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.

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. 

Star Trek: SNW Reviews D

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.

“The Serene Squall” Episode Seven, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

There are three political themes to mention.

They/Them/Theirs (LGBTQ+)

Although it could possibly be construed as hostile to non-binary people because the character who makes some good statements about being yourself turns out to be the bad guy, it’s actually pro-LGBTQ+ because the prominent doctor she is impersonating IS non-binary and a good guy. This (the pro-LGBTQ+ statement made by the existence of a character who is a popular Federation doctor and is non-binary) gets a little sharper when there is some talk about how Spock, who is half human and half Vulcan, doesn’t need to choose between being Vulcan and being human:

ASPEN: Spock, you know, all species put things into boxes. It’s like you’re either this or you’re that and sometimes we act a certain way to fit people’s expectations, but that’s not necessarily who we are. And sometimes, like on the bridge just now, it can limit us.
SPOCK: You are proposing I better balance my human and Vulcan natures.
ASPEN: I’m saying maybe you’re neither.
SPOCK: That is nonsensical. If I am not human or Vulcan, what am I?
ASPEN: That’s not my question to answer.

First of all, I think this episode counts as pro-LGBTQ+ and I think that “Dr. Aspen’s” statements above are pretty well written.

I am going to use this as an opportunity to get a little long-winded and also a little personal. On one hand, I have been a fairly good or very good ally of what I call the LGB, since 11th grade. On the other hand, for some reason I have been kind of slow to see what I call the TQ+ as important. I go into a little more detail here when discussing the “Broken Rhymes” episode. This is the first time I have commented on the non-binary part of the population (I have watched every season of Discovery an average of three times (including the last three seasons that include a non-binary main character) but I have yet to do “reviews” of that show- something I’ll do in about a year).

First, if “Dr. Aspen” is talking about Spock identifying as equally human and Vulcan, that seems like a better idea than identifying 100% one way or the other. In The Original Series I believe that Spock identified mostly or overwhelmingly as Vulcan. If “Dr. Aspen” meant creating some kind of brand new identity I have tried to grasp what that would be and it has slipped through my fingers or has been as ethereal as smoke, dispersing into nothingness as I try to grasp it. There’s a good chance I am overthinking this and/or I need to get a firmer grip on the LGBTQ+ identities, so I think I will just move on very soon. The good news is that I think that in the process of typing this I DID improve my grasp of the LGBTQ+ identities.

A Clockwork Red??? (Rehabilitation of Convicts)

(Although I was a fan of “A Clockwork Orange” in 9th grade I don’t think I have watched it since then. Wikipedia’s explanation of the term “clockwork orange” doesn’t help, but it sounds like what some assortment of society and government leaders want people to be upon leaving prison, and I believe we need a progressive view of rehabilitation of convicts)

There’s a brief part of the episode that’s about criminal rehabilitation on Vulcan. It sounds pretty good. When I think of that issue in reality in America, I think it’s probably a really good thing, although it must have some short-comings. Although therapy and vocational opportunities and education and such in prison CAN help with some of what’s wrong in our society, I think that a huge majority of convicts wouldn’t be there if they weren’t poor and I would add a similar statement about an overlapping large minority of convicts who wouldn’t be there if they weren’t people of color. In the next three paragraphs I will offer an abridged explanation of exactly what I mean by that.

I simply assume that there are innocent people in prison- and I mean completely innocent- I will say something about the others soon. This belief is partly just a vague one based on being engaged with American liberalism and progressivism for roughly 35 years. It’s also influenced by a work of non-fiction (The Innocent Man) and at least two works of fiction (The Confession and The Guardians) by the author John Grisham. Although I don’t look for this, about once a year I stumble on to a story about someone being declared innocent years after their conviction- I assume that for every such case I hear about there’s probably something like 100 I don’t hear about. There was at least one statement by a main character in the TV show Law and Order: SVU about there being innocent people in prison. And then there’s the people who are sort of guilty but don’t deserve to be convicted - i.e. abused women who killed their abuser, 18yos who had sex with a 17yo in some of the nation’s states, the character Carl Lee Hailey in Grisham’s A Time To Kill, etc.

To a large degree the majority of inmates who wouldn’t be there if they weren’t poor don’t need rehabilitation. Many are completely innocent and would have been acquitted if they hadn’t been represented by an over-worked, under-resourced Public Defender. Many more wouldn’t have committed a crime if not for one or more poverty-related factors that drove their criminal behavior (i.e. they wouldn’t have stolen a loaf of bread for their family if they weren’t penniless, or they wouldn’t have gotten work selling marijuana if they had been able to afford college). In general, POVERTY, not bad morals or a lack of civic values, is why they committed a crime.

To a large degree the majority of those inmates who wouldn’t be there if they weren’t people of color don’t need rehabilitation. They’re there because a racist cop framed them, and a jury fell for it, or they’re guilty but it’s because the racist nature of this society alienated them from trying to work within the system, because the people criticizing crime were the same ones brutalizing their community economically, physically, institutionally, etc. What I’m talking about is well illustrated in the 1996 non-documentary film “Set It Off” starring Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett Smith. One of the four Black women turns to crime partly because her racist bank employers fire her after a man from her neighborhood tries to rob the bank. Another of the four women turns to crime after her brother, an innocent and unarmed man, is killed by police. There is of course the aforementioned overlap between the population of non-white convicts and the population of poor convicts.

