ll see you in court? This would have made him look like a hero, and won over progressives. Now he and the Democrats look like cowards.
I am really disappointed in Biden, especially since I have sung his praises on this blog. I can hear Eric and Anonymous saying, “I told you so.”
"Why couldn’t Biden have just told the Attorneys’ General, Go screw yourselves, and we’ll see you in court?"
ReplyDeleteSince we can assume the AGs will venue shop and an injunction will be issued followed by years of litigation, seeking to avert that is hardly unreasonable. We are finding out to our sorrow that fifty years of neo-liberalism is difficult to unwind.
Eric,
ReplyDeleteJustice Roberts remark is apropos of what is going on in Brazil, where President Bolsonaro has called on his supporters to take to the streets and demonstrate against the judges on Brazil’s Supreme Court, whose decisions he opposes. While power concedes nothing without a demand, the demand may not be allowed to replace the rule of law, even if, as in the case of the Dobbs decision, a large segment of the population disagrees with a Supreme Court’s decision. Make you demand known through the ballot box, rather than via mob rule (which could have been done in 2016). This is preferable to invading the Supreme Court and dragging the Justices out by their hair. Anarchy does not protect anybody’s rights.
These reflections have been prompted by certain comments at this site (though not necessarily in this particular thread).
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately (in my view) democratic socialism (or, if one prefers, social democracy) has been in retreat in large parts of the world for some time. (Latin America was a partial, though only a partial, exception in recent years.) The geopolitical and ideological competition or rivalry that seems to prevail now resembles the Cold War in one respect at least: it occurs between two flawed systems. One is a capitalist semi-democracy, with v. high levels of inequality and various other severe defects; the other(s) are autocratic semi-kleptocracies (at least in Russia's case) with varying degrees of state involvement in the economy but nothing resembling collective or even state ownership of the all main means of production. The latter systems deny most rights of dissent and most of the other standard liberal-democratic rights, and (in China's case at least) engage in v. extensive surveillance of their populations.
In this context, a relevant question is whether the U.S., for all its defects, is less awful than Putin's Russia or Xi's China. Unlike in a domestic election, where one does not have to choose the lesser of two evils but can write in a candidate or vote for a third-party candidate, the current competition or rivalry on the international scene does not really present that option. One can just ignore it all together, of course; one can critique *both* U.S. imperialism (if one sees it that way) and Russian expansionism (to use a mild term); but at some point it may well become necessary to weigh the awfulness of one competitor against the awfulness of the other. Everyone has to do that weighing, I suppose, for himself/herself/themselves.
I don't know whether this has been too cryptic or not, but I'll leave it at that for now.
LFC,
ReplyDeleteNo, not cryptic. I have made this same point in a number of comments on this blog in the past. One can complain about having to choose between the lesser of two evils in an election, but when it comes to choosing between available forms of government, the less evil government is attractive by comparison. Given that this is the case, we should be prudent in assuring that the less evil government survives, and is not sabotaged by elements on the far left, or the far right.
"...and is not sabotaged by elements on the far left, or the far right."
ReplyDeleteThe present danger worldwide is from the far right. The far left as a force exists only as far right fantasies and propaganda. There's no need for balance or both siding.
aaall,
ReplyDeleteWell, Yes and No. Of the two, I agree that the far right presents the greater direct threat. But the far left can provide ammunition which increases far right recruitment and thereby enhances their direct threat.
ONE
ReplyDeleteWhile acknowledging the pragmatic reasons which certainly lend the lesser of two evils argument a lot of weight, I must confess I find that argument problematical in that it does not seem to take into account some of the considerations that might approriately weigh on the minds of those faced with making such a decision. (I apologise for my remarks being several parts long.)
By way of preface, since we usually seem to encounter the argument as one between a leftist and a centrist (whatever these terms may now actually connote), let me try to put it in a different frame: Suppose you are a rightist or a center rightist in Germany in the early 1930s looking with trepidation at the strength of the communist and social democratic leftists. Might you not opt to vote for the Nazis as the lesser of the two evils as you perceive them to be at that moment, before they’d made clear the horrors they were capable of? Maybe you do so in anticipation that the ‘realistic’ right, including the aristocratic military officer corps, will soon dump Hitler once he’s served his function of blocking the left. But maybe not. And yes, I am aware that things were a bit more complex than that—things always are a bit more complex, aren’t they?
