the daily howler

HUMANS AT WAR: In search of the Gaza GDP!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2023

The facts we ignore during war: If you have the time today, we'll suggest that you give it a try:

Stop a thousand people on the street. Ask them to explain the nature of the so-called "two-state solution."

(By the way, does "the State of Palestine" currently exist? You could even ask them that!)

It's a very familiar phrase, but what does the concept entail? We ask in part because of the way a certain news report begins in today's New York Times.

Principal headline included. Mark Landler's report starts like this:

Palestinian Authority Open to Gaza Role if U.S. Backs 2-State Solution

The Palestinian Authority has told the Biden administration that it is open to a governance role in post-Hamas Gaza if the United States commits to a full-fledged two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a top official of its parent, the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The official, Hussein al-Sheikh, the P.L.O.’s secretary general, said he had told Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken last week that the Palestinian Authority sought “a commitment from the U.S. administration, with a comprehensive political decision that would include the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
[...]
His message is both a relief and a challenge to the White House, which has been groping for a path out of the worst violence in decades between Israel and Hamas, the extremist group that controls Gaza...

According to Landler's report, the Palestinian Authority might play a role in post-Hamas Gaza if the U.S. commits to a two-state solution.

Check that! According to Landler's formulation, it would have to be a full-fledged two-state solution! You have our permission to interrogate your thousand respondents concerning that new turn of phrase.

How well do we, the people of North America, follow the tragic and deadly events which constitute this long-running human disaster? Perhaps unfairly, consider this:

In this morning's print editions, Vanessa Friedman's report about the Trump family's wardrobes sits on page A1—on the front page—of the New York Times. Landler's report about this possible approach to a post-Hamas Gaza is found on page A6.

We'll have more on Friedman's detailed wardrobe frisking this afternoon. For now, we're asking you about the way we the people follow the basic events involved in such long-running wars.

This takes us back to what Mustafa Barghouti said back on October 11.

As we noted yesterday, Barghouti was interviewed that evening on the PBS NewsHour. Once again, we'll show you a chunk of what he said:

BARGHOUTI (10/11/23): I, as a person, always say that I am against any killing of any civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli. And we're sorry for all those people who were killed, Palestinians and Israelis.
But, unfortunately, everybody keeps avoiding the root cause of the problem.
[...]
JOHN YANG: You talk about the root cause, and there are—there's a generation of Palestinians who reject your call for nonviolence, who feel that this is how they have to respond. What do you say to them?
BARGHOUTI: I say to them, and I try to prove to them, that nonviolence is a much more effective way of achieving our freedom. That's the best way of doing that.
But one should ask the question, why these young people go in that direction? It's simply because they see no hope.
Eighty percent of young educated people in Gaza are under siege and are unemployed. The poverty is unbelievable.
The GDP per capita in Israel is $56,000 per year, while it is less than $1,000 per year—per capita per year in Gaza. Yet, Gazans are obliged to buy products at Israeli market price. These people don't see a hope, don't see a future.

Was Barghouti excusing the killings and the hostage-takings which had occurred just a few days before? Was he evading the question of who is responsible for the poverty to which he referred?

Following Barack Obama's advice, we'll advise ourselves to briefly sidestep our outrage. For ourselves, as we watched the NewsHour that night, we wondered how accurate Barghouti's highlighted statement was.

Please note! "Per capita GDP" is not the same thing as "per capita income." Also, there are two major ways to measure GDP and per capita GDP—PPP and nominal.

(With statistics, it's rarely comes easy.)

That said, per capita GDP is a basic way to measure the prosperity of a jurisdiction and its people. Could it really be possible that per capita GDP of three such groups actually look something like this?

Alleged per capita GDP, 2022
United States: $75,269
Israel: $57,758
Gaza: "Less than $1,000"

The first two figures are drawn from this source. As it turns out, it's hard to locate figures for the GDP of Gaza.

Over at Axios, Felix Salmon recently scored the data as shown below. Warning! As you can see, he provides no figure for Gaza alone:

Per capita GDP, 2021 / 2022
Israel: $53,000
West Bank and Gaza: $3,500

That second figure plainly exceeds "less than a thousand dollars." But that number is for the West Bank and Gaza combined—and as he continues, Salmon notes that "per-capita income in Gaza is now just half the amount seen in the West Bank."

This suggests that per capita GDP for Gaza alone would have been well less than $3,500 during the period in question. As part of a larger overall view, Salmon offers this:

Palestinian GDP is likely to shrink by 3% in 2023, with per-capita income falling by 5%, per estimates from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
The big picture: Even before the current conflict, more than half of the people in Gaza lived in poverty, and 60% suffered from food insecurity. The combination of war and recession will only exacerbate Gaza's humanitarian crisis.
Where it stands: Per-capita income in Gaza is now just half the amount seen in the West Bank. As a result, Gaza accounts for less than 18% of Palestinian GDP, down from 34% before a strict blockade was put in place by Israel in 2007, according to the statistical bureau.

How reliable is the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics? We have no idea.

That said, Salmon was willing to go with the claim that, as of the start of this year, "more than half of the people in Gaza lived in poverty, and 60% suffered from food insecurity."

Also, he mentioned some sort of "strict blockade" which has made matters much, much worse. Could all that have something to do with the highlighted part of Barack Obama's recent "disgusting" remarks?

OBAMA: If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas:
That what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.
And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, or your uncle or your aunt, tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism.

According to Obama, what Hamas did was horrific—one might even say irredeemable. But he also said that we the people need to keep an additional fact in mind:

And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.

The "occupation" [has been] unbearable? Were GDP figures of the type we've presented part of what the former president had in mind?

For ourselves, we have a dream! We'd like to see a future where Israeli citizens and Palestinian citizens live in peace and prosperity. We want to see Palestinian children and Israeli children born into a world like that—with news of their moral and material success spreading elsewhere in the world.

In search of some such better world, Obama said that we the people need to keep a wide range of basic facts in mind. We can't simply stick to the set of facts which valorizes the population we may tend to identify with or favor, for whatever perfectly understandable reason or set of reasons.

Barghouti's figure may or may not have been perfectly accurate. That said, how often do you see any such matter discussed at all?

Joe Scarborough went off again on this morning's Morning Joe, offering a selective array of facts as he grew red and shouted. That's the way we humans are inclined to behave at times of war, or so the major top experts have all repeatedly said.

Obama said we have to consider a range of relevant facts. In response, a Newsweek editor went on last Sunday's Fox & Friends and said the former president's remarks had been "absolutely disgusting."

Astonishingly, she even seemed to say that he should have a yard sign in his yard—a sign which says, "Kill the Jews." And yes, that's what she said.

By the norms of our own blue tribe, the Fox & Friends guest is "highly educated." She's a Berkeley PhD, with an emphasis on the role played by cannibalism in the early novel in Britain. You can't get much smarter than that!

On that morning, she adopted another identity as her friends on Fox maintained a strategic silence: She became the latest member of the demographic long known as "humans at war."

Her behavior was truly astounding that day. Then too, we have our own Morning Joe program. What should we think about that?

HUMANS AT WAR: "Less than a thousand dollars," he said!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2023

What Obama was talking about: Way back when, a news report in the New York Times raised an important question.

Actually, the report appeared in print editions on November 1 of this year. Online, it appears beneath these dual headlines:

How Posters of Kidnapped Israelis Ignited a Firestorm on American Sidewalks
In the weeks since Hamas attacked Israel, fliers depicting the hostages have become ubiquitous. But in cities and on college campuses across the globe, anti-Israel protesters have removed them.

In cities and on college campuses, some people were putting up posters of kidnapped Israelis. Other people were following up by tearing the posters down.

So it went as a newly reignited war began to rage again. Midway through her news report in the Times, Katherine Rosman cut to the chase:

Some of those caught destroying the posters have been condemned on social media. A dentist in Boston and a person in South Florida, among others, have lost their jobs.
The battle has inflamed already tense emotions. And it captures one of the most fervently debated questions of the war: Whose suffering should command public attention and sympathy?

In our view, Katherine Rosman had given voice to an excellent question.

Whose suffering should command public attention and sympathy? In recent comments posted on videotape, Barack Oabam had seemed to answer in this war:

Everybody's suffering counts, the gentleman seemed to say.

So Obama had seemed to say! And as we've been noting this week, his comments triggered Batya Ungar-Sargon, a 42-year-old Newsweek editor and a PhD level expert on the role played by cannibalism within the early novel in Britain.

This past Sunday, Ungar-Sargon showed up on Fox & Friends and let her preferences show. According to experts, we humans may be inclined to behave this way at times like this—at terrible times of war.

