Following Rachel Maddow's lead

I've been a big fan of Rachel Maddow for years now. There is so much there that I am drawn to. I like her faith in the American democratic project. I like the fact that her cool-headed recognition that we are mightily flawed as a nation doesn't shake her belief that humankind is nonetheless perfectable - provided we work hard enough at it. I like her dedication to investigative journalism, now looking for all the world like a lost art. I like her curiosity. I like her commitment to reason and objectivity. I like that she cares about world events and acts accordingly by keeping herself informed and remaining ready to express an opinion unabashedly, asserting her right to participate in the governance of the world around her. She inspires me to try to imitate that effort, however imperfectly.

I listened to her report the other day on the research she did for her latest book, Prequel, on Henry Ford, the pro-fascist American who helped Adolf Hitler form his policy on eliminating the Jews among us. I knew the story, and I'm familiar with the long history of anti-semitism in America as I am with the chronic social illnesses of racism and sexism that keeps the U.S. from being the model for morality it likes to see itself as.  These things baffle you when you get deep into them. I'm currently reading a biography of Thomas Jefferson and trying to get into the mindset of a man who lived with the contradiction of working his whole life long to eliminate slavery while keeping two hundred slaves of his own.  Wondering how I'd deal with the man if I could take a time machine back to Virginia in the late 1700s, and how hard I'd try to push him to work harder.

You don't have to look far to find imperfections in the society you live in. What's difficult is keeping your cool when talking with those who defend them. I'll never forget watching a program on television (I believe it was Donohue) as a kid where they lined up a number of concentration camp survivors and confronted them with holocaust deniers - in the interest of creating a fair debate. And another time when gays were confronted by homophobes, and each side got to "lay out their perspectives." As somebody who grew up with the belief that freedom of expression entailed having to listen to all sorts of slander and lies, it was a challenge. And it still is. I understand that there are people you'd rather shoot than talk to.

Sometimes the best we can do is agree to disagree. Debates on the existence of a God are like that. A complete waste of time, most of the time, because each side is simply reflecting a different set of experiences,

What about the two wars going on at the present, one in Ukraine, the other in Israel/Palestine? Are they simply two sides at loggerheads reflecting two different sets of experiences? Or is one side simply deluded? Does Putin have a case when he says Ukraine should be seen as part of Russia? Which narrative, the Zionist one or the Palestinian one, has the greater ring of truth? Are these legitimate issues one can and should debate? Can one side persuade the other, ultimately, or is the best than can happen that they agree to disagree? And if so, what can that disagreement look like other than endless war?

We reach out for examples of fight-to-the-death times that have given way to solutions. France and Germany, Britain and Germany, are today the best of friends. They were not when I was a kid. "The troubles" in Northern Ireland seem to have found their way to a solution, as well. If it can happen in these cases, why not in the Middle East?

Let me focus just on the Israel/Palestine conflict, for a moment, since that is the one I find not just sad, but heartbreaking. I've taken sides on Ukraine. I think the Russians need to recognize that there are too many Ukrainians willing to fight to the death for Russians to pursue this dream of folding them back into the arms of Mother Russia. For me, that's an easy one. The Palestinian case is more troubling because I find myself genuinely torn. I can feel the weight of the Jewish yearning for a homeland. And I can feel the injustice of what the Palestinians call an invasion of European Jews onto land they are being pushed out of. And the insult uttered by that kindly old grandma, Golda Meir: "There is no such thing as Palestinians."

Like anybody else who has been dealing with this issue since my eighth birthday (pardon me for making it about me here, but the fact that we share a birthday is not insignificant to me) the day the modern Israeli nation was formed - I've listened to countless hours of justification from both sides. I know pretty well how the two narratives go. I've heard both presented numerous times by convincing spokespersons. A good Palestinian argument makes me pro-Palestinian; a good Jewish argument makes me pro-Israel. Because I am neither Jew nor Arab I have the luxury of washing my hands of the conflict. Fight it out amongst yourselves, guys, I've said out loud more than once.

