CONFLICT NOW

The U.S. Constitution is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism, when the people in power shall be so corrupted as to need a despotic government, being incapable of any other. Benjamin Franklin (American, Founding Father, Statesman, Inventor, 1706-1790).

By the time you read this book, events are moving so rapidly, not necessarily for the better. It is difficult to fathom these changes. Our present political debacle unfolded long ago…about forty years ago, and now we are experiencing the demolition of the fair, clear vision of this American Republic and its visionary, solid Constitution.

In her book, THE STEAL, Alex Wagner recounts events from years ago that are increasingly recurring today. The following excerpts examine the ideological takeover of a free nation and its growing destructive influence.

Let’s get started: as you read this book or some excerpts about this takeover, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, brought religion and bigotry into the public square, ended civil rights protections, and sanctioned discriminatory policies across the country. It is a spectacularly effective policy that even the Originators of this movement could not have imagined… that goes back to 1981. As it turns out, the delusion was the belief that established freedoms would remain firmly entrenched in federal law and that the modern American trend toward a progressive, open society would continue to grow, unabashed and solid. And, especially, that no one man -or men- could do anything about any of it.

Let’s continue: The Heritage Foundation was officially incorporated in early 1973. By whom…the major donor of this movement was the big donor Joe Coors (Alfred Coors Beer Company); then fifty years later, the ALEC group was established: ALEC stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that would craft conservative policy and hand it to legislatures. Now it is a major force in American politics, having developed Stand Your Ground gun laws, Voter ID laws, extreme immigration policy, and several bills designed to undermine scientific consensus on climate change, including scientific medical research.  

In 1974, the term New Right was coined to describe this nascent brand of conservatism. Heritage was focused on immediate battle…and found its perfect general in Ronald Reagan. The Heritage Foundation could nourish this new administration with policy proposals just as the Brookings Institution had done for the John F. Kennedy administration. This Heritage Foundation was a nascent think tank, drawing up the marching orders for this new Reagan administration. It was both a blueprint and a line in the sand. Nearly forty-five years later, this Heritage Foundation is still at it…now called “Project 2025”. Then the existential question – who a ‘real’ Republican is – and remains unclear even today. The Reagan-era seizure of power in the 1980s began an internal party fracture that has yet to heal, with disastrous consequences for both the party and the nation.  Continued in 1980, the Free Congress Foundation released its Blueprint for Judicial Reform. The federal judiciary needed reform; the courts had gone too far, judges were unaccountable and unimpeachable. The goal was and is to shift its center of gravity and power!

The many things the Blueprint argued were that judges had committed “verbicide” against the Constitution – distorting the true meaning of the document- and that they deemed themselves superior to the coequal branches of government. The consequences of this were apocalyptic.‘In place of values of family, faith and freedom, enshrined under God, many federal judges now support a movement toward humanism and social change, designed to transform our schools, homes, libraries, media and culture into vessels of socialism, sexual liberation, atheism and amorality,’ reads the Blueprint foreword.

Let’s look at the consequences…and how they affected every American life and beyond. In the end, the reinvention of the federal bench-as highly charged, partisan seats of power – remains the secretly stunning accomplishment of the neon-hued, shoulder-padded Reagan eighties. It far outlasted any cultural movement, and it outlived any one man. In hindsight, Democrats’ critical error was misunderstanding the ways in which the Reagan years were merely one stage of a broader ideological fight. No less consequential, the New Right had managed to establish originalism as a bona fide legal theory – and moreover, frame it as the status quo. At this point, anything that was not originalist was therefore activist. It is and was a stunning reorientation of jurisprudence. Not seeing that success in this war was not to be measured in single election cycles or immediate balance of power in Congress. The New Right was focused on changing American culture, and to do that, these conservatives had and have transformed the battlefield. Democrats wanted to see the Reagan years as merely a circumscribed period when conservatism was dominant, an era that they could put an end to by winning the White House back. They failed to comprehend the conservative structures that had been built in those eight years that would far outlast any one administration.                                                    

We may not know or understand the events taking place long ago, yet the ramifications are with us today. More and more truths are revealed, and we need to know and recognize these decisions from times past… for they affect this American nation and the Free World to this day and beyond.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willingness is not enough; we must do. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet, statesman, 1749-1832)

CONCENTRATION OF POWER

We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. Maya Angelou (American poet, essayist, 1928-2014)

Not all technology is bad, but things have clearly gone off the rails. It harvests our data, influences our behavior, controls our society, supercharges our economic inequality, confuses our reality, dulls our humanity, and corrupts the liberal world. How did all this happen?

In his book THE NERD REICH by Gil Duran, the subtitle is: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy; you will find many answers, whether you like them or not. Needless to add we are all influenced by this technology…the good and the bad of it. What happened to Liberal Democracy is one question; the Free World envied it. Now we must learn why and how we can adjust without losing our hard-won freedom and remain a free society and a liberal democracy.

