An Essay About Pro-Palestinian Democrats And Progressive Jewish-Americans

I recently read an article published 7/7/26 on CNN.com about Jewish-American progressives and the Democratic Party. Although this was sort of news to me, I had heard some stuff about the problem the article describes- supporting the Palestinians has become a litmus test  required by progressives in the Democratic Party and this was causing some problems for Jewish-American progressives who are at least sort of pro-Palestinian but also support Israel in some ways. 

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If our goal is to get the Jewish Israeli population to transform their relationship with the Palestinians, it will work a lot better if we can convince them that accusations of anti-Semitism among us are untrue.

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In the last 18 years I have given a lot of thought to blending support for the Palestinians with opposition to anti-Semitism. I have more to say about my qualifications, etc. in the final section of this essay at the very bottom. One thing I will mention here is that although it’s just a BA, I have a degree in a very relevant field- Ethnic Studies. If you want an example of me contributing to the progressive community on this issue, I got a Guest Opinion published in a MSM newspaper (see this or read it here).                   

My position is that progressive Jewish-Americans who are sort of zionist should be treated as part of the progressive community but simultaneously need to re-evaluate their understanding of what is going on with Israel and the Palestinians. There IS a problem with anti-Semitism among progressives and this, among other things, hobbles the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) in America (I am not sure how many pro-Palestinian activists refer to it as the Palestine Solidarity Movement, but it’s a pretty good way of referring to us).

Progressive Zionists?!?!?!?

Although there is a spectrum for this, and at one end maybe some self-identifying progressive Democratic people don’t qualify as progressive, there are a lot of progressives who are Jewish and probably most of those are, to one degree or another, zionists. A big part of why I say that is an idea I adopted in recent years- that I’m not going to look at something political that I dislike and automatically and always say “I’m a progressive and I don’t like that, so that’s not progressive.” I initially came up with it when I thought about how many progressive activists I came across who were bizarrely friendly to the Libertarian Party and I decided that if they were SOME of the time capitalistic economically but only SOME of the time, and checked ALL the other boxes for stuff like opposing racism, supporting the environment, etc. they should be considered progressive. I also decided, in a similar spirit, that although I greatly value the DEMOCRATIC part of democratic socialism and am open-minded about the term “State Capitalist,” the Soviet Union actually had been about some kind of socialism.

Another reason to consider these Jewish-American progressives PROGRESSIVE is that when Irish-American GOP members expressed support for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (the one associated with Gerry Adams) in the 1980s, the other GOPers didn’t evict them from the party when their ethnicity led them to support what was, IN THE 1980s, a SOCIALIST organization.

One more reason is that the GOP Irish-American IRA supporters did a lot of conservative stuff, which I assume they were passionate about and for which they got credit for from their fellow GOPers. They kept LGBTQ+ people out of the NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade, they opposed Affirmative Action as passionately as they supported the MacBride Principles (Affirmative Action for Catholics in N. Ireland), they supported the invasion of Iraq, etc. etc. etc. I get the impression that the Jewish-American progressives we’re talking about have done and are doing tons of good progressive work that they deserve credit for.

No Pasaran?!?!?!?

That phrase is Spanish for “they shall not pass,” and the Spanish original was a rallying cry for the anti-fascist side of the Spanish Civil War.

This bunch of extremist progressive supporters of the Palestinians who are pushing a McCarthyist-like agenda overlap heavily with the “Uncommitted” movement in 2024 who urged critics of Israel to vote for anybody BUT Harris and sometimes were quite friendly towards Trump. This despite the fact that they are the kind of progressives who would insist that they are more radical than I am but basically sided with a fascist who probably IS the most pro-Israel US President we have had. Apparently being VERY pro-Israel is okay if you’re a fascist but being a little pro-Israel is not okay if you’re a progressive.

I also have to say at some point, that the people who coined the phrase “Genocide Joe” to refer to Biden in connection with Gaza and protested him never did get around to giving Donald Trump the same treatment, and Trump was much more in favor of Israel than Biden was and much more in favor of genocide for the Palestinians than Biden was (I don’t think that Biden was anywhere near that hostile to the Palestinians). I think that until Trump spoke about a Gaza Riviera describing the Gaza War as genocidal was going a little too far.

Was the June 1st 2025 Boulder Attack Anti-Semitic?

As you may know, June 1st 2025 in Boulder, CO there was a violent attack on a non-violent demonstration of support for the Israeli hostages. In a Guest Opinion that was published three days later in the local MSM paper here, I described it as anti-Semitic. Apparently a lot of Americans supporting the Palestinians refuse to call it that. In a recent email with one of these people (in this case a Jewish-American man) I wrote the following:

“You have said that the Pearl St. attack was not anti-Semitic. I realize it was a slightly (politically) pro-Israel activity that was attacked, but their focus was the hostages. And you have to take into consideration that they were non-combatants far from a battlefield. Yes, the Israeli flag was displayed, but that may have been less political than it usually is. In general, they were CIVILIANS and a physical, lethal attack on them from someone who is on the opposite side of a conflict which often touches on religion is bigoted, and I will not apologize for saying that in my essay. Unlike usual I am not sure what is analogous in N. Ireland- although I'll tell you this- not everyone in N. Ireland who identified with the Irish flag during the conflict was a supporter of the IRA and/or Sinn Fein.”

There’s also the fact that, in N. Ireland the main thing, conflict-wise, that the unionist (British-identifying) paramilitaries did was intentionally kill Catholic civilians (and about 99% of those Catholics were totally INNOCENT). Often it was in retaliation for republican violence, but anyone who wasn’t a sectarian asshole (and even some who were) labelled it anti-Catholic because they were innocent civilians.

Lastly, although I think the Palestinians and their American supporters have a point or two when they refer to many of the Palestinians in Israeli prisons as hostages, the fact is, there is nothing inherently colonial about Jewish-Americans being concerned about the hostages that were held by Hamas or others. The hostage-taking was roughly as bad as the murders of Oct. 7th- worse when you consider the medical problems made more complicated by being hostages, or the possibility of being raped, etc. I am open-minded about referring to the active duty IDF members taken prisoner Oct. 7th as something else, but in general the extremist parts of the Palestine Solidarity Movement are wrong about the hostage-taking.

Why the issue of the Palestinians?

I am less certain of my position on this aspect, but combined with everything else I will mention it. Why this issue? I’m certain that for most progressive Americans in the PSM it’s just a coincidence that the oppressor of the Palestinians is, largely, a big chunk of the world’s Jewish population. But I am certain there are also plenty of people who use the k-word and are obsessed with attacking Jewish people. 

On one hand, the conflict IS very important. It’s short history has contributed to making the region a “dangerous neighborhood.” For decades BEFORE Oct. 7th, the Palestinians, in different ways, faced one degree or another of serious injustice and inequity. And the United States is heavily involved as a sponsor of Israel and in some bizarre way is also seen by some as a mediator for peace there.

