This article appeared on The New Yorker website last Saturday.
The violence that took place this Shabbat morning at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh is the fear of every synagogue, Hillel, day school, and Jewish community center in this country. It is the ancient Jewish expectation of persecution—when, where, has it not been with us?—married to American reality: a country saturated with guns and habituated to quotidian massacre, plagued by age-old racism and bigotry, which have lately been expertly inflamed by the holder of the highest office in the land.
For the past few years, American Jews have glanced warily at Western Europe, where anti-Semitism, never dormant, is once again on the rise. The British Labour Party has been riven by accusations of anti-Semitism among its leadership. French Jews have emigrated to Israel in unprecedented numbers. In Sweden, synagogues and Jewish centers have been firebombed. After 9/11, American synagogues and community centers became barricaded spaces, outfitted with concrete sidewalk barriers and metal detectors, so that going to services felt like going to the airport. The concern then was an external threat.
There has long been a casual assumption that homegrown anti-Semitism could not happen here, that “The Plot Against America” would remain the fantastical counter-factual that Philip Roth intended it to be. And yet, the warning signs have become increasingly clear. Since the 2016 Presidential campaign, anti-Semitic vitriol has exploded on the Internet. Neo-Nazis tweet swastikas and Hitler-era propaganda of leering, hook-nosed rabbis. Holocaust deniers discuss “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in plain view. Jewish journalists and other public figures have had their profile pictures Photoshopped onto images of lampshades and bars of soap. The name “George Soros” is no longer invoked as a dog whistle, but as an ambulance siren. “The Jewish question” is debated on alt-right blogs and news sites. In the run-up to the election, anti-Semites began to put Jewish names in sets of triple parentheses—a yellow star for the digital age, by which to un-assimilate the assimilated. Jews rushed to claim and defang the symbol, turning it into a voluntary declaration of pride, but the scar of its origins remains. For a time after Donald Trump’s election, I collected screenshots of racist and anti-Semitic hate speech I came across. Then I stopped. The proof was everywhere, plain as day.
It seems clear that anti-Semitism has burrowed into the American mainstream in a way not seen since the late nineteen-thirties and early nineteen-forties, when it also fused easily with conservative isolationist fervor and racism. In “These Truths,” her masterful new history of this country, my colleague Jill Lepore writes about the anti-Semites of that period, who saw “mass democracy and mass culture as harbingers of the decline of Western civilization.” In 1939, the German-American Bund held a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, attended by twenty thousand people; you can watch footage of it here, and, as vile as it is, I suggest that you do. Amid the sieg-heils, you will see Fritz Kuhn, the Bund’s leader, railing against the “Jewish-controlled press” as he lays out his vision for a “socially just, white, Gentile-ruled United States.” “We, with our American ideals, demand that the American government shall be returned to the American people who founded it,” he says, to cheers.
Not long ago, I came across a description—published in the March, 1939, bulletin of the men’s club at New York’s Ansche Chesed synagogue—of a counter-rally held a couple of weeks later, at Carnegie Hall. “Stressing that racial intolerance was un-American, speaker after speaker denounced the activities of the German-American Bund,” the bulletin reports. “The need for protecting our democratic processes was on the lips of everyone and strong sentiment of solidarity to protect democracy and racial and religious freedom that goes with it was prevalent throughout.” That sense of solidarity, which, for me, as for many, is at the moral center of the American-Jewish experience, was explicitly attacked in Pittsburgh on Saturday. It has been reported that, a few weeks ago, the alleged gunman furiously railed on social media against hias, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which was founded, at the turn of the last century, to help the waves of Jewish immigrants who left imperial Russia for America. The organization later worked to resettle Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, and currently serves immigrants and refugees of all backgrounds. It is a bitter irony that that sense of common cause has now been further strengthened, as the Tree of Life joins Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center, in Bloomington, Minnesota, and so many other houses of worship as points on a dark map of ongoing American tragedy.
___________________________________________________________________________
Guns don’t kill people. Really? They certainly kill people in other countries who wonder why we can’t legislate any decent gun control laws. $30 million to Trump was a good investment by the NRA. So was $2,896,732 to Senator Todd Young [R-IN], a Trump sycophant.
……………………………………….