I don't think anybody with any sense of responsibility can take that approach. Israel is a nuclear power; if they feel existentially threatened, one has to assume they are likely not to give up without a fight with those weapons. Then also Americans, like myself, have to assume responsiblity for the fact that our government goes to almost incredible lengths to support Israel, down to the last bullet and howitzer. We are morally obligated to watch where our money goes. Never mind that much of that support comes from American Christian nationalists who believe that the conversion of Jews to Christianity is a necessary precursor to the Battle of Armageddon.

So here's my take. I try to watch and read a wide range of analysis of the problem, but I admit I'm like everybody else, a product of the information that happens to come to my attention. Let me lay out what opinions I have formed and stress that they are the result of those somewhat arbitrary sources, and therefore not carved in stone.

1. Hamas found an opportunity to attack Israel because Bibi Netanyahu took his eye off the ball. His base includes the right wing "Israel for Jews only," settlers in the West Bank, committed to expanding Israeli territory by pushing Palestinians out. Because Palestinians were causing a fuss over being pushed out, Bibi pulled the IDF, the Israeli Defence Forces, away from the Gaza border where they would have been able to prevent all or most of the incursion and subsequent massacre on October 7th.  Pretty bad call by a political leader. How he keeps from getting tarred and feathered remains a mystery.

2. The Palestinians, for all the injustice done to them over the last three quarters of a century, have had some pretty bad luck in getting decent leadership according to the sources I read. Whether it's that, or unavoidable human folly, simple greed and corruption, or something in the polluted water that makes them unable to get their shit together to present a solid front against Israeli incursion on their homeland, I can't tell. I hear all these explanations all the time, but don't know how to evaluate their validity because I have trouble finding truly neutral sources of information. I find believable sources - in the British and German press, but Britain started this whole mess during Mandate times, so I pause before taking British information in, and Germany, while justifiably doing all it can to show national contrition for the evil it perpetrated against the Jews, is also not a neutral party to the scene. Germany is among the most notable world suppliers of the Israeli war machine, thirty-two million dollars worth in 2022, and ten times that so far in 2023.  I know Israel has to defend itself, but in the long run I see the choice of seeking a military solution as the primary cause of Middle East problems, ahead even of incompetence in governing on both sides. An understandable outcome of the seething hatred among the two populations, but hardly a productive one.

It's not that I don't trust sources like the Guardian and Haaretz; it's that I'm just cautious in principle, given how radical the opposing narratives are.

3.  If it were up to me (it's not, obviously and I realize that nothing I say here is original) I'd suggest we skip the historical narratives and begin with present reality: Both sides are willing to fight to the death to get their way. Israelis need to convince their right wing that it doesn't matter that they think God promised the land to them: if they want their children to live, they will have to find a compromise. And Palestinians need to get past the fact that the Israelis bullied their way in; they are here now, they have built a mighty nation and it will never be disassembled. Both sides have no alternative to compromise. 

4. Israel's Arab neighbors have often taken advantage of the Palestinians as a victim rather than come to their aid.  Egypt, not without justification, is fearful of what would happen if there were a sudden influx of refugees. The Jordanians have similar fears. And the world is not persuaded by those who insist the Palestinians, as Arabs, already have a homeland in Jordan. It's a cowardly inaccurate cop-out.

5. Probably the most intractable problem is the presence of now about 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They have to leave. Don't ask me how, but either they leave or they accept living under Palestinian authority. I see no way out of this. This is a backs-to-the-wall issue, I realize, but if you want a solution, it has to include this step.

6. Both sides need to bring back a serious commitment to a two-state solution. Because Israelis fear the Palestinians might someday outnumber them in a single state, the one-state solution is a no-go, precisely because as a democracy it would have to stop being a Jewish state. 

7. The reason the world, and not just reasonable Palestinians and Israelis bearing the brunt of Middle Eastern folly, throw up their hands in despair is that it gets to watch in real time how the expression of anger leads to more anger and hatred to more hatred. Apparently Hamas had no idea Netanyahu's blunder in leaving Southern Israel unprotected would enable them to run in and butcher innocents - ironically, largely folk most interested in working toward a just solution with Palestinians. They let loose sickos among them who raped, killed kids and gouged eyes out. And then made videos of their horrors they had to know would inflame Israeli rage. Which it did, and now many otherwise decent Israelis are perfectly willing to turn Gaza into a parking lot and kill not hundreds, but thousands of Gazan children. The world cries out for people who can back people down from this level of rage. Who can find nuances in the most trying of circumstances.