I was involved most of the time between 1995 and 2005 with the IRELAND Solidarity Movement (which was almost exclusively American) and the American Left really dropped the ball on that one. Why the difference? I understand that America isn’t propping up the UK the way we prop up Israel. But A) the oppression of Northern Ireland Catholics was serious, probably more serious than American progressives understand, and B) the UK (until Trump) was the most important ally of the United States in the entire world, and C) the Northern Ireland issue would have given engaged American progressives opportunities to drag a significant chunk of the Irish-American population towards the Left, and D) the US government did not have a good record on The Troubles. (I explain a lot more about those four points in an essay here starting with the words “Here are some of the reasons…” about 3/4 down from the top and ending with the third paragraph (you will then need to skip down to the very last section of the essay starting with “What makes me confident about….”)) (the fourth point I make is backed up in a post here about halfway from the top starting with “Ways in which Washington D.C. was bad…..” )

Another problem with this focus on Israel and use of it as a litmus test is that there have been a lot of very reactionary people who were anti-Zionist. There is not a strong, consistent connection between being a progressive and being opposed to Zionism.

I am not sure I am proving this aspect of my argument beyond the shadow of a doubt, but the differences are glaring in terms of the extent to which progressives today are embracing one cause and how they neglected the other cause in the mid and late 1990s.

Yes, These People Are Being Obnoxious, But Israel As A Jewish State Is Not Acceptable

Here’s the thing. I’m sure that many of the Jewish-American progressives are (according to the CNN article linked to at the top) supporting Israel to such a small, acceptable degree that I probably have no or little problem with them at all- i.e. if they simultaneously also identify as supporters of the Palestinians. But I’m also sure that many of them, for example, object to use of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid,” a phrase that, in different ways, accurately captures how the Palestinians were treated in the Gaza Strip (before Oct. 7th) and have been treated in the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem, and in the internationally recognized borders of Israel. I did a post that debunks the idea that applying the word “apartheid” to Israel is inaccurate and/or anti-Semitic. About 1/3 of the articles it’s based on are from The Times of Israel, which I believe is a fairly mainstream web publication based in Israel and about 1/3 of the articles are from the BBC (the BBC’s professional coverage of N. Ireland 1997-2005 probably means that they are a good source in general, especially for issues that DON’T involve people frequently setting off bombs in London for decades).

In general, some Jewish-American progressives need to understand that a self-defined “Jewish State” of Israel does now and very likely would in the distant future, involve continued inequality for Palestinian-Israelis- when the Israeli Left is in power that would change a little, but about 3-4 years later Likud or other right-wing parties would get into power and use the formally Jewish identity of the State as encouragement and cover for re-imposing anti-Palestinian policies. I have no idea how progressives can accept a state based on religion and/or ethnicity. It is so much in conflict with progressive values. (If you think that I have a double standard because I am not opposed to the 26-County Irish state based in Dublin and I support uniting the two parts of Ireland, see a post here and read the very last part starting with “Lastly, here is my response….” )

At some point I need to link to a post that takes a fairly comprehensive look at why I think Zionism was a bad idea and and why I believed in the one-state solution. On one hand, since Oct. 7th and Israel’s response I have leaned towards saying that now there must be so much hate on both sides that maybe the two-state solution is better. On the other hand, people who believe in justice and equality and peace might continue pushing for the one-state solution and I would sort of still support that and I can’t help but criticize progressives who rejected the one-state-solution BEFORE Oct. 7th. I should also say that uniting Ireland is more or less the one-state solution for that conflict, whereas re-partitioning Ireland would be comparable to the two-state solution in the Middle-East and is something that Sinn Fein and most Catholics in N. Ireland would never accept.

Anti-Semitism Weakens The Palestine Solidarity Movement

Was there anti-Semitism in the college campus protests that swept the nation 2-3 years ago? I am certain that Trump is not nearly as concerned about anti-semitism as he is hateful of Muslims, Arabs, and the Left. But some of the articles about that issue quoted Jewish-American leaders who said that although Trump is not helping and is exaggerating  the problem and/or that they hate Trump, there was a problem with anti-Semitism in those protests.

I make a big deal on my blog about the need to purge the PSM of anti-Semitism (to a large degree I am influenced by an article here that helps define what is anti-Semitism and what isn’t anti-Semitism in connection with the conflict). I have written on this topic here, here, here, and here (this last one is probably the best). I am not sure how popular or unpopular anti-Semitism is in America, and there’s a spectrum that makes this difficult to measure, but I think there’s at least a small majority of Americans who oppose it. So there’s a very good chance based on that alone that this bigotry costs us political influence and the Palestinian people support. If our goal is to get the Jewish Israeli population to transform their relationship with the Palestinians, it will work a lot better if we can convince them that accusations of anti-Semitism among us are untrue. More members of the PSM who are either Jewish or allies, numerically and strategically outweigh any loss of support from people who are simply anti-Semitic and show little potential for change.

On a personal level and on a political level I greatly value the Jewish-American population. Those who were/are liberal or progressive were disproportionately involved in the anti-Vietnam War effort, with supporting the anti-racist cause, and with Democratic Party victories. In my experience they were disproportionately involved with supporting the N. Ireland Catholic population during the conflict. On a personal level I have had some friends here and there who are Jewish, my Mom’s best friend almost her entire life was a Jewish woman, etc. My fiancé who I’ve been with for 6 and 1/2 years is partly Jewish. In case anyone thinks (after all I have written here) that  I will do anything to get along with Jewish people I should explain something- when I started thinking of leaving the Catholic Church about 5-10 years ago, I decided to convert to a Protestant Church after spending maybe an hour contemplating the idea that Christ was NOT the Son of God and then dismissing it and sticking with Christianity.

I think I say enough things in this essay that contribute to this statement: Anti-Semitism is destructive to our communities, our political movements, our nation, and our world. No more or less than, for example, anti-Muslim bigotry (some will say that the greater number of Muslims means that anti-Muslim bigotry is more destructive to humanity, but I am also influenced by the facts that within the last century we almost lost the Jewish population and anti-Semitism is the fuel for the neo-Nazi movement which is still a threat).

Islamophobia and Support for Israel Weaken The Movement Against Anti-Semitism

Via articles on the Southern Poverty Law Center web-site and other sources I have encountered anti-Muslim bigotry from Jewish-American people who were and are more right-wing than left-wing, but I am not sure how widespread is some mild variant of Islamophobia among progressive Jewish-Americans. I imagine it’s a small but significant problem because A) Jewish-Americans are basically White Americans and exposed to the same propaganda all white people are and B) Israel IS in a conflict that usually pits it against Muslims and that is often influenced by religion.

Most of what I would say to liberal or progressive Jewish Americans who might be islamophobic is either typed in, or linked to from, these paragraphs. These Jewish-Americans should spend some time thinking critically about how they see muslims and Palestinians. 

When progressive, Zionist Jewish-Americans say pro-Israel stuff alongside a ton of progressive things they make it a little more difficult for us to get progressive anti-Semites to abandon their bigotry because it is easy for people to experience that as politically maddening- that people would be progressive on all issues but one, about their people (when GOP Irish-American IRA supporters do their version of that I go a lot further and simply call them racist). The Palestinians do have very serious and legitimate national grievances and national aspirations and Jewish-American people denying that doesn’t help the fight against anti-Semitism.