Opinion | It’s Time To Talk About the N.R.A. – by Nicholas Kristof – NYT
by David Lindsay Jr
“The massacre of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, allegedly by a man with 21 guns registered to his name, was terrifyingly predictable. Every day in America, about 104 people die from guns, while in Japan it takes about a decade for that many to die from gun violence.
Equally predictable was the response. President Trump and members of Congress denounced the violence but show no signs of actually doing anything to stop it: So Americans will continue to die from guns at a rate of one every 15 minutes.
Why do we Americans kill each other, and ourselves, with guns at such rates? One answer as it relates to the Pittsburgh attack is a toxic brew of hate and bigotry, but the ubiquity of guns leverages hatred into murder. And let’s be blunt: One reason for our country’s paralysis on meaningful action on guns is the National Rifle Association. If we want to learn the lessons of this latest rampage, and try to prevent another one, then let’s understand that saving lives is not just about universal background checks and red flag laws, but also about defanging the N.R.A.”
Subject: Add your name to the demands from Pittsburgh Jewish leaders to Trump
I signed a petition to Republican Party and President Donald Trump, which says:
“President Trump, your words, your policies, and your Party have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement. The violence against Jews in Pittsburgh is the direct culmination of your influence.
We demand you and the Republican Party:
Fully denounce white nationalism,
Stop targeting and endangering all minorities,
Cease your assault on immigrants and refugees, and
Commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us.”
Will you sign this petition? Click here:
https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/add-your-name-to-the?source=s.em.cp&r_by=1432174
Thanks, Carol. Signed.
And shared.
Ditto
Thanks also, Carol. Signed and passed on to like-minded friends.
History repeating-
Marc Goldman quoted in the Washington Post said he backed Republicans like Trump because their “approach creates self-dependence as opposed to government dependency”. Presumably he’s anti-tax (opposed to tax-funded American intervention against Hitler?), in favor of Social Security privatization, in favor of corporatization and privatization of schools, opposed to affordable healthcare for workers, opposed to minimum wage, in other words, a man like the Koch’s and Bill Gates. The significant difference is he’s part of a minority religion. It only took the passage of two laws for rich and powerful Germans to take the money and freedom of the people of Goldman’s faith.
Given the flat incomes of Americans for 3 decades, the share of income that they have to pay for healthcare, their reliance on Social Security, the theft of their public schools who does Goldman think will stop the passage of the two laws?
Guns in the hands of killers kill people. Replace those guns with knives and the casualty rate would drop drastically and almost vanish. There have been a few incidents in China where a knife welding lunatic attacked children in a preschool.
Since Mao died in 1976, there have been eight incidents of massacres in China. Tienanmen Square is on that list with 241 deaths.
One listed for 1979
One listed for 1983
Tienanmen Square for 1989
one listed for 1994
Two listed for 1994
One for 1997
One for 1998
One for 2014
How many mass killings have there been in the US since 1976 where firearms and/or bombs were used?
There were so many listed from several sources for the U.S. the list was too long to share. I’d be typing for hours. The following link is from only one of those sources listing shootings from 1982 – 2018. There are 106 listings that include deaths and injured
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence
Thanks for that source and link. The chart was jaw dropping.
And the headline opened the the eyes wider than usual: “Mass shootings in the US: there have been 1,624 in 1,870 days”
According to that report in The Guardian, there have been 1,624 mass shootings in the US in 1,870 days
Bob Shepherd: Remember ‘Guns don’t kill people.’ Think of how many innocent people would have been killed if guns actually did kill. [I know this doesn’t make sense but neither does the NRA.]
They are defining “mass shooting” as one in which four or more people were shot in a single incident.
While anti-Semitism is certainly on the rise, I don’t separate it out. The real fear dominating the Right is the fear of the “other” and I don’t believe it matters if you are Jewish, liberal, atheist, Mexican or whatever. They all bundle up nicely as the “other” and make wonderful rallying cries for the downtrodden who hate.