For decades, many described the anti-government politics of certain Silicon Valley figures as libertarian, portraying them as the eccentric beliefs of rich men who hate paying taxes. Still, most wanted to build their companies without government interference. This framing, this thinking, is now dangerously obsolete. It has developed into something sinister: techno fascism. The sight of tech billionaires partnering enthusiastically with authoritarian regimes, providing technologies of control and surveillance while profiting from government contracts, clarifies this reality. In fact, seizing that power for themselves is and was the goal. 

The phrase of one of the oligarchs, ‘I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,’ makes this remark believable. Why? Because we are experiencing that technofascism innovates, creates, and controls all aspects of government and society. It is the driving force of authoritarian regimes. Its goal is to privatize the public domain and to eliminate democracy. As of late, the American government regime is amplified and bolstered by artificial intelligence, crypto, surveillance, and a national media apparatus, increasingly controlled by its accomplices. So, the narrow chasm between governance and business disappears. For example, AI is being used to hollow out federal bureaucracy as masked goons, violently kidnap, terrorize neighborhoods, and kill citizens and emigrants, young and not so young, alike. It is a reminder of “never again”. The leaders of this misguided alliance and their families gorge on government contracts in an orgy of corruption, distinguished by its unprecedented scale. Anti-democracy thinkers – a cultish network of radical anti-democracy thinkers have designed and forced a blueprint of dictatorship by trying to replace free nations with corporate city-states, with powerful oligarchs reigning.

When a nation is betrayed by its leaders and its wealthiest citizens, and when these citizens believe their money and technology entitle them to rule – existential crises follow. When one of these leaders spouts, ‘I will rule this country, then I will rule the world’, this remark was said during one of the unhinged drivels; free citizens should be alert. It should remind us of how we got here and where we wish and work NOT to be. It is a warning about the post-American authoritarian dystopia that the billionaires of Silicon Valley are racing to build. The need for bipartisan legislation is called for! Oversight must be developed by intelligent, knowledgeable politicians and forward thinkers. It is needed… for next time, the onslaught on democracy might be even more powerful, and democracy will not survive. This negativity and demise of democracy need to be protected and fought against.  It affects this nation and the free world… for we are co-dependent …whether we like it or not!

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln (16^th American President, lawyer, 1809-1865)

WHERE ARE THE GUARDRAILS?

Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember.  Involve me, and I learn.                                                                                      Benjamin Franklin (American, Founding Father, political philosopher, 1706-1790)

The reality on the ground is devastating; the future is still bleak. Will it ever be possible to discard the violent, military, and racist aspects of its vision? Will alternative voices be heard? This book by Professor Omer Bartov provides some answers, besides a most insightful understanding in ISRAEL WHAT WENT WRONG?

Professor Bartov is Israeli-born, now American-Israeli, grew up in Tel Aviv, served in the military, and is now the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, Rhode Island. In this story, Professor Bartov explores the tragic transformation of a new country, of Zionism. This movement sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression and persecution into a state of ethno-nationalist ideology. The question remains: How is it possible that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust stands today accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes, forcibly displacing civilian populations, and crimes against humanity?

Two traumatic events – the Holocaust and the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) – the violent displacement of more than 7500 Palestinians in 1948- are rarely discussed together. In fact, the two events are inextricably linked, historically, personally and as part of the politics of memory, and they have respectively become constitutive of Israeli and Palestinian national identities.

On May 14, 1948, the Jewish People’s Council of Palestine promulgated a Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel – known in Israel as the ‘Declaration of Independence’; this document included lofty assurances of equality, justice, regardless of ethnicity, creed and gender. No constitution or bill of rights was ever adopted… the legal status of the Declaration remains disputed. As Israel evolved without a constitution, reflecting the democratic and liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, Zionism itself transformed from a movement for Jewish self-emancipation, individual transformation, self-determination and freedom from persecution and antisemitism into a state of ideology. At very least, a constitution might have prevented or limited the reach of military rule, imposed on Israel’s Arab citizens between 1948-1966… even as vast tracts of their lands were confiscated by the State. Instead, as time went by, the focus on Zionism as a state ideology tilted increasingly toward Zionism – a state strictly for Jews.