Ungar-Sargon is a good, decent person, but on this occasion she was behaving very much like a human at war. Her statements that day were so remarkable that they deserve to be published again:

UNGAR-SARGON (11/5/23): Thank you so much for having me, Rachel. Thank you for your incredible courage at this time, and I also just have to say thank you to everybody at Fox News, every producer, every writer,
You guys have been incredible in a sea of antisemitic media and bigotry. So thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.
Speaking of signs, I was joking with a friend over Shabbat that the progressives need a new sign for their yard, right? "Black Lives Matter, In This House We Trust Science, No Human is Illegal, and Kill the Jews," right?
I mean, that's what we're seeing.
[Earlier speaker] is absolutely correct that the progressive movement is deeply, deeply antisemitic. Rashida Tlaib out there defending Hamas' chant, "From the river to the sea?" Why would anyone pick that as the hill to die on, I don't know.
But even President Obama, out there with a clip yesterday with absolute moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel. Absolutely disgusting stuff.
[...]
I feel very sure that this country will not accept this progressive movement with this disgusting antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. and we're going to see the unity of the American people and the good heartedness of the American people prevail.

With apologies for repeating her statement, we pose this obvious question:

Given his "absolutely disgusting" comments, should Barack Obama be gifted with a yard sign which says, "Kill the Jews?"

In real time, that's the way Ungar-Sargon's wonderfully humorous comment sounded. Needless to say, none of the three Fox friends who were present that day took issue with what their tough-talking guest had said.

It's astounding that we live in a world where commentary of this type, on a major "news" program, can pass without comment or mention. That said, experts continue to say that this is simply the way we humans are inclined to behave at times of war—and our own nation was involved in a great tribal war long before the events of October 7 in Israel.

In the wake of October 7's killings and kidnappings, as war began to come to Gaza, some news orgs attempted to report on the suffering on all sides. On October 11, the PBS NewsHour started down that long and deeply complicated road.

It was as we noted in yesterday's report. First, John Yang interviewed Yohanan Plesner, identified as "the president of the Israel Democracy Institute and a former member of the Knesset, the Israeli legislature."

Plesner described the state of affairs from one of many possible Israeli perspectives. Then, to his eternal credit, Yang actually said this:

YANG (10/11/23): For another perspective, we're joined by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He's a leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, which advocates nonviolence and offers an alternative to both Hamas and Fatah, which is the major force in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank.

Yang had decided to seek "another perspective!" Because we ourselves are inclined to believe that all suffering counts, we were struck by something Barghouti eventually said.

As we noted yesterday, Barghouti started by saying this:

"I, as a person, always say that I am against any killing of any civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli. And we're sorry for all those people who were killed, Palestinians and Israelis."

Barghouti had started by saying that all such suffering counts. As he continued, he made a factual claim we've seen no one explain or explore.

We're skipping past some of the colloquy between Yang and Barghouti. For a full transcript or to watch the videotape, you can just click here:

BARGHOUTI: I, as a person, always say that I am against any killing of any civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli. And we're sorry for all those people who were killed, Palestinians and Israelis.
But, unfortunately, everybody keeps avoiding the root cause of the problem.
[...]
YANG: You talk about the root cause, and there are—there's a generation of Palestinians who reject your call for nonviolence, who feel that this is how they have to respond. What do you say to them?
BARGHOUTI: I say to them, and I try to prove to them, that nonviolence is a much more effective way of achieving our freedom. That's the best way of doing that.
But one should ask the question, why these young people go in that direction? It's simply because they see no hope.
Eighty percent of young educated people in Gaza are under siege and are unemployed. The poverty is unbelievable.
The GDP per capita in Israel is $56,000 per year, while it is less than $1,000 per year—per capita per year in Gaza. Yet, Gazans are obliged to buy products at Israeli market price. These people don't see a hope, don't see a future.

Say what? Let's post that claim once again:

"The GDP per capita in Israel is $56,000 per year, while it is less than $1,000 per year—per capita per year in Gaza."

In Gaza, is GDP per capita less than $1000 per year?

If that statement is actually accurate, we can't tell you whose "fault" that is. But if that statement is accurate, could that be part of what Obama meant in the highlighted part of his "absolutely disgusting" comments?

OBAMA: If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas:
That what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.
And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, or your uncle or your aunt, tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism.

Obama described suffering on both sides, including the cosmic level of suffering in the Holocaust. "Absolutely disgustingly," he seemed to say that all such suffering matters.

We know nothing about Dr. Barghouti, or about his political conduct over the past many years.

To what extent is he an active apostle of nonviolence? We can't tell you that—but we can say this:

We were struck by the statement he made about those GDP figures—and we decided to see how accurate his statement was.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what we've found. As we conducted our search, we were exploring one of the many boring topics our news orgs, and certainly our cable news orgs, may possibly tend to avoid as they report on the war, or as they sometimes pretend to do so.

Whose suffering matters, the New York Times wondered. Whose side are you on?

Tomorrow: The road back to Trump Trump Jail

Rashida Tlaib adjusts her language!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2023

What's in a bunch of words? Yesterday, Rashida Tlaib was censured by the House.

Along the way, she seems to have adjusted her language. Headline included, here are two excerpts from the New York Times report about the censure vote:

House Censures Rashida Tlaib, Citing ‘River to the Sea’ Slogan
[...]
[The measure] cited Ms. Tlaib’s embrace of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a pro-Palestinian rallying cry that many regard as calling for the eradication of Israel and has been deemed antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League. The resolution called the phrase “a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”
Ms. Tlaib has said the slogan, which was used by pro-Palestinian protesters featured in a video she posted accusing President Biden of supporting genocide in Gaza, is “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.”
During debate of the resolution, Ms. Tlaib grew emotional on the House floor as she reiterated her calls for a cease-fire, defended her criticism of the Israeli government and pleaded for sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people.
“I can’t believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable,” she said, appearing to choke back tears as Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, stood up to comfort her. “The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me.”
Ms. Tlaib said her criticism had “always been” of the Israeli government, not the Israeli people, and warned her colleagues that the movement urging a cease-fire was “growing every single day.”

The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me? In our view, that's the kind of language people should be urged to get behind.

That said, Rep. Tlaib had originally gone with “from the river to the sea.” In this passage from the Times report, Rep. Jeffries pushes back against that choice of words:

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said in a statement before the vote that echoing “slogans that are widely understood as calling for the complete destruction of Israel—such as ‘from the river to the sea’—does not advance progress toward a two-state solution. Instead, it unacceptably risks further polarization, division and incitement to violence.”

For the record, Rep. Jeffries didn't vote in favor of censure, though 22 Democrats did. In our view, the Times report should have noted that fact.

What's in a bunch of words? Over at The Atlantic, Juliette Kayyem has criticized Tlaib for her original formulation, but also has complimented her for adopting more nuanced language. Here's how her essay ended:

KAYYEM (11/8/23): The burden of promoting a more civil discourse shouldn’t fall only on Tlaib and others sympathetic to the Palestinians. Supporters of Israel should not assume that pro-Palestinian means pro-Hamas. Students on many campuses genuinely view Israeli administration of the Palestinian territories as immoral; to portray their activism as mere anti-Semitism is to stifle legitimate inquiry. To defend any and all Israeli military actions by pointing out that Hamas started the war is to deny Israel agency.
Rather than making reasoned arguments that might win other people over, Tlaib has made herself the story by defending From the river to the sea. In response, the House passed a resolution last night to censure Tlaib for her comments. In a statement earlier yesterday, Tlaib accused her critics of trying to silence her. But she also took a notably more nuanced stance than her social-media posts did. “I will continue to work for a just and lasting peace,” she said, “that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people, centers peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and ensures that no person, no child has to suffer or live in fear of violence.”
That comment shows a belated recognition that the choices members of Congress make about language are important, and that good causes are seldom served by dubious and loaded slogans.

What's in a bunch of words? Rightly or wrongly. Kayyem applauds Tlaib's transition from a "dubious and loaded slogan" to a new statement in which Tlaib says that she wants to uphold "the human rights and dignity of all people," Israelis and Palestinians alike.

No one is required to agree with those views, but that's where Tlaib has now gone.

“The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me?” In our view, that's a very strong foundational statement.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jeffries said that Tlaib's original choice of words "does not advance progress toward a two-state solution." How many Americans could speak with clarity about that choice of words?

What exactly do people seek when they seek a "two-state solution?" To its credit, the Washington Post explores that very question today. The very question might seem a bit strange when searchers can simply click a link and find themselves reading this lengthy report about the "State of Palestine," which already has a flag and already seems to exist.

On blue tribe cable, our favorite reporters and friends have returned to our tribe's favorite topic:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

No legal trivia gets left behind as they pleasure us with these ruminations. But what would a "two-state solution" be like?

Over the course of the past many years, not to mention within the past month, have you seen our favorite stars make an attempt to explain those familiar words?

HUMANS AT WAR: A shooting death, plus GDP!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2023

But does anyone much really care? Rather plainly, former president Barack Obama had said a wide array of the darndest things.