The point I’m trying to get at is this: The lesser evil argument seems not to take the complexity of the choices into account. Neither does it take account of time. (At this point, it’s usual to quote Keynes to the effect that in the long run we’re all dead. But that’s surely just a way of trivialising via a spurious appeal to authority that time might be significant. Or to put it differently: don’t try to think about the longer term because in politics all that matters is the short term. That is, I think, part of what the lesser of two evils argument suggest.
Let me try to draw these points together in the case of a looming choice that much concerns me since I am British.
The woke left, the identity politics left, tends to scare off "normal" people, leading them to vote for the right or far right.
ReplyDeleteTHREE
ReplyDeleteBritain already has a party, the Conservative Party, which is rather like this. And after the outcome of that party’s recent leadership contest, where a handful of party members who are not professional politicans have been responsible for handing the leadership over to a bunch of not ready for prime time players, I very much suspect that the Tories will do what they can to marginalise their 100,000 or so paid up members so that what they regard as sanity can prevail again. But in the case of the British Labour Party, the membership has been in the millions—under Corbyn the Party became the largest political party in Europe, all paid-up politically vetted members. And they are the ones who must now contemplate whether to jump when they’re told to jump, whether to keep quiet unless called upon to voice approved points of view dictated from on high.
Now it may be that party politics is dying in Western Europe. Maybe in some places it’s already dead, having outlived the circumstances which gave it viability in the first place. (That is, I think, the point of Art Goldhammer’s recent reflections, “Does France still have a party system?—accessible at https://tocqueville21.com/art-goldhammer/does-france-still-have-a-party-system/ — where he concludes that instead of a party system France now has “a menagerie of factions gathered around strong personalities hoping to emerge as presidential contenders in an election that remains nearly half a decade in the future, as if today’s urgent problems . . . can somehow be finessed without coherent party positions to clarify and organize debate and without a decisive presidential majority capable of tamping down dissent.”) But that doesn’t begin to comprehend my hopes for a viable British political system, though it is presently what seems to be on the cards. And at this point, a vote for Labour seems to be, whatever else it is, a vote to enter a de-politicised morass.
I doubt I will persuade anyone who is committed to the eternal validity of the lesser evil argument, but still I’ll ask that refusal to be ruled by that argument should not be dismissed as naive political purism or political naivety. Such a refusal often enough has to do with genuine political concerns that are just as weighty as which politician to vote for. Such concerns should not uniquely determine the political judgement one arrives at. But they should be part of the consideration that goes into forming a political judgement.
R McD,
ReplyDeleteI am not qualified to comment on your observations regarding British politics, but your observation about the choice that many Germans made favoring the Nazis over the Communists, as s. wallerstein points out, makes my point To many Americans, the choice between the far left and the right, the right and the far right are the lesser of two evils, driving them to the right and thereby enhancing the prospects of a fascist government. It is up to the moderates to offer them another less evil option – a less evil option that for many on the left and far left is unattractive because it is imperfect. But an imperfect moderate government is still superior to right to far right fascist government.
R McD
ReplyDeleteSome interesting points.
If you go back to my comment that started this discussion, you'll see that I tried to distinguish, perhaps not clearly enough, between the domestic and international realms and to suggest that the lesser evil argument may have more force in the latter realm than the former. (I don't think Marc S. agrees w that and I'm not positive that I myself would try to defend the position, but that's what I was suggesting.) I do think the lesser evil argument has *some* force in the domestic sphere but perhaps not as much as in the international.
In the U.S. context, I don't esp share the view of s.w. and Marc that "woke-ism" is driving voters to Trumpism, and even on the assumption that it is, that would argue in my view for a different kind of U.S. left rather than for an abandonment of the left terrain entirely.