It’s likely that some or most of the convicts I write about above could benefit from therapy and/or vocational and/or educational opportunities while in prison. Ideally there may, in theory, be some way for that to be progressive- i.e. if convicts get therapy and/or college degrees in prison, is the education or therapy compatible with their experiences as (for example) working-class Black Americans? I also wonder how radical books collected by progressives and donated to prison libraries fare when they’re examined by whatever prison official looks at them. When I think about this stuff I worry that at this point, with increasing politicalization outside prisons because of George W. Bush and now Donald Trump, prisons are not creating opportunities for progressive values to be learned or explored or weaponized (depending on which prisoners we’re talking about).

Spartacus (Slavery)

Although it turns out to be a red herring deployed by the bad guy, at one point the crew of the Enterprise thinks that they’re going after slave traffickers. It would be a good story if there WAS an ST episode about going after such scum. About 3-6 years ago I watched the movie “The Birth of a Nation,” which is based on a true story of a major slave rebellion in the American South, and it is a really good movie. I also watched, about 6 years ago, the movie “Harriet” about the Underground Railroad, and I have it in my collection. ST has reminded us of the issue of slavery several times in it’s life, but an episode just about fighting slavery would be great- one story possibility would be a StarFleet crew helping maintain a sci-fi version of the Underground Railroad. About 33 years ago I read a The Next Generation novel called “Spartacus” about the Enterprise encountering a ship adrift with a bunch of android slaves.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews A

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.

“Strange New Worlds” Episode One, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

This episode promises that the series will be roughly as political and progressive as most ST TV episodes are. I’ll get to the more important and general topics in a minute. One minor thing is that there are wind generators conspicuously visible in the background of a scene on Earth.

The main issues are war, civil war (of the sort that we face at this point in America), and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Elsewhere I have gotten slightly long-winded about WMD. Bearing in mind that I didn’t come up with that term, it’s true that only one is INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE, but they are all united by how indiscriminate they are or at least can be (it just occurred to me that Anthrax in an envelope might not be that indiscriminate, but Anthrax (for example) in the water supply is pretty horrible). Chemical weapons are totally indiscriminate although the non-persistent ones might not go far beyond a battlefield, but if that battlefield is populated, that’s a serious problem and the persistent ones are much worse. And I imagine a death from most of these weapons is worse than a death from a few bullets in the chest that kill you after an hour. Nukes are INCREDIBLY DESTRUCTIVE AND INDISCRIMINATE, most easily consume entire cities, there are some lasting and regional environmental problems, and radiation is a slow and painful killer. As far as the pinnacle of the nuclear threat (to humanity’s existence) you should read the book review I did here.                                       

The weapon developed by the aliens sounds very destructive- like it could easily destroy a StarFleet vessel. The idea of using such a weapon on the surface of a populated planet is horrifying.

In general I am very much against war, although I stop short of embracing pacifism. Some of my thoughts about war IN GENERAL can be found here and there in the posts here.

As far as the topic of a second civil war in this country… First, for the Trekkers out there, present and future, I have to point out that ST has shifted the date for the Eugenics Wars, I THINK for WWIII, and has now added an American second civil war, which apparently now all blend into each other. I kind of knew this sort of thing might happen- about 15 years ago I silently suggested ST should make a LOT of TV stuff and then, as there was more and more conflict between between the two histories (ST lore and reality) with the passage of time, just stop making ST, or reboot it possibly? 

Anyway, let me say some things about a second civil war here in reality. I sort of talked about this here, when I made a plea for, in some ways, partisan peace. There are probably a total of 2,000 more words scattered in different paragraphs on my blog that are relevant to this. I am not sure how you can find them, although probably about 15% of them are in a recent post here. Some times I think it might be becoming increasingly unavoidable, with Trump as President and the division that that means. His supporters simply do not believe the various sources that most of us (liberals and progressives/leftists) do and you cannot believe the things that people around Trump imply we support. That’s part of something that’s a big part of what’s wrong- there is no respect for the facts. I’m not saying that’s brand new or totally avoidable in politics, but it is much worse today than it usually is, and that worsening is 100% one-sided- CNN, for example, spends a HUGE amount of time fact-checking Trump, and spent about 5% as much time fact-checking Biden. I believe that there are some other fact-checkers out there that are also good and might possibly be more acceptable to Republicans (is it better if they’re NOT part of the media?). If it hadn’t just started requiring subscriptions I would, as I have in the past, strongly recommend the BBC News website- it’s WIDELY respected throughout the world, and it’s coverage of Northern Ireland 1997-2005 was close behind the Irish media in accuracy and not far behind how sensitive it was to the Irish perspective (if you know Anglo-Irish history and the early history of Northern Ireland, you’d understand the importance of that in coverage of The Troubles) (I say 1997-2005 because during that time each week I read an average of about 100 articles from Irish news sources (primarily the Irish News and the Irish Times) and about 25 articles from the BBC). GOPers would do a lot worse than getting their news there. I am not going to do an entire essay here on this topic and I think I have said all I have to say here about a possible second American civil war.

Trump’s “Great Escape” From Prisoner of War Empowerment

  (“The Great Escape” is a classic movie about Allied POWs in World War II) 

(The image is of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba during the early years of the War on Terror) 

 

Below is something I typed up and, since it was way too long to be a guest opinion, I turned it into a PDF pamphlet-like thing with some interesting format stuff that I can't reproduce here. I sent it to about 15 friends and relatives, about 10 Dem politicians, and two veterans groups that lean to the left and three that lean to the right. I sent it to the vets partly because I thought that a majority of them would represent a large chunk of those Americans who are either pro-Trump or are open-minded about him.