Conclusions

People who are politically active and/or are inside certain communities can help advance these twin agendas of supporting the Palestinians and opposing anti-Semitism. When we convince progressive anti-Semites that their bigotry is wrong, we strengthen the PSM in America and the more people who hear the PSM’s message from people who oppose anti-Semitism, the more progress we make taking down anti-Semitism, the more Jewish Israelis will take us seriously— this goes around and around in an upwards spiral.

Some things that will help with combatting anti-Semitism:

1) American supporters of the Palestinians who believe that because Jewish-Americans are not oppressed (AS JEWISH-AMERICANS) no effort should be made to avoid friction with that community need to understand that we’re all standing in a lake of gasoline called ANTI-SEMITISM and we need to avoid creating unnecessary sparks that could set it on fire. 
2) The Irish political party Sinn Fein, which interacts with Americans a lot and which is largely against anti-Semitism, needs to stop putting out (side-by-side) the following two statements: A) that there must be a boycott of Israel and B) that it was okay that the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany (they need to repeal the second of those two statements).
3) It wouldn’t hurt if supporters of Israel would speak about anti-semitism in their own ranks (i.e. The Rapture, and the anti-Soros stuff, and comparing reasonable things like COVID-19 public health measures and hostility towards Republicans in our society with what Nazi Germany did to Jewish people).
4) Critics of Israel need to abandon two ideas I have encountered. The first is that because the conflict is asymmetrical it’s okay for the military wing of Hamas to target civilians. The other idea is that Palestinians are so powerless that they have the power to make war, but not the power to make peace. (I criticize both ideas here).
5) I think that a lot of American progressives fail to express enthusiasm, when looking at history, for the Allied cause in World War II. I’m thinking of people who are not anti-Semitic but who might be giving other people the wrong idea about the Holocaust, simply because they take their usually solid criticism of America too far.
6) Critics of Israel need to remember that although a majority of Jewish-Americans support Israel, that majority is a VERY SMALL minority of American Zionists.

I can only come up with two ideas to counter anti-Muslim bigotry besides everything else I have said or linked to above. 

1) If the opportunity arises, we should ask the US military if they would behave the way they did in Iraq 2003-2008 were they to find themselves policing a rocky Peace Process in N. Ireland (I am not sure how popular this shirt is, especially for the POST-Bush GOP, but the text of a shirt here should be discussed, especially the one about collateral damage).
2) I have read, at least once, the argument that anti-Muslim bigotry in America today resembles the anti-Catholic bigotry that occasionally surged and retreated in this country over the decades until about the 1940s (I think it has surged a little bit since then in terms of left-wing ignorance about Catholic politics). I used to be Catholic (I’ve sort of started converting to the Episcopalian Church) and I experienced anti-Catholic bigotry in this country at least two or three times (I also kind of experienced it in Northern Ireland twice).
3) The two very last statements in this conclusion should balance things a little.

It’s been about 15 years since I read huge amounts of information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, but if we DO see a resurgence of the Nazi skinhead movement, we should, as united communities, counter them by ANY AND EVERY means available. This will be more effective and successful if Muslim-Americans and Jewish-Americans cooperate and have not pushed each other away, and this future battle requires them to start massive dialogue now.

I am concluding with a quote from the hard-working opponents of organized hate, right-wing politics and economic injustice at the Southern Poverty Law Center. In one of the articles in the Fall 2008 issue of their publication, they wrote the following (it’s a statement by the author of that article, Sonia Scherr):
 

“Although criticism of Israel does not typically amount to anti-Semitism — and many critics of the Jewish state are unfairly accused of bigotry — in some cases those who denounce Israel also cross the line into denigration of Jews as a group.” 

My Qualifications And Some Other Stuff About Why You Should Consider What I Say In This Essay

I could be more familiar with this in some ways- but in other ways I believe I have a lot to offer. I  have read a ridiculous number of articles about the conflict there, I have read a ridiculous number of articles about anti-Semitism, and I have given a lot of thought to blending support for the Palestinians with opposition to anti-Semitism. Although it is just a BA, I got a degree in a very relevant field in 2003 at CU-Boulder— Ethnic Studies. When I attended the 2002 National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth in Galway, Ireland, I was representing the Anti-Racism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America (see below). It might be relevant that I am engaged to marry a woman who identifies partly as Jewish- enough that I have been to three Passover Seders with her in the last four years.

I was a member of DSA from 1995-2002 and my familiarity with it gradually declined after 2002. I left for a hybrid of personal and political reasons but I have some reason to believe that I would probably still feel at home in it today if not for the personal stuff. The political stuff is not relevant to this. Even today I am not as literate when it comes to socialist theory as I should be, and around 25-30 years ago I knew even less. During that time I vaguely identified as a Marxist and I was either a third-party fan or reluctant to register as a Democrat. I have done an okay job of educating myself more since then and I now use two terms in combination to describe my political beliefs- democratic Marxist and left-wing social-democrat. I’ve been registered as a Dem since 2004. I am not officially with any political organization, although I might be close to identifying with Indivisible.

Some people might point out that practically no one has heard of me and suggest that I have done nothing in recent years to earn a prominent stall in the marketplace of ideas. The short version is that while I did a ton of activism in Boulder 1994-2004, since Aug. of 2001 I have been dealing with a “perfect storm” of things that are A) largely or completely not my fault and B) largely personal tragedy (in some ways that situation has been almost overturned since I started dating my fiancé in 2020, but in a lot of ways I still struggle with stuff vocationally, mentally, emotionally, etc.). During the time since 2001 I have continued reading a HUGE amount of political material, I have developed some analytical skills through writing a lot, and I have made some decent contributions to the progressive community. Since 2008 I have published about a million words on this blog. Although in the last 6 years my blog has gotten only about 10 page-views a week on average, 2008-2018 there were about 10,000 first time visitors (who may have looked at several posts and/or come back some other time for more) and in the first few months of the pandemic there were somewhere around 100 page-views a day. 2011-2022 I volunteered an average of five hours a week at a large food-bank in this area. Since early 2021 I have gotten a total of about 10 LTEs and about six Guest Opinions published in a mainstream Boulder County publication and a sort of mainstream Boulder County publication. Since 2010 I have gone to a progressive event or protest about twice a month on average and in the last year it’s been about twice a week on average.

A big part of why few people have heard a lot about me as a political activist in the last 20 years is that I have 4+ mental disabilities that got worse or more numerous at a few different points in the last 25 years (for more about my mental health and progressive politics, read this).           

The Anti-Muslim Attack In San Diego

Below is something I submitted to the daily Camera a week ago about the 5/18 attack on a San Diego mosque. It probably won't be published at this point. You should read a CNN.COM article here. It basically says that an effort was made to deny mosques DHS funding for security about a year ago.