Is it really true that it's the presence of the "far left" whatever that may be that is what's driven people to the right? I've seen quite a number of reports that the Democrats abandoned the American working class to their globalized fate and that that led lots of people to look elsewhere for salvation. Isn't it also the case that way back when there was a lot of discussion of how a lot of those who looked elsewhere were also looking favorably on Bernie before he was set aside?
ReplyDeleteBack to s.w.'s point about wokeness, since I've seen your name in comments on Leiter, you've probably read https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/10/race-reductionism-threatens-to-doom-the-left.html
LFC,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about the motivations of U.S. voters, but the woke elements of the draft Chilean constitution, especially stuff like Native-American rights, abortion with no time limits and animal rights, certainly played a big role in voter rejection according to all the polls.
Yes, I'm arguing for a different kind of left, one which stresses social democratic and welfare state benefits, such as public healthcare, free university education and in the case of Chile, a pension system based on solidarity, instead of privatized individual funds. Certainly, women's reproductive rights should be included, however, with a certain respect towards the "normal" sensibility that at one point in the pregnancy (I don't know exactly when because I haven't studied the issue in detail), the fetus becomes a human baby.
P.s. the Dem candidate for Senate in Pa., from what I gather, is a good example of a left populist who appeals to voters who might otherwise vote Repub. Left, but w emphasis on economics and class, not woke-ism.
ReplyDeletes.w.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that what you're calling the woke left is stronger in Chile than the U.S. In the U.S. it's not what's primarily driving Trumpist voters, I think, though it gives Trumpist politicians and media figures talking points.
So I agree w Anonymous 5:36 p.m. on that.
ReplyDeleteLFC,
ReplyDeleteIt's not so strong in Chile. If it were, the Constitution would have been approved by voters.
It's vociferous enough to give rightwing politicians and media figures talking points, as you say and those talking points scare "normal" voters, who unlike you and me, don't spend all day (or much of the day) informing themselves about politics. That's all.
Public figures on the left, before they open their mouths, should think ten seconds about how their statements will be exaggerated and distorted by the right. That's how the game works.
Marc, I’m not sure what point of yours you’re referring to, but that aside I don’t believe the history of Germany after WW One supports the notion that “moderates” may save us. To quote a perhaps not quite pertinent remark from Franz Neumann’s “Behemoth” (p. 47): “It was the liberals who represented in the legal field the great cultural tradition of Germany—profound historical knowledge, sharp and precise power of analytical thought, and a firm adherence to the values of German idealist philosophy. They attempted to bring the democratic structure into harmony with liberal guarantees. The Weimar system, supposedly the constitutional expression of this system was the embodiment of their failure.” In short, the moderates failed? They failed because the circumstances they were trying to grapple with were beyond their understanding? Their opponents’ understanding may not have been much better in most respects, but these opponents certainly understood how to exploit the regime's evident failures.
ReplyDeleteAs I see both s.w. and LFC trying to urge, though perhaps I misunderstand them, it’s not enough to propose moderation, it’s also necessary to have some meaningful sort of understanding of the current situation in all its complexity. An imperfect moderate government is surely superior to a far right fascist one. But to revert again to the German case, look to the fate of the imperfect moderate Weimar system. Moderates must offer more than a less evil option, I think. They surely also have to offer solutions that will strike the suffering many as genuinely meaningful and bring together into some sort of large coalition those who understand their own miseries in somewhat divergent ways, the woke and the unwoke, so to speak?
The "never" part seems not to have worked out:
ReplyDeletehttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeQOuNxXEBMZpcH?format=jpg&name=small
A disturbing image to see on any day, but especially on Yom Kippur.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, why has “never” not been “never”? Are the Russians more inherently evil than the rest of us?
At the end of Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. And The Holocaust, one of the commentators, the son of survivors, said: “The fragility of civilized behavior is the one thing you really learn, because these people who we now see in these photographs – these sepia photographs that are receding into time – they are no, no different, from us. You look at your neighbors, the people at the dry cleaners, the waiters at the restaurant, that’s who these people were. Don’t kid yourself.”
