Nonfiction – education and deconstruction.com

Kristi Scandals – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

As is well known, Kristi Noem is the United States Secretary of Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Here’s a little song about her.

KRISTI SCANDALS

sung to the tune of “Sixteen Candles” with apologies to The Crests, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

[Having a bad day. Having a bad day, indeed.] Oh. I hate you so.

Kristi scandals

scream, “might makes right”

all to the delight, of the xenophobic whites.

She outs her-own scandals, makes her power-plays come true.

And she’ll be fishing, for dirt on YOU. [for dirt on YOU.]

The ends-justify the means. There’ve been brutal scenes.

She’s the most-ruthless, huffy-est DHS-chief, I’ve ever seen. [I’ve ever seen.]

Kristi scandals. Deportations will grow, until deaths and lawsuits

end her reality show, end her reality show.

The ends-justify the means. But there’ve been brutal scenes.

Oh, she’s the most-ruthless, huffy-est DHS-chief, I’ve ever seen. [I’ve ever seen.]

Kristi scandals. Deportations will grow, until deaths and lawsuits

end her reality show, end her reality show.

The Book of the Week is “From That Place and Time, A Memoir 1938-1947” by Lucy S. Dawidowicz, published in 1989. In this slightly sloppily edited, completely chronogically disorganized volume, the author detailed her: experiences during a time of anti-Semitism and war, and then 20/20 hindsight.

Born in 1915 in New York City, the author was sent to Hebrew school, but was only “culturally Jewish.” This, to American Jews, means celebrating the major annual holidays, but neither going to services nor observing the vast majority of religious laws on a daily basis.

The author’s parents came to the United States from Poland around 1908. They thought the Yiddish language would be the common element that would unify the Jewish community. Around the 1910’s, an American Jew, Chaim Zhitlowsky tried to popularize that idea. The author therefore was fluent in Yiddish.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, there were four different educational Jewish factions (contentious with one another) in New York City that taught Yiddish: Zionist and socialist, socialist and anti-Zionist, Communist-affiliated, and non-political but culturally Jewish (For a description of the different aspects of Zionism, type “Zionism” in the search bar on the upper right side of this blog; the term “Zionism” like “feminism” and “global warming” was hijacked for emotionally-charged propaganda purposes.). The author fell into the last group.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the author perceived that American Jews didn’t have the same fears of getting bullied and victimized by discrimination as their European counterparts did. The Americans weren’t “wandering Jews.” Of course, she was always among her own kind of people, so she wasn’t exposed or subjected to hatred against her group.

In 1935, there existed a group named the Freeland League who were searching for a homeland for the Jews, other than Palestine. One place they looked at, was Kimberley in Australia. It seems the current territorial disputes between Jews and Palestinians are focused on lands they claim their ancestors occupied for centuries, and no substitute territories will do.

Anyway, Dawidowicz’s father instilled in her a hostility toward the religious aspects of Judaism, as well as toward Zionism. “Furthermore, [in the mid-1930’s] in Palestine, the Zionists denigrated Yiddish and demanded that Hebrew alone be the national language of the Palestinian settlement.”

In March 1935, in rearming for world conquest, Hitler tore up the Versailles Treaty. Stalin felt he needed to make nice with the West in order to gain security for Russia. So in August 1935, the Soviet leadership announced a new policy that pivoted away from Marxism. It was the new Stalinism: collectively fighting against the Nazis and Japanese militarism.

In spring 1938, the Polish government hated its own Jews, and was looking for an excuse to refuse to accept Jewish refugees from Germany. Nevertheless, that autumn, the author went to study and do research at the Yiddish Scientific Institute in Poland. In August 1939, Stalin reversed himself and allied with Hitler so the two could take over Poland.

Read the book to learn of the author’s anguish at the historical events of the next decade, and how they affected her generation.

TACO Man – BONUS POST

It might be recalled that “TACO” stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Here’s a song about that.

TACO MAN

sung to the tune of “Rocket Man” with apologies to Elton John, and to whomever else the rights may concern.

He packed the Court to fight for the Right.

Gaining power, getting old.

And his proposals will mo-o-ost, likely be put on-hold.

He repulses the earth so much, left by his wives.

He’ll go lonely to his grave, from all his li-i-fe-long fights.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

Mar-a-Lago ain’t the right place to hide secret-documents.

By the way, where’s the Wall?

Vance will be there, to raise taxes, you-know he must.

And all the academics, Trump doesn’t understand.

He relies on defamers eight days a week.