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Although as a progressive I had a mostly negative view of the late Sen. John McCain, when he was attacked in 2015 by President Trump in connection with McCain’s time as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam, I found Trump’s comment offensive. Trump said that McCain was not a war hero, which I agree with (Hugh Thompson was), but crucially also said that “I like people that weren't captured, okay?” (What does he think of American service members who were killed? In France in 2018 he allegedly referred to them as “losers”). Some of Trump’s supporters would probably say that it was in response to McCain calling Trump’s supporters “crazies.” But there are at least two statements indicating that Trump has always been quite hostile to McCain and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is because of the POW issue. For some bizarre reason, Trump seems to have never suffered much political damage from other Republicans for this.
 

There have been and are international agreements about the treatment of  POWs that make those protocols akin to human rights

I need to briefly state that I believe that what we did in Vietnam was wrong and I am to one moderate degree or another hostile to the US military. And that opinion of Vietnam is influenced not just by progressive analyses of the war, but also by a novel written by the late Vietnam veteran and (usually) hawkish fiction author Nelson DeMille.

There have been and are international agreements about the treatment of POWs that make those protocols akin to human rights and I think this partly reflects the fact that most supporters of, for example, the Allies in WWII, were concerned about the treatment of those captured by the Axis. In general this is probably influenced by the fact that POWs are, to one degree or another, vulnerable (they are physically defenseless and entirely dependent on their enemy captors for food, shelter, medical care, information, etc.).

The attachment that many in war have for their side’s POWs might also be inspired by the fact that many POWs respect their obligation to escape, and one benefit of this is that they tie down enemy forces far behind the front. (I have at least five movies about Allied POWs attempting escape)

I attended the 2002 National Conference of Sinn Fein Youth in Galway, Ireland and bought a shirt (at a SF bookstore in Derry) with an artist’s depiction of an attempted escape tunnel made by IRA prisoners (which said “WE ALMOST GOT AWAY, YOU KNOW” (an inside joke among republicans)). I told some of the kids about what I bought and when I mentioned that shirt one kid said “oh, yeah, my uncle was in on that!” In 1981 10 republicans (seven IRA, three INLA) died on hunger-strike demanding that they be treated as POWs. Many will say they were just terrorists with no popular support. They weren’t terrorists (see this) and when such critics examine more closely the facts surrounding the presence of 100,000 people at Bobby Sands’ funeral (see the middle 3rd, starting with “For about 5 years…” of this), they will know that the Hunger-Strike was a traumatic period for about 80% of the Catholic population in N. Ireland.

I do largely spend my time thinking about POWs focusing on the Allies, and the IRA, and the African National Congress, etc. but I also have my own (VHS) copy of “Hanoi Hilton” about US military pilots shot down over North Vietnam, and I believe that even the Waffen-SS in WWII deserved to be treated as POWs, etc.

As I said, these men and some women (probably especially the women) are (were) in harmful situations which could (have) become nightmares if their captors are (were) a state dismissive of POW rights and they end (ended) up with a psychotic jailer. Do I think they are (were) all heroes? I am far from totally objective and non-partisan and no, most of them are (were) not heroes. But I’m willing to bet that at least around half of them are (were) working-class or poor and very likely in a war that is (was) even more nightmarish than the very few ones I am tempted to call “good.” 

Was John McCain a hero? No, and I probably would have disagreed with about 80% of the votes he cast in the US Congress during his career. But Trump doesn’t understand the need to be at least concerned about the rights of those who get captured (IF his feelings about how POWs are treated reflects that concern he has had several convenient opportunities to express that and he has failed to do so). More critically, he frequently uses the word “loser” to describe McCain and this seems connected to the fact that the late US Senator was captured. McCain was, when he made Sarah Palin his 2008 running mate, a horrible person, but his time as a POW doesn’t mean he was a “loser.”

Some would say that Trump was motivated not by hostility to all American POWs but just hostility to McCain, but there is, in his own words, what he SAID (“I like people that weren't captured, okay?”), and there’s the consistency and intensity of his hostility for McCain, connected, in Trump’s own words, to the fact that he was a POW.

After wanting to do something like this for years, I finally wrote this essay now because a couple weeks ago I saw a bit of CNN video footage taken of the White House, and right below the American flag was the POW/MIA flag. I am sure that millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans who stand with that flag also vote for Trump, and these people would threaten physical violence if a Democrat said what Trump said about American POWs. 

 

Charlie Kirk's Murder And Political Violence in the US

This is about some thoughts I had in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. The first essay is what I submitted to the Daily Camera as a Letter-To-The-Editor and is I think exactly what they published here. The second essay is a longer version of the same- this time when writing something I'd like the paper to publish, after I felt that I was kind of done except for the disfiguring editing process so it would be under 300 words, I saved that first, longer version. It might perhaps be the better version because some of the editing I do involves deleting entire sentences or paragraphs which might be less valuable than the rest but are still valuable.

Tom

 

Editor,

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, we are close to another civil war. There’s been, for about 8 years, a “Cold Civil War.” In that time there’s been a large increase in political violence, from the massive insurrection of 1/6/21 by Republicans, to the sole-victim shooting of health care insurance CEO Brian Thompson in 2024.