 

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For decades I have been worried about anti-Muslim bigotry in this country, especially since 9/11. I’m not sure how often I have done something really significant about it- unless expressing support for the Palestinians counts, in which case I have done a lot (including at least one very visible effort). I think that yesterday’s attack in San Diego might be the first fatal attack on a mosque here. There have been many other manifestations of anti-Muslim bigotry in America, including some deadly violence. Trump has done a lot to fuel that bigotry here, especially with his first-term Muslim travel ban and his second-term suggestions that it would be appropriate to get Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently and that it would be appropriate to destroy, as in commit genocide against, the Iranian nation-state. And there’s been tons of smaller stuff as well.

I’ll be honest, in the same spirit of saying that all white people are at least a tiny bit racist, as a Christian I have had occasional anti-Muslim thoughts. It’s so minor it’s barely worth mentioning, but since I am writing this, I should say that I think that in recent years I may have slightly or significantly discounted the progress made in the Muslim world when it comes to how women are treated by men and male-dominated institutions. In the last few years I have been pleasantly surprised by how many news articles quote Gaza women (for example)- to be honest, I DID think they would be discouraged by men and other women from speaking to the media. People who are much worse than flawed Christian allies of America’s Muslim population should consider that Sharia has been mentioned enough already.

I’m embarrassed by that oversight of mine for at least a few reasons and one of them is that I have read, at least once, the argument that anti-Muslim bigotry in America today resembles the anti-Catholic bigotry that occasionally surged and retreated in this country over the decades until about the 1940s (I think it has surged a little bit since then in terms of left-wing ignorance about Catholic politics). I used to be Catholic (I’ve sort of started converting to the Episcopalian Church) and I experienced anti-Catholic bigotry in this country at least two or three times (I also kind of experienced it in Northern Ireland twice).

I could be better equipped to do this- although I set out to read the Koran about 6 and 1/2 years ago, I only read about 5% of it and then the pandemic distracted me. The part I read didn’t contain anything I found offensive. I get the impression there’s a fair amount of politically good stuff in that book, just like there is in the Bible. We need to remember a handful of facts- Muslims believe that Christ was an important prophet and the Angel Gabriel appears in both books. Many people use the term “Abrahamic” to refer to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and I believe strongly that we all pray to the same God.

Would I say that non-Muslims should never criticize certain tendencies (sexism and homophobia) in the Muslim world in order to avoid encouraging religious bigotry? No. But we should blend critical statements about them with positive ones about Islam and the Muslim community. We should make more efforts to build bridges in every sphere of life with Muslims. We should understand that the Palestinians have very legitimate national grievances and aspirations and reject the Israel lobby’s demonization of them. We should ask the US military if they would act the way they did in Iraq 2003-2008 if they found themselves policing a rocky Peace Process in N. Ireland.

We need to stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters at this time and in general and whenever hatred for them raises it’s ugly head.

Law and Order Reviews J

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Pride” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is basically about homophobia and I think it’s a fairly good reply to the homophobes.

“Savages” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

The Death Penalty 

This episode is about the death penalty, but the main characters, collectively, have mixed opinions about it. I won’t bother describing or analyzing those statements with two exceptions. First, it’s stated that (possibly looking just at NY state and it’s death-penalty situation) there was some kind of trend where the suspension of the death penalty saw a decrease in capital crimes or something like that.

One of the main characters (the senior detective) in a practical but not principled way opposes bringing the death penalty back to NY and says that it will create more desperation among criminals who might become more willing to shoot cops when police try to arrest them if they’re already facing charges that could involve the death penalty.

I am generally against the death penalty. To some small degree you could say this is partly inspired by or reinforced by the fact that my Church opposes it (until very recently I was a Catholic and I am now converting to the Episcopalian church that also opposes the death penalty). I know that the statistics indicate that independent of the thoughts of judges, prosecutors, and jurors, it’s application really is racist and classist. I believe there’s no reason to say that it deters serious crime.

I am open-minded about it being used in one situation. If someone is already serving a life sentence in prison with no chance of parole, where life means life, and they are convicted of a serious crime (murder (and maybe rape should also be included)) and there is no other way to significantly upgrade their sentence to reflect the new conviction, maybe they should get the death penalty. I am not sure how often murder and rape happen in prison, but it might possibly happen less often if what I just proposed was an option for judges and/or juries.

“Jeopardy” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.             

First, the Wikipedia summary is REALLY bad. The dead brother’s business had created a financial vulnerability for his family’s business. There were no rival businesses and there was no stealing of clients.

This is a type of episode that I have only inconsistently high-lighted until recently, but my plan for 1-3 years now has been that I’ll make a brief note about this when it comes up. First, the defendant is a wealthy businessperson who doesn’t seem political at all (i.e. he’s not made to look bad because he’s liberal or progressive, since he’s neither as far as we know- he’s made to look bad because he’s the kind of powerful person who thinks the rules don’t apply to him). Second, his even wealthier Mom uses her wealth-created power to subtly BRIBE the judge who gets the case and then rules in favor of the defendant a few times.

“Angel” Season 6. See this for a plot summary.

There’s 2-3 parts where racism towards Puerto Ricans in NYC is illustrated. The first time, I have to admit, the police don’t seem too offended. That doesn’t necessarily exclude the thing I want to highlight as anti-racist. After a well-attended Coleman-organized press conference is basically told that at that point the police are looking for a Puerto Rican man, the police get flooded with tips. One of the two detectives, while answering calls to the tip line, says to his supervisor: “Since the Colemans’ town meeting every nut job in the city who ever got a bad taco is pointing the finger.” It could be a better objection to what is happening to their investigation- it’s sinking into the muck of popular racism- but the detective is basically caricaturing that racism, saying that any White person who had a negative experience with a “hispanic” person is making false allegations about Puerto Ricans and the disappearance of the baby and are doing so in a way that doesn’t distinguish between different “hispanic” racial and ethnic groups. It turns out that the baby's White mother killed the baby.

Trump, Iran, and Genocide

Below is something I wrote about a week after Trump threatened to destroy the civilization of Iran in early April. 

 

Tom 

 

 

I am glad that President Trump has so far not gone through with his threat to destroy Iran. It is damning of him and his voters that he made the threat and he is guilty of threatening genocide (“Conspiracy to Commit Genocide” and “Direct and Public Incitement to Commit Genocide” are crimes in international law (according to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ) and it’s reasonable to assume that Trump’s threat involved planning with high-ranking members of his administration). If there was no conspiracy because it was nothing but a threat, Trump should say so, apologize and acknowledge that even the threat by itself is harmful (and he would still be guilty of the incitement charge)). Although some of his supporters, for various and not-necessarily progressive reasons, have criticized him, the GOP don’t seem to understand how criminal it is to make the threat that he made. Some think that he was just being politically tactical and would never actually do it and therefore it’s okay. It’s so far from OK it is globally considered a crime. It reminds me of a scene in the Denzel Washington film "Training Day" where a cop interrogating college students who just bought drugs threatens to get the young woman in the group gang-raped.