TACO man, TACO man.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

In his shakedowns, we see all his lies.

He’s not the man the rich think they own. Oh whoa whoa whoa.

He’s TACO man, TACO man.

Doing the same deals he smeared in-the-past.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time.

And we’ll be able to correct this wrong, wrong time…

The Playbook

The Book of the Week is “The Playbook, A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War” by James Shapiro, published in 2024.

In the 1930’s, American president FDR implemented programs to help the unemployed during the Great Depression. One was the Works Progress Administration, a sub-program of which, Federal Theater (hereinafter referred to as “FT”), put thousands of people to work. However, there were numerous complications every time the group wanted to put on a play, because there were a dozen unions with whom to negotiate.

FT produced thought-provoking shows that starkly portrayed the dangers and immorality of fascism, totalitarianism, slavery, racism, etc. It risked having its funding cut for its political correctness. In autumn 1936, FT was able to stage the Sinclair Lewis novel It Can’t Happen Here because MGM had decided not to make a movie of it.

FT opened the inflammatory play in eighteen big cities across America. In Seattle the cast was inter-racial. New York City performed the play in Yiddish. The traveling version lasted 133 performances. Fortunately, audiences interpreted the play all different ways politically.

In September 1937, FDR signed affordable-housing (what activists for the downtrodden would call “gentrification”) legislation that was diluted due to fears of:

government competition with the private sector;
over-regulation;
budgetary excesses;
and Southern states’ getting short shrift because they were more rural than urban.

In response to the above, in 1938, FT staged One Third of a Nation. That theatrical production demonstrated how stakeholders treated America’s slums, which accounted for where one third of the nation’s population resided, according to FDR, as of early 1937.

The movie version was Hollywoodized– its funders were purchasers of distressed assets and profiteers. They made it a story about poor whites with a romantic subplot involving a “kindly capitalist” (the absentee landlord, or in the real world– a slumlord). A suicidal arsonist prompted the landlord to rebuild the place with trees and a playground. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Anyway, FT’s most vicious enemy turned out to be Martin Dies, a U.S. Congressman from eastern Texas, first elected in 1930. He had the KKK mentality, with xenophobia and misogyny thrown in. In 1935, he got himself on the Rules Committee, the most powerful committee in the House.

Dies also fast-tracked his power accumulation with his endless persistence. In 1938, he finally got himself appointed the head of a special committee that investigated a hot-button political issue; this, by chance, through teaming up with the exact right person who could help him– Samuel Dickstein, a Congressman from New York City who was equally driven to amass power and attention. They secretly allied with vice president John Nance Garner, who was on their side.

By spring 1938, their committee was claiming it was trying to root out subversives, Fascists and Communists, and prevent violence at Nazi rallies in America’s streets. But they had questioned a politically active Nazi who stayed right under their noses, and they failed to investigate him further!

Their real motive was to execute a smear campaign against FDR himself, in addition to his New Deal, and unions. So FT became an easy target, too. Ironically, “He [Dies] envisioned the hearings touring nationally, moving from city to city, beginning on the West coast and ending back East.”

One of Dies’ star investigators, Hazel Huffman, ignorantly equated Progressivism, racial integration, anti-capitalism and anti-fascism with Communism in her testimony. She recited verbatim lines from the FT’s scripts, out of context as evidence of Communist propaganda. Dies backed her up. They were so entertaining– newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasters presented her nasty, biased utterances about the FT, as fact. Dies realized he needed to keeping directing fresh accusations at FT and the WPA to keep the media in his back pocket.

Read the book to learn yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun, in terms of demagogues who use age-old propaganda techniques to amass sufficient power to commit crimes, oppress their fellow citizens, and spread hatred far and wide with total impunity.

And So To America

The Book of the Week is “And So To America” by Cecil Roberts, published in 1947. Clearly, the author (who was an established British writer born in May 1892) had 20/20 hindsight of WWII at this book’s writing. He threw in the kitchen sink at intervals, of the history of specific people, places and things, of all different centuries.

In October 1939, Roberts began public-speaking tours in the United States to try to alert ordinary Americans to the dangers of taking no action against the Germans, who had already invaded Poland. In 1935, FDR sign the Neutrality Act that took effect in 1937. The Act denied America’s allies any military help in the event they felt they were in need of it. After the horrors of WWI, America had no interest in entering another war, and thought the Atlantic Ocean would offer geographic protection from the violence going on in Europe.