Marc,
ReplyDeleteI'm currently rereading the Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, which I first read many years ago.
The first section is about anti-semitism and I thought that it might interest you.
I'm half-way through the first section and into a fascinating account of the life of Disraeli.
Arendt, by the way, mostly treats anti-semitism in Western and Central Europe. She barely goes into the progoms in Russia, etc. There's a long chapter on the Dreyfus affair, which interests me, but I haven't gotten to yet.
I'm sure that there are more recent accounts which have corrected that of Arendt, but she is incredibly brillant and insightful so that I prefer reading her to more pedestrian and probably more exacting recent narratives.
By the way, she touches on Marx and finds him to be anti-Jewish, not anti-semitic. I think that she reserves the term "anti-semitism" to refer to racialized bigotry against Jews such as that of the Nazis.
S, wakkerstein,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the reference to Hannah Arendt's work and your summary. I have meant to read her work, but have never gotten around to it. Based on your recommendation, I will obtain a copy. Interesting that she deemed Marx anti-Jewish, but not anti-Semitic.
A more contemporary analysis of anti0-Semitims can be found in Deborah Lipstadt's Anti-Semitism, Here and Now. Lipstadt was one of the commentators in the Ken Burns documentary. If you have not seen it, it is available for free on the PBS channel on the internet.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteI believe that Origins will interest you. The most readable of Arendt's works is Eichmann in Jersusalem, which was originally written for the New Yorker magazine. So you might start with that.
A genuine question: why should we think that it is the calls for serious change that drive people away from the left, and not the complacent endorsement of the status quo by establishment types (Pelosi, Manchin, Biden, etc.)? If the argument for moderates is that they are better at forming a broad coalition, this question has to be taken seriously. (Also, wokeism is an ideology of many moderates as much as it is one of many leftists—consider the CNN types constantly obsessing with Trump’s uses of racist language or Kamala Harris’s brand of politics or even Biden’s promise to appointment a Black women to the Supreme Court. It is simply not correct to say that opposing leftism is opposing the woke and that supporting moderates is rejecting it. You need to explain which policies and candidates you have in mind in each case.)
ReplyDeleteAnon, "wokeism" hardly qualifies as an ideology. As with CRT and "groomers" its a racist/anti-LGBTQ meme created and perpetuated by far right propagandists like Chris Rufo, Tucker Carlson, and Rod Dreher.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you find a president doing racisms as unproblematic. Tell us more. Harris' comment was apropos to the context and, be honest, do you see a problem with a Republican president giving the SC choice to the Federalist Society?
s.w. this may be of interest:
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2022/09/levinsonfest-on-comparative_01871438799.html
Given what l've gleaned on Chilean politics, electing a constitutional convention from the general population was probably not a good idea.
aaall,
ReplyDeleteIn the Octuber 2020 plebiscite where people were asked (voting being voluntary, not obligatory) if they wanted a new constitution, they were given the option of a constitution convention wholly composed of citizens elected from the general population or a convention composed half of citizens and half of members of congress. 79% of the voters opted for a convention wholly composed of citizens without members of congress.
Do I find a president saying racist things unproblematic? No, of course not. I despise it. But do I think that the response to a president who thrives on media controversy and on the constructed image of himself as a martry who is unfairly persecuted by sanctimonious hypocrites who do nothing good for real people--do I think that the response to such a figure should be sanctimonious and hypocritical criticisms of every word he says while doing nothing substantive actually to help people of color (a la CNN)? No, I don't think that should be the response. That is what I call 'woke'. You are right: it is less an ideology than a posture or style of politics, unlike CRT which is a substantive field of legal scholarship. Or do you think we should discuss every vulgar offensive thing Trump says all the time? Because that is a full time job and leaves out any space for discussing anything else (i.e. for actual politics).
ReplyDeleteAnon, both "woke" and "CRT" are terms that have been hijacked by far right apparatchiks. According to them, "CRT" is anything that might make snowflakes on the Right uncomfortable about the history of race relations in the United States. The value of terming talking heads calling out racisms as "sanctimonious and hypocritical" isn't clear.