The US should be more sensitive about this sort of thing- not because we have a great history of doing the right thing (we don’t). But because we did the wrong thing when it came to American Indians, because we are more familiar than most countries with the genocide of European Jews, and because we’re more familiar than most countries with the near-genocidal treatment of the Irish during the so-called “Potato Famine.” There are millions of Americans who lost relatives (and not distant ancestors) to Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and/or who are also similarily related to many Jewish people who were lucky to survive Nazi Germany- who would have been killed if not for that luck, Allied sacrifice, and/or their own efforts to escape the Holocaust.

I believe that one way to concisely capture the evil of genocide is that a 100%-successful effort could be described as the cultural equivalent of an animal species going extinct. I worry that putting it that way focuses too much on what other populations lose when the victim is (at least to a moderate degree) exterminated. But it contributes to understanding the severity of this crime.

Genocide is so horrible that it should be universally opposed by all nations. Although I am not a fan of the Islamic Republic, I have opposed Trump’s war since day one, and I have a little factoid relevant to this. Although I believe there is at least a fair amount of anti-Semitism in Iran (and I say that while supporting the Palestinians) in 2007 a TV mini-series was made by and broadcast by official Iranian media- a movie based on a true story of how an Iranian diplomat in Paris during World War II engineered some kind of Oscar Schindler-type effort that saved at least about 500 Jewish lives. The mini-series is called “Zero Degree Turn” and there’s an article that seems fair about it here.

Trump is of course selective, more so than most American politicians, in his opposition to genocide. It’s like his attitude to COVID-19, when he explicitly said that states would get more help from Washington if their governors publicly said nice things about him. It was a politically-indiscriminate PANDEMIC, and he saw it as transactional. He is, almost 100%, sensitive when it comes to the Holocaust, because he wants Jewish votes and Jewish money. When he thinks it will help him, he threatens the misanthropic destruction on an entire civilization.

Trump’s threat might give some nations and other actors the impression that genocide or threatening genocide is okay.

Lastly, Trump’s threat greatly undermines how the rest of the world sees the US. We have lost more moral authority on the global stage and we didn’t have much to begin with. It will increase support for or indifference towards any effort at carrying out another 9/11. We have already taken two steps backwards during Trump’s second administration in terms of conciliation with the Muslim world- supporting Netanyahu’s Gaza War, and the first month of Trump’s Iran War. What Trump has threatened would inflame hatred for us throughout the world.

If Trump were to go through with his threat it would be a nightmare for the Iranian people, a nightmare for the Middle-East, and would guarantee pandemic-level hatred of Americans for decades.

Combatting Anti-Semitism

Below is a guest opinion of almost 700 words that, with very few small differences, I submitted to the Daily Camera (Boulder's main paper) about four weeks ago. At this point it's not going to get published.

There are some things I'm going to clarify and offer some addendums below the essay following this introduction. Let me first say that I have heard of two other recent attacks in the last year or so and there was one more in London three weeks ago. Also, one thing I came across a few times in the last several months in articles on CNN.COM is prominent liberal or progressive Jewish-Americans saying that there ARE some problems with anti-Semitism on the university campuses Trump has been attacking, although these leaders make it clear that it's not as bad as Trump makes it out to be and that the President is not helping at all

 

Tom

 

**********

 

I’m sure I am forgetting 1-2 examples of this, but in the last eight years there have been some really significant anti-Semitic physical attacks. From the American Right there was the 2018 murder of 11 Jewish people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Right here in Boulder in 2025 one Jewish person (a Holocaust survivor) was killed and several were wounded and the number one suspect is a Muslim. At Bondi Beach last year in Australia 15 Jewish people including one Holocaust survivor were killed and the two (dead) suspects were a Muslim father and son. In January 2026 an anti-Semitic arson took place at an important synagogue and the number one suspect is a White, American (possibly fundamentalist) Christian. A few days ago a destructive attack was carried out at a synagogue and community center in Michigan and the dead suspect was an Arab-American man.

Some of this predates the Gaza War and most of it predates the Iran War. The common theme is anti-Semitism. I do have some connections to the Jewish-American community, and I am incredibly partisan (on one side) in the fight against anti-Semitism, but I go where the facts take me and I say what has to be said, independent of the politics (I have been a supporter of the Irish political party Sinn Fein since 1997, but 1999-2004 I criticized them very publicly three times because they had strayed a bit from the path of opposing homophobia). Although this is greatly exaggerated by some political tendencies among Jewish Americans (such as the ADL), most Republicans including Trump, and an official part of the Israeli government, there IS some anti-Semitism among progressive supporters, Muslim supporters and Arab supporters of the Palestinians. I have encountered it in Ireland and in Boulder.

When I started my blog in 2008 I was very quick to add fighting anti-semitism to the list of official main topics. I’m not sure when I started thinking about it critically (probably about 25-30 years ago) but I have always been a fan, when looking at history, of what the Allies of World War II did. The Holocaust was one of the worst things to happen in this world’s history (a big part of my major was American Indian Studies and in some ways what happened to Native Americans may have been more destructive to humanity, but the Holocaust, overall, was way up there, too). One of the other reasons I made it a big part of my blog is that in my Sophomore year of college (1995-1996) I was mildly anti-Semitic. I don’t think I did any harm, and there were a lot of anti-Semitic things I did NOT do, but I believe in compensating for the tiniest possibility that I DID do some harm. Anyway, about half of why I was slightly but significantly hateful was the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

What can be done about anti-Semitism in the short-to-medium term? Some suggestions:

1) Supporters of the Palestinians who believe that because Jewish-Americans are not oppressed (AS JEWISH-AMERICANS) no effort should be made to avoid friction with that community need to understand that we’re all standing in a lake of gasoline called ANTI-SEMITISM and we need to, when appropriate, avoid creating sparks that could set it on fire.
2) Supporters of Israel need to be less trigger-happy with the accusation of anti-Semitism. I don’t have space here to go into any detail, but, for example, there is nothing inherently bigoted about the term “Israeli Apartheid.”
3) Sinn Fein, which is largely against anti-Semitism, needs to stop putting out (side-by-side) the following two statements: A) that there must be a boycott of Israel and B) that it was okay that the IRA accepted aid from Nazi Germany.
4) It wouldn’t hurt if supporters of Israel would speak about anti-semitism in their own ranks (I.e. The Rapture, and the anti-Soros stuff, and comparing reasonable things like COVID-19 public health measures and hostility towards Republicans in our society with what Nazi Germany did).

I AM a pretty solid supporter of the Palestinians, and for decades now I have believed that opposing anti-Semitism STRENGTHENS that movement, and that supporting the Palestinians STRENGTHENS the struggle against anti-Semitism.

 

*********

 

Some things to clarify and/or add:

 

1) There's a post partly about my sophomore year and anti-Semitism, here.

 

2) As far as my assumption that Jewish-Americans are not oppressed AS JEWISH-AMERICANS, I wrote a fair amount about that in mid-2020 here.

 

3) Why do I mention a "lake of gasoline"? There's a line in the 1991 movie "Backdraft" spoken by Robert De Niro, a line that for some reason I really like. It refers dramatically to a "lake of gasoline."