I am not a pacifist and I define violence as something not inherently unjustified, although it could be defined as something inherently heart-breaking. When I look at Northern Ireland’s history, I defend almost everything the Irish Republican Army did. But I have also supported their 1997 cease-fire since day one. I believe very strongly in electoral politics, petitioning, non-violently protesting, etc. As a socialist I think a lot about how we can be more politically democratic (i.e. reforming the Constitution to reflect the fact that democracy is one-person-one-vote not one-state-flag-one-vote).

Kirk’s murder was wrong but to a very large degree criticizing Trump as a fascist is not deceptively encouraging people to kill people like Kirk- it’s simply not deceptive. Trump has always, since the 2016 campaign, made it clear he likes political violence. He believes that every civilian Executive Branch employee should be loyal to the President- this means that either A) he thinks that every four or eight years the entire civilian Executive Branch workforce should be completely replaced with new people, or B) he doesn’t foresee any future in this country where he is alive and not President.

There is one recent political murder that hasn’t gotten much attention. People should look into the 2020 case of Garret Foster being killed by Daniel Perry in Texas- after being convicted of murder, Perry was pardoned by the governor in 2024.

Tom Shelley

 

*************

 

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, we are close to another civil war. There’s been, for about 8 years, a “Cold Civil War” comparable to the standoff between the Soviets and the US. It can be traced back to the “New McCarthyism” after 9-11 that included censoring the anti-racist part of a book about George W. Bush by Michael Moore. In the last several years there’s been a large increase in political violence, from the massive insurrection of 1/6/21 by Republicans, to the murder of health care insurance CEO Brian Thompson in 2024 (he was probably killed because of the horrible health care situation in this country).

I am not a pacifist and we should understand that violence is not defined as inherently unjustified, although it could be defined as something inherently heart-breaking. When I look at Northern Ireland’s history, I defend, to one degree or another, almost everything the Irish Republican Army did. But I have also supported the 1997 cease-fire (permanent for many years now) since day one and have largely supported Sinn Fein (who bent over backwards to make the Peace Process work) since 2000. I believe very strongly in electoral politics, petitioning, non-violently protesting, etc. And have given a lot of thought as a socialist not just to making this country economically democratic and (what I call) sociologically democratic (i.e. racially just and racially equal) but also how we can be more politically democratic (i.e. reforming the Constitution to reflect the fact that democracy is one-person-one-vote not one-state-flag-one-vote).

Kirk’s murder was wrong. At this point it seems like nothing the Left has to own, but I still wanted to make my opinion clear. To a very large degree criticizing Trump as a fascist is not deceptively encouraging people to kill people like Kirk. It’s simply not deceptive. Trump has always, since the 2016 campaign, made it clear he likes political violence. He believes that every Executive Branch employee should be loyal to the President- this means that either A) he thinks that every four or eight years the entire Executive Branch workforce should be completely replaced with new people, or B) he doesn’t forsee any future in this country where is alive and not President.

There is one example of political violence that hasn’t gotten much attention. People should look into the 2020 case of Garret Foster being killed by Daniel Perry in Texas- after being convicted of murder, Perry was pardoned by the governor in 2024. 

A LTE About Two Examples Of How Trump Is Anti-Democratic

This was submitted as a letter to the Daily Camera in April 2025 and published on April 18th. To be honest, I have collected a bunch of little facts about Trump that I dream of making more visible to either the whole population and/or certain chunks of the American population, either when they will do the most damage, or when I have a good excuse for reminding people about them, etc. I briefly but sufficiently weaponized two of these facts below.

 

Tom

Editor,

Donald Trump is getting closer and closer to making plain his contempt for democracy. In some ways this letter might soon be unnecessary. But it wouldn’t hurt to offer more evidence and develop comprehensive arguments that might be better than what we’ve been doing so far.

There is one thing from the last election that I don’t think was used to attack Trump. That is, his calls for reforming Nebraska’s election laws so that, with the Electoral College, it’s winner-takes-all. Nebraska, as well as Maine, awards two of it’s electoral votes based on the result for the whole state, and then gives one more vote per congressional district to whoever wins each of the districts. But Trump had nothing to say about this in relation to Maine, and the thing is he would have benefited in the election from a winner-take-all law in Nebraska, but not in Maine. He has no principled objection to what Nebraska does, he just wanted to win and didn’t care how.

Trump recently suggested that he might have the Federal government take over the running of Washington DC. It’s already bad enough that DC doesn’t have statehood (which means they have no votes in Congress), it would be a huge (undemocratic) step backwards if that were done. Even progressives don’t believe in getting rid of local government- to one degree or another we love it. I think the non-white majority in DC is pretty much why Trump and other GOPers oppose statehood for the city. I should also remind everyone, especially those who rose to power as leaders of the Tea Party movement (i.e. Rand Paul), that a massive part of why America fought a war for independence was the problem of “taxation without representation.”

Tom Shelley
Gunbarrell 

Letter-to-the-editor on Trump and the Confederacy

This was published in the Boulder Weekly Jan. 26th 2023, here. The column I'm responding to is here.

Editor,

As much as I usually love Dave Anderson’s columns, his latest, about the Civil War, could have been better. I’d like to offer some facts that Dave at least kind of left out. In recent years I have frequently gotten the impression that a LOT of Americans are confused about the Civil War. People think it was about states’ rights and not slavery and racism. In recent decades many people in the Republican Party who were either closet racists (or had been fooled by them) thought it was fine to have the Confederate flag displayed wherever people wanted to display it, including as part of state flags.

