Blind in the worst way, at the worst time
Feburary 6, 2024
Falls at Frenchman Coulee
Don’t blame the baristas
I didn’t wake up Monday itching for an argument. But it was there, shadowboxing in the room, as I made coffee.
The voice of Jonathan Martin, a veteran political reporter for POLITICO, was coming from the speakers on my laptop. He had a grim prognosis for why it was going to be so difficult for Joe Biden to win re-election this year. His prognosis wasn’t the problem so much as the condescension wrapped into it.
Martin was a guest on “Morning Joe” which is MSNBC’s hyper-politicized dawn-breaker, usually hosted by former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough and his wife Mika Brzezinski. The four-hour affair can be a comedy of XXL-sized egos but it offers real-time insight into how the world of current events (and especially political events) get digested by the “mainstream” media.
Scarborough made his mark as a southern conservative a quarter century ago, but left the Republican Party six months after Donald Trump took office in 2017. Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, best known as the hawkish National Security advisor to President Jimmy Carter. Although once socially amicable with Donald Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski now despise him—and he despises them, even to the point where Trump baselessly alleged that Scarborough had one of his Congressional staff members, a young woman, murdered in 2001.
Martin was on to talk about his new magazine piece in which he makes the point that the biggest threat to Biden’s re-election is not third-party candidates but genuine revulsion from progressive Democrats—most notably younger voters and people of color. I think Martin is right about that. What quickly got under my skin, though, was his very POLITICO-like inference that idealism is not just naive in the real world of politics, but a danger to the health of the republic.
“Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence”—Samantha Power.
At one point in his remarks on Morning Joe (though not in his article) Martin used the word “radicalized” to describe people who are shaken and disgusted by the Biden administration’s complicity in the bloody invasion of Gaza following the October 7th atrocities committed by Hamas militants on Israeli civilians. Since the start of the war, according to the UN, close to 100,000 residents of Gaza have been killed, or injured or gone missing. At least 10,000 children are among those who’ve been killed. It’s not radical to reconsider whom you’ll vote for if the person you voted for last time has enabled such an atrocity.
In the ashes of the casualties—and the open defiance of the Netanyahu government in the face of international calls for a ceasefire and humanitarian relief—the popular wisdom in the U.S. pundit/political class is slowly shifting. Last fall there was near-daily wailing (Scarborough was often yelling in exasperation) that public protests of the U.S.-backed assault on Gaza were either naive or, worse, rooted in anti-semitism. The insinuations of anti-semitism have diminished, but less so the contempt and mockery of those who protest the morality of the Biden administration’s unwavering material support for the pulverizing Gaza campaign.
A caricature Martin used in his Morning Joe appearance was of “baristas in Wisconsin” (a swing state) who won’t show up for Biden at the polls in November, even if Trump is the Republican candidate. Part of the problem, we’re told, is that baristas get their news from social media instead of Morning Joe.
Martin quotes a profanity-laced screed from Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman arguing that progressive critics of Biden who may enable a Trump victory in 2024 by not voting will have only made matters worse.
Martin summarizes the problem this way, as if protestors just don’t appreciate the world view of Joe Biden and the fix he’s in by dint of his political DNA.
“There is a hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner element to Biden’s approach to Israel that some in Gen Z can’t fully grasp. His politics are that of a Cold War Democrat, and a Northeastern one at that. Support for Israel is part of his liberal DNA, no matter the prime minister. Jewish voters, Irish ones, Italian, too — that’s the coalition. It’s a matter of principle, sure, but also domestic politics.”
The problem with this tortured rationalization is that it ignores and abets the sin of violence against innocents. Full stop. End of argument.
Samantha Power’s other problem from hell
If it were American children being bombed out of their lives and homes in Gaza we wouldn’t tolerate it for a minute. It’s not just the baristas in Madison who have strong feelings about this.
Just ask Samantha Power, the presently embattled leader of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) now under sharp criticism for her relative silence on U.S. military support to Israel. In addition to her government service—Power served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama—Power won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book A Problem from Hell in which she condemned governmental inaction in the face of genocide.
USAID Director and former UN ambassador Samantha Power
As the Washington Post reports, Power was openly and vocally challenged by current and former USAID officials during a recent speech she gave on the dangers of climate change. One of those who interrupted was Agnieszka Sykes, a global health specialist who had resigned from USAID only days earlier.
“You wrote a book on genocide and you’re still working for the administration,” Sykes exclaimed. “You should resign and speak out.”
In her response, Powers tried to defend Israel’s military response but also acknowledged it was “devastating” and that more than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the past four months.
If it were American children being bombed out of their young lives in Gaza we wouldn’t tolerate it for a minute. It’s not just the young baristas in Madison who have strong feelings about this.
Last Friday, more than 800 government officials in the U.S. and serving its allies signed a letter criticizing their governments’ complicity in the destruction of Gaza.
Here is part of what they wrote:
•Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations in Gaza which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths; and that the deliberate blocking of aid by Israel has led to a humanitarian catastrophe, putting thousands of civilians at risk of starvation and slow death;
•Our governments have provided the Israeli military operation with public, diplomatic and military support; that this support has been given without real conditions or accountability; and that when faced with humanitarian catastrophe, our governments have failed to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to blockages of necessary food/water/medicine in Gaza;
•Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally and weaken our efforts to rally international support for Ukraine and to counter malign actions by Russia, China and Iran; and
•There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.
If there is anyone out there who deplores the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House more than I, all I can surmise is that I’m right on his or her heels. The stakes in the 2024 election are the most consequential in our lifetimes.
But I understand why people, especially young people, feel betrayed by Biden’s unwillingness to reign in the horror of what is happening in Gaza. It is a betrayal of his promise and what should be our defining aspiration to make human rights the cornerstone of American foreign policy. We’ve given ourselves the military power to be a global thundergod. But none of it comes to good unless we deliver on our promises, to ourselves and to others with whom we share the planet. Including the people of Gaza.
—tjc