These feelings of hate have always existed and will continue to. But as Lloyd and Bob have so rightly stated, the difference here is guns and their availability. I coincidentally happened to be quite near the last German mass shooting in March 2009 and visited the impromptu memorial that formed in front of the school affected. I was able to compare the shock and emotion there over the next few days with that in other German cities in towns as I traveled. What struck me as an American was the depth, breadth, length, and intensity of national mourning and reckoning. One could literally not go anywhere in the nation and not encounter scores of people who were shaken to the core and could not stop thinking about it. Because an incident like this was so rare, people could not stop thinking and talking about it and asking how to prevent something similar in the future.
Here we take it for granted, we express momentary condolences, but then we go on as if nothing happened. Guns are legal and inevitable, after all. I know the program South Park is probably too course for many of the readers here, but this season has had a brilliant theme. The first show was about how school shootings have become the new normal. Every subsequent episode begins with a picture of the school underscored by the sounds of shooting. Then it moves on to the story because shootings have become so prevalent and normal even the students don’t take notice anymore. We don’t take the time to process and mourn. Instead we get jabberwocky like this:
http://time.com/5437861/why-nc-high-school-didnt-immediately-dismiss-students-after-fatal-shooting/
I believe the hatred is caused by fear. The fear is caused by a lack of understanding. The cure is getting to know each other better. It’s integration. It’s education. The cure is public education.
High stakes testing has made teaching unpleasant, a great deal of the time. It’s worth it. Be the cure. Teach literature. Teach history. Teach in a democratic public school. Teach.
If all you ever hear about Jews comes from what nut jobs tell you, you’re going to have crazy opinions about Jews. Teachers need to tell American students the facts about Jews to serve as ballast against the gales of lies. But telling (lecturing, direct instruction) is out of fashion in schools (but not on right-wing media: they understand that telling is powerful teaching!). Transmitting knowledge, like facts about Jews, is no longer the point of school. Teachers will tell you it’s OK if kids aren’t learning facts, because kids are honing their critical thinking and problem solving skills instead. Except they’re not doing that either.
I believe integration and the teaching of literature and history can overcome hate. It doesn’t mean specifically teaching about Jews like me, or teaching specific messages of kindness. Just teaching more than job skills like computer coding in an integrated setting is enough to overcome hate. Overcoming segregation and the narrowing of curricula is enough to overcome hate.
While I lecture too much in class, I must say that one of my favorite moments in teaching came when I was doing research on the computer in class. We were going to study imperialism, so I told the kids to look up anything about European imperialism in whatever continent they desired. It was not a good plan, except that amid the bungling around and lassitude in the poorly designed lesson, there arose an irate mumbling from one of my favorite kids. He was a young African-American kid who never studied enough but had a great sense of humor. He was mumbling angrily. “Man that’s just not right” over and over again with different emphasis on each repitition. He had stumbled upon the story of the Meiji Meiji Rebellion in East Africa, which led to a German-initiated genocide late in the 1800s. I stopped class and we listened to him relate the story. There is an old saying around here. Even a blind hog will find an acorn every now and then. I felt like the blind hog.
LCT
Perhaps, but I fear we trust too much in osmosis. Give it to them straight if we want them to get it.
Years ago, I was working at my desk at an educational publishing house. I had been assigned to write a “thematic exercise set”–a group of 25 sentences, for a grammar exercise, dealing with a single topic or theme. I decided to write about major figures in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. So, I made a list of some thirty or so fields of human endeavor, and beside each field, I listed the name of the person whom I thought most impacted that field in the twentieth century. When I finished my list, my jaw dropped, looking back over it. Every name on the list, except three, was of a Jewish person. (I had chosen Pablo Picasso as the most influential artist, Ezra Pound as the most influential poet, and Alan Turing as my most influential computer scientist. My choice in the category “popular music” was a tie between a Jew, George Gershwin, and an African-American, Louis Armstrong.)
Linguistics, Noam Chomsky
Anthropology: Claude Lévi-Strauss
Classical Music: Arnold Schoenberg
Popular Music: George Gershwin; Lewis Armstrong
Political Theory: Karl Marx
Psychology: Sigmund Freud
Physics: Albert Einstein
Biology: Lynn Margulis
Mathematics: John von Neuman
Economics/Systems Theory: Herbert Simon
Robotics/AI: Marvin Minsky
Law: Louis Brandeis
Philosophy: Ludwig Wittgenstein
Literary Criticism: Jacques Derrida
Medicine: Jonas Salk
Sociology: Emile Durkheim
Novelist: Franz Kafka
Theologian: Martin Buber
Of course, people can argue about what names belong on this list, but I must say, this is astonishing. Jews make up 1/2 of 1 percent of the world’s population, and yet this. Astonishing.
cx: s/b, ofc Louis Armstrong. Aie yie yie.