The Confederacy and it’s symbols were and are about slavery and racism. The Confederacy was NOT about state’s rights as some have claimed. Those who pushed for it’s creation complained that northern States had anti-slavery laws. At one point, the Confederacy’s leaders briefly considered ending slavery to get military support from Europe- support that probably would have resulted in victory against the Union. They decided to keep slavery, meaning that slavery was more important to them than independence from Washington D.C. And there was at least one incident where Black Union soldiers captured by the South were executed instead of being taken to POW camps as were the White Union soldiers.

When Donald Trump needed a new Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2018, the position was filled by Robert Wilkie, a man with a history of involvement with the Neo-Confederate movement. In 2020 Trump passionately opposed re-naming military bases named after Confederate military leaders, including one responsible for the incident where Black POWs were executed. In 2017 Trump talked about the Civil War and said that the former President Andrew Jackson would have handled the slavery issue better than Lincoln did and the Civil War would have been avoided. Jackson was a passionate opponent of abolitionists and would have compromised with the South and slavery would have continued with (at most) minor changes to it's geographic scope and/or life time and/or there may have been minor changes in how slaves were treated. Or he may have done absolutely nothing about slavery- if it were up to Donald Trump, slavery might still exist today.

As Dave said, the Neo-Confederate view is part of the MAGA movement.

Tom Shelley
Boulder

Trump's Loss and COVID-19

Below is first what I submitted to CNN when they asked people to respond to Biden's win, and below that is another note about Trump and COVID-19. The first one hasn't been edited by me since I submitted it to CNN.

1. I'm really glad. I had a lot of anxiety about it, which won't completely leave until Trump either concedes or it's clear that he's isolated and alone. But Trump is worse than George W. Bush and Bush was worse than his Dad and most republicans. In addition to everything else, Trump has been a disaster in relation to the pandemic. He would actually make fun of people for wearing masks. We have suffered disproportionate to our numbers as a nation. At the end of May we had lost 100,000 people. At the same time, at that point Israel had lost just 284 people- in America, 30 times bigger, that's 8,520 people. As much as I dislike Netanyahu, if he were our President in the early months of the pandemic, we would have lost 8,520 people instead of 100,000. I'm sure something similar can be said about the time since late May. He predicted a pandemic while Trump was calling it a media hoax, he was putting his foot down about social distancing while Trump was prematurely talking about re-opening. I write at greater length about this at- https://theblackandthegreen2.blogspot.com/2020/04/trump-netanyahu-and-covid-19-coronavirus.html     But the main thing is that we had a horrible President when we needed, more than ever, a good one, and now (what will hopefully be) the final months of COVID-19 will be more bearable and less anxiety producing if we have a President who encourages mask-wearing, who doesn't seek political favors in exchange for desperately-needed medical supplies, who doesn't push us too far as far as re-opening, who will allow the scientists and doctors to develop a vaccine that is safe and effective without political interference, etc.

2. Somewhere in my COVID-19 posts I need to put something. I am a very strong believer in masks and I also respect Dr. Fauci. Trump likes to point out that in the very early weeks of COVID-19 Dr. Fauci opposed the idea of encouraging the general public to wear masks. Dr. Fauci's main or only argument was that there weren't enough masks for medical personnel AND the general public. Now, in hindsight and maybe for some people at the time, opposing mask use by the general public was a stupid mistake. There would have been fewer deaths in the Spring if we had all been wearing masks. I understand that medical personnel were a priority, but this is another example of Trump failing to use the Defense Production Act like a sledgehammer. We could have had enough masks in early March if he had. I don't know how Netanyahu did on this question, but Trump failed. Before he started making fun of people for wearing a mask, at one point in April or May he made some half-hearted suggestion that people "might" want to wear a scarf over their mouth and nose. And he seems to think that masks are primarily for the benefit of the wearer, when it's for the people around them. He also doesn't understand that you should wear a mask when no one's around but there's a decent chance someone will come up to you unexpectedly, instead of just when there ARE people around you. We all forget sometimes to wear a mask when we go out, but if you plan on putting one on when you leave the house instead of just when someone unexpectedly comes up to you outside, it’ll work out better.

Trump, Masks and Conspiracy Theories

Two miscellaneous thoughts about Trump. The first about masks and the second one about right-wing conspiracies.

 1. First, Trump has said (three times with large audiences) that a recent CDC study found that 85% of people who wear a mask get COVID-19. I’m going to rely primarily on a CNN article to refute that and add a couple things. First, the CNN article is here. Second of all, this shows that trump, like many Americans, still doesn’t get it- a mask isn’t supposed to offer more than partial protection to the wearer. It protects people around the wearer in case they are pre-symptomatic  or asymptomatic- in case they have COVID-19 and don’t know it. You can still  get it with a mask because the mask doesn’t protect your eyes, but the only way for the virus to get out is through your noes and mouth (well you also sort of have to worry about your hands as well to some degree). Third, I can only imagine how much damage he did tossing around that fake information. Bearing in mind what CNN says about its accuracy, he must have strengthened the resolve of mask skeptics like a steel beam placed in their spine. I mean, if 85% of mask wearers get COVID-19, who in the world would wear a mask?

