sovay: (Viktor & Mordecai)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2018-06-22 03:11 am

I watched cities consume cities, killing history

Earlier I asserted that there have to be words even in the face of things that seem unspeakable, so even though [personal profile] spatch has been listening to me for the last half-hour repeat like a tape glitch, "These people make no sense to me. I don't understand them. I don't understand," I need to put more words around it than that.

It started with Stephen Miller. I put a lot of it into "Cosmopolitan Bias," but I don't understand him. I get that that resistance genealogy means nothing to FYGM, but Miller goes beyond complacency and into absurdism, funny as a heart attack. Being Jewish and not just throwing in your lot with white nationalists but aggressively working to bring about their promised land as flat and white as a sheet of cut paper, its borders closed, its citizens as monocultural as the Cavendish banana, I don't get that. Forget ethics, what about self-preservation? Where do you see yourself in this shining new nation-state, the American flag and the Christian church? Do you really think racial ideology will make an exception for you? You're so useful, they'll be grateful? Proof of tolerance? One of the good ones? They put the listmakers on the trains, clever boy; they deported the Judenräte and they liquidated the ghetto police. When that charmed circle tightens, you're not going to be inside it. (Convert and they'll still remember you were of Jewish extraction, like cyanide out of almonds. Every time someone on Facebook says that Miller looks like a rat or a vampire, even if they're saying it in condemnation of his policies, I wonder what they'd say about me.) Whatever winning side you think you're purchasing a seat on, I don't want what you've helped set in motion to go far enough for you to find out you're wrong. I don't know if I'll still be around.

So then I start thinking about Jared Kushner, who I have always taken for more of an opportunist than a true believer, especially when his visible, Orthodox-observant Jewishness is a big selling point of his father-in-law's non-racism: yes, but would you let your daughter marry one? Well, he did! I have gotten the idea that Israel is tangled up in it for him, but there I run into the same wall as the Netanyahu government and their affection for Evangelical Christians whose Zionism is more than tinged with the patronizing and the apocalyptic: I am not sure that any system of belief whose endgame is Armageddon can be said to be in the interests of Israel, especially when the sequence of necessary steps includes the conversion of the Jews (and a two-state solution? The Bible says nothing about that). It bewilders me and it disturbs me. It is buying the wrong kind of protection, for the wrong purposes, from the wrong people. But we can scale back from millenarianism and the survival instinct objection à la Miller still applies. Complicity is no guarantee of security. Even a political ignoramus must notice when, in a context of criminal investigation and protection, his wife is rated a "fine woman" by her father's attorney and he himself is dismissed as "disposable." I wondered about his genealogy, how far back the immigrants that he would repudiate, laughing at his father-in-law's jokes about murderous, rapist Mexicans.

His grandparents were Holocaust survivors. His grandmother was Rae Kushner of Novogrodek. One of the architects of the tunnel escape from the Novogrodek ghetto. A Bielski partisan. Gedenkstu vi ikh hob dikh gelernt haltn a shpayer in di hent? Now he makes less sense to me than Stephen Miller. How can you grow up with that story in your family and stand smiling for photo ops with a father-in-law whose campaign didn't even bother to dogwhistle its racism and anti-Semitism? Who signs executive orders to extort from his own government the legal pretext to detain entire families that he calls animals, infestations, indefinitely? In camps? How different is their barbed wire from the walls your grandmother crawled beneath? Or the DP camps where she waited for years after the war, stateless, unwanted by America? Never mind self-preservation now, how can this be what you choose to do with the life she won for you in 1943?

These people make no sense to me. I don't understand them. I don't understand.
thisbluespirit: (Default)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2018-06-22 08:59 am (UTC)(link)
I don't understand either, but thank you for linking back to the updated Resistance Genealogy article, because it is still great. (If only they would take more notice though! :-/)
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)

[personal profile] dewline 2018-06-22 09:56 am (UTC)(link)
I don't understand them either, although David Brooks' column for the New York Times seemed to get at some of the motivation for Miller: rebellion against his parents and classmates(high school and university alike). Toxic rebellion. To quote:

People like Stephen Miller are not steeped in conservative thinking and do not operate with a conservative disposition. They were formed by their rebellion against the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities. Their primary orientation is not to conservative governance but to owning the libs. In power they take the worst excesses of statism and flip them for anti-liberal ends.

I'm not sure that Miller's even thought it through that far, beyond that and anti-Latino hate.
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2018-06-22 02:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Stifling conformity?! Oh, God, I hate David Brooks. Yes, he's partly right here, but that makes it WORSE.
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2018-06-22 05:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Regretful Voter for Face-Eating Leopards Party: "But I never thought the leopards would eat my face!"
moon_custafer: sign: DANGER DUE TO OMEN (Omen)

[personal profile] moon_custafer 2018-06-22 10:47 am (UTC)(link)
All I can offer is that while “Fight or Flight” are the best-known responses to danger, “Freeze” and “Fawn” are also pretty common, and I think we’re seeing some.
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-22 12:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I've never seen that formulation but man: right on target.
dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)

[personal profile] dewline 2018-06-22 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Puts a new spin on the "4F" designation.
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-22 12:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I am afraid it is just testament to the fact that not even personal history (personal in the sense of familial/genealogical) can protect against the banality of evil, blindness, and breath-taking short-termism. Both those men see personal advantage in what they're doing, and personal ambition blinds them to the fact that they are not among White Nationalists' Chosen Ones. Maybe in the case of Kushner he's like a hapless man on a runaway train, fancying himself controlling it.

We're drenched in such evil right now.

asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-22 11:46 pm (UTC)(link)
People should know what happened to us. If we don't tell the story now, who knows what people will say in twenty years. Maybe they will say it never happened. --and then you think of Charlottesville, and the pain is just so intense.