Another crucial element in the transformation of Israeli society over time was the occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that followed the 1967 War. Israel controlled lands that lie outside the borderlines established by the armistice of 1949 and contained large numbers of Palestinians. Taking in the full picture…seven million Jewish Israelis now rule over seven million Palestinians…whose rights are restricted in myriad ways by the State, with three million Palestinians in the West Bank, two million in the Gaza Strip…and they have practically no rights at all. Judeophobia, now commonly referred to as antisemitism, has a long and vile history. Jews were singled out in the pagan world because of their insistence on worshipping only one God as well as for their self-identification as a chosen people. They were also a rebellious, independent lot. Under Greek rule, Jewish elites were increasingly Hellenized, but as tradition has it, in 166 BCE, the Maccabees rebelled against foreign domination, clearing the Temple of Jerusalem of what they perceived as gentile filth. The Roman takeover of Judea brought it under the control of the most powerful political and military entity of the ancient world – a vast empire that tolerated the different ways of its numerous provinces if they accepted Rome’s rule. Yet instead of accommodating Roman hegemony, the Jews again rebelled. This was a fatal move for Jewish existence in Judea. The Great Jewish Revolt of 66-73 CE ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple and the fall of the fortress of Masada. It was here the Zealots – as the rebels on the isolated hilltop called themselves- made their last stand against the Roman Empire. Like the extremists in the current Israeli government, the Zealots had no interest in politics or compromise. For them, the only alternatives were victory or death. The destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews created a new Jewry. Even before these traumatic events, vast numbers of Jews were living in such cities as Alexandria and Rome.

The October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the Israeli military operation in Gaza that followed therefore cannot be understood without taking into account the larger historic context. The precise timing of the Hamas attack was likely precipitated by the domestic disarray in Israel and fears that the Palestinians issue was about to disappear completely from the international agenda. There should be no doubt that the Hamas attack – the massacre of hundreds of civilians, including children and the elderly, as well as cases of rape and other abuses, taking of hostages, was horrible.  All of this horror is and was a war crime and a crime against humanity! We can condemn the barbarity of the attack, yet also recognize the right to resist occupation.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in its advisory opinion to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s occupation of the West  Bank and the Gaza Strip was illegal. As we observe the current situation on the ground and now the Israeli/American war on Iran… the supporter of Hamas…we need to ask ourselves what the possible future for this devastated region might be and the implications it will have on the nature of Israel… for the region of the Middle East and beyond?

A formula for Jews and Palestinians to share the space between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea is a crucial precondition for coming to terms with the past; for the violence will continue and the denial of past wrongs will drag Israeli society and its politics ever deeper into a moral and psychological morass. Only the assurance of equal rights to all inhabitants of the land can put an end to this calamity and help the people establish a plan for a different future for generations to come.

Of all sad words of tongue and pen…the saddest are those…it might have been. John Greenleaf Whittier (American poet, 1807-1892)

A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door; the whole world will be clean. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet, writer, 1749-1832)

Let’s look at this great story of another time, this one of repressive Elizabethan England (1558-1603) the ‘golden age’ of English history. It makes one wonder where and how and why this ‘golden age’ has been resurrected by a leader on another continent- and in another century.

In the book DARK RENAISSANCE Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Humanities at Harvard University, captures this gripping time, with the subtitle: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival. What is told in this story is not only the story of the tragically brief life of Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1593, a contemporary of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), but a reminder of an age, passed long ago, yet it still haunts us to this day. It had to do with religion.

The story tells the reader about Christopher Marlowe, a brilliant student, who had a classical education in Latin and Greek and specialized in scientific studies; he was born in Canterbury to a poor, provincial cobbler and fortunate to be accepted at Oxford and Cambridge as a boy student. He was an unlikely person to have a major role in breaking open the rigid carapace that constricted the English creative spirit. He lived for a short time and was murdered at the age of twenty-nine. During his life, he wrote plays and poetry; it is said he influenced Shakespeare. The Kit, as he was called, wrote during a time when the English people had no freedom of thought, freedom of expression, or freedom of religion, all unknown or feared. After he graduated from Oxford, he was a catalyst for the awakening of the genius of the English Renaissance. Christopher Marlowe was an eager student who mastered ancient languages at university, even within a restrictive environment where social distinctions were controlled but not erased.

Kit took his studies seriously, and they awakened curiosity and deepened skepticism rather than piety…to become a minister of the church. Beyond the classroom lay a shadowy world of secrecy and spies, designed above all to trap Catholics or other believers. Anyone who participated contributed to the corruption and was tainted by it. What was the most obvious reason…money. Was Marlowe in the spy service… it appears so…he was paid for participating in the service of exposing the hatred between the religions. Powerful people forced the English, no matter what class, into the direction of Protestantism. Religious wars commenced for centuries and are still being fought to this day, in 2026.  The brutality of these forces of religiosity is legendary.

Scholars like Marlowe earned their keep by waiting tables or running errands for their tutors. Despite differences in class and privilege, student life was relatively egalitarian, and authorities worked to keep it that way. College life excluded marriage, families, and children; faculty members were required to remain unmarried, a rule not lifted until the nineteenth century. It was an all-male world in which women were treated as second-class citizens and largely ignored.