2. In the NBC Trump Town Hall that partly replaced the second debate, Trump was asked to reject a popular conspiracy theory. Referred to as QAnon, it is basically saying that Democrats are part of a satanic conspiracy based on pedophilia. I’m not sure how connected it is to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory or if it is separate. Pizzagate resulted in an incident of armed violence and QAnon could, too. Pedophilia (a sexual attraction by adults or adolescents towards pre-pubescent children) is a serious problem. And Trump refuses to say this conspiracy theory is nonsense. Instead he says that all he knows about them is that they’re against pedophilia and apparently that makes it okay. He also emphasizes that he only RE-tweets QAnon stuff. But A) he has the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community at his fingertips- he knows that QAnon is slanderous, politically-motivated nonsense, B) Who ISN’T against Pedophilia? and C) when you retweet something you are, to one degree or another, endorsing it.

Trump Doesn't Understand the Need for Widespread Testing

This focus exclusively on health workers when it comes to testing and masks is ridiculous. Yes, I am concerned about them. But testing them and giving them masks is not going to slow the spread of COVID-19. And they'll be safer if we slow the spread, by testing everyone at least once a week and doing whatever is needed to get everyone to effectively cover their mouth and nose. What we needed 1-2 months ago was for Trump to use the Defense Production Act like a sledgehammer and get tons and tons of what we need made. It sounds like he's still dragging his feet on that, for the most part.

Testing just those who are sick is ridiculous. Before they get tested, before the are symptomatic, they can spread it. Trump seems to think that a test is an inoculation, but days after you get tested you could get it.

Also, read this, about the failure of Trump's idea of a treatment for COVID-19. He is finished.

There are Confederate flags at anti-lockdown/pro-Trump protests. I found several articles that briefly refer to it, but since it's such a small part of the articles, I'm not going to link to them. Do a search and you'll find them. I AM going to link to this, because it de-bunks a claim that a photo of a protester with that flag was doctored. Also, two such examples were in Wisconsin and Michigan, states that weren't in the Confederacy.

*****IMPORTANT*******

There is more evidence that Trump is a fascist. Read this. They aren't planning on replacing the entire Federal workforce with Trump loyalists for just 4-8 years. This is supposed to be permanent. Someone should ask them if they believe that every time someone moves into the White House, the entire Federal workforce should be replaced.

As Michael Farrell (the popular Irish civil rights/civil liberties lawyer) said, a characteristic of fascism is "the total identification of party and state."

UPDATE 4/22/20 I just wrote most of the following to a friend who thinks that fascist is the wrong word:

**He is supported by a right-wing populist movement. This thing with the federal workforce is, as I said, wanting to make the State an extension of the Party. He is bigoted, believes in an INCREIBLY imperial presidency, is thuggish (in 2016 he had his supporters assault protesters at his rallies), and is slightly imperialistic and militaristic. And there is a cult of personality involved.**

See this and this as examples of his recent, BROAD assertion of the President having more authority than he has. Also, see this as far as him purging Inspectors Generals in a way that is worrying not just Dems but GOPers as well. And he doesn't believe in an independent judiciary. First, at some point at least once he said that judges he appointed should side with his administration, and there's also this about how he thinks that judges who don't like him should recuse themselves from cases involving his administration.

 
UPDATE 4/23/20 Bearing in mind that criminal "justice" reform is a issue of racism, see this.

With the unavoidable depression and the lack of funding for local and state governments (which will happen if we don't start taxing the rich and maybe corporations more than they are taxed now) we will see economic insecurity skyrocket. And the Republicans, especially the hard-core Trump fans who are right-wing populists, will not blame capitalism for this increased economic insecurity, they will blame people of color. That is my solid prediction.

**************

That's Michael Farrell, the Irish activist not the actor. As I wrote elsewhere:

Michael Farrell is one of my top political heroes. He wrote an amazing book “Northern Ireland: The Orange State.” It’s a great book- it’s fairly introductory at the beginning and is a history of N. Ireland ending at some point in the 1970s depending on which edition you read. It’s also almost a labor history of N. Ireland, offers a lot of analysis, exposes the sectarian, brutal and near-authoritarian nature of the Northern state. It highlights the contributions made by Protestants and leftists to the struggles for justice, equality, and freedom. It exposes the role that capital played in creating and maintaining N. Ireland and the ways that capital benefited from the partition of Ireland and Orange rule in N. Ireland. Farrell was a leading member of People’s Democracy whose politics and activities I describe in the first half of this post (starting in the very early 1970s they expressed support for the Provisional IRA).

According to his wikipedia page:

After moving to Dublin and becoming a solicitor, Farrell was co-chairperson of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties from 1995 to 2001. He was appointed a member of the Irish Human Rights Commission in 2001 and reappointed in October 2006, serving until 2011. In 2005 he was appointed to the Steering Committee of the National Action Plan Against Racism [according to his ECRI page, it was 2001-2003- TS]. He is currently working for Free Legal Advice Centres, Dublin, and has brought cases to the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. In 2011 he was appointed to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, and in 2012 he was appointed to the Irish Council of State by President Michael D. Higgins.

I can confirm pretty much all of it (including the Council of State part), and there’s also the fact that people who were (between 1970 and 1990) very vocal and active Northern supporters of the Provisional IRA are not appointed to the Council of State (by a mainstream Labour politician) 20 years later without being (for example) a ridiculously well respected human rights/civil liberties lawyer.