Yesterday, we transcribed his remarks. Speaking about the war in Gaza, he had said such things as this:

He'd said that we should acknowledge the "complexity" of the overall situation. He'd said that we should acknowledge the truth of what may seem, on the surface, to be "contradictory ideas."

"You can speak one side of the truth," he had said. "But if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth!"

He'd even said that we shouldn't "confine ourselves to our outrage!"

Most inscrutably of all, the former president had actually said this:

He'd said we should be "out there talking to other people, including people who [we] disagree with." Then he hauled off and said this:

"If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it."

There it was, that "you've got to learn how to speak to others" diktat again! As with Brooks and Kristof and Bill Clinton before him, Obama had said that we need to "speak to somebody on the other side"—and he said we couldn't simply dismiss whatever such Others have said!

The guest on Fox had heard all this—and she knew what she had heard.

On Sunday morning's Fox & Friends, she said that Barack Obama's remarks had been "absolutely disgusting." She even repeated her wonderful joke, the one about the way progressives like Obama need to have yard signs which say, "Kill the Jews."

No other guest appeared on the show to critique what this guest had said. Nor was she asked to explain or defend her various remarkable statements.

At any rate, leave it to Obama! In a video clip which ran less than four minutes, he violated every rule of present-day "cable news" programming.

According to those well-known rules, seldom is heard a discouraging word on our favorite "cable news" programs. We never hear competing views from observers who may be on "the other side."

We don't have to "dismiss" what these Others have said because we never hear their opposing views in the first place! Our favorite stars, and our favorite producers, "dismiss" such viewpoints for us!

Obama spoke from an antique realm—from a world in which it's possible to imagine that there could be actual merit to more than one perspective or point of view. On cable news—on childish programs like Fox & Friends—this antique understanding is now almost wholly honored in the breach.

That said:

On the day when Obama was trashed on Fox, a familiar name appeared in a front-page report in the New York Times. Online, the news report appears beneath this pair of headlines:

How a Campaign of Extremist Violence Is Pushing the West Bank to the Brink
Israeli settlers and Palestinians have been locked in a cycle of bloodshed for decades. But extremist settler attacks could send the conflict out of control.

Viewers of Fox will never hear about the contents of this report. For that matter, viewers of MSNBC are also very unlikely to be burdened or bored by such complex content.

In all honesty, the familiar name wouldn't be familiar to most viewers of cable news. But shortly after the "horrific" behavior by Hamas on October 7—we're using Barack Obama's word—we had seen this same person interviewed on the PBS NewsHour.

Now he was quoted in the Times. The passage went like this:

GETTLEMAN ET AL (11/5/23): Palestinian leaders say their people are more frightened—by what is happening in Gaza and now across the West Bank—than they have been in a long time.
“Israel says they have the right to respond. They responded,” said Mustafa Bargouthi, a senior Palestinian lawmaker. “How many more thousand Palestinians should still die before they stop?”

In the case of Mr. Saleh, the man killed while picking olives, his family remains in shock.

In large part, the front-page report concerned the death of Bilal Mohammad Saleh, "a Palestinian sidewalk vendor of sage and thyme." Saleh had been shot and killed the previous week when he "went out with his family to pick olives from the gnarled trees that his family has owned for generations."

This incident happened in the West Bank, not in Gaza. The Times offered this overview:

GETTLEMAN ET AL: While the world’s attention has fallen on Gaza, violence in the West Bank, a much bigger and more complex Palestinian-majority area, is hitting its highest levels in years.
Some of the specific incidents, like the killing in the olive grove, reflect a longstanding problem in the West Bank that has gotten much worse since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks: Heavily armed extremist settlers have operated with impunity for years, many Palestinians say, and now their assaults are becoming bolder, deadlier and nonstop.
[,,,]
According to witness statements, video footage and analysts who have examined larger patterns of the violence, extremist settlers in the West Bank have been attacking Palestinian homes and businesses, blowing up their generators and solar panels, burning down the tents of seminomadic Bedouin herders—and even shooting people.
United Nations officials say that since Oct. 7, the Israeli military and armed settlers have killed more than 130 Palestinians in the West Bank. (Most of those deaths occurred in clashes with Israeli soldiers.)
Even before the Hamas attacks, settler violence was hitting its highest levels since the United Nations began tracking it in the mid-2000s. According to U.N. figures, there used to be one incident of settler violence a day. Now it is seven.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank are also escalating, and Israeli officials say there have been more than 550 since Oct. 7.

Was Saleh killed by "extremist settlers?" This news report didn't explicitly say. But this was the general situation on which Mustafa Bargouthi had commented.

For ourselves, we'd been struck by what we'd seen him say almost one month before.

Make no mistake! These killings in the West Bank are part of what Obama was talking about when he made his "absolutely disgusting" remarks on that short video clip.

It's also true that people who watch clown-car programs like Fox & Friends will never hear about these killings in the West Bank. We'll guess that a certain Newsweek editor will never bring this possible point of complexity to the long-misused viewers of Fox.

For ourselves, we recalled what we'd seen Bargouthi say almost one month before. He'd appeared on The NewsHour on October 11, interviewed by John Yang.

Yang spoke with a former Israeli legislator, then he spoke with Bargouthi. You can watch the interview here, or you can see the full transcript.

Yang said he was seeking "another perspective!" The interview started like this:

YANG (10/11/23): For another perspective, we're joined by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He's a leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, which advocates nonviolence and offers an alternative to both Hamas and Fatah, which is the major force in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank.
Dr. Barghouti, as the head of a Palestinian organization that advocates nonviolence, what's your reaction or what was your response to what happened in Southern Israel?
BARGHOUTI: You are absolutely right when you say that I'm an advocate of nonviolence.
We were shocked about what happened. I, as a person, always say that I am against any killing of any civilian, whether Palestinian or Israeli. And we're sorry for all those people who were killed, Palestinians and Israelis.
But, unfortunately, everybody keeps avoiding the root cause of the problem...

Yang had sought "another perspective!" However news orgs may spell his name, Barghouti continued from there.

On that occasion, we were struck by something Barghouti proceeded to say. It concerned the per capita GDP which prevails in Israel and in the Gaza Strip.

We aren't sure if his statement that night was perfectly accurate. Nor will you see such matters discussed by "our favorite reporters and friends" (including some who said to be "dear, dear friends"), no matter which of our corporate "cable news" channels you currently employ.

What did Barghouti say to Yang? Tomorrow, we'll post the text of his statement—and yes, his statement is closely related to one of the comments Obama would make a month later.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what he said. But under the current rules which govern our imitations of discourse, it might be said that it's fairly clear that nobody much really cares.

Barack Obama needs a sign, the Fox guest amusingly said.

Tomorrow: What Barghouti told Yang

Gotham parents oppose smaller classes!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2023

The dog which rarely barks: Perhaps and possibly to its credit, the New York Times seems to be expanding its coverage of public school issues.

We'll admit that that's a subjective impression, but it sometimes seems that way to us.

That said, we're not entirely sure that there's much to gain from the new topics which are being considered. We think, for example, of Sarah Mervosh's recent (detailed) report about the way Governor Mike DeWine has banned the practice known as "three-cueing" all across the state of Ohio.

What the Sam Hill is three-cueing? you ask. You're asking a very good question!

In her report, Mervosh answers your question in substantial detail. For the record, we don't mean that, in any way, as a criticism of Mervosh's report.

Instead, our problem is this:

We don't have gigantic confidence in frameworks which hail from our "educational experts." But the Times at least seems to be moving beyond the one topic it most adores—the evergreen question of who will get into Stuyvesant High, and may perhaps move on to Yale.

That said, there was a report in yesterday's Times which returned to that evergreen point of concern. In print editions, the report appeared on page A2. Online, it sits beneath these somewhat discouraging headlines:

Why Some Parents Oppose Smaller Classes
Families hoping to send their children to New York City’s elite public high schools don’t want the number of seats reduced.

Say what? Some Gotham parents oppose smaller classes? Perhaps a bit discouragingly, Barron and Clossom splain why:

BARRON (11/6/23): You write that some parents are against smaller class sizes. That’s almost unheard of. What’s going on?
CLOSSOM: A state law requires smaller classes in all grades and at all schools in New York City by 2028. In city high schools, classes would shrink to 25 students, from 34, bringing them close to class sizes in some suburban districts.
Families that want their children to attend selective public high schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science worry that their chances could decrease when there are fewer seats available.

Whatever the city does, it’s going to mean some transition pain for some people.
BARRON: How so?
CLOSSOM: Some schools that don’t have a lot of extra space will probably have to accept fewer students. Again, that’s a concern at elite high schools and other specialized schools, which are heavily valued by some low-income and immigrant families as the ticket to the middle class. Any plan that effectively changes how admissions work at those schools is sure to spark some debate.

The colloquy continues from there. But for perhaps the ten millionth time, a certain dog fails to bark.