Yet, no legends surrounded him, comparable to the ones that circulated about another young provincial, William Shakespeare, the newcomer from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Let’s look at England in the sixteenth century. Yes, it is a long time ago… yet we still see parallels today. People spoke a language largely unknown to the rest of the civilized world. Nothing written in English had aroused sufficient interest to merit translation into one of the dominant languages or into Latin. In the sixteenth century, Italy had established major universities; all were sites of extraordinary achievements for scientific studies of plants, advances in anatomy, creation of epidemiology, revolution in physics, and many more subjects. Think of the great Italian art and the artists who were supported by wealthy Italian families…one would be the Medicis…or the Roman Papacy. The two English universities were scientific backwaters; both Oxford and Cambridge were riven by bitter conflicts, as the ascendant Protestants authorities tried to eradicate any loyalty to Roman Catholicism.

The religious conflicts had been going on for more than half a century, ever since Henry VIII broke with Rome over his divorce. During these murderous tangles, all lives were threatened in the kingdom. The ruler’s religion was the religion for the entire country; no other faiths were tolerated, neither Judaism nor Islam, nor any versions of Christianity other than the one of the ruler’s own. If this demand was not followed, people were brutally murdered…not only in the Tower of London.

Hypocrisy or Bigotry are not new, not then, not now! During Elizabethan times, there was the fear of foreigners, of strangers, racism, hatred of otherness, pettiness. The introduction to Christopher Marlowe’s transgressive genius gives the reader an insight into a period of long ago…yet also timely. Kit Marlowe was a homosexual atheist, tormented by compromises and lies, and in the end was murdered. We should know of the Faustian bargains he embraced that are with us to this day.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

Elie ‘Eliezer’ Wiesel (Nobel laureate, American, Romanian, 1928-2016)

ZEITGEIST, it’s about ALIENS

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, and immortal -Arthur Schopenhauer

Do you ever think that there may be Aliens in your life? The thought is not about the political
arena but about the possibility that there are visitors from Alien cultures, you can neither
see nor hear. In his book, Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the Astrophysicist, titled TAKE ME TO
YOUR LEADER, with the subtitle ‘Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter,’ describes
their existence and behavior with humor… at times it leaves you laughing.

Here are some reminders about if you ever meet an alien: Dr. Tyson suggests how they
might look or act. He o􀆯ers useful tips for this encounter. A professional Astrophysicist, he
is also the director of the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, and knows our solar system
well. He writes we have done all the calculations…know the size of the observable
universe of more than 90 billion light years, know the age of this universe…13.8 billion
years, know how many galaxies it contains …as many as a trillion, know how many stars
populate those galaxies, about 10 sextillion ( 22 zeros). We know the age of the Milky Way
Galaxy – at least 13 billion years. We can estimate how many planets and moons might
orbit those stars…multiply this by ten. We know the chemical ingredients of life: hydrogen,
carbon, nitrogen, and, of course, other elements. We know how common they are — among
the most common in the cosmos. We know how quickly life began — organisms have
thrived for 95 percent of Earth’s timeline or existence, starting when the Earth was cool
enough to sustain complex molecules. We know the numbers that prevent any of us from
imagining a universe not teeming with life. We want to find Aliens. Or maybe they will find
So, when wondering what we might look like to Aliens, we must first abandon all our
preconceived notions of self; we must especially abandon our unbridled hubris. Some
hubris presumes we’d make immensely interesting objects of study for them, accounting
for their persistent pursuit of our body orifices. Aliens may be intrigued by the sounds we
make in our throat that travel through the air and get interpreted as information by others
who can hear us. Of course, maybe they make sounds too. Many insects, birds, and
mammals communicate with each other in this way. But it seems only humans can
generate single-syllable sounds – simply vibrations of air molecules – that could
completely o􀆯end other humans. Aliens might wonder why all whales and dolphins can
communicate with one another, while humans on Earth speak 7,000 di􀆯erent languages. If
there is anything left of ego, observant Aliens might notice that our digestive tract is home
to trillions of microbes, happily dining upon our waste products in the absence of oxygen.
More bacteria live and work within one centimeter of our lower intestines than the total
number of humans who have ever been born.

There you have it. A selection of embarrassing and misleading first impressions we will
make on eavesdropping Aliens. And there is nothing we can do about it. If we manage to
recover from these impressions, and they still choose to visit us after dodging our orbital
space debris, our goal will be to convince the Aliens that among the Earth’s biodiverse
creatures, we’re the smartest ever and that we’re worthy of their attention, admiration and
respect. But upon seeing evidence of rampant irrationality in human civilization, in which
humans oppress-or kill-one another over which creator of the universe they worship, or
who they sleep with, or what side of an arbitrary line on Earth’s land masses they’re born, or
how absorptive their skin is to sunlight, or what set of sounds come out of their mouths, the
Alien would surely rush home and report no sign of intelligent life on Earth.
Our collective assumption is that the Alien wants to meet the person in charge; for Aliens to
have reached Earth at all, from any place outside our solar system, we can reliably
conclude, they’re more advanced than we are.