We are all people. I tell my children this. --I just don't even.

This reminds me of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man--the rich man ignores Lazarus-the-leper's suffering, and then Lazarus goes to the bosom of Abraham and the rich man is in hell. The rich man begs Abraham first to tell Lazarus to give him just a drop of water to drink, and then when Abraham tells him that's impossible, the rich man begs him to send Lazarus to his five to warn them to reform, whereupon there's this exchange:

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”


I always found that parable kind of defeatist and give-uppy, but now I wonder if it isn't just a description of a sad reality: some people really don't/won't learn some things.

Edited (html) 2018-06-22 23:46 (UTC)
asakiyume: (God)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-23 11:51 am (UTC)(link)
That is a sick burn for a Gospel. --Right?!


(I still think the dead should give it a try.) --Me too.
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2018-06-22 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I just want to punch so many people every day. Forget partizaner-lied, I'll stick to "You're a fucking shanda fur di goyim," unless that takes too long to say before the punching. It is hard to live here. It must be hard to live out there, too, God knows, but I cling to the idea of Massachusetts as slightly less likely to fall.
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2018-06-22 05:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, you know, come round for the next protest. And don't apologize for promoting queer Jewish books! I think we all enjoy eating.

(I am sorry I can't be in Providence on August 11. But I think I have the honor of placing the firstest pre-order.)

((Have you seen the video loop of Richard Spencer being punched to Hamilton?))
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2018-06-22 06:04 pm (UTC)(link)

https://twitter.com/natefoo/status/822659271645167618?lang=en Ugh, I can't find just a YouTube link but it, too, is beautiful. It inspires me. And no one suspects a large rounded person with a pretty dress of being the punching kind.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-06-22 08:42 pm (UTC)(link)
"By request, an extended cut with even more BOOM," OMG that is awesome.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-06-22 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
No! I saw the mashup with Captain America: The First Avenger, which was beautiful.

WHAT WHERE
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-06-22 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
....this is REALLY cathartic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHM9lL2iCes
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-06-22 08:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I think I am going to have to convince people that buying queer Jewish books is itself a form of counter-protest

It totally is!

//distracts Tiny Witt. with first edition of Black Beauty
negothick: (Default)

[personal profile] negothick 2018-06-24 02:35 pm (UTC)(link)
I suspect that's why Margaret Atwood set The Handmaid's Tale in Cambridge, MA. "If it could happen here. . ."
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2018-06-22 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't understand them either but then part of my family died either in the Riga Ghetto, Kaiserwald Kz or the Rumbula forest.

I don't even know that much. :o(
rachelmanija: (Default)

[personal profile] rachelmanija 2018-06-22 05:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Here is what I think explains all of them: "I got mine."

They have no empathy (Kushner) and are additionally actively sadistic/sociopathic (Miller). They are too narcissistic to believe that anything bad could ever happen to them. Bad things happen to other people. Other people have no relation to them, in any way whatsoever. Other people are not human and deserve what they get. The society they're creating will benefit them (they believe; it always has so far) and that's all that matters.
gwynnega: (Default)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2018-06-22 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't get it either. Maybe it's just as well that I don't.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-06-22 08:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't get it either. I don't know if it's possible to get, if you don't have that mindset. Like sociopathy.
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-22 11:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Because we have novels and TV shows that feature clever, interesting sociopaths. But apparently there can also be stupid ones.
kore: (Default)

[personal profile] kore 2018-06-23 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
Actually, not to get totally gross, but the stereotype of the very clever evasive sociopath -- serial killers in this instance -- seems to be really wrong. Gary Ridgway for example was hardly highly intelligent. But there's this social concept of them as being somewhere between Hannibal and Ted Bundy, when in reality they're mainly powered by nightmarish drives and irresistible urges, and conscious rational thought apparently counts for very little. (Like, see Trump bragging about how alpha male and what a great dealmaker and businessman he is -- and the moment he's flattered, he totally caves and not only gives away the farm but the farmhouse and the hatchery next door.)
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-23 11:44 am (UTC)(link)
And what you say makes me wonder how we even ever got the notion that sociopaths were clever, and I think maybe it's just because they can lie completely gaily and self-assuredly. They simply have no problem at all with lying, and since most people don't lie most of the time, this gives the sociopath an advantage.

ETA: hold on, we need a more appropriate icon for this.
Edited (icon switch) 2018-06-23 11:45 (UTC)
asakiyume: (black crow on a red ground)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-24 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
This would really make an interesting paper: the genesis and development of the aspirational (in a manner of speaking) sociopath
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2018-06-23 11:50 am (UTC)(link)
I hear you.
kenjari: (Eowyn)

[personal profile] kenjari 2018-06-23 03:16 am (UTC)(link)
Well, my own father, despite what happened *to him* (and his family) is a Trump supporter, despite the fact that he literally punched Nazis in the 1960s. Despite the fact that he has a severely disabled son. Although I haven't talked to him about what's going on down on the border - so maybe he has backed off that support. I don't get it either.
So I use the family story as part of my resistance efforts. He may be able to ignore or discount that history in his politics, but I can't and won't in mine.
thistleingrey: (Default)

[personal profile] thistleingrey 2018-06-23 05:54 am (UTC)(link)
There were people like Jared (I won't dignify him with a full name) during the '30s and '40s, too. It isn't worth trying to make sense of them.
thistleingrey: (Default)

[personal profile] thistleingrey 2018-06-24 05:46 am (UTC)(link)
It is upsetting, agreed. I have a weaker version of the contrast closer to home--it's easier to be cynical when it's not a surprise.