ReplyDeleteI sense the class argument lurking in your post. It would be nice if everyone not wealthy recognized and prioritized their class interests over the kayfabe as it would have been nice if I got that pony. Sadly, that is not the world in which we dwell.
The question was not “should we devote time to criticizing the sanctimonious hypocrisy of those called ‘woke’?” (I believe the problem of so-called wokeness is way over-discussed.) The question was “should we support moderate or more radical politics on the left?” Some said that supporting moderates is better because it brings more people into the coalition. I suggested it is not obvious that moderate approaches to, e.g., identity politics or the moderate refusal to call for serious change and to reject “bipartisanship” as an ideal really does bring more people into the coalition. Then you became defensive about the characterization of the woke and the criticism of the moderate style of politics. To just say “what good is it to call them sanctimonious?” is a complete non-sequitor. What I suggested was good was endorsing more serious left politics. It is boring to have a discussion in which the topic is changed just to the end of point-scoring. No real dialogue happens
ReplyDeleteYesterday, and the previous night, my wife and I attended the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service at a Reconstructionist synagogue, for the first time. It was a unique and stimulating experience. Reconstructionist Judaism is the most liberal of the four main Jewish denominations. It was founded by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan in the 1930s on the principle that Judaism is not a religion, but a culture. At the beginning of the Tuesday night service, the choir sang a song beginning with the line, “We are the imperfect breath of an imperfect God.” When I heard that, I knew I was in a different place – no Orthodox, Conservative, or Reformed service would refer to God as imperfect.
ReplyDeleteThe service, which was conducted by a female rabbi and a female cantor, continued to be marked by many unique and inspiring moments. During the Torah reading, three women (and three men) read from the Torah, a rather difficult thing to do (I cannot do it), because the Hebrew text in the Torah does not have any vowels, and is chanted in accordance with established cadences that are indicated by symbols above the text.
During the morning service (the service began at 10:00 A.M. and ended at sunset, at 8:00 P.M.), the congregation read, in unison, the following prayer for peace in the Middle East:
“Two peoples, one land,
Three faiths, one
Three faiths, one root,
One earth, one mother,
One sky, one beginning, one future, one destiny, one broken heart,
One God
We pray to you
Grant us a vision of unity
May we see the many in the one and the one in the many.
May you, Life of All the Worlds, Source of All Amazing Differences,
Help us to see clearly
Guide us gently and firmly toward each other.
Toward Peace.”
Later in the service, we read aloud the following prayer for the environment:
“Eternal God, You created earth and heavens with mercy,
And blew the breath of life into animals and humans.
We were created amidst a world of wholeness, a world called ‘very good,’ pure and beautiful,
But now your many works are being erased by us from the book of life
Not by our righteousness do we plead our prayers before You.
Adonai our God, for we have sinned, despoiled, destroyed.
Today, I’m saying Al Chet
For the sins of silence.
For the sins of using the ‘I’ voice of individualism when a ‘We’ born of collective accountability was called for
For the sins of using ‘We’ toward erasure of others and the elevation of a single narrative
For the sins of failing to acknowledge our own and other’s Power.
For the sins of acknowledging Power that is misused and misplaced.
For the sins of judging others favorably and unfavorably without gaining proximity to their lived experience.”
Later, three recently bar and bat mitzvahed teenagers read a passage from Isaiah, in English, in which Isaiah chastises the Hebrews for placing the rituals of Judaism (keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath, etc.) over the moral demands of Judaism. They read it to the tune of a standard Yom Kippur Hebrew prayer, Aveinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King). (You can hear Barbra Streisand singing it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YONAP39jVE) Even in English – especially in English - the lecture by Isaiah was impressive.