Now to the Aliens: for example, if an Alien approaches you with multiple appendages, one
might look like an extended hand, refrain from grabbing or shaking it. You don’t know in
advance what part of the Alien’s anatomy you just touched, and you probably don’t want to
find out. Furthermore, a handshake is not a worldwide custom. Nor do you know if raising
your hand in a “HI” gesture can be construed as an act of kindness or aggression. You don’t
know anything about your new friends’ customs…so on a first encounter, it’s good to leave
your habits until you learn a thing or two about theirs. Also, know that the attraction of
silicon as the basis of Alien life storytelling, it has an authentic biochemical foundation.
The element that sits directly below carbon is silicon, which means all molecules you can
make with carbon, you can also make with silicon. Since life on Earth is carbon-based, why
not imagine an Alien biota with silicon atoms swapped for carbon atoms! As tempting as
that reads, it’s simply unnecessary. Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the
universe. It’s everywhere.

Thousands of years of ancient art – from cave paintings to stone and wood carvings to
papyrus etchings – have showcased fantastical renderings of human beings or other life
forms. Riding the Zeitgeist, our collective agreement on the appearance of non-evil Aliens
converges rapidly: Gray, colorless body. Can be green. Large eyes. Bald. Large head. Long
fingers. Thin limbs. Bipedal. General tinier and skinnier than we are.

If there were an Alien sighting guide, as the kind bird-watchers might reference, but for
birds, the Alien you least want to meet is the one made of antimatter. One of the great
mysteries of modern astrophysics is the asymmetry between matter and antimatter in the
universe. In every experiment ever conducted, when you create matter out of energy, you
get matter-antimatter particle pairs. Each particle has the same mass as the other, but opposite charge and other opposite properties in the quantum realm. In science, there is no such thing as a credible claim or a credible witness, only credible evidence. Whenever
scientists are involved, it will always be about the existence of rigorous evidence-based
data, not about eyewitness testimony.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard, ( Danish philosopher, 1813-1855)

THE EVIDENCE IS PRESENT

The cause of America is, in great measure, the cause of all mankind. Thomas Paine (English American Founding Father, political activist, 1737-1809)

Let us face it, for America’s Democracy to survive, it requires truth, and courts where truth still matters. If people don’t have facts or know them, Democracy cannot work. We make the world we live in and shape our own environment… that is the promise of Democracy!

In his book LIAR’S KINGDOM…how to stop Trump’s deceit and save America…Andrew Weissmann, the author, clearly defines the perils democracy faces…and has faced for the past ten years and longer. The illuminating story is essential for the reader to acknowledge the difficulties of America’s vision, where and how it must be protected.

Let us read some excerpts of this important, timely book: The creep of lies and deception into our government policies goes far beyond the claims of election fraud, the tarring of immigrants, and the use of the military domestically. Lies abound about COVID and vaccines, about Russian interference in the election, about having rid the world of ISIS. More recently, America’s attacks on the sovereignty of Venezuela, whether by blowing up boats offshore or by abducting its president, have been fueled by the administration’s pretextual claim that it is taking these actions to thwart drugs entering the United States—something at odds with, among other things, the US decisions to remain in Venezuela to run its oil industry and to pardon the Honduran president, Juan Hernandez, who was convicted of conspiring to import 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. 

This kind of political deceit, and the actions it supports, have risked our national security by making us pariahs in the international community. For instance, the Trump administration’s assaults on Venezuela are a sign of disregard for international law, which most reputable experts believe has been violated. But these actions also hurt us in more direct ways. Promulgating lies about the efficacy of medical cures for diseases, for instance, does not make this disease go away – just the opposite. Policies based on falsehoods, such as using quack theories to justify denying funds to basic research into medical science, hurt the health of the entire nation.

What has changed or has not changed, other than the misalignment of official facts with the White House’s preferred narrative? In many cases, the Trump administration is betting that, by killing the messenger, they can kill the message. In retrospect, many lies, corruption, and deceit were and are emblematic of the lawlessness that would come to pervade both Trump administrations. To survive, democracy requires the truth, and courts are where truth still matters. ’Disregard for truth undermines our political discourse, and it infects our policymaking. If the people don’t have the facts, democracy can’t work.’ Yet, when it comes to political lies that deny, distort, or hide those facts and thus aim a dagger at the heart of democracy, the courts can’t do this essential job.  Where lies are taken for granted, creating a vicious cycle of distrust and cynicism between political leaders and the citizens who empower them?

How did we become a country where political lies seemingly have no legal repercussions? The legal answer, if not a political one, can be traced to an analogy popularized by the famous jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935). In the early twentieth century, he penned a famous dissenting opinion in a case involving men convicted for distributing leaflets opposing United States intervention in the Russian Bolshevik revolution. Holmes famously wrote that the defendants’ speech should not have been subject to prosecution. “The ultimate good desired,” he penned in 1919, “is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” This phrase is the metaphor and its drive to expand free speech rights and the robust revision of the First Amendment.  