What Trump Was Told and When He Was Told It (COVID-19 (Coronavirus))

You should read an article here. It's largely an expose of the fact that Trump was warned about the seriousness of COVID-19 in January and February. Very soon I'll add a couple more relevant links.

UPDATE Another relevant article.

One thing that the first article touches on reminds me of something else. When people say we lose a similar number of people each year from the flu, they're ignoring a couple things. First, early on there was plenty of evidence that COVID-19 is VERY communicable and more likely to result in death than the flu. Second, COVID-19 deaths are IN ADDITION to earlier flu deaths in the 2019/2020 flu season.

CODVID-19 (Coronavirus) Thoughts

I'll post some more COVID-19 thoughts, but you should read a post by Juan Cole of Informed Comment here. It's about when to re-open the country, about how earlier social-distancing/stay-at-home orders could have saved lives and how Dr. Fauci might be fired soon.

1. Blaming China for COVID-19 and Racism

Although I get the impression that China DID do some bad things in respect to their response to COVID-19, a focus on China could just encourage hostility towards Asian and Asian-American people here. There WERE attacks on Asian people wearing masks a month ago and Trump was persuaded to stop referring to its as “the Chinese virus” because of this. But just about 15 days ago Secretary of State Pompeo was insisting to the Group of 7 industrialized nations that COVID-19 be officially labelled the “Wuhan Virus.”

UPDATE 10/24/20 An article about an increase in anti-Asian-American racism in connection with COVID-19 is here. Also, Trump has been saying that Biden called Trump's partial China travel ban xenophobic. Apparently, within an hour or so of Trump announcing the ban Biden called him xenophobic but Biden wasn't aware of the travel ban at the time- he hadn't heard of it yet when he called Trump xenophobic. There's plenty of things Trump has done that were xenophobic but the travel ban was not one of them.

UPDATE 2/16/21 A CNN video story about anti-Asian-American racism is here.

2. In response to an article here, I wrote the following:

"I think a big part of this is that we have a health-care system set up for a lot less than the entire population. If we had something resembling what they have in other countries (like Canada) and properly funded it, our hospitals wouldn't be as overwhlemed as they are. We should have done social distancing earlier. I don't think this is said with hind-sight- I think if in some alternate reality, we had social-distanced starting in early March and after a week or two it was SORT of a fale alarm, people would have been okay with that. At the very least, WITH hind-sight it makes sense. I mean, if history is a guide, something that could become a pandemic will happen maybe once every 4-5 years or something. We can live a little differently for 1-2 weeks. At the first sign of a pandemic, Trump should have used the Defense Production Act to make more medical supplies like masks and whatever would be likely needed for testing. Our economy would survive if, in a similarly alternate reality, we produced a bunch of stuff for a week and then it turned out okay and we had to wait as production was switched back. And if we taxed the rich (not neccessarily corporations) more, A) they would survive and B) we could afford compensating corporations for making a bunch of medical supplies we end up not needing right away (we could use them and briefly cut back on production so overall supplies can go back down to normal).

We also need to stick with past plans and stuff as the article says. As far as when the alarm should have been raised, 4 days after Trump called it a hoax, his buddy Netanyahu called it a Pandemic."

3. After reading an article here, I wrote the following comment:

"I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but I could swear (and the article kind of says this) that one of the things the Dems want is for Affirmative Action to be a factor in support to small businesses. I generally support AA and think this is a good idea. in about a week there will be a post on my blog supporting AA."

That post is here.

4. I read an article here. There is valid concern that people of color are dying disproportionately from COVID-19. That’s partly just the correlation between race and class and also capitalist healthcare. Trump is also a racist. There's Charlottesville, and there's this, and this, and this. UPDATE 4/23/20 Bearing in mind that criminal "justice" reform is a issue of racism, see this.

5. I read a an article here and left the following comment:

"This thing where you have to say nice things about Trump to get supplies is horrible. I was hoping that this would end months before the election and those governors who, rightfully, want to criticize Trump could do so and he woud lose the election, but he is messing up so bad, who knows when this will end, and governors will have to keep saying nice stuff about him to get supplies. They might take a chance shortly before the election and try to get him kicked out of the White House, but if they try that and he wins (probably in an unfair election), they're in trouble. Liberal and progressive media and activists unconnected to governors need to spread the word about what a bad job Trump is doing. GREAT JOB POLITICO!!"

When Can We Return to Normal? (COVID-19 (Coronavirus))

After I read an article on Politico, I left a comment. Most of what's below is that comment.

The only reason he is including business people on the council is so that they can vote to re-open the country. They're not epidemiologists, they have no idea when the country can reopen. It's great that he'll include some governors and doctors, but I have a bad feeling that the business people will out-vote the others and recommend opening the country. And Trump saying he'll close it back down if there's a resurgence of COVID-19 is stupid. That means he'll wait until AFTER a bunch more people will have gotten an often deadly disease and THEN close the country again.

What we need is for him to use the Defense Production Act to dramatically ramp up the production of masks and whatever is needed to test for COVID-19, and maybe AFTER we have enough masks and everyone is getting tested frequently, then we can reopen the country.

The thing is, the decrease in cases, when it comes, is because of social-distancing. COVID-19 isn't becoming less communicable. We need masks and testing before it's even sort of safe to return to normal. And even then, restaurants and such will have to stay closed (you can't take your mask off) but a lot of non-essential businesses can open again, including many that can't do stuff on-line.