I am pushing for my school to do more on anti-hate. BUT the other teachers complain, because they don’t have time for it, because of the ridiculous pushing by the school admin and district and state to, “cover the core, and nothing else.”
We are creating machines, no humans, and this is what happens.
PS: I lecture on Antisemitism, and will be doing so this week.
I know I sound like a broken record, so I’ll stop this argument after one last time. I don’t believe it’s fear. It’s resentment that others, who should be behind us all the time, will get ahead of me or us. They don’t fear immigrants, they resent the mistaken notion that they get lots of stuff for free, jump to the head of the “line” (in any context), and perceive favoritism. Of course, not one of these are true, but they (want to) believe it. People they fear can be protected against. People they resent can be put in their places with laws and intimidation and violence that the law overlooks or does not prosecute accordingly.
But everything you wrote after your first two sentences…yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and especially, yes. I kind of resent that you were so clear and concise.
I agree the hatred is caused by fear. Education/ integration can help open minds. But this kind of fear is bred by generations of economic malaise– fear of somebody else grabbing the food off your plate. I hear it daily on the CSPAN call-in show “Washington Journal.” Those expressing irrational ideas about “others” [immigrants, socialists, Soros et al] will reveal in the same breath lost jobs, meager Soc Sec income, health issues that threaten to put them on the street despite a life of hard work.
Anecdotal example: my dad was raised in IN farm country in the ’30’s where families were always a hair’s-breadth from bankruptcy; it was KKK country. He had intelligence and initiative, left for broader experiences. Part of shedding the attitudes came from factory work then soldiering among a wide spectrum of ethnics. He became generous, and eventually a political liberal, but only after achieving and maintaining economic security. Anxiety about losing it all was never far from the surface. Whenever there were economic setbacks, he fell back into the habit of finding nefarious “others” trying to steal what he’d gained.
One year ago this month, a public letter was sent to Bard College President, Leon Botstein, and Hannah Arendt Center Director, Roger Berkowitz. The letter was an objection to the College’s speaking invitation to a far right German politician by the name of Jongen. With no Bard College signees to the letter, Jongen’s speech took place.
The points made by the signees were that Jongen vilified already vulnerable groups and that those groups did not have equal power nor outlets to express their opinions. One of Jongen’s targets was refugees.
A few years earlier, John Arnold and Charles and David Koch attacked public pensions. The Arendt Center posted its position about pensions, similar to the Koch/Arnold view.
The pensioners, with average incomes of $19,000, medical insurance at risk, and no Social Security were an economically vulnerable group without access to the communication outlets of the richest 0.1%.
Those with conscience at Bard, can assess the college’s contribution to the climate we live in.
The letter about Jongen was published at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
There was a letter posted shortly after in the Chronicle by Canadian attendee Donna F Johnson [“Learning to Live together in our Political Reality”] on how the Jongen talk was handled, & the pro’s/ con’s of giving him a platform. Also, see this letter examining how the 2012 pension discussion fit into the goals of the Arendt Center: http://hac.bard.edu/news/post/?item=5000 On balance, it sounds like the Center offers a rare meeting place for thinking minds to explore current issues.
The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh has raised $70,000 for victims of the massacre fund. They offered to guard the synagogue in the future.
Trump is going to Pittsburgh but no official of the city or state has agreed to meet him. No Congressional leaders either. Accountability is karma. Or vice versa.
Diane, I read that nobody would greet Trump or welcome him. I hope this is the beginning of people being strong enough to speak out, by their actions, that they know he is no good. He would not adjust well to this occurrence. Tough SH*T! Wonder how he’ll spin it for Fox?
“thinking minds”…plural?
External comments that rejected the Center’s view about pensions were deleted from the posted articles, the last time I looked. Were you correct in thinking that the Center’s viewpoint reflected more than the director’s opinion? Does the pension position paper belong on a personal faculty page, instead of on the Bard Center’s website? Did you find a follow-up event at Bard that provided a platform for the alternative view to be heard?