History offers a rough but instructive analogy to what we are going through today. At the turn of the twentieth century, before the Red Scare and before the rise of Hitler, America had virtually no restrictions on who could run for elected offices (if they were White men, that is). There were so many candidates that the choices were difficult for the average citizen to keep track of. This gave party bosses enormous power because they would put together bundles of candidates. Slates of candidates selected by bosses, not the voters, did the work. Progressives tackled this problem by supporting ballot reform measures to reduce the power of party bosses. New laws gave people more of a voice in party nominations and restricted the flood of eligible candidates to only those with a sufficient showing of popular support.

Today, we must also confront another issue that the Progressives took on in the early nineteenth century: wealthy speakers, corporate actors, media conglomerates are able to dominate the discourse and drown out other voices in the confrontation of the marketplace. Most dangerous of all to our democracy is that the current social media marketplace permits falsehoods to flourish, with no guarantee that the truth will prevail all or even most of the time. The marketplace can be polluted with propaganda, disinformation, and emotional manipulation. Authoritarians use the cloak of freedom of speech to promulgate false factual speech and drown out the truth.

It is certain that ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. James Baldwin (American novelist, civil rights activist, 1924-1987)

SEARCHING FOR A FAIR CHANCE

 If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Frederick Douglass (American, writer, abolitionist, 1818-1895) 

This powerful story, set from 1829 to today by Eugene Robinson, is written with deep knowledge and understanding of America’s history. He is a well-respected, well-known journalist and author. The story maps, like a mirror, correspond to actual events, including programs affecting predominantly Black Americans. Eugene Robinson’s story is timeless; it still moves us today. The title FREEDOM LOST, FREEDOM WON…a personal history of America…takes us into America’s past, to the present. It is like taking a journey through centuries of events that still occupy us, even trouble us, to this day. The author is an observer, a clear-eyed participant of our time. 

The story starts almost two centuries ago, in 1829, when Black people were purchased, not yet called African Americans. These transactions took place in one of the major slave-trading places, which was Charleston, South Carolina. One of the slaves was Eugene Robinson’s great-great-grandfather- a boy called Harry. This story brings to life almost two hundred years of America’s history. 

Let’s read some excerpts: During the Depression (1929-1939), both sides of my family experienced the effects of this nation’s general rule: However bad the situation was for white people, it was worse for Black folks. They were prime targets of the ‘last hired, first fired’ rule, which meant African American workers were first to have their salaries cut, their hours reduced, and ultimately their jobs eliminated. The general attitude was that whites should not be unemployed while Black folks were still working, so African Americans were shoved out of their positions. In 1933, the low point before the New Deal brought some relief, unemployment was nationwide 25 percent; among African Americans, the jobless rate was 50 percent, in some places even higher. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s massive and unprecedented New Deal programs did make things better. What eventually brought the economy back, of course, was World War II. The most devastating conflict in world history changed America, and in many ways changed Black America most of all. 

On September 16, 1940, President Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which required all American men between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five to register for the first peacetime draft in the nation’s history. I should put “peacetime” in quotes, because the rest of the world was already at war. The United States had watched first with unease and then with alarm as Hitler’s ground forces made lightning-fast conquest of continental Europe, capped by the shocking fall of France, and German bombers rained death upon London in the horrifying Blitz. Domestic public opinion favored keeping out of the war, but hope of neutrality was fading-and Roosevelt was doing everything in his power to prepare his nation for the inevitable. Histories dispel any question anyone might have about the patriotism and sacrifice of African Americans in service to the United States. They interrupted their studies and their careers to serve in the still-segregated army and navy, as was their duty. 

On March 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, mandating that federal contractors “ take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated correctly during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Kennedy’s order is often cited as the first use of the term affirmative action in the context of race. Despite that acknowledgment of systemic racial discrimination and the imperative to do something about it, revolutionary progress would not come until after President Kennedy was tragically assassinated in November 1963 and his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was sworn in. He was once a powerful senator from the Jim Crow state of Texas, wrestled Congress into approving civil rights 

laws that changed the nation – the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. In the real world, there was resistance – not just fierce defiance in the former Confederacy but also tribalism and inertia in the rest of the country. 

Moving forward: White Supremacy Digs In is one of the chapter’s headings: In January 2012, I wrote a Washington Post Column about Martin Luther King Memorial, with its towering likeness of the civil rights leader had opened the previous summer and was drawing surprisingly large crowds. I went for a visit and was deeply moved. Dr. King’s memorial, stretching along the bank of the Tidal Basin, is on a direct line between the marble temples honoring Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln…architects of the nation’s birth, rebirth, second rebirth, arrayed in an axis of eloquence, all of them inscribed with words that never fail to stir and inspire. Today’s Dr. King is remembered as a martyr for justice, an orator whose speeches schoolchildren learn by heart, a national hero whose contribution and sacrifice we celebrate with ultimate honor, of gratitude and contemplation. Organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League were pressing their demands for racial equality in the halls of power. Dr. King was taking direct action, sending masses into the streets in a campaign of radical, confrontational non-violence. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover thought Dr. King was dangerous enough to keep him under surveillance and tried mightily to discredit him. Dr. King exasperated three presidents- Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, who all expressed the wish that he would settle for incremental progress and temper his demands. He was seen not as a statesman but as a revolutionary. 