The author claimed the British government initially declined his offer of assistance on the public-relations front, but he did admit that it compensated him for certain services he performed for the British Embassy in America, and the British Ministry of Information.

Roberts also participated in a program that allowed about four thousand children and some of their mothers to move to the U.S. during the time that Britain was getting bombed via warplanes. Generous American families hosted them. Those Britishers’ families had assets in the U.S. that had been frozen by the Treasury. For, Great Britain had yet to pay America back for its WWI debt.

Beginning in September 1939, Republicans in the American federal government voted against three different pieces of legislation (that passed at FDR’s urging anyway) that would prepare the United States for war, through: military spending to rearm, reinstating the draft and repealing an arms embargo (which kind of negated the Neutrality Act).

In 1940, there were two major groups of Republicans, one of which opposed FDR in the presidential election– isolationists and the anti-New Dealers. They viewed his running for a third term, as dictatorial. Besides that, they were also thinking Germany would win the war, so they were preparing to reap the spoils when that happened. They were viciously vengeful against FDR, spouting the meanest, nastiest smears again him.

As is well known, in mid-August 1945, on the world’s various continents, people were homeless, still dying in frightful numbers from disease and starvation, from having participated in the war gone by, occupying the wrong place at the wrong time as an innocent bystander, or from just plain bad luck in not having been born a royal-family member!

Meanwhile, in Newport Rhode Island, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt threw a dinner party for some two hundred guests in lavish surroundings that included fresh pink flowers, two orchestras, and caviar and champagne. The author was there, rubbing shoulders with the elitists, a little disturbed about this cosmic injustice, but not enough to do anything about it.

Roberts also wrote, “In the following years [after WWII] one was very conscious of the India and Palestine questions. It would appear that large sections of the American people were perturbed about the reputed tyranny of Britain in these two places.” Read the book to learn a boatload more history and of the author’s adventures in the lap of luxury in America.

Eighty years later, the overall status of humanity in the world has improved a little, but not much.

For the last 45 years, Republicans in America have:

enjoyed their pet programs (military and security that kick out, keep out, or possibly trample on, the civil rights of, foreigners and poor people) while

been trying to justify eliminating what they consider government handouts (the social safety net that assists older or unlucky people, or those who have made bad life-choices).

Beginning with the George W. Bush era, the Republicans have become hypocrites because they ruined their own reputation for fiscal responsibility– they went on a spending spree that caused the deficit to skyrocket!

Here’s a little song that describes the current political situation in the United States– what the budget-busting Republicans are singing.

SLASH SLASH

sung to the tune of “Splish Splash” with apologies to the Estate of Bobby Darin and to whomever else the rights may concern.

Slash, slash, we’re doing the math,

long about a budget-bill fight. yeah

Snub, snub, just taxing-the Democrats’ club,

favoring everyTHING far-Right.

Well, jack up the deficit. It’s all Biden’s fault.

Open wounds around us, and we rub in the salt.

Well, slash, slash, we went back to the math, well, how were we to know Biden’s brain was all gone?

We’re Biden-bashing, healthcare-slashing,

wheeling and dealing, Dems are stewing and a-suing,

we’re complying with Trump’s lying. Yeah.

Bang, bang, we smear the Liberal gang,

dancing on the Democrats’ graves.

Yeah, no cops, pulling out all the stops.

This bill has the pork we crave.

Well there’s, big MON-ey, for ICE.

Forget the EARTH.

We Reagan wannaBES put America FIRST.

Well- a, we can’t forget about the math. We have to put our fancy PR on. Yay.

We’re polling and steam-rolling, wheeling and dealing,

Dems are stewing and a-suing. Slashing and slashing. Yeah.

Yes, we’re Biden-bashing, we’re polling and steam-rolling.

Yeah, Dems are stewing and a-suing. We’re wheeling and dealing.

We’re polling and steam-rolling. We’re complying with Trump’s lying. Slash slash yeah

mm slashing and slashing, all-time we’re Biden-bashing, whoo-wee, Dems are stewing and a-suing, we’re slashing and slashing…

The Warburgs

The Book of the Week is “The Warburgs, The 20th-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family” by Ron Chernow, published in 1993. This ginormous, slightly: chronologically disorganized and redundant volume, recounted mostly, the life-stories of four males born to a German Jewish family in the mid to late 1800’s, and the life-stories of their descendants.

Through the decades, different family branches traveled or moved from Germany to other countries, such as England, Sweden and Italy, due to discrimination against Jews, and world wars. Some became fully assimilated in their adopted countries and married outside the faith. Some moved to the United States.