 

4) I don't know if this has been repealed since but at some point about 20 years ago an agency of the EU said that the term "Israeli Apartheid" is anti-semitic. I did a post that was largely about refuting that accusation. It's here.

 

5) After Bondi Beach I felt like I had to do something and I decided to weaponize a post on my blog about the problem with Sinn Fein that I refer to above. It went nowhere, for some reason or other. So I brought it into this. The post is here. 

 

6) Maybe the worst fit in this essay is suggestion #4. I did a post on my blog that is overwhelmingly about examples of anti-Semitism among SUPPORTERS of Israel. I think it's at least kind of relevant to this, but I'm not sure if I added it to this essay very well. That blogpost is here.

 

7) I am thinking of doing a fairly long essay that focuses on and substantiates and further develops the idea in the last paragraph of the essay above.

Star Trek SNW Reviews H

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“Under The Cloak Of War” Episode Eight, Season Two. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is in at least one way perhaps the best anti-war episode of all ST. It is also a little difficult to follow closely to figure out if there is any significant REVELATION that addresses the question- is Federation Ambassador Dak’Rah something more sinister than the Federation knows? I’m going to focus on that part first. Partly because it is the more difficult part and I have a habit of often doing the difficult stuff first, and partly because it’s implied here and there that he is not the great man of diplomacy people think he is.

You should read the episode “summary” I link to above, but it is REALLY long and many readers might want something shorter, so here is a summary of the stuff about Dak’Rah.

One battle of the Klingon War became even uglier at one point when the Klingon commander (on the planet focused on) ordered that anyone without a Klingon uniform should be killed. That commander was Dak'Rah BEFORE his apparent transformation, but it’s not clear to the audience and unknown to a lot of people in StarFleet. The story is that the future diplomat fought in hand-to-hand combat with 2 or 3 of his subordinates to stop the slaughter of civilians. We learn that M’Benga was actually the one who fought the Klingon subordinates while Dak'Rah escaped. Although it’s still not totally clear to me, I believe this fact is the main revelation to StarFleet- not that the original order was given by Dak’Rah.

The former Klingon commander, apparently around the time that the war ends, goes through some kind of transformation politically/philosophically and defects to the Federation where he becomes a popular and inspirational ambassador. The timeline is not super clear because he was probably a Federation Ambassador no more than 2-4 years before the events in this episode, but I guess he got a lot done. There’s some suggestion that there’s something shady about how much distance he has (or ostensibly has) put between his past during the war and his new work with the Federation- that he has moved on and forgiven himself too much and unreasonably expects people like M’Benga to also forgive him and treat him as a friend. I initially was kind of inclined to think that M’Benga and Chappel and Ortegas were being too hard on Dak’Rah, that he had made a legitimate and total transformation, and maybe it wasn’t on an unrealistic timeline and he had apparently done a lot of really good work for the Federation. 

If someone believes that a relatively or very rapid total transformation like that is just totally unrealistic, think about the true story movie “The Best of Enemies” in which, over a small number of months, a very active, immersed Klan leader becomes anti-Klan and pro-integration, and then goes to work for the AFL-CIO (America’s labor movement and at the very least a sort of anti-racist force).

Anti-War Stuff

The other part of this is not obscured at all. It is a very anti-war episode up there with Deep Space Nine episodes “… Nor The Battle To The Strong” and “The Siege Of AR-558.” In general there’s a lot about war from the perspective of a StarFleet field hospital. You get the impression that among the hospital staff there’s a lot of casualties and/or a lot of turn-over in general (possibly from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder if not from actual weapons). Probably the main thing worth mentioning is that, although it’s not explained how this works (it’s long before StarFleet in the last three seasons of Discovery where they have individual transporters you carry with you like a communicator) apparently the wounded arrive at the hospital by transporter and that means that once in a while or often there’s a repetitive computer-voiced announcement of “incoming transport-incoming transport” which basically means, at least usually, that a lot of wounded are going to arrive. There’s something about the repetitive nature and the electronic voice of the announcement that caused me some kind of anxiety (although I’ve never been in a war I have some imagination of how upsetting it must be and since my mom’s death I have become a bit hyper-emotional). It kind of reminds me of how on the 1970s TV show MASH the sound of approaching helicopters would alert the staff that wounded would be there in seconds. But it’s even more powerful.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews G

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST.

“Lost In Translation” Episode Six, Season Two. See this for a plot summary.

My Environmental Record

There isn’t much here. The idea is that in that small part of space some kind of living, sentient race (which apparently can’t be seen with the naked eye or any StarFleet technology) has become attached to a substance that becomes starship fuel and the alien race is being killed by that industrial process. Crew members are getting contacted by this race who cannot communicate with us as we do and are trying to stop the collection and exploitation of the substance.

I think it’s an environmental issue. And the thing is, I’m not that familiar with environmental issues. I mean, I AM a tree-hugger- in fact, I start making out with the tree!  :  ) Just kidding. 

To be serious, I AM a bit weak on environmental issues. I think it might be partly that I never completed High School chemistry (I have almost no idea what “parts per million” means and no idea what’s a high number for that and what’s a low number). In Jr. High and High School I probably got a no better average grade for science classes than a B- or C+. In college I DID take a course about physics and the environment and I got a C- and in “Environmental Geology” I got a C. I wasn’t a great student in general (for a lot of reasons, some of which can’t be held against me) but I think I deserve a little credit for trying to be a good environmentalist- which is the main reason I took those two courses. I also spent, around 1998, a total of about 4 years working an average of about 25 hours a week at a company in Boulder called Jade Mountain (it sold environmentally-friendly tech like energy efficient light bulbs, solar panels, etc.). I did practically zero sales work that involved answering technical questions from customers, and 90% of what I did was data-entry, shipping, copying, mailing, filing. But, I accepted a relatively low wage compared to what I would have gotten at an entry-level job at Dairy Queen (no one at JM got paid what they should have but were there at least partly for the environmentalism) and made an okay/almost good contribution (a vague measurement of how valuable I was to the operation (not very) and how frequently I screwed up (overall extremely INfrequently), etc., etc.)

In the last 30 years I have a fairly good record as an environmentalist. I probably recycle about 75-95% of what I can recycle (I have been told, twice, “when in doubt, throw it out,” and I probably have thrown away some recycling). I have been using energy-efficient lighting about 1/3-3/4 of that time. I am not half as good as I should be when it comes to not driving a car. I sign a lot of the environmental petitions I hear about and have gone to some marches and protests, etc. and done a little bit of “light lifting” organizing on environmental issues. In the 18 years-archive of this blog there are a total of 14 posts labelled “environmental.”

I almost forgot, I took a class called “Race, Class and Pollution,” and failed it- a few small flaws in me as a student and a few small problems in my life chipped away at the B I probably should have gotten and I failed it.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews OO

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Prima Nocta” Season 25. See this for a plot summary.