Was there a collective of “thinking minds” at Bard who issued the invitation to Jongen? How representative were they and how many were there?
The National Coalition to Protect Pensions has exhaustive reports detailing the economic benefits of pensions, cost/benefit analysis in communities, etc. Hannah Arendt scholar(s) taking up the anti-public pension cause begs the question, why would an average state budget item of 3%, provoke a position paper from those so far removed from the expertise of a highly complex issue?
At the same time that Bard found its cause, an economics professor from a different university found his pension work strongly rebuked, in part because it aggregated widely disparate situations in 50 states into one invalid conclusion. That professor’s alarmism was amplified by journalists who attended all-expenses-paid seminars funded by wealthy donors. The same professor testified at state capitols with pension colleagues from a Pew advocacy branch which was subsequently found to be working with John Arnold’s foundation.
Matt Taibbi’s report about the plunder of pensions published at Rollingstone details the winners of privatized pensions who are the hedge funds.
Bethree, I understand the playbook to eliminate public pensions was created for use to subsequently destroy Social Security. And, I understand that it has support from a collective of “thinking minds”, most of whom are among the richest 0.1%.
The Economic Policy Institute, not nearly as attractive to wealthy donors (unlike the anti- Social Security institutes of hedge funder Pete Peterson) has a collective of “thinking minds”, who document the importance of a middle class for economic growth. The question university faculty should be asking is, do the “thinking minds” of the less powerful and less well-funded get the same speaking invites and get their viewpoints amplified by faculty?
A well known academic, publicly, rebuked the scholars who opposed Jongen’s speech. The letter writers were referred to as “snowflakes”, which is the right wing’s disparagement of those sensitive to humanity and powerless. Is that the same group who were murdered at Tree of Life?
Linda, I’m just saying that I went to the site, & read up. It seemed like the Center’s interest in hearing Jongen was in the spirit of intellectual questioning; his highly objectionable ideas got an airing, & were thoroughly hashed out, rebuked & rebutted.
Their position on public pensions is more troubling. I find it obtuse that they challenge higher pay/ benefits of the similarly-educated on philosophical rather than practical grounds. But they also air bipartisan issues underlying the crisis [govtl corruption, insufficient taxation of the rich, Wall St bailouts/ bonuses, etc]. Without this sort of discussion, there can be no reform, & state govts just go on misappropriating the funds at one end and reneging at the other.
OK. I feel a folk song coming on:
There’s a big sinkhole at Mar-a-Lago.
Let that sink in.
Trumpty is your president.
Although he didn’t win.
What’s wrong with that you ask, and I say,
Where do I begin?
Our President’s a hero to
The skin-head Aryans.
Yeah he’s a friggin’ hero to
The skin-head Aryans.
Bob, I know we should allow poetic license, but Trump did win.
He lost the popular vote, Harlan. That’s the meaning of the phrase.
Every human monster throughout history was a winner before they lost and poetry often chronicles those stories.
For instance, The Ballade Of Attila The Hun – Poem by Gert Strydom
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ballade-of-attila-the-hun/
After all, Attila the Hun was one of history’s winners.
Reign: AD 434-453
After killing his brother, Attila became the leader of the Hunnic Empire, centred in present-day Hungary. He expanded the empire to present-day Germany, Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans. “There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow gain,” he remarked on his reign
Trump is just another Attila and because he won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote by almost three million votes doesn’t mean we should blindly worship and do whatever DT wants.
Bob and Lloyd. Is your position then that the constitution should be amended to sunstitue the aggregate popular vote for the electoral college of state by state counting? I would argue that the USA is a union of states fundamentally and by law and history and correctly so by political values of equality of representation underlying the constitutional system. We are not a “democracy” but a “democratic republic” and I think that’s how it should stay. I am aware many will argue a different position. Napoleon saw France differently.
How many Constitutional Republics in the world elect their Presidents through an Electoral College like the one in the U.S. instead of the popular vote?
“Among democracies, U.S. stands out in how it chooses its head of state”
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/22/among-democracies-u-s-stands-out-in-how-it-chooses-its-head-of-state/
“One Founding-era argument for the Electoral College stemmed from the fact that ordinary Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose directly and intelligently among leading presidential candidates.” …
“Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery.”
http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
Well, ordinary Americans today have too much information to help them choose intelligently among leading presidential candidates. The exact opposite of that Founding era argument for the Electoral College.