In September 1922, “Paul [Warburg] saw America sunk in an intellectual coma and warned Washington that ‘we are surrounding ourselves with a wall and moat of cynicism and selfish materialism…’ ” As ought to be well known, there’s nothing new under the sun.

The Warburgs were “international bankers”– Hitler’s anti-Semitic code language for Jews, whom he claimed were the cause of all of Germany’s problems in approximately the two decades leading up to, and during WWII.

Aby was the black sheep of the family. He had a brilliant career in art history. The other Warburg brothers, Max, Paul and Felix became financiers, philanthropists and activists. In the 1920’s, the German government began to persecute its Jews more than was historically usual, but until the late 1930’s, the brothers evaded the brunt of the Nazis’ human-rights abuses.

The Warburgs had special influence with government officials because they had substantial assets, and their businesses’ financial transactions had a major impact on the German economy, and worldwide.

In late winter 1936, the Warburgs struck a secret deal with Heinrich Himmler that allowed them to continue doing business. However, later that year, they lost their connections to power when the Nazis forced corporate boards’ directors who were deemed Jewish, to resign. The brothers had been on dozens of boards.

The culture of the German people in their place and time was characterized by blind obedience to authority and passionate love for one’s homeland. Even after September 1937 when the brothers’ bank in Hamburg was ejected from the Reich Loan Consortium, they still clung to the hope that the Nazis’ amassing of power and menace was only temporary.

Hermann Goering scotched free trade when he formed his five-hundred employee fiefdom– the Office of Raw and Synthetic Materials. It allowed Germany to prepare for war. The Nazis needed funding for re-arming Germany, and the eventual theft of Jews’ assets would come in due time. The Jews were pawns in Hitler’s evil plan of Aryan world conquest.

A minor action symbolizing this, was the hanging of a gigantic oil painting of Hitler in the newly seized Warburg brothers’ Hamburg branch-office in May 1938. The Warburgs were allowed to choose two Aryans to run the bank indefinitely; of course, it was then unclear when or if the family would be able to reclaim their business.

In the twentieth century, the Warburgs wore the label “Jewish” that the world had thrust on them, whether observant or not, assimilated or not, for having a Jewish last name, or for having “Jewish” relatives (at the time Europe was ruled by Hitler), or having been raised by family members in this identity they felt was immutable.

“It wasn’t their [the Jews’] alien quality so much as their familiarity, their uncomfortable resemblance to other Germans, that enabled Hitler to tap fears of ‘racial pollution.’ “

Post-Holocaust, the discomfort about Jews has continued. Could it be that women who dye their hair blond, don’t want to look Jewish? And then– could it be that the Jews started the “dumb blond” jokes?

Read the book to learn much, much, much more about the histories of Warburg family members, and their times.

(Knock Harvard Out) in Massachusetts – BONUS POST

As is well known, the president is executing an evil plot against America’s institutions, and Harvard University is a major target. Here’s what Trump is singing that explains the situation.

(KNOCK HARVARD OUT) IN MASSACHUSETTS

sung to the tune of “(The Lights Went Out) in Massachusetts” with apologies to the Bee Gees and to whomever else the rights may concern.

I am getting back, at Massachusetts.

They were always telling me Harvard’s the best school.

And I’m going to knock Harvard OUT in Massachusetts.

I hate the Left. I have standing to be cruel.

Also on my list is San Francisco.

Gotta give my cronies law-jobs to do.

And I’m going to knock Harvard OUT in Massachusetts.

They bring me back, to sore spots in a state-of Blue.

Sack all the life out-of Massachusetts.

Freak out all the people I’ll unseat.

And I’m going to knock Harvard OUT in Massachusetts.

And Massachusetts shows I hate the Kennedys.

I will dismember Massachusetts.

Tip and the Gipper

The Book of the Week is “Tip and the Gipper, When Politics Worked” by Chris Matthews, published in 2013.

Exactly two weeks after Republican (and former Democrat!) Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, he and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, both of Irish ancestry and of the same generation but with class differences, met to see how they could cooperate in the new administration. They found little common-ground politically, but were able to socialize outside of work.

Reagan’s agenda on the budget was as follows: pass a tax cut for the rich, increase military spending, and reduce the national deficit at the same time. He expected major savings would be had by cutting programs such as education, the arts, food stamps, college loans and Social Security– the sacred cow of the Democrats. He truly believed that that would balance the budget, and maintain America’s national security against the “evil empire” of the then-Soviet Union.