Racism Towards Inter-Racial Couples

One of the rape survivors is in a interracial relationship. I include a note about that sort of thing when doing these reviews because I got the (flawed) impression about 30 years ago that hostility to such couples was sort of the more-widely-acceptable form, and/or pinnacle, of white supremacy (although White hostility towards mixed-race couples IS more common and more intense than the more basic facet of white supremacy (see the next paragraph), the more basic facet is still a massive problem). Another reason I mention it is that I think there is some much smaller degree of hostility towards such couples from some small minority of people of color. As I have explained here, although I understand that calling it racism is inaccurate and unhelpful and I understand that it’s a TINY problem which White people shouldn’t worry about, I believe it does exist. I would say something sort of similar about interracial relationships where both people are non-white- I imagine the frequency that such relationships are treated with hostility by people of color is incredibly low, but it's still noteworthy since they can be described as “multicultural” in a very positive way.

As far as the hate from white supremacist bigots in connection to the first kind of interracial relationship, I WAS open-minded about 1-3 years ago that maybe it’s declining and I should ignore it (part of that math is the fact that the show is set in NY City and there are plenty of minor characters and extras that are people of color, and I already had a policy about this show where I did not high-light everything anti-racist, because of course there are plenty of minor characters who are people of color). But racism has resurged in the last 10-17 years and I believe that white supremacists ARE much more hostile to mixed-race couples than they are to people of color in general (I’ve attached greater value than I used to to a letter the Southern Poverty Law Center published after they received it from a Jewish man in state prison in America and one thing he focused on was the Nazi skinhead-enforced rules about fraternization between different races in prison).

“Fractured” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

First, there’s a fair amount of vague talk about widespread hostility towards the police in NYC, which is probably a continuation of the ramped-up anti-racism that the show started expressing (not necessarily vaguely) in Season 22 about a year after the 2020 Black Lives Matter-aligned protests. 

“Cornered” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

Anti-Muslim Bigotry

In some ways it’s not political but in some ways it is. A minor character that the Assistant DA for SVU had become close to is killed by criminals robbing a bodega and this is I think fairly significant because the character has a first and last name (Ali Imran) that is Arabic and also Muslim. The ADA is so upset that in the next episode (“First Light”) he has a graphic flashback to when his friend is killed. As I have said elsewhere about something kind of similar involving a handful of episodes of Star Trek TV shows, I believe this kind of thing can (at least) chip away at anti-Muslim bigotry in this country.

“Deductible” Season 26. See this for a plot summary.

Capitalism and Women’s Sexuality

This episode is basically about something that I don’t think comes up very often in the show. I may have failed to comment on this sort of thing 1-2 times that I should have but didn’t because I thought it was what I have decided to call “pretty basic feminism” (I have no intention of mentioning everything feminist on the show, that content would clutter my posts and surprise no one, so it has to be a pretty significant and/or extraordinary manifestation of sexism). I know I commented on this episode’s topic very briefly with one episode that was a bit different but very similar (“Hell’s Kitchen” in Season 20).

At the risk of greatly exaggerating how intellectual I am, I think it is the kind of thing that can set off Marxist Women Studies scholars. It’s about an insurance business where the boss manipulates female employees into using their sexuality to confirm new clients. He uses his power as a capitalist to exploit not just the labor but also the sexuality of female employees in order to maximize profit. It’s not clear to what degree if at all his male employees are aware of this and/or to what degree if at all they cooperate (we learn that one of his earlier female victims is now COO and helps him- it’s not clear how many of his female employees are not being exploited sexually). The imminently-signing new client featured in this episode seems slightly decent. After being misled by the woman’s boss, he, without permission, tries to give her oral sex and it’s slightly possible he may have gone further without permission if she hadn’t gotten away from him and locked herself in the bathroom till he left. But there are some statements indicating he was far from fully okay with what the boss did. I say that because it seems like, if the show SVU has the pulse of the population, maybe a surprisingly large majority of the male population is against that sort of thing.

What is “that sort of thing?” It’s bad enough that you have exploitation of labor in general with capitalism and then what I believe is called “super-exploitation” of female workers in a non-sexual way. I am, to a large but not blind degree a pro-porn feminist and I believe that sex-work should largely be seen as just another kind of labor. If a woman FULLY consents to let her body be exploited, I’m not going to complain if I get to see pictures of her naked. But basically forcing a woman to put her sexuality to work for the company (a company that has nothing to do with sex and where her official job description says nothing about sex) as a whole and/or her male boss is sickening. Sexuality is something that is usually very personal, private and sacred (unless this protected status is waived BY THE PERSON INVOLVED in a fair and mutually beneficial and respectful agreement (I’ll be honest I can’t think of how to make a comprehensive and legalistic yet general and concise statement about this and I believe it is a little complicated, but what the defendant in this episode does is a GREAT example of what powerful men should NOT use their power for)). 

And it might not hurt if I say something here that I have wanted to say in recent years. At the risk of patting myself on the back too much for being a good feminist, when I think of non-trafficked pornography I am horrified by the possibility that some women do it with little or no enjoyment simply for desperate financial reasons and I think the possibility of that scenario is damning of the fact that women in our society get paid less, are often saddled with ALL the child-rearing expenses, etc. etc.

Michael Parenti: Socialism and World War II (Two Brief Notes)

(Below is an edited version of something I published on Facebook a week ago)

Michael Parenti passed away recently. He was a fairly or very important Marxist scholar, maybe comparable in some ways to Noam Chomsky but less well-known and certainly more comfortable being called a Marxist. There is some information about him here (I am NOT endorsing that site- a progressive I used to be a political acquaintance of seems to think that web-page is a good source of info about Parenti, so I am linking to it but that’s all).

Although I listened, in the late 1990s, to two of Parenti’s talks (I got them on tape from Alternative Radio), I have never read one of his books and probably just a few articles that I can’t remember. 

As some of you may suspect, I am not great at political theory. But part of my personal grasp of socialism was improved a little bit by something he said in one of those talks on tape. He said that socialism is not the utopia. I can’t remember exactly what he said socialism is, but I think it was something very close to, as I put it- the final stage or two (of how many? Maybe a few) of BUILDING the utopia. I’m not saying it’s crucial- in fact it’s pretty minor (I can’t imagine a socialist group splitting over this). But I don’t think we should be promising the utopia. Another way I put it is this- there’s something in that part of math where, in High School Algebra they hand out graphing calculators where a line goes almost parallel but not quite to one of the axes and will, indefinitely get closer and closer and closer to intersecting that axis but it will never actually intersect.

Anyway, I liked Parenti enough that I typed up something similar to this for a Facebook thread. There were a handful of things he said besides the utopia thing that I liked (the algebra thing is all mine). I just remembered one more that I feel like sharing. 

He said that the D-Day scene at the beginning of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” was great but that the rest of the movie should have been called “Saving Private Ridiculous.” I understand what he meant and I agree with the first part but only sort of agree about the second part of what he said. That first scene, I imagine, captured how chaotic and bloody and nightmarish war probably is (independent of things like the political cause involved). When looking back at history I am probably more fond of the Allies than most American progressives are. I’m not sure how Parenti felt about that cause, but I can’t totally endorse what he said about almost the entire movie. Also, if anyone responds by explaining that the US was just as bad as Nazi Germany and that my failure to totally agree about that is evidence that I’m a bad ally of, for example, American Indians, let me explain that I got three As and one B in the four Native American Studies courses I took. Although I did do better as a white ally of American Indians IN THE CLASSROOM than I did OUTSIDE of it, I WAS a fairly good or okay ally OUTSIDE of it.  I’m also fond of what the British did in WWII, and I have a pretty good record as an Irish Republican. Also, I criticize the IRA and the South of Ireland for their behavior towards Nazi Germany. IT IS A REALLY GOOD THING THAT NAZI GERMANY WAS DEFEATED.