We can't name the breed of the dog, but the barking would have asked this:

If a lot of additional kids could benefit from the accelerated courses of study at Gotham's selective public high schools, who doesn't the city simply create more schools of that type?

Why doesn't it open a Stuyvesant II and a Bronx Science Annex, thereby doubling the number of available seats? This is the world's most obvious question, but it never arises when writers at the New York Times return to this evergreen topic.

Moses never provided commandments about how many seats there should be at Stuyvesant High and Bronx Science. Putting our mathematics to work, twice as many kids could get admitted to those schools if the New York City Public Schools simply doubled the number of seats!

Coming: A letter concerning (the educational practice known as) "looping"

HUMANS AT WAR: Obama's "absolutely disgusting" remarks!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2023

What Obama said: Sunday morning, in the 8 a.m. hour, viewers of a cable news program were alerted to Obama's misconduct.

The day before, the former president had advanced an assessment which was "absolutely disgusting." Or at least, so said Batya Ungar-Sargon, the former Berkeley graduate student who is today one of the endlessly reinvented Newsweek's fifty-seven different editors.

Ungar-Sargon is 42 years old. Her comments this day were timeless. On this occasion, she did what experts say we humans are wired to do:

Ungar-Sargon had plainly selected a side. As we showed you yesterday, this is part of what she said on the highly tribal "cable news" show, Fox & Friends Weekend:

UNGAR-SARGON (11/5/23): Thank you so much for having me, Rachel. Thank you for your incredible courage at this time, and I also just have to say thank you to everybody at Fox News, every producer, every writer,
You guys have been incredible in a sea of antisemitic media and bigotry. So thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.
Speaking of signs, I was joking with a friend over Shabbat that the progressives need a new sign for their yard, right? "Black Lives Matter, In This House We Trust Science, No Human is Illegal, and Kill the Jews," right?
I mean, that's what we're seeing.
[Earlier speaker] is absolutely correct that the progressive movement is deeply, deeply antisemitic. Rashida Tlaib out there defending Hamas' chant, "From the river to the sea?" Why would anyone pick that as the hill to die on, I don't know.
But even President Obama, out there with a clip yesterday with absolute moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel. Absolutely disgusting stuff.
[...]
I feel very sure that this country will not accept this progressive movement with this disgusting antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. and we're going to see the unity of the American people and the good heartedness of the American people prevail.

Where once she'd been a graduate student, the current Ungar-Sargon is one of our truly great humorists.

Recently, she'd been joking with a friend about the outlook of the nation's progressives. Rim shot optional, this was the stuff of her quip:

Today's progressives are so deeply, deeply antisemitic that they need yards signs which say, "Kill the Jews."

So went Ungar-Sargon's latest award-winning joke. Based on context, it sounded like Barack Obama needs that yard sign too.

Ungar-Sargon was speaking with Rachel Campos-Duffy, one of the weekend friends. Campos-Duffy immediately began to ask if this progressive antisemitism might swing Jewish votes toward Donald J. Trump next year.

Indeed, why are so many Jewish voters Democrats to begin with? When Campos-Duffy asked, Ungar-Sargon offered this explanation:

"A lot of American go to college," she said. "And so they end up Democrats."

To watch that exchange, click here. But so it went as the weekend friends, aided by a succession of guests, brought the news to a significant segment of our rapidly failing nation.

For ourselves, we watched this interview live. We were surprised to hear that Obama had made absolutely disgusting remarks—disgusting comments which had apparently revealed his disgusting antisemitism.

We hadn't yet seen the video clip to which Ungar-Sargon referred. When we found the video clip, we were a bit surprised by one of the ways it began.

Below, we'll show you a transcript of Obama's complete remarks. But very, very early on, the antisemite said this:

And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, or your uncle or your aunt, tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism.

As part of his disgusting remarks, the antisemitic former president had seemed to say that we must maintain our awareness of "the madness of antisemitism."

No one mentioned this inconvenient fact during Sunday's interview. As is now standard on "cable news" programs, viewers of this Fox News show were being exposed to one Storyline only.

At times of war, we humans are strongly inclined to behave this way, major top experts have said. We're inclined to pick a side and to otherize Others. Or at least, so these experts all claim.

At any rate, here's the full text of what Obama said. Here's the full text of the videotape to which the former grad student was referring:

OBAMA: If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas:
That what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable.
And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents, or your great-grandparents, or your uncle or your aunt, tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism.
And what is true is that there are people right now who are dying, who have nothing to do with what Hamas did.
And what is true—right? I mean, we can go on for a while. And the problem with social media and TikTok activism and trying to debate this on that, is that you can’t speak the truth.
You can pretend to speak the truth. You can speak one side of the truth. And in some cases, you can try to maintain your moral innocence.
But that won’t solve the problem. And so if you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth and you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean. That all of us are complicit to some degree.
I look at this and I think back, "What could I have done during my presidency to move this forward?" as hard as I tried, and I’ve got the scars to prove it.
But there’s a part of me that still saying, "Well, was there something else I could have done?" That’s the conversation we should be having. Not just looking backwards, but looking forward.
And that can’t happen if we are confining ourselves to our outrage. I would rather see you out there talking to other people, including people who you disagree with.
If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it. Because you can't save that child without their help. Not in this situation.

To watch that tape, click here. But those are the "absolutely disgusting" remarks to which the self-assured Newsweek savant had referred.

In fairness, let's be fair! Obama had recommended the very approach we humans have always been inclined to reject when we march off to war:

For starters, he had said that we need to acknowledge the "complexity" of the tragic matter under review. Beyond that, he had said that we need to be willing to maintain what may seem to be contradictory ideas!

We need to acknowledge the accuracy of various countervailing ideas! At any rate, the first such idea Obama cited was this:

"What Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it."

Thus spake the antisemite! And as he continued, he seemed to describe the very way this topic would be handled on the Fox News Channel, and perhaps on MSNBC:

"You can pretend to speak the truth," the former president said. "You can speak one side of the truth."

And that's when Obama offered the prescription which we humans tend to reject at times of war. This is the bewildering thing Barack Obama now said:

"If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it."

We can't "confine ourselves to our outrage?" Even worse, we have to learn to listen to people who come from "the other side!"

We have to listen to such people! We can't just dismiss what they say!

Obama said there's no excuse for the horrific thing Hamas did. He said we must continue to be aware of "the madness of antisemitism."

In such ways, he apparently proved to Ungar-Sargon that he's deeply antisemitic. According to experts, the highly educated Berkeley PhD was behaving as we humans are wired to do during our endless wars.

Obama didn't sift the facts the way the Newsweek star prefers. According to experts, the "highly educated" Ungar-Sargon reacted to this behavior as do we humans at war!

Tomorrow: The endless sifting of facts

HUMANS AT WAR: Ungar-Sargon visits the friends!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2023

Obama denounced as disgusting: Batya Ungar-Sargon, age 42, holds a PhD from Berkeley.

For the record, she doesn't hold just any PhD. from Berkeley. She holds a PhD in the 18th-century novel.

Her dissertation was entitled "Coercive Pleasures: The Force and Form of the Novel 1719-1740." As you can see at this link, the 61-page masterwork starts exactly like this:

Abstract
Coercive Pleasures: The Force and Form of the Novel 1719-1740
by Batya Ungar-Sargon
Coercive Pleasures argues that the early novel in Britain mobilizes scenarios of rape, colonization, cannibalism, and infection, in order to model a phenomenology of reading in which the pleasures of submission to the work of fiction—figured as analogous to these other coercions—reveals the reader’s autonomy as itself a fiction. This is a project about the novel but also about the way in which literary forms mediate political models of subjectivity. Literary histories of the novel tend to relate its “rise” to the emergence of a liberal subject whose truth resides in her interior, autonomous and private self. I propose instead that privacy and autonomy are the price rather than the payoff of fiction. With its depiction of invasive and coercive content such as rape, colonialism, cannibalism, and infection, and its self-conscious deployment of forms that coerce absorbed reading, the novel reveals the reader’s consent to read to be part of a structure that infracts both readers’ and characters’ autonomy, producing a particularly modern pleasure...

As you can see by clicking that link, that opening paragraph continues at length from there. We'd be cheating if we didn't let you know how the abstract ends:

Coercive Pleasures argues that the novel intervenes to expose the pleasures of subject formation built on coercive consent. Some early novels identify and coopt the coercive pleasure that contract theory and consent-based models of political subjectivity deploy, while others intervene to disrupt this pleasure, critiquing implicitly, or even explicitly, the fictions of consent.

So the dissertation argues. In accord with the practices of our own imperfect blue tribe, its presentation allowed Ungar-Sargon to be certified as a "highly educated" person.