Reagan ended up needing Democrats’ House votes to raise the debt ceiling. O’Neill shrewdly told the head of communications on Capitol Hill to personally send a letter to each of his fellow House party-members urging them to vote “aye” on debt-ceiling legislation, thus putting a political favor in writing.

The following video details the sleight-of-hand Reagan employed.

An additional way of looking at Reagan’s dogged mentality of refusing to face reality is this quote, from Bertrand Russell: “There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.” Also called “hubris syndrome.”

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about how Reagan and O’Neill clashed at work, but were still able to have civil discourse and healthy disagreement, while passing legislation that maintained America’s democracy.

Speaking of democracy, here’s a little song that describes the current messaging of the Trump administration– however unsavory it may be, but allowed, because free speech is a major ingredient of democracy.

WITCH HUNT ON BIDEN

sung to the tune of “Wichita Lineman” with apologies to Glenn Campbell and to whomever else the rights my concern.

They’re the leaders of the Trump PR team,
and they drive the main smears.
Searching everywhere for what his base,
wants to hear.

They put propaganda on the news wires.
They’re desperate to fill air-time.
And the witch hunt on Biden, distracts from Trump’s slime.

America needs a long vacation,
from this criminal reign.
A lot of GOP insiders’ consciences are cracking, from the strain.

Trump’s media thinks it can brainwash you.
They’re doing this on your dime.
And the witch hunt on Biden,
distracts from Trump’s slime.

Troublemaker

The Book of the Week is “Troublemaker, A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties” by Bill Zimmerman, published in 2011. The author was a true activist– he sacrificed his livelihood and risked his life to work for causes he believed in. Kudos to him.

In his twenties, the author made a major life-decision that made him look like a righteous prick (excuse the crudeness). He opposed the powers-that-be via participating in street demonstrations and civil disobedience. Later on, he felt he was more likely to change the world via engaging in humanitarian actions and working within the system.

Born in December 1940, Zimmerman grew up on Chicago’s West Side. In 1963 in Greenwood, Mississippi, he helped African Americans register to vote. In May 1966, the author and other anti-Vietnam-War protesters occupied the administration building at the University of Chicago. He learned from an experienced activist, what to do in connection with making demands of the school officials, to get what they wanted.

President LBJ was running out of cannon fodder (who were mostly non-white, poor men) for his war in Vietnam. So he had the Selective Service System (the government’s military-draft authority) do away with students’ ability to defer their service until after graduating.

The older generation of men– WWII veterans– viewed draft dodgers as cowardly, unpatriotic and selfish. They were unaware that their tax dollars were paying for the U.S. military’s committing of atrocities; one kind involved torturing pairs of enemy soldiers (National Liberation Front guerrilla fighters) by taking them up in a helicopter, and throwing one out the door so the other would be terrorized into revealing his side’s State secrets.

The author wrote, “Flower power [a 1960’s idea pushed by antiwar activists and people in the counter-culture] meant freeing men from outdated norms of masculinity that sapped their sensitivity, their poetry, and their urge to share instead of dominate.”

It was widely known even then, that the three major ways to redistribute societal wealth, consist of: 1) reforming campaign financing practices so that election winners are those who get the most votes, not those who are wealthiest; 2) having the least unfair tax system– encouraging citizens to start entrepreneurial ventures via financial assistance while also taxing the super-rich on the back-end for having taken advantage of existing infrastructure and front-end incentives; and 3) having a social safety net for those individuals who have unluckily been born into sucky situations, and providing opportunities for everyone, as far as egalitarianism is possible.

As is well known, in the first half of the 1970’s, there were lots of behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving president Nixon’s sidekick Henry Kissinger, with his secret diplomatic missions and his role at the Paris Peace Talks, to purportedly end the Vietnam war. South Vietnam’s leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, ran a corrupt regime, and he was eventually forced into exile, compliments of American taxpayers.

That theme– the propaganda-suffused, and CIA-assisted ousting of various dictators around the world– had already become a cliche since the 1950’s. A Mad Lib could be made of it: “He then consoled himself by fleeing to ______ [a place that would accept him] with $_______ [money he had looted from his homeland that supplemented his offshore financial stashes, that also might serve as tax shelters if he had U.S. income] stolen from the aid the U.S. had given to _______ [his former territory].” In recent decades, for obvious reasons, there has been less of this Cold War nonsense.