Tom

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: Trump, Putin, and Zelensky

Although Trump has significantly corrected his attitude towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are several things that people should know about Trump’s record on that issue. 

First is the fact that in general he is very deferential to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This has taken the form of Trump siding (for example) in July 2018 with Putin over his own intelligence community when it came to the allegation that Russia interfered with the 2016 election hoping to help Trump get elected. Trump’s initial response to the February 2022 full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine was that Putin was “smart.” In the Spring, Summer and Fall of 2025 Trump would occasionally express a negative opinion of Putin’s behavior in relation to the war but continued to occasionally act as if Putin was a partner for peace (i.e. at the August 2025 Summit between the two leaders).

Why is Trump so deferential to Putin? In addition to reading a huge number of relevant articles at CNN, Politico, the BBC and some miscellaneous sources, I read the 2018 book “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump” by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. They don’t analyze hardly anything AFTER the 2016 election, but there’s plenty of material about how Trump admires Putin and is connected to him in a few ways. There’s some small possibility that Putin has a compromising video of Trump.

More generally we know that Trump likes strongman leaders (including El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and many others). Although this will not be a lengthy description of Russia’s democratic deficit, Putin is widely seen as a strongman. Some bases for this includes the legal shackling of pro-democracy foreign NGOs, the extreme suppression of gay rights and information about homosexuality itself, and the muzzling of any anti-war voices in the last four years. In Trump’s first administration Mike Pompeo was for one year Director of the CIA and then spent three years as Secretary of State. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Pompeo said that Putin, with his KGB background, knows how to “use power” and should therefore be respected.             

It’s also possible that Trump is friendlier to Putin than Ukraine’s President Zelensky partly because the latter is socially liberal. Although Trump makes it difficult to say that he hates the LGB in LGBTQ+, he is certainly on the HOMOPHOBIC half of the spectrum between HOMOPHOBIC and ANTI-HOMOPHOBIC, while Zelensky has expressed support for gay marriage. Zelensky is also against anti-Muslim bigotry. And as far as I can tell, Zelensky has also lobbied non-white nations for support without referring to them as “shit-hole countries.” (On a brief, related note, between this paragraph and the fact that Zelensky is partly Jewish, Putin’s propaganda when the war started, that there was a serious Nazi problem in Ukraine, was nonsense)

Although it is almost ancient history at this point, we need to take a closer look at the February 2025 meeting in the Oval Office where Trump and VP Vance attacked Zelensky. There’s a lot of details about the amount of aid sent Ukraine’s way that I won’t go into here but which undermine Trump’s idea that Zelensky was an ungrateful brat. There’s one thing about that which seems to have been barely mentioned in the mainstream media. When Zelensky came to the White House that day he brought a special gift for Trump. Trump is at least moderately if not seriously into martial arts and Zelenksy brought Oleksandr Usyk's 2024 undisputed heavyweight world boxing championship belt as a gift for Trump. He made a small mis-step and postponed presenting it to Trump- after Trump and Vance ambushed him he left the Oval Office and almost nothing has been heard about the belt since then.

There are three more aspects of Trump’s failure to support the VICTIM of the invasion, and one is that he briefly pushed the idea that UKRAINE was the aggressor in the war. Trump was probably saying it because he’s pro-Putin, but it also reminds me of what a lot of American progressives believe about the war. Whether it’s coming from Trump or the Left, it should be understood that Ukraine is definitely the victim- the Russian military crossed the border, it wasn’t the other way. Some progressives believe that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO justified the invasion. I have no idea how people who are usually driven by a strong opposition to state aggression believe that WANTING to join a military alliance which MIGHT be a threat to Russia is worse than ACTUALLY INVADING Ukraine. If Ukraine had invaded Russia that would be as bad as what Russia actually did. Ukraine was nowhere near invading Russia and they are clearly the smaller, weaker state which had already been militarily violated twice by Russia. It’s Orwellian. 

(Trump leans towards supporting Russia not because he thinks the invasion is legally a good cause, but partially for the same reason that he recognized Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights- he agrees with his Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller who said “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power”)

Trump has some times suggested that Zelensky is an illegitimate President because elections haven’t taken place since the invasion. This is nonsense. Because of the war martial-law has been declared and elections held under those conditions would be illegitimate. No one has said that the United Kingdom (outside of Northern Ireland) was no democracy during WWII even though they suspended normal politics and did so when practically ZERO parts of the Union were occupied by a foreign power and when there was a barrier (the sea) between them and their enemies.

The very last thing I’ll talk about is the main thing that inspired me to write this- it’s something that I don’t think anyone has said in defense of Zelensky. Part of the rationale for the Oval Office ambush of Zelensky was that he dressed very casually for a meeting IN THE OVAL OFFICE WITH THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. At the beginning of the war Zelensky decided that he would dress in a military style to express that he was symbolically with Ukraine’s soldiers in harms way. He wore that outfit all the time, including meeting with other governments. Apparently Trump and his supporters decided that was dis-respectful of Trump. The thing is, Trump loves the idea of being some kind of “war-time president.” During the first several months of the Pandemic he tried that, apparently thinking that leading during a major health crisis was similar enough to leading during armed conflict with a foreign nation. In Aug 2025 he declared that he was a “war hero” (apparently because he decided that Netanyahu was a “war hero” and Trump was supporting Netanyahu or maybe Trump just felt left out and so declared that he and Netanyahu were “war heroes”) The thing is, Zelensky was a war-time leader for real, in a conflict where a decent chunk of his country was either occupied or made up the front lines, where initially a massive effort was made to seize the Ukrainian capitol and where the invasion involved tanks, soldiers armed with powerful fully automatic rifles etc. Zelensky’s status as a war-time leader is twice as legitimate as George W. Bush’s was, and Trump has ZERO claim to being a war-time leader. Although this can be taken too far and I’m not sure if I can be totally non-political about this, tweaking some of the rules of statehood to accommodate a real War-Time leader seems appropriate, especially in this case (in the movie “Iron Jawed Angels” when suffragettes continue protesting the President after America entered World War I they were severely criticized for protesting a war-time President but they shouldn’t have been).

Trump is on the side of aggression, land-grabs, social conservatism, and is in no position to be criticizing political leaders when it comes to how democratic they are. Although the cause of Ukraine is not something that energizes me as a socialist, it is an important cause and I’m glad to say that most Saturdays when I protest Trump with local progressives near a Tesla dealership in Superior (CO), there’s usually one or two Ukrainian flags held by the protestors.

 

An earlier post on the war is here.