At any rate, in Ungar-Sargon's view at that time, the early novel in Britain mobilizes scenarios of rape, colonization, cannibalism, and infection in order to model a phenomenology of reading in which the pleasures of submission to the work of fiction reveals the reader’s autonomy as itself a fiction. With its depiction of such content, it reveals the reader’s consent to read to be part of a structure that infracts both readers’ and characters’ autonomy!

On the one hand, it's obvious that Ungar-Sargon produced some solid, thought-provoking stuff in her doctoral dissertation.

On the other hand, very few readers will have any idea how to assess such statements. Her statements on yesterday's Fox & Friends Weekend may be easier to assess.

Back then, Ungar-Sargon was a Berkeley graduate student. Today, she appears on the masthead of the endlessly reinvented Newsweek as Deputy Editor, Opinion.

For the record, three other people are mastheaded that same way. By our count, Newsweek's masthead lists five correspondents and fifty-seven editors, though there may be a very good reason for that.

Back then, Ungar-Sargon was a grad student at Berkeley. Yesterday morning, she was a guest on Fox.

Her dissertation is somewhat hard to parse. Her statements on Fox were substantially more direct.

Ungar-Sargon was interviewed by one of the regular weekend friends—by Rachel Campos-Duffy, who got her start, way back when, on MTV's The Real World. You can watch the four-minute interview simply by clicking here. We offer the following excerpts:

UNGAR-SARGON (11/5/23): Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Rachel. Thank you for your incredible courage at this time, and I also just have to say thank you to everybody at Fox News, every producer, every writer,
You guys have been incredible in a sea of antisemitic media and bigotry. So thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.
Speaking of signs, I was joking with a friend over Shabbat that the progressives need a new sign for their yard, right? "Black Lives Matter, In This House We Trust Science, No Human is Illegal, and Kill the Jews," right?
I mean, that's what we're seeing.
[Earlier speaker] is absolutely correct that the progressive movement is deeply, deeply antisemitic. Rashida Tlaib out there defending Hamas' chant, "From the river to the sea?" Why would anyone pick that as the hill to die on, I don't know.
But even President Obama, out there with a clip yesterday with absolute moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel. Absolutely disgusting stuff.
[...]
I feel very sure that this country will not accept this progressive movement with this disgusting antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. and we're going to see the unity of the American people and the good heartedness of the American people prevail.

Needless to say, people are entitled to state their views. Those are among the views the former grad student stated.

Some of her views were surprising. According to the Newsweek editor, progressives need to put signs in their yards which say, "Kill the Jews."

"The progressive movement is deeply, deeply antisemitic," the former grad student sweepingly said. She named exactly one such person—Rep. Tlaib. Or did she mention two?

As we watched, we were most struck by the Newsweek editor's claim that former president Obama had been "out there" on Saturday with a clip which included "absolutely disgusting stuff."

Presumably, Barack Obama is guilty of the "disgusting antisemitism" too. Presumably, he needs a sign in his front yard—a sign which says, "Kill the Jews."

At we watched the interview, we hadn't yet seen the video clip to which Ungar-Sargon referred. You can watch that four-minute clip simply by clicking here.

Tomorrow, we'll transcribe what Obama actually says in that video clip. As for the highly convicted Ungar-Sargon, we would venture this:

She holds a PhD from Berkeley. According to the norms of our imperfect tribe, that makes her "highly educated."

She's also a human being, speaking at a time of war. According to experts, we humans tend to pick a side and start attacking Others during our endless wars.

Also, we tend to limit ourselves to the statements, claims and views which valorize the particular side we've chosen. No other views will be heard!

Yesterday, Fox viewers heard no dissenting view about Ungar-Sargon's controversial claims concerning the early novel in Britain. Nor did anyone critique what she said about the way we progressives, apparently including Obama, want to "[UGLY PHRASE WITHHELD]."

This is very human stuff. Indeed, disconsolate experts have asked us if it's all that different from the recent pseudo-discussions offered on Morning Joe.

Back then, she was a graduate student. Today, she's a human at war.

Tomorrow: Transcribing Barack Obama

Here's what Brother Scarborough said!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Much heat, almost no light: As we noted yesterday, it seems to us that Harvard president Claudine Gay has offered some good, sound advice.

Her advice came as part of a longer statement concerning events in Israel and the Gaza Strip. We'll show you her full text below, but as we noted yesterday, her good, sound advice went like this:

"We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame."

How do we know that Gay said that? Here's the background on that:

We had gone looking for Gay's recent statements because of an exchange we heard on Tuesday's Morning Joe.

In the excerpt offered below, we agree with the first thing Mike Barnicle says. After that, the program's latest angry exchange would become remarkably fuzzy:

BARNICLE (10/31/23): In Atlanta, there's a center for communicable diseases where the government spend a lot of money studying diseases.
Antisemitism is the oldest disease we live with, and we live with it each and every day. And stunningly, in this day and age, it's grown explosively.
On college campuses, Mimi [Robach], everywhere, you wonder, "How did they get into college? How did they— With these beliefs, how did they get into college?"

That's the way the exchange began. As he started, Barnicle seemed to be talking about certain college students—but at this point, Brother Scarborough jumped in with this:

SCARBOROUGH (continuing directly): Because the presidents of the colleges can't even condemn it! Did you see how long it took?
BARNICLE: Five tries at Harvard.
SCARBOROUGH: At Harvard! Five tries at Harvard to say raping teenage girls and shooting kids at concerts and burning babies is terrorism and it's unacceptable. Five! Tries!

Scarborough was visibly irate. At this point, Mika introduced Mimi Robach, and the discussion turned in a somewhat different direction.

That said, a few minutes later, Scarborough returned to his earlier theme. If you want to watch the entire exchange, you can just click here:

SCARBOROUGH: And again, where does that start? That starts with where and what we teach our students. And I want to know—and I'm glad the Biden administration is doing something about it. I want to know how people are allowed to lead the most elite universities in America, and they are morally confused, and baffled, by what they call the raping of women and the burning of babies.

Scarborough seemed to be wondering why morally confused people like Gay are allowed to lead elite universities like Harvard. As he is paid to do, Willie jumped in to agree:

"To most of us, this isn't a hard one," the sidekick modestly said. "To not be able to condemn unequivocally what happened on October 7 is a huge moral failing."

For ourselves, we were intrigued by the indictment of "Harvard." According to Barnicle and Scarborough, it had taken five tries for "Harvard" to say that raping teenage girls, shooting kids at concert and burning babies is terrorism and is unacceptable.

By whatever means, Scarborough and Barnicle seemed to be well choreographed as they advanced this particular claim.

In the original exchange, Scarborough tossed the topic to Barnicle. Barnicle quickly supplied the claim about the way it took Harvard five tries to condemn the behaviors in question.

Scarborough quickly agreed about the five tries. But who and what were they talking about? They didn't mention any names or specify any such statements.

The angry pundits didn't try to document their shared claim. Which "five tries," by which unnamed people, did they have in mind? Beyond that, who at Harvard had finally gotten the matter right?

Neither pundit bothered to say. We decided to work the Google machine—and we quickly came upon the statement shown below.

The statement was made by President Gay. For the record, it included the sound advice to which we've already referred.

Is this where "Harvard" finally got it right? In her official statement, President Gay had said this:

War in the Middle East
A Statement from President Claudine Gay
As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.
Let me also state, on this matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group—not even 30 student groups—speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.
We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame. And I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue.

In that statement, President Gay had condemned the "atrocities perpetrated by Hamas." She had even referred to those actions as "terrorist atrocities!"

Was that the statement in which "Harvard" had finally got it right? Scarborough was too busy ranting and shouting to explain what he was talking about—but as you can see if you click this link, Gay's statement was made all the way back on October 10, three weeks before the red-faced rants by the furious cable news stars and a mere two to three days after the "abhorrent" behavior in question.

In that statement, Gary doesn't seem "confused" to us. What the heck were the cable stars actually talking about?

Scarborough and Barnicle have been very busy in recent days producing more heat than light. Along with other Morning Joe guests, they have been extremely loud, and extremely imprecise.

Willie is almost always there to repeat whatever was said.

In her statement on October 10, Gay suggested that we try to illuminate, not to inflame, as we discuss the events in question. As we all know, that isn't the way the game is played on these "cable news" TV shows.

We'll have more on this topic next week. We've seen a lot of inflammation over the past several days.

In this instance, who and what were Barnicle and Scarborough actually talking about? There was no way for viewers to know.

At Morning Joe, no one bothers with piddle like that. It's thunder all the way down.

CLINTONS AND OTHERS: The Clintons have sketched two different approaches!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Whose side are you on? On the evening of October 25, his son had been shot and killed as part of the latest mass shooting event, this time in Lewiston, Maine.