(Continued)
I was in for more surprises during the Yizkor (Remember) service just before the closing evening service. The Yizkor service is in memory of friends and relative who have passed away. Generally, the rabbi reads the list of names which has been provided by the congregants beforehand. Here, they did something I had never seen before. A box of stones was placed on a table, and the congregants were invited to come up to the table, select one or more stones, and then speak about a loved one who had passed away. I had not intended to participate, but I was so moved by the varied narratives that the congregants related, that I went up to pay tribute to a former co-counsel, Liza Chan, who passed away in 2019, who had succeeded in persuading the Justice Dept. to prosecute the murderers of Vincent Chin in 1982; and to a Holocaust survivor, Miriam Brysk, who passed away in May, whom I represented in a lawsuit seeking an injunction against a group of protesters who have been picketing a synagogue in Ann Arbor every Saturday morning for now 18 years, with signs denouncing Israel, commingled with such anti-Semitic signs as “Jewish Power Corrupts”; “Resist Jewish Power”; “No More Holocaust Movies”; “Israel Attacked The United States – Sep. 11, 2001.” (I lost. The 6th Circuit held that the signs are protected by the 1st Amendment, and the S. Ct. denied certiorari.)
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the Yizkor service, one of the congregants picked up several stones, placed them on the table and stated that they were in the memory of the innocent Palestinian men, women and children who have been killed by Israelis. Since I was a guest, I resisted the temptation to go up to the table and place several stones in the memory of the innocent Israelis, men, women and children, who have been killed by Palestinian terrorists.
Just before the final evening service began, there was one more surprise - we read a poem by, of all people, Leonard Nimoy:
“I am not immortal.
Whatever I put off for later
May never be.
Whoever doesn’t know now
That I love them
May never know.
I have killed time.
I have squandered it.
I have lost days … weeks …
As a man of unlimited wealth
Might drop coins on the street
And never look back.
I know now, that there will e an end,
A limit.
But there is time
Valuable and precious time
To walk, talk, breathe.
Time to touch, taste, care.
To warm the child
Who is cold and lonely.
There is time to love
I promise myself …
I will
I am
I am ready to give
I am ready to give and to receive.”
As the sun set, the shofar was sounded and the doors of the Ark of the Torah were closed.
We proceeded to go to the social hall to break our fast.
My wife and I have decided to become members of this congregation. I am prepared to be confronted with some views that I am likely not to agree with. But the inspiration of the unique service will be worth it.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteIt's great that you're joining a synagogue.
However, as I remarked previously, Reform Jews do not like being called "Reformed Jews".
My rabbi, as I grew up in a Reform synagogue, would get quite irritated when we kids mistakenly referred to our congregation as being "reformed", because, as he pointed out,
to say that someone is reformed suggests that he or she previously had bad conduct or behavior or attitudes.
Post-script:
ReplyDeleteFor those who do not know, Leonard Nimoy was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Boston. The hand gesture which he used with the greeting, “Be well and prosper,” was adapted from a gesture that the rabbi would use during the High Holy Days to bless the congregation.
Nimoy talks about his Jewish upbringing in this youtube interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QAYvI5CC5s
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteMy sincere apologies. You told me about this in a previous post, and I forgot.
Oy, vei, I have already started out the new Year wit a sin!
Uh oh. Another sin. I am in trouble with the Star trek fans.
ReplyDeleteSpock's greeting was not "Be well and prosper." It was "Live long and prosper."
Marc,
ReplyDeleteNo need to apologize. The Reform rabbi in question was a vain, pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, but I warn you, not because I get offended, but because some people do.
I hope that you and your wife find continued inspiration in the new synagogue.
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteYou may want to check if there is a Jewish Reconstructionist house of worship near where you live. I think you would feel comfortable with their service.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your good intentions, but I've never felt any affinity with religious or political or any kind of rituals or ceremonies. Neither as a child nor as a old man.
s. wallerstein,
ReplyDeleteIt's your prerogative to march to the beat of your own drummer.
This was a pleasant surprise and way overdue:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/i/status/1578604572402417664
aaall,
ReplyDeleteAt first glance, I wondered why you were celebrating a burning bridge in Florida caused by Hurricane Ian. Then I read the caption.
Marc, imagine being someone who drove over for a few days at the beach.
ReplyDelete