And, the U.S. doesn’t have slavery anymore.
Reported by Daily Beast and Mother Jones- Judicial Watch (funders for Kavanaugh’s appointment and often linked to the Federalist Society) provided material about Soros to a tax-funded American agency that generates global news. The material was used for a program that vilified Soros. Soros was identified in the segment as a “multimillionaire Jew”. At Fox, a Judicial Watch official spread the Soros/ migrant caravan conspiracy.
If Tree of Life prevailed in a lawsuit and won a judgement against Judicial Watch it would be the beginning of justice for the unholy conservative plot to establish American oligarchy.
I am not Jewish, but I worked as a teacher in a Jewish kindergarten. I enjoyed working there and celebrating the Jewish holidays. I attended a briss, Bas and Bat mitzvah. I loved the warmth and acceptance I felt at Kol Ami, our local synagogue. I am appalled by what happened. These actions make me fear for our religious freedom. It is another attack on our democracy. We are all threatened by this nutty violence.
Koans
Can things return
That never left?
Phalanges turn
From right to left?
*Without a mirror
sad but true
Things Trump has said about Jews:
1) Jews are Hagglers
“I know why you’re not going to support me. You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money …Look, I’m a negotiator like you folks, we’re negotiators.” (Today at the RJC.)
2) One of My Favorite Daughters is Jewish
“I want to thank my Jewish daughter. I have a Jewish daughter…This wasn’t in the plan but I’m very glad it happened.” (The Algemeiner’s ‘Jewish 100′ at Capitale. Feb. 2015.)
3) How ‘Bout That Jon Leibowitz — I Mean Stewart
“I promise you that I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz – I mean Jon Stewart @TheDailyShow. Who, by the way, is totally overrated.” (A tweet about Jon Stewart in April 2013.)
4) Debbie Wasserman Schultz is “Neurotic” (Read: Jewish Woman)
“This is a woman that is a terrible person,” Trump said of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz after calling her “crazy” and a “highly neurotic woman.”(Last month on Breitbart News show on Sirius XM Radio.)
5) Not That I’ve Actually Read Hitler…
“If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them… My friend Marty Davis from Paramount gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (Trump’s response in a 1990 profile on whether he read Hitler’s writings.)
(Marty Davis is not Jewish)
Thought we needed some humor. It’s an oldie but goodie and it just came to me from a Canadian friend. Trump is NOT loved by everyone. Teachers, are you listening. Great lesson to read to the class!!
…..
Donald Trump decided to visit an elementary class one day.
The teacher asked the President if he’d like to lead a discussion on the word ‘tragedy.’ So Trump asked the class for an example of a ‘tragedy’.
One little boy stood up and offered: “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs him over and kills him, that would be a tragedy.”
“No,” said Trump, “that would be an accident.”
A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove off a cliff, killing everyone, that would be a tragedy.”
“I’m afraid not,” explained Trump. “That’s what we would call a great loss.”
The room went silent. No other child volunteered. Trump searched the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”
Finally at the back of the room, Little Johnny raised his hand. The teacher held her breath ….. In a quiet voice he said: “If the plane carrying you was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy.”
“Fantastic!” exclaimed Trump, “That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”
“Well,” says Johnny, “It has to be a tragedy, because it sure as hell wouldn’t be a great loss … and you can bet your sweet ass it wouldn’t be an accident either!”
The teacher left the room………..
I’m glad that Christian leaders are coming out against the hatred and fear that Trump is putting into the population. I am very much against the rise in hate crimes that is happening now.
………………………..
‘If You Hate Jews, You Hate Jesus’: 6 Christian Leaders’ Reactions to Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre
Russell Moore
Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, stated on his website that “if you hate Jews, you hate Jesus.”
“Sadly, in a time when it seems that every week brings more bloodshed and terror in this country, we should not let the news cycle move on without a sober reflection of what this attack means for us as Christians,” Moore said of the massacre.
“Such is especially true as we look out a world surging with resurgent ‘blood-and-soil’ ethno-nationalism, much of it anti-Semitic in nature,” he declared.