On the morning of October 27, the grieving father was interviewed on CNN. He said he refused to hate the killer. The interview ended like this:

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR (10/27/23): Your son—it is clear that all the good in him came from so much good in you. Thank you for sharing about him with us this morning. And we're here for whatever you need.
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Thank you very much.
HARLOW: Of course.
(Turns to co-anchor.)
HARLOW: No love like a parent's love, right?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: I don't—I don't have anything to say.
HARLOW: What a great human.
MATTINGLY: He said all of the things. And I wish I and everyone else could be more—
HARLOW: Like him.
MATTINGLY: —like him.
HARLOW: We'll be back.

There were pauses for emotion. Watching the interview, it wasn't hard to understand why Harlow and Mattingly had assessed the grieving father in the way they did.

Then again, there was this:

Along the way, the grieving father had made an odd remark about the "diversity" which has been taking place in the Lewiston area. And not only that! Two years earlier, a set of extremely odd remarks had resulted in this local news report, headline included:

Auburn’s Leroy Walker apologizes for racist comments /
City leaders say they'll form new diversity committee to tackle racial issues in Auburn

City Councilor Leroy Walker apologized Friday for racist comments he expressed this week as he discussed a proposal to name a footbridge for former Mayor John Jenkins.
Walker said in a prepared statement that Jenkins was “a good friend of mine for 40 years” and he “meant no disrespect to him or his family.”
Walker, who represents the New Auburn-centered Ward 5 and is running unopposed for a sixth term, said he understands his comments at Tuesday’s council meeting “were insensitive and inappropriate.”
“I humbly and sincerely apologize,” Walker said.

That city councilor is the same person who was lionized, two years later, on the CNN program. It seems to us that these dueling portraits of this man offer us Democratic voters a chance to assess some of the instinctive behaviors of our own flailing blue tribe.

Go ahead and make your assessment! Is the grieving father a great human being? Or should he mainly be assessed on the basis of the very odd remarks which were explicitly described, in a local newspaper's news report, as a "racist rant?"

How would you assess this person? For a fuller account of those earlier comments, you can just click here.

Is the grieving father an amazing human being, or is he simply another one of Those People? It seems to us that Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton have sketched the outlines of two different ways our badly floundering tribe can approach such questions.

In yesterday's report, we described Bill Clinton's general approach. His home state's Pentecostals rarely for voted for him. But he attended one of their events every summer, and as part of a longer portrait, he offered this appraisal in his 2004 book, My Life:

CLINTON (page 251): Far more important than what I saw the Pentecostals do were the friendships I made among them. I liked and admired them because they lived their faith. They are strictly anti-abortion, but unlike some others, they will make sure that any unwanted baby, regardless of race or disability, has a loving home. They disagreed with me on abortion and gay rights, but they still followed Christ’s admonition to love their neighbors.
[...]
Knowing the Pentecostals has enriched and changed my life. Whatever your religious views, or lack of them, seeing people live their faith in a spirit of love toward all people, not just your own, is beautiful to behold. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pentecostal service, don’t miss it.

Bill Clinton said that he had seen the good in this group of red voters. He even said that knowing them had "enriched and changed" his life!

People can assess that presentation in any number of ways. That said, while Bill Clinton has generally leaned on the side of inclusion, Hillary Clinton has recently voiced a different type of reaction.

Donald J. Trump may be leading President Biden in the polls! How can this still be happening, Christian Amanpour asked:

AMANPOUR (10/5/23): When you see another matchup between, potentially Trump and President Biden, what goes through your mind? And particularly, how do you process that this person who defeated you back in 2016 is still at it, given all that you've said—91 indictments, you know, civil fraud, sexual transgressions, according to the courts. How is this still happening?
CLINTON: It's a classic tale of an authoritarian populist who really has a grip on the emotional, psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population. And the base of the Republican Party, for whatever combination of reasons, and it is emotional and psychological, sees in him someone who speaks for them.
And they are determined that they will continue to vote for him, attend his rallies, wear his merchandise. Because for whatever reason, he and his very negative, nasty form of politics resonates with them.
Maybe they don't like migrants. Maybe they don't like gay people or black people or the woman who got the promotion at work they didn't get.
Whatever the reason, you know, Make America Great Again was a bid for nostalgia, to return to a place where, you know, people could be in charge of their lives, feel empowered, say what they want, insult whoever came in their way.
And that was really attractive to a significant portion of the Republican base. So it is like a cult. And somebody has to break the—break that momentum. And that's why I believe Joe Biden will defeat them. And hopefully, then that will be the end and the fever will break.

Why might someone favor Trump? In her answer to Amanpour, Hillary Clinton imagined no possibility that wasn't linked to racism, homophobia or sexism or to membership in a cult.

Hillary Clinton sketched a portrait of Others; Bill Clinton had sketched a portrait of friends. Meanwhile, this answer by Hillary Clinton called to mind a statement she made in 2016—a politically unfortunate statement which may, all by itself, have sent Trump to the White House.

In that statement, Hillary Clinton had said that half of Trump' voters could be placed in a "basket of deplorables." As transcribed by Time magazine, here are her fuller remarks:

We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
[Laughter/applause]
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people—now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric.
Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket—and I know this because I see friends from all over America here—I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas—as well as, you know, New York and California—but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Credit where due! On that occasion, she started by acknowledging that she was being "grossly generalistic." Also this:

On that occasion, she condemned only half of Donald J. Trump's supporters as "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic."

"You name it," she somewhat cheekily said. She also seemed to say that some or all of those people were flatly "irredeemable."

On that occasion, Hillary Clinton also said that we should empathize with the other half of Trump's supporters. When she spoke with Amanpour last month, that dispensation was gone.

Did the grieving father from Auburn, Maine vote for Donld J. Trump? We have no idea, but he certainly might have.

Back in 2021, why did he make the odd remarks concerning a very good person who he said he had always regarded as a friend? Did those remarks show that the grieving father is racist?

We have no idea how to answer those questions. In closing, we'll offer this:

Candidate Clinton's remarks in 2016 were weaponized against her. Given the narrow way that race was decided, it's imaginable that Trump ended up in the White House because of that one unscripted remark.

Politically, that remark may have hurt Candidate Clinton. That doesn't necessarily mean that it was wrong on the merits.

So how about it? When it comes to their reactions to others, who's actually right on the actual merits—the gentleman or the tiger?

On this matter, we would side with Bill Clinton's instinctive assessments. That said, many liberals and progressives would think our assessment is wrong.

Many liberals and progressives will be inclined to think that Hillary Clinton's assessment is fundamentally accurate. That said, liberals have been shedding votes among certain demographic groups, dating back to the 1960s, as we continue to offer such sweeping public accusations.

David Brooks says that national survival is at stake in matters of this type. He may be thinking of the way such public accusations swing votes over to people like Trump.

Nicholas Kristof says that "poisonous hatred" from the Israel/Hamas war is "spilling over to the United States and other countries worldwide." He says that the growth of this variegated hatred will "make it more difficult to ever...look into one another’s eyes and find a path to peace."

Offering those remarks as background, whose instincts are more right about those other people? Who's right about the tens of millions of people who will vote for Trump?

Politically and on the merits, we would side with Bill Clinton's instincts on this general matter. We don't think a person has to be irredeemable in order to be voting for Trump.

We strongly disagree with those voters. But then, those voters—those neighbors and friends—also disagree with us!

We think there are reasons why a decent person might choose to vote for Trump. In our view, the fact that we blues have a hard time imagining such reasons may perhaps say something unflattering about such self-impressed people as us!

Politically and on the merits, we'd side with Bill Clinton's instincts on this general matter. That, of course, doesn't mean that Bill Clinton is somehow "right," or that Hillary Clinton is "wrong."

Clinton and Clinton lean different ways. Now for an intended irony:

When it comes to the attempt to "see others," whose side are you on?

Harvard president gives good advice!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Scarborough doesn't listen: Not long ago, Harvard president Claudine Gay offered some good, sound advice.

It was part of a longer statement about events in Israel and in the Gaza Strip. The good, sound advice went like this:

"We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame."

That was Claudine Gay's advice. She graduated from Harvard in the class of 1998, became president just last year.

We thought Gay offered good, sound advice. In our view, Joe Scarborough and his "recitation chorus" have been strongly inclined to take things down a different, louder road.

Echoing Mike Barnicle, Scarborough offered some incoherent remarks about Harvard—and therefore, presumably about Gay—on his Halloween morning shoutfest.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what he and Barnicle said. To see what the two fellows said, you can just click here. In our view, their highly imprecise ranting didn't serve to illuminate, but may well have served to inflame.