Anyway, as is also well known, the Japanese in WWII dogmatically would have fought to the last man, guerrilla-style. It was known that America’s supposed enemies in Vietnam had the same mentality. Yet, regarding Vietnam, the unbloodied elites and chickenhawks in the U.S. government failed to take a lesson from both the WWII’s Japanese and from the French in Dien Bien Phu.

Fortunately, the vast majority of current world leaders have had enough of genocide and atrocities, and are ready to sit down at the bargaining table to negotiate the distribution of rare resources (especially those that will fulfill their energy needs) crucial to their homelands’ economic development for decades to come. Slowly but slowly, the world is making progress in the humanitarian arena.

Nevertheless, worldwide, human beings have evolved so that the super-rich now own:

show business;
professional sports teams;
gambling entities;
Silicon Valley, and
Wall Street.

They have become one big, incestuous network, married to politics. The situation has spawned excessive (especially in the United States):

pardoning of criminals;
lawsuits;
deregulation;
smearing;
lies;
conflicts of interest, and
deception via AI-generated images, and pre-recorded video clips (especially of the president!)

This calls for a funk reggae fusion rock parody.

ELITIST REVENUE

sung to the tune of “Electric Avenue” with apologies to Eddy Grant and whomever else the rights may concern.

[Ploys. Ploys.]

Now ov’r resources, there is violence.
And profi-TEER-ing to be done.
One hand washes the others.
And in charge, are fortunate sons. Oh, no

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

Abortion, wars, and the border.
Can’t bear to watch a thing on TV.
In their world, it’s a challenge,
to push the envelope infinitely. Good God?

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

We’ve gone extreme in this country.
Money and revenge are job-one.
Lawyering and manipulation,
and our Constitution is done. Oh no

They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh no
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

Oh, Trump is discreet.
So is Wall Street.

Locking in the payday. Ratcheting up the spite…

Oh, they gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.

Trump is discreet.
So is Wall Street.

AI is Fox’s playground, on the dark side all-around.

Oh, they gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire.
They gotta LOCK in their, elitist revenue.
They’re power-whores for hire. Oh yeah

Locking in the payday. Ratcheting up the spite…

$ $ $

Anyway, read the book to learn much more about Zimmerman’s life and times.

Bad Jew

The Book of the Week is “Bad Jew, A Family’s Quest From the Minsk Ghetto to Netanyahu’s Israel” by Piotr Smolar, translated from the French by Anthony Roberts, published in 2024. This sloppily edited volume with confusing descriptions of the author, his father and grandfather– contained a brief overview of the mentality of Eastern European Jews and Arabs. As is well known, these peoples have had a long, intertwined and inter-tribally violent history in Palestine (currently Israel). American-English language would say, “self-hating Jew” not “bad Jew.”

Born in 1974, the author grew up in Normandy in France. As an adolescent, he asserted his identity by practicing Catholicism with his aunt and uncle in Warsaw, Poland. He never did receive a formal education in Judaism.

The year 1967 saw an anti-Semitic Wladyslaw Gomulka, the Polish government’s first secretary, denounce the author’s Polish grandfather for his Judeo-Communist views. The grandfather wrote op-ed pieces for his newspaper with a pro-Zionist, pro-Israel bent (For a description of the different aspects of Zionism, type “Zionism” in the search bar on the upper right side of this blog; the term “Zionism” like “feminism” and “global warming” was hijacked for emotionally-charged propaganda purposes.). Gomulka also spread propaganda that the Jews were the ones who committed Stalin’s crimes.

In 1968, the Polish government allowed Jews to leave with the clothes on their backs, with the condition that they never return. Many went to Israel. Although he didn’t explicitly say so, the author was trying to convey the idea that, even in the late 1960’s, there was such rife anti-Semitism in the world that Israel was still relevant as a homeland for the “wandering Jew.” Israel has certainly been an exceptional sovereign territory. During its short existence of only three quarters of a century, with American financial aid, it has:

established agricultural collectives in the desert;
developed salinization and irrigation technologies;
built a military-industrial complex; and
founded numerous Big-Tech startups.

Given all the historical hostilities in Israel, one would think that the only people who still live there are ideologically dogmatic Darwin-award candidates. The author spoke with some residents who gave that impression. They are willing to risk their lives to defend what they consider their own respective tribe’s property which their ancestors owned for centuries. On the other side, the Palestinians have the same mentality.

Read the book to learn about several other reasons why the Palestinians (and Arabs) and Jews can’t work out their differences, and more about the author’s and others’ family backgrounds.