As we read this book, we are sitting on the shoulders of the author; his deeply researched story gives the reader not only insights into the events of the past, but also of today’s struggles, then and now. We gain insights into events over these almost 200 years, from then until today…and what has taken place and is taking place. Several ‘rebirths’ must be accomplished for this nation to embrace the full idea of the Founding Fathers-to gain equality, dignity, rights, and freedom – [all of which are essential for the human spirit. 

The liberties of people never were, never ever will be secure, when the transactions of the rulers are concealed from them. Patrick Henry (American, Founding Father, gifted orator, 1736-1799) 

WE ARE NOT INVISIBLE

With a new day comes new strength and new thoughts. Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady, Activist, 1884-1962)

Against the background of the chaotic, political pressure of our time, which includes the Law, the Universities, the Arts, Medicine, and even Books, we are facing a major change in America. In her book, Rebecca Solnit, the author, reminds us that these changes amount to nothing less than the dismantling of an old civilization and the building of a new one. In this changing worldview, interconnection is a core idea and of value- yet its scale is seldom recognized. This new worldview embraces antiracism, feminism, an understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and new Western ideas, and a respect for Indigenous people—all of these point to an interconnected, relational, new worldview. Here are some excerpts. Our world has changed more than anyone imagined—both wonderfully and terribly—often in unexpected ways, and the depth of that change will continue. Stability is not an option, but we may be able to help guide change if we recognize our role in it. The mosaic of shifts has many pieces, but beneath most of them is a growing belief that everything is connected— that the world is a network of interdependent systems. The isolated individual is, at best, a fiction; in both nature and society, collaboration and cooperation matter more than competition. This marks a move away from old hierarchies and the segregations—which normalized cruelties—they produced. Ideas of interconnection arise from many sources: new economic models; scientific insights from biology and psychology to Buddhism and Indigenous worldviews; changing values; and a desire to undo the loneliness, isolation, and severed relationships between people, and between people and nature, that feel entrenched in today’s social structures.

In many ways, the world of yesterday is not the world in which we are reading this book. Almost everything has changed-unevenly, imperfectly, incompletely, but even so, the way we talk about gender, race, sexuality, equality, family, violence, justice, nature, agriculture, food, all have shifted in many ways. Looking at these past years, the world was divided along racial lines in many ways and places. The United States was a far whiter place, far more of a Christian country than it is now. In the late 1960 and 1970s, Ivy League and other elite, private universities only admitted men as undergraduates, largely white men; some had quotas to limit the number of Jews. Across the nation, private clubs, resorts, hotels, and neighborhood housing also kept out Jews. Many forms of Official segregation, as well as unofficial intimidation and menace, kept Black and brown people out of white neighborhoods, public spaces, and organizations, including pools and beaches. Redlining – preventing access to loans, insurance, and other financial services or offering overpriced and inferior versions kept Black neighborhoods poor, which kept Black people in these neighborhoods; they had less access to good schools, good grocery stores, or any public service. Jim Crow cut far more harshly across southern society, segregating hospitals, schools, drinking fountains, theaters, and preventing Blacks from voting through poll taxes and rigged literacy tests, and through threats and violence, unequal protection under the law, keeping Black people out of professional jobs, and businesses. Women were supposed to be physically, intellectually, and emotionally feeble compared to men; this was also the justification for keeping women out of sports, the military, the professions of medicine and law! When a society becomes more equal and audible and has traditionally been subordinated, silenced, excluded, or devalued… then this society tells the stories which will further incriminate those who were in power. The Civil Rights Movement harnessed this to make the brutality of the Jim Crow and segregation issue a national and international scandal. There is room for nostalgia about the old world – less than 100 years ago, the world before computers, the internet was part of daily life. Its stately pace and rhythm were so unhurried. The radical uncertainty of the future arises from how we’re making the future in the present by how we show up, how new ideas are amplified, and become reality. But it is the past that shows us the possibilities, how the world changed, how power appears in places, how the foundational things can be transformed, how ideas and arts matter in making the world. Knowledge is power, memory, and perspective are among the most important aspects. Only in the long view can you see a pattern emerging, the way the present builds on the past, the way past surprises are coming into our time, the ingredients of change over years, decades, centuries. If you don’t see time on the scale of change, you don’t see change; if you don’t remember how things used to be, you don’t know they are different now, how they unfolded… and always will.