So it went on that "cable news" show, where The Guests All Say The Same Things. In an alternate vein, we recommend the Washington Post news report which appeared in print editions today beneath this regrettable headline:

DC-area schools report more bias incidents against Jews, Palestinians

Elwood and Asbury did the reporting. Their report started as shown:

Students on K-12 campuses throughout the Washington region have reported finding antisemitic graffiti in bathrooms, hallways and parking lots since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and Palestinian students recount being called terrorists and feeling unwelcome in their school communities.
It’s difficult to quantify the number of incidents that students are experiencing. Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia’s largest school district, does not keep data on the types of hate or bias incidents reported in its schools, and police say they receive reports for only a small number of the episodes that do occur. Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland’s largest school district, did not provide data on the number of incidents.
Still, community organizations have seen a surge in reports. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said it has experienced a “dramatic uptick” in requests for assistance from students, parents and teachers since the Oct. 7 attack, said Guila Franklin Siegel, the associate director of the organization, which serves students in Maryland, Northern Virginia and D.C. And the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported a surge of complaints, with more than 770 since the attack—the largest wave the organization said it has seen since December 2015, when former president Donald Trump announced he would pursue a “total and complete shutdown” of the entry of Muslims into the United States.

Presumably, we don't want any kids, or any teens, subjected to threats or harassment. We want Jewish kids to feel safe and respected in their schools, Palestinian kids as well.

In our view, Elwood and Asbury did a good job supporting the ancient dream of Jewish and Palestinian kids together. The general atmosphere has been quite different on the daily Scarborough show. In our view, these very, very, very rich people are often just amazingly dumb, unimpressive, blind.

Claudine Gay offered good, sound advice. MoJo has featured few takers.

CLINTONS AND OTHERS: The poisonous hatred is already here!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2023

A warning from Nicholas Kristof: We sometimes think that Nicholas Kristof tends to get out over his skis on certain specialized issues.

We sometimes think that he tends to accept the findings of the people who get described as "experts." In some of those areas, these experts have tended to be asleep at their posts again and again and again.

We sometimes think such things about Kristof. That said, when it comes to the question of "seeing others," we're inclined to say that he's the expert—and that the expert here isn't wrong.

A few weeks back, the New York Times' David Brooks said that "national survival" is at stake, due to our inability to "see others." We discussed his essay for a week, starting with this report.

The current Gaza war hadn't started when Brooks wrote the new book he was discussing. It started on October 7. In this morning's New York Times, headline included, his colleague Kristof writes this, reporting from Jerusalem:

What Happens When We Lose Sight of Our Shared Humanity
One reason I’m afraid that the worst is yet to come in the Middle East is that the mutual dehumanization is the most savage I’ve ever seen it in decades of on-the-ground reporting in the region.
Israel’s invasion of Gaza is destroying tunnels, ammunition dumps and Hamas fighters, yes. But I’m afraid it’s also helping to pulverize the recognition of shared humanity that in the long run allows people to live beside one another in peace. The poisonous hatred in turn is already spilling over to the United States and other countries worldwide.
[...]
The Biden administration says it welcomes a humanitarian pause, and it should push for this more resolutely as an occasion to provide medicine, water and food to civilians while also seeking at least a partial prisoner exchange. It should also ask Israel to refocus its warfare more narrowly on Hamas itself, because every extra bomb that hits civilians digs us deeper into this crater of hatred and will make it more difficult to ever clamber out, look into one another’s eyes and find a path to peace.

Should Israel fashion "a humanitarian pause?" We offer no view on that question.

At any rate, we've shown you how Kristof's new column begins and ends. And be forewarned—we've omitted mountains of deeply important context.

We expect to return to Kristof's column, and to those mountains of context, in our reports next week. For today, we'll note the way Kristof's framework seems to track the framework offered by David Brooks.

We need to learn to "see others," Brooks said. He called it a matter of national survival,

This morning, Kristof says that we need to be able to "look into one another’s eyes and find a path to peace." He says that the "poisonous hatred" he has found in his recent trip to the Middle East "is already spilling over to the United States."

We invite you to pair those recent remarks. It seems to us that Kristof and Brooks have been walking the same side of a certain bomb-littered street.

For what it's worth, Brooks is still featured on the PBS NewsHour as the conservative member of the program's weekly pundit tandem. Kristof has long been seen as a generally liberal columnist.

That said, each observer seems to feel that we Americans need to learn to "see others" with greater empathy and understanding—that we need to learn to "look into one another’s eyes and find a path to peace."

In the midst of this discussion came our nation's latest mass shooting, this time in Lewiston, Maine. Along with that came a slightly peculiar remark by a grieving father who son had been killed in this mass shooting event.

We'll return to that father's comments tomorrow. For today, we want to direct you to a divergent pair of approaches to the general task of "seeing others."

One approach to this worldwide problem has come from Hillary Clinton. The other approach has come from her well-known husband, Bill Clinton.

For ourselves, we strongly favor Bill Clinton's general approach to this matter. We've discussed it many times before, most recently on September 15.

In this particular matter, we'd be inclined to cast Bill Clinton in the Gallant role. He refuses to turn others into Others, as in this striking passage from his lengthy book, My Life:

CLINTON (page 251): Far more important than what I saw the Pentecostals do were the friendships I made among them. I liked and admired them because they lived their faith. They are strictly anti-abortion, but unlike some others, they will make sure that any unwanted baby, regardless of race or disability, has a loving home. They disagreed with me on abortion and gay rights, but they still followed Christ’s admonition to love their neighbors.
[...]
Knowing the Pentecostals has enriched and changed my life. Whatever your religious views, or lack of them, seeing people live their faith in a spirit of love toward all people, not just your own, is beautiful to behold. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pentecostal service, don’t miss it.

Quite plainly, those qualify as unusual remarks from a major Democratic politician. The overall story is this:

As a general matter, Arkansas' Pentecostals didn't vote for Governor Clinton. Beyond that, they disagreed with him on several major issues.

But as an ex-president, Bill Clinton said that his state's Pentecostals had enriched and changed his life. So it tended to go with Bill Clinton, who tended to say that we don't have a single person to waste.

In our view, Hillary Clinton has tended to take a less helpful approach to this general matter. That doesn't mean that she's a bad person. We'd say it may mean that she, like everyone else, is simply a person person.

Hillary Clinton made a recent statement in which, we'd be inclined to say, she wasn't working especially hard on the task of "seeing others." It seemed to us that she took millions of others and turned them into millions of Others, as she perhaps did with a famous, unfortunate statement during the 2016 campaign.

Some will think that Hillary Clinton was right on target with each of these remarks. Tomorrow, we'll recall those remarks—and we'll return to several remarks by the grieving father in Maine, including some weird remarks from 2021 which were expressly described as "racist."

Is the grieving father a decent person, or is he simply one of the Others? For what it's worth, we're inclined to agree, as a general matter, with what Kristof has said this morning:

The invention of Others is a worldwide disaster, and it always has been.

Tomorrow: What the grieving father once said

Another blue professor at Davis!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Goodbye, calabazas: We hated to see Halloween go. It takes with it the start of the end to the daily pleasure we've taken from our neighborhood's displays of winter squash.

As we noted yesterday, we're especially indebted to those cultivars which are "extremely variable in size, shape, and color," which may be the calabazas. They seem to exist to provide visual pleasure and to do little else. Here's the quote from Atticus Finch which those cultivars call to mind:

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy...They don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

So too with the cultivars of winter squash which aren't orange and round. They don't do one thing but create visual surprises for us to enjoy. In our view, it's a sin to walk by such cultivars without stopping to admire their work.

On the other hand, this:

We've been listening to many deeply counterproductive discussions of events in Israel and the Gaza Strip. We're thinking now of discussions we've watched on Morning Joe and on Deadline: White House, right there on our own tribe's channel.

We expect to focus on those discussions in our dispatches next week. For today, we'll direct you to a tragic column by the Washington Post's Charles Lane.

Like the Atlantic's Graeme Wood, Lane watched the IDF's presentation concerning the savagery of the October 7 killings. Headline included, here's Lane's account of what he saw:

What I saw when I watched videos of the Hamas attack
[...]
What was revelatory—what you really do have to see and hear to believe—is the attitude of the terrorists. They are having the time of their lives. Some whoop with delight over dead civilians lying on a highway. A team of gunmen brings a dead Israeli soldier back to Gaza and stands triumphantly over his body, as a crowd spontaneously rushes forward to kick and stomp the corpse. Young, heavily armed members of Hamas’s elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades pose for a video selfie, shouting in Arabic, “that’s how it’s done.” (The embassy provided translations.)
Surely, the most chilling part of the film is an audio-only clip: a terrorist calling home to tell his parents that he is in Israel and killing Jews—10, he boasts, including a woman whose phone he is using. “Their blood is on my hands,” he cries, joyously. “Your son’s a hero.”

Sadly, tragically, this sort of behavior is a familiar part of human behavior down through the annals of time. Even in modern times, murderous behavior of this type isn't unique to Hamas.