What we really need a is an effective treatment- not the ones that Trump recommends. And from what I've heard, a lot of health-care people think his obsession with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine is requiring effort that could be better spent on other stuff. If you think that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are treatments, you should read this, this, and this.

You should also read the other post I did about COVID-19.

UPDATE 4/14/20 Trump's real reason for not encouraging people to wear masks and and ramping up production of them is that he thought it would look bad if there were a bunch of people wearing masks and it would be bad election-year optics.

Trump, Netanyahu, and COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

I had earlier thought that I would keep the topic of Coronavirus (COVID-19) off my blog. I have sent some thoughts about it (more or less political thoughts), to a handful of individuals by email. Soon I’ll post some more thoughts about COVID-19 but right now I want to get this out there immediately. (I get almost all of my COVID-19 news from Politico)

In general there are a lot of ways to criticize Trump for his horrible response to Coronavirus. But there is one thing that I don’t hear anyone mentioning. For about two months until about 20 days ago I read A LOT of stuff in The Times of Israel, an online and apparently mainstream Israeli newspaper which is only slightly pro-Israel (the founding editor is described here). I found an article that contrasts Trump’s response to COVID-19 with that of Netanyahu, which is the only good thing I can say about Netanyahu. When reading that article, remember that it was the 29th of February when Trump said that COVID-19 was a liberal “hoax.” (UPDATE 4/12/20 Trump can't accuse Netanyahu of predicting a pandemic because he's a liberal in love with the American media)

On March. 17th, Netanyahu said: “This isn’t child’s play, it’s not summer vacation, it’s a matter of life and death,” and “If you don’t have to go to work, stay home. I assume you know the English expression ‘My home is my castle.’ Please adopt that. Your home is your castle in defense against the coronavirus pandemic…stay home.” It was March 24th when Trump said: “I’d love to have it open by Easter, OK? I would love to have it open by Easter. I will tell you that right now.” On March 26th it was reported that Israeli police were handing out fines for violating social distancing regulations. On March 23rd, Trump said of schools: “In many cases, they are open now. But the schools are going to be open. In other cases, (New York) Governor (Andrew) Cuomo, Gavin Newsom of California, certain governors are going to maybe have a decision to make.” Trump has resisted calls for a NATIONAL “stay-at-home” order and continues to refuse to do that, despite the fact that Dr. Fauci supports it (an April 3rd article). Here’s a good (March 27th) article about the response of many Governors to Trump’s March 26th plan for lifting social-distancing restrictions in the near future on a county-by-county and state-by-state basis. A March 22nd article reports that the Isareli Health Ministry said that social distancing will probably last until the Summer and maybe beyond.

In an article here it was illustrated that the Israeli State wasn’t very well prepared for this. But I think that Netanyahu still did a better job. In a more recent article, on April 5th it was learned that at least 10,000 tests a day will be done, and it sounds like that was a pretty realistic estimate. It sucks, but it’s still better than Trump. According to this, only in late March did testing in America get to 100,000 a day, and America’s population is about 30 times bigger than Israel’s.

On production of things like ventilators, I haven’t found much info. But the first article I link to above strongly implied that Netanyahu was deploying the power of the national government to combat COVID-19. And I found an article here saying that Israel has already used a 2/3 public 1/3 private partnership to produce more ventilators. The new production line was set up in days and in one day produced 30 ventilators. From what I’ve heard, the new production lines for ventilators in America haven’t been set up yet. And again, America’s population is 30 times Israel’s. I don’t know how many ventilators America normally produces or how many were already being made in Israel, but again, if you consider the different population sizes involved, Israel might be doing better on ventilator production, and it was set up quickly and Netanyahu was a lot more willing than Trump to involve the State instead of relying, to one large degree or another, on the private sector. (I wish I could find more information about Israel and this aspect of responding to COVID-19, but I am kind of sticking with The Times of Israel and after doing a few searches using Google Advanced Search, I don’t think there’s anything more I’m likely to find). I know more about Trump’s efforts to ramp up production and I THINK it’s worse than Netanyahu’s. An article, from April 2nd goes into Trump’s efforts here.

1-2 weeks ago I tried to get this message out to people I know (and some politicians like Senators Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren) because I thought it could be used to pressure Trump to do the right thing (in addition to the thing about ventilators, there’s the first article I link to that strongly implies that Netanyahu was deploying the power of the national government to combat COVID-19- some would point out that they don’t have a federal system, but the point is that Netanyahu didn’t take a hands-off approach, and in America, the fact is that this situation is the sort where there is broad, bipartisan agreement that the Federal government is supposed to act (why else do we have the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Defense Production Act? (the states don’t have a DPA))). It might be too late for that, but when COVID-19 ends, this can be used to attack Trump. Why? Trump and Netanyahu are very good friends politically. Trump isn’t going to attack Netanyahu as a socialist or liberal or a pussy (on the other hand, there are reports that Trump likes to grab Netanyahu without permission). He won’t have a response. When I thought that this could be used to get Trump to do the right thing, I wrote: “I think it might help if people start pointing out that it's okay for a "tough-guy," right-wing, capitalist, racist motherfucker to take Coronavirus seriously.”

UPDATE 5/29/20 According to CNN (and this), at this point Israel has recorded 284 COVID-19 deaths. The US population is 30 times that of Israel's, so if we had the same death rate per capita, there would only be 8,520 deaths in this country and we just passed 100,000.