8. I don't expect to be alive by the time Israelis and Palestinians come to live peacefully and cooperatively side by side, but I look at the large number of French people taking vacations in Germany and vice versa. And at the very real possibility that the Northern Irish can now drive across into Ireland and no longer remember where the border was. Well, they could until Brexit. I'm not up-to-date on that. But Brexit notwithstanding, things can get better.

9. Because this Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been labeled intractable and has gone on for so very very long, and baffled so many people with good intentions, it's tempting to view it as one does a chronic illness and find ways to take our minds off it. But that's like putting a band-aid over an infection. What's needed are people who can fight, get knocked down, and get back up to fight some more, no matter how long this problem lingers.  I know how hard it is to reason with some people. But some day it will sink in that there is a way to prevent their children from dying by bombs, tanks and guns.

I started this reflection off with Rachel Maddow's history of fascism in America. She goes to great lengths to not make comparisons with the rise of the National Socialists in the 1930s, insisting she wants to place the focus on the "good guys, those who resisted fascist and anti-semitic forces on government. But you can't escape the fact that at times they held sway, and the government did cave to their wishes at times. And if you don't see a cautionary tale in there, you're not paying attention.

Something in me tells me I should put down my reading on the troubles in the Middle East and pay more attention to the fact that an alarming number of Americans seem to be willing to allow Trump back in office, knowing (but not caring?) that he will immediately dismantle the legal structures we have in place to keep elections free and the judiciary independent of a Führer. 

Once again, it's all about getting your priorities straight and your shit together.

Still fumbling for the right words

Sometime in the early 1970s - I think it was 1972 - I got word from Berlin that my Tante Frieda seemed to be on her last legs. So my friend Ben and I hopped an Aeroflot flight to Moscow, intending to spend a couple days there before taking the train to Berlin. Everything had to be arranged through Intourist in those days, right down to meal vouchers in the hotel we were assigned to. Much as I wanted to get to Tante Frieda, I was counting on her surviving long enough for us to have a look at the Kremlin. She lived another dozen years.

Aeroflot felt no need to accommodate passengers. The eleven or twelve hours, whatever it was, were boring as hell, "in-flight entertainment" evidently being a decadent Western conceit. And when we reached the air space over Moscow, the plane simply dived straight down without any warning. No way to know whether they were doing this to save on fuel or whether we were facing certain death. I assumed the latter but managed to calm down when I noticed the Russian passengers were taking this move in stride.

It had been a decade since my Army Language School days and my Russian was pretty rusty. Ben and I were given rooms miles apart, for some reason. No cell phones, of course, in those days. I wanted to shower and sleep, but there was no soap in my bathroom, so I wandered into the hall to find the overseer, a woman sitting in a raised booth in the middle of the corridor. "Soap?" I asked, rubbing my hands together. I had forgotten the Russian word.  "Ah, мыло (mylo)," says the lady in charge, and produces a tiny bar from under her desk. Without trying I had hit upon the secret to getting soap.

Somehow Ben and I found each other and before going out into the freezing cold - it was December - we went back to the soap lady to ask where we could eat. She didn't bother to look up from what she was reading, but simply indicated with her head that we should follow our noses to the end of the corridor. Which we did. When we got to the cafeteria, there were two women in waitress uniforms watching us approach.  I summoned up my Russian, with all its limitations. Instead of saying, "Can we use these coupons here?" I said "Is it possible to use these coupons here?" (Возможно использовать эти купоны здесь? - Vozmozhno ispolzovat' eti kuponi zdyes?)  The answer came back with what I swear was a sneer. "Все возможно! (Vsyo vozmozhno! - "Everything is possible!"

We were in the Hotel Rossiya, right next to Red Square, so we didn't have to go far to see the main sights. Ben freaked out at the total absence of cars. Only one car passed us on our walk and a policeman stopped it. We never understood why. I can't remember where we were going but I knew it was on Gorky Street, so I stopped a kindly-looking elder gentleman and hauled out my Russian once more: "Can you tell me where Gorky Street is?"  He stares at me for a minute. Then says, "Gorkovo? Gorkovo?" and reaches down and touches the pavement with the back of his hand. "Vot Gorkovo" "Here is Gorky Street."