“As Christians, we should have a clear message of rejection of every kind of bigotry and hatred, but we should especially note what anti-Semitism means for people who are followers of Jesus Christ.
“We should say clearly to anyone who would claim the name ‘Christian’ the following truth: If you hate Jews, you hate Jesus.”
The ethicist insisted that Christians must always remember that all of them are “adopted into a Jewish family, into an Israelite story.”
https://www.christianpost.com/news/if-you-hate-jews-you-hate-jesus-6-christian-leaders-reactions-to-pittsburgh-synagogue-massacre-228217/
My former alternative medicine healer in KL, who is now a licensed medical doctor, changed from being a Christian to the Islamic religion. I met with her on my last trip back to Malaysia. She said she changed religion because of the love that this new religion gives. She gave me a copy of the Qur’an.
I had a Muslim girlfriend who was very religious. She would often leave and go to a prayer room to pray…they pray 5 times a day. She would pick me up every weekend and help me get groceries my last year in Kuala Lumpur when I wasn’t working. I came down with a rare nerve disease and didn’t have a car.
To me these two people represent what the Islamic religion is about…love and caring.
I also believe that Jesus wants all people to be treated with respect and mankind should help those in need, especially the poor and the sick.
All people are important and should be treated decently.
I believe the extremists in any religion do damage and hurt people. Trump’s rantings are bringing out the worst in people. The haters are now free to come out from under their rocks.
Here is more evidence that the true Muslim religion is about giving and caring for others.
………………………………………
$180,000
The amount raised by Muslim communities in three days for the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims
When will the US ever get decent [severe] gun control laws? The claim that shootings are done by those with mentally ill backgrounds doesn’t always ring true. This fellow didn’t fall into any category and was able to purchase his killing machines legally. It makes me sick that Congress is a bunch of bought-out [NRA $$$] wimps. Does anyone really need to acquire an AR-15 assault rifle? Did he really need to possess three Glock .357 handguns? He owned 10 guns in total? Why is this allowed? Killings are getting to be a normal part of living in the US. We now sigh and think, “That’s too bad.’ and wait until the next horror happens.
…………………………………..
Feds: Synagogue Shooting Suspect Bought His Guns Legally
The man accused of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre—the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history—legally purchased all the firearms he used to kill 11 worshippers last Saturday morning, federal authorities said. Robert Bowers is believed to have used four guns in the attack: one AR-15 assault rifle and three Glock .357 handguns. An investigation found the guns were “acquired and possessed legally by Bowers,” the Philadelphia office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Tuesday. Felons, convicted domestic abusers, dishonorably discharged veterans, and people adjudicated to be mentally ill or subject to certain restraining orders cannot own guns, but Bowers didn’t fall into any category. An ATF spokesperson also said Bowers had a handgun license and is believed to have owned 10 guns in total.
Friedman is saying that we should be worried if Trump asks his loyal followers to use their guns.
………………….
Opinion | The Neuroscience of Hate Speech
By admin – October 31, 2018025
Do politicians’ words, the president’s especially, matter?
Since he has been in office, President Trump has relentlessly demonized his political opponents as evil and belittled them as stupid. He has called undocumented immigrants animals. His rhetoric has been a powerful contributor to our climate of hate, which is amplified by the right-wing media and virulent online culture.
Of course, it’s difficult to prove that incendiary speech is a direct cause of violent acts. But humans are social creatures — including and perhaps especially the unhinged and misfits among us — who are easily influenced by the rage that is everywhere these days. Could that explain why just in the past two weeks we have seen the horrifying slaughter of 11 Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, with the man arrested described as a rabid anti-Semite, as well as what the authorities say was the attempted bombing of prominent Trump critics by an ardent Trump supporter?
You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to understand that the kind of hate and fear-mongering that is the stock-in-trade of Mr. Trump and his enablers can goad deranged people to action. But psychology and neuroscience can give us some important insights into the power of powerful people’s words.
We know that repeated exposure to hate speech can increase prejudice, as a series of Polish studies confirmed last year. It can also desensitize individuals to verbal aggression, in part because it normalizes what is usually socially condemned behavior.
At the same time, politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat. One study, for example, that focused on “the processing of danger” showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.