Beyond that, people may tend to respond in predictable ways to behavior of that type. Here was Michelle Goldberg, just last week, with this account of the behavior of another professor at Cal Davis:

With War in Israel, the Cancel Culture Debate Comes Full Circle
[...]
Part of me shudders to view the unfolding catastrophe in Israel and Gaza through the provincial lens of America’s cancel culture debate. In some ways, that debate has now come full circle, because pro-Palestinian voices were being censored long before the phrase “cancel culture” existed, one reason the left was unwise in recent years to prevaricate about the value of free speech. But if someone as evenhanded as Thrall now finds his talks being dropped, we’re in an especially repressive period. And in a time of war, particularly a war shrouded in fiercely competing narratives, free speech is more important than ever.
I don’t like the fact that the statement Nguyen signed gestured only vaguely at Hamas’s slaughter of Israeli civilians. In calling off his Friday evening appearance, 92NY, a Jewish organization, was playing by rules much of the left established, privileging sensitivity to traumatized communities ahead of the robust exchange of ideas. And supporters of Israel are hardly alone in creating a censorious atmosphere; particularly on college campuses, it is Zionists who feel silenced and intimidated. A professor at the University of California, Davis, is facing investigation by the university for a social media post calling for the targeting of “Zionist journalists,” which said, “They have houses with addresses, kids in school,” and included emojis of a knife, an ax and three drops of blood.

If you want to get the full context, you'll have to read the full column. The highlighted passage follows on yesterday's post about another professor at Cal Davis—the one who said that a good way to get rid of police is to shoot them in the back.

Concerning the behavior of this second professor, we read the column to which Goldberg linked. As it turns out, the professor in question "received her PhD in the history of consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz."

At times like these, we humans are wired to identify the Others and to seek war with such beasts. Along the way, our blue tribe can be quite unwise too. It seems to us that we blues should try to get a bit more clear about that tragic fact.

Blue pumpkins are there to bring us joy. Blue professors can go off the tracks!

CLINTONS AND OTHERS: What was the resident talking about?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2023

"Diversity" comes to Maine: On October 25, a 40-year-old man named Robert Card shot and killed at least 18 people at two separate locations in Lewiston, Maine.

It has been said that Card had been "hearing voices" in the months leading up to this brutal event.

As far as we know, this claim hasn't been verified or confirmed. But according to the leading authority on such matters, the phenomenon may be a sign of a (severe) mental illness:

Auditory hallucinations
An auditory hallucination, or paracusia, is a form of hallucination that involves perceiving sounds without auditory stimulus. While experiencing an auditory hallucination, the affected person would hear a sound or sounds which did not come from the natural environment.
A common form of auditory hallucination involves hearing one or more voices without a speaker present, known as an auditory verbal hallucination. This may be associated with psychotic disorders, most notably schizophrenia, and this phenomenon is often used to diagnose these conditions...

Further discussion continues from there. If you're willing to click the links, the discussion goes on at substantial length. In all likelihood, you'll see few discussions of this matter in the high-end mainstream press.

We can't tell you why our high-end journalists, and our top news orgs, seem disinclined to interview medical specialists about such significant matters. That said, we'd say that the Auburn, Maine resident whose son was shot and killed may have had a strong point when he spoke to Poppy Harlow on CNN two days after the killings:

HARLOW (10/27/23): I'm struck by your remarks yesterday that you do not harbor hate or anger for the man who took your son's life. And I wonder how that's possible despite your grief.
AUBURN RESIDENT: Uh, you have to put that part of it—you have to put it out of your mind. You have to let the Lord do whatever needs to be done. And if this person was, at the time, in his right mind, I believe he would have been a loving person just like we are. There's something that went wrong.
[...]
And I'm sure this man— Whatever happened to his mind, I'm sure he wasn't born to be a killer. And he's got, I'm sure, a father and a mother that would have never believed this would have happened with him. So all I can say is, I'm sorry that it's happened to all of us, and I'm sorry what may happen to him. And God will prevail.

Borrowing from the language of Hank Williams, the killer had been born as "some mother's darling son." At some point, something had gone (badly) wrong in his mind, this grieving father now said.

We're inclined to assume that this grieving father had a very good point.

We can't explain why our major news orgs are so reluctant to discuss the role which is often played in our public lives by (severe) mental illness. That said, the grieving father refused to hate. As we noted yesterday, the views he expressed struck Harlow and her co-anchor as being highly enlightened.

The views the grieving father expressed struck us that way too. But as we noted yesterday, he made a somewhat odd remark in the course of stating those views:

AUBURN RESIDENT: We have—we really have a loving community. We have two cities here—sister cities. They both believe that their city is the best city, and that's the way we are. But we love each other.
We travel back and forth to all businesses. We make plans together. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And as a city councilor, I know a lot of their feelings and they know a lot of mine. The two cities try to make the cities the proudest place to be.
Diversity, of course, is here and we know that, but we don't go around shooting each other. So you know, I just hope we can move on through this and get it behind us so that we can start healing. And thank God we have you people to keep our loved ones alive for a few more days.
HARLOW: Your son—it is clear that all the good in him came from so much good in you. Thank you for sharing about him with us this morning. And we're here for whatever you need.

Say what? "Diversity is here, and we know that, but we don't go around shooting each other?"

Harlow didn't address this throw-away comment. But as the term is commonly understood, "diversity" seems to have played no role in this latest mass shooting event. What could the Auburn resident have meant by that odd remark?

Presumably, the "diversity" to which he referred involves the widely reported way Somali immigrants have moved to cities like Lewiston in the past twenty-odd years. We don't know that that's what he meant, but it seems like a fairly obvious supposition.

As readers may know, Maine has always been a heavily "white" state. Asa of July 2022, the Census Bureau offered these estimated for the state's population as a whole:

State of Maine, July 2022
White: 92.2%
Black: 2.0%
Hispanic: 2.1%
Asian-American: 1.4%

The state of Maine, on the whole, is still quite heavily "white." But back around the turn of the century, Somali immigrants began moving into some of the cities in southern Maine—into cities like Lewiston and Portland.

According to an array of reports, these communities have largely been successful at the task of assimilation, acceptance, integration, welcome. Two years ago, to cite one example, CNN offered an upbeat report about South Portland beneath this upbeat headline:

A Maine city that’s 90% White now has a Somali mayor

That sounds like success to us! Two years earlier, Cynthia Anderson had offered a lengthy essay in the Christian Science Monitor concerning the way this project has unfolded right there in Lewiston, her home town.

She offered a very thoughtful portrait. Headline included, we'll offer a few brief excerpts:

Refugees poured into my state. Here’s how it changed me.
[...]
In spite of occasional news reports to the contrary, things have mostly gone well. But Lewiston is not Utopia. The city’s challenges mirror those in other places with large refugee communities. It has struggled financially, especially early on as the needs for social services and education intensified. Joblessness remains high among the older generation of refugees; many elders still speak little English. The trauma of wars new immigrants escaped—loss of loved ones, sexual assault, years of privation – means that many bear heartache. For some in Lewiston, the long-term effects of trauma hinder acculturation, both for them and for their children.
Yet Lewiston is more vital than it was two decades ago. Of the city’s 36,000 residents, 6,000 are now African refugees and asylum-seekers. New immigrants work in health care, retail, industry, and food service. The first Somali American kids born in the city are high school juniors, and a new elementary school opened in September with a 900-student capacity—among the largest K-5s in Maine.

Things have mostly gone well in Lewiston, Anderson wrote. She also offered this:

A sizable minority of Mainers remains unhappy about the presence of the city’s newest residents. Lewiston sits in the state’s 2nd Congressional District. Mr. Trump won here in 2016, giving him his only electoral vote in New England. The expansion of the city’s services to include translators and English as a second language instructors is anathema to many, as is coexistence with Islam. In recent years, the region’s anti-Islam faction has gained momentum and new followers.

We can't judge the accuracy of Anderon's overall assessments. That said:

For what it's worth, Trump didn't win in Lewiston in 2016. He did win in Maine's much larger, encompassing 2nd Congressional District, but he lost to Hillary Clinton in Lewiston by a fairly substantial margin.

It's also hard to square Anderson's population figures with Census Bureau estimates. Here are the Census Bureau's figures for Lewiston in 2022:

Lewiston, Maine, July 2022
White: 82.7%
Black: 7.3%
Hispanic: 2.2%
Asian-American: 3.0%

According to the Census Bureaus, Lewiston was still heavily "white." But as compared to the state as a whole, those figures make Lewiston a melting-pot. Presumably, this was the diversity to which the grieving father referred.

Nothing about the mass killing in Lewiston seems to be connected to "diversity" or to "race." Why then did this seemingly enlightened man insert that odd remark?

Harlow didn't ask about the remark, and we can't answer that question. But as we noted yesterday, the resident had made an even odder set of remarks back in 2021—an even odder set of remarks with an explicitly racial backdrop.

Did those remarks make him a "racist?" Should we regard the Auburn resident as one of the deplorables?

Should we conceive of him as an Other? With "national survival" at stake, what can we learn from this grieving father's collection of remarks?

Tomorrow: Clinton and Clinton and others