I had never had so many humiliations one after the other in my life. What is it about these people? They're going to win the Cold War on intimidation alone.

Other than a quickie walk around the Kremlin - at least we managed to do that - we missed the chance to do much else and made our way to the train for Berlin. Once again, Intourist showed a complete lack of consideration for what its "customers" might want, and put Ben in the forward set of coaches and me in the rear - with no way of crossing from one to the other. I was totally on my own for the entire distance, in a car filled with sullen Poles who were teachers of Russian on an excursion to Moscow.

Sullen, that is, until we reach the Polish border when all hell broke loose. Out came the bottles of vodka, the sandwiches and salami, and suddenly everybody wanted to know who this strange American was travelling alone through their country. For the first time, I began to relax and let my Russian do what it could. But the time we reached Warsaw, where they all got off, I was snockered and quite fluent.

Well, fluent may be going too far. Because I had been living in Japan for a couple years, my mind did that trick that often happens to second-language learners. The brain divides the language storage space into two compartments - English and "Other." Try as I may, I couldn't keep myself from sticking Japanese words into my Russian sentences.

That memory was brought alive this morning when one of the guys working on my house stuck his head through the door to the patio. The electrical socket on the outside of the house doesn't work, so we told the guys to use the one just inside the door to keep their batteries charged. The guys, as I explained elsewhere before, are from Moldova, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan and their common working language is Russian.

"Mozhno?" says Yuri.  "May I?"

"Mochiron," I respond.

"Er... "Konyechno."

Amazing how the mind can turn an awkward, slightly unpleasant memory into a fond melancholic one over time.  "Of course," is "konyechno" in Russian.  Or "mochiron" in Japanese.

Tore - a film review

I want to talk about another of those movies that seem to be piling up these days, the kind you watch and can't quite explain why because they are not all that good.

This one fits that category. It intrigued me no end. First off, I found I had an intense attraction to the writer, William Spetz, who also plays the lead role in the TV series. It's titled Tore.

It's Swedish and takes place in Stockholm.

Tore, the main character is, like Spetz who plays him, 27 years old. He's not a loser, exactly, but he has done nothing of note in his life, has lived at home with his father since his mother's death, has no ambition, has never had sex, never gotten drunk, can't drive a car. His father, and his best friend, a girl named Linn, believe he needs to be pushed out of the nest so he can get his life started.

It's painful to watch. His naiveté is cloying, and I no doubt would have turned the film off in the first twenty minutes if it were not for his eyebrows.   

His father gets hit by a garbage truck and dies, suddenly, and the entire plot line consists in watching this immature kid fail to grow up, fail to grieve, fail to do anything useful. If I'm correct about American tastes when I say Americans like people to be "good deep down inside" I'm probably also correct when I say Swedes don't have any need for their fictional characters to be good guys. They are willing to watch somebody bob on the waves and find themselves - or not - by the end of the 90 minutes it takes to tell their story.

While Tore has never had sex, his desires are same-sex desires, and he stumbles into sex, drugs and alcohol with equal clumsiness. We're supposed to believe the story is about a guy who can't process grief. It is that, but it's just as much about a guy who can't process much of anything that matters in life. He even sells his dog, at one point, the third creature in his life, along with Linn and his father, who love him unconditionally. Spetz, the writer, risks creating a character so devoid of character and interest, that you wonder at some point, as I said, why you're still watching. It can't be just the eyes and the eyebrows.

There are some very graphic sex scenes, and they are well played. The drag queens are talented and the child actors are well chosen.

A mixed bag of a movie. My guess is the reason I got to the end is that I couldn't believe this guy could mess up his life so badly; I had to wait to see the happy ending that I hoped would be there.

I also want to give credit to movies that feature gay characters who play roles that have nothing to do with their being gay. I can't put the label "The Long Hard Slog to Gay Liberation" on this one because it depicts a world in which gay characters are not fighting for liberation; they are living with it and in it.

Won't spoil the ending for you.

Netflix streaming - six episodes