Mr. Trump has managed to convince his supporters that America is the victim and that we face an existential threat from imagined dangers like the migrant caravan and the “fake, fake disgusting news.”
Were the men arrested in the synagogue shootings and bombing attacks listening? Robert Bowers, for example, apparently blamed Jews for helping transport members of the Central American migrant caravan. It seems he did not think the president was going far enough in protecting the country from invaders. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he wrote online before the murderous rampage. And Cesar Sayoc Jr., accused of mailing bombs to CNN, echoed the president in a tweet: “More lies con job Propaganda bye failing failing CNN garbage.”
But you don’t have to be this unhinged to be moved to violence by incendiary rhetoric. Just about any of us could be susceptible under the right conditions.
Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton, and colleagues have shown that distrust of a out-group is linked to anger and impulses toward violence. This is particularly true when a society faces economic hardship and people are led to see outsiders as competitors for their jobs.
Mina Cikara, a psychologist at Harvard and a co-author of that study, told me that “when a group is put on the defensive and made to feel threatened, they begin to believe that anything, including violence, is justified.”
There is something else that Mr. Trump does to facilitate violence against those he dislikes: He dehumanizes them. “These aren’t people,” he once said about undocumented immigrants suspected of gang ties. “These are animals.”
Research by Dr. Cikara and others shows that when one group feels threatened, it makes it much easier to think about people in another group as less than human and to have little empathy for them — two psychological conditions that are conducive to violence.
A 2011 study by Dr. Fiske and a colleague looked at “social cognition” — the ability to put oneself in someone else’s place and recognize “the other as a human being subject to moral treatment.” Subjects in the study were found to be so unempathetic toward drug addicts and homeless people that they found it difficult to imagine how those people thought or felt. Using brain M.R.I., researchers showed that images of members of dehumanized groups failed to activate brain regions implicated in normal social cognition and instead activated the subjects’ insula, a region implicated in feelings of disgust.
As Dr. Fiske has written, “Both science and history suggest that people will nurture and act on their prejudices in the worst ways when these people are put under stress, pressured by peers, or receive approval from authority figures to do so.”
So when someone like President Trump dehumanizes his adversaries, he could be putting them beyond the reach of empathy, stripping them of moral protection and making it easier to harm them.
If you still have any doubt about the power of political speech to foment physical violence, consider the classic experiment by the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, who in the early 1960s studied the willingness of a group of men to obey an authority figure.
Subjects were told to administer electrical shocks to another participant, without knowing that the shocks were fake. Sixty-five percent of the subjects did what they were told and delivered the maximum shock, which if real could have been fatal. The implication is that we can easily be influenced by authority to do terrible harm to others — just by receiving an order.
Now imagine what would happen if President Trump actually issued a call to arms to his supporters. Scared? You should be.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN
Listen to the video in this article showing what Fox is spreading. It is enough to make one throw up. The self-righteous hate, lies and the fear they are promulgating is absolutely horrendous. [Can we throw Trump out of the country? How about making a switch with Mexico? Trump for the immigrants!]
Trump Compares Migrants In Caravan To Cop Killer In Fearmongering Ad
“Who else would Democrats let in?” the ad asks, highlighting the story of an immigrant convicted of killing two police officers.
By Willa Frej
President Donald Trump’s latest call to vote Republican in next week’s midterm elections came in the form of an ad blaming Democrats for letting an undocumented immigrant later convicted of homicide into the country….
Trump has joined other Republican figures, including Ann Coulter, in propagating fearmongering surrounding the caravan in the weeks leading up to the midterms. Not only has he accused people traveling in the caravan of being criminals, gang members and Middle Eastern terrorists, but he has also accused high-profile Democrats like George Soros of funding the caravan.
“George Soros? Who’s paying for it?” a reporter asked the president Wednesday.
“I don’t know who. But I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump replied. “A lot of people say yes.”
In reality, the caravan is mostly made up of people who plan to legally seek asylum at ports of entry. Many, including children, are braving illness, squalor and the threat of death as they make their way north mainly on foot…
Article: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-ad-undocumented-immigrants-midterms_us_5bdac1a8e4b019a7
If Soros werepaying, they would be traveling in comfort in air-conditioned vans.
This is just Trump’s anti-Semitism