The speed of communication is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. Edward R. Murrow (American journalist, 1908-1965)

AN INTRACTABLE QUESTION

Nothing happens unless something is moved. Albert Einstein (German American physicist, 1879-1955) 

This story is compelling and timely, and holds extraordinary moments of real events. As you read this story of the Israel/Palestine conflict and war, which follows the complex history in the lives of individuals in two different societies. The real LEMON Tree is used as a metaphor, generally thought of as fresh, sour, zesty, or tart, but also conveys fun, health, brightness, yet also bitterness. Trees are like people! 

The author of The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan, a professor at the University of Southern California, tells a balanced perspective about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It took him seven years in research and studies, following two families in detailed conversations and observations, sometimes in painful exchanges about the past, and an uncertain future. The narrative penetrates the historical events in one – an Arab family’s history of centuries, and the intractable problem of Palestine, and the other family, a Jewish one, fleeing a horrific environment in Bulgaria. For both families…far apart, yet so near…the events of years past are still part of their lives, now and in the future. 

Here is some background: News from the United Nations in New York arrived at midnight in Palestine on November 30, 1947. On the recommendation of the UN Special Committee on Palestine, the UN General Assembly had voted, thirty-three states in favor, thirteen opposed, ten abstaining, to partition Palestine into two separate states, one for Arabs and one for Jews. A UN minority report, which recommended a single state for Arabs and Jews, with a constitution respecting “human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion”, was rejected. It read like the United States Constitution; Palestine was to be divided, according to the plan, the Arab and the Jewish states would be born on the same day. The partition would place more than four hundred thousand Arabs in the new Jewish state, making them a forty-five percent minority amid a million Jews. 

Reaction to the UN vote was swift. Palestinians, backed by other Arab leaders, immediately rejected the partition and pledged to fight it. Why, they asked, should their homeland become a solution for the Jewish problem in Europe? Jews in Palestine and around the world celebrated. In this story, one Bulgarian Jewish family, Moshe and Solia Eshkenazis, was elated. At last, after the Holocaust, the world had seen justice in the Zionist cause. Yet, even David Ben-Gurion worried about the large minority on the land set aside for the Jews; this leader described the conflict as ‘seven hundred thousand Jews pitted against twenty-seven million Arabs – one against forty.’ For many of the 1,800 Bulgarians Jews on the train from Sofia, then by boat to Haifa —or the tens of thousands of Hungarians, Romanians, or Polish Jews —emigrating in the fall of 1948. It was a journey into the unknown. The journey to Israel represented a return after two thousand years of exile, a chance to fulfill the Talmudic promise: ‘He, who makes four steps on Israel soil, all his sins will be forgiven.’ 

Twenty years later, in the summer of 1967, conversations like the one the Khairi’s had, the family whose house and garden held the Lemon Tree, were taking place throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Bashir Khairis and his cousins had visited their house, built by their father, Ahmad, with Dalia Eshkenasis, the daughter of Moshe and Solia Eshkenazis. She lived in their house, and yes, the Lemon Tree was still standing. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Palestinians had made pilgrimages across the Green Line to childhood homes. It hardly mattered whether a refugee was old enough to remember his home; the landscape and the dream of return were imbibed with mother’s milk. Generations unborn in 1948 spoke of the details of neighborhoods in villages destroyed before they were born. 

For Bashir Kairir, as for many Palestinians, who still believed in the right of return, this reasoning made little sense: How could you have a right, but not be able to exercise it? Perhaps after more than half a century, many refugees would choose not to return to the site of their old villages, but many believed this should be their choice, not anyone else’s.

For Dalia Eshkenazis, the daughter of Moshe and Solia, the solution lay in two states, side by side – much as they had existed prior to the Six-Day War in 1967, except that now alongside Israel would rise a peaceful, independent Palestinian state. The Palestinians would have a right to return, but it would be limited to only part of old Palestine. This wish of return remains to this day and is constantly fought for.

On January 25, 2005, Dalia walked with a group of Arab and Jewish teenagers to the corner of the garden at the house in Ramla; in their hands was a sampling of a lemon tree. The cone of earth in the shape of a bucket clung to the sapling root. It was Tu B’shvat, the day the Jewish sages call a holiday for the new year for trees. Dahlia’s hands, and the hands of Arabs and Jews, lowered the sapling into the hole beside the old stump.

This fascinating story offers no magical solutions as in a fairy tale. This Lemon Tree died in 1998 as the Israeli-Palestine peace process stagnated. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the War of Independence. It is also a tapestry of compassion, grief, and hope to this day. The human conflict, the pain and loss on both sides in the lives of ordinary human beings, gives the reader a clearer understanding of the pain and even the joy they experienced. It is a painful exchange about the past and the future. The key to this openness lies in the narrative: when a story is fairly represented, it opens the mind and heart to the OTHER. A Lemon Tree tells the story! 

How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Anne Frank (German-Jewish Diarist 1929-1945)