Trump’s America

There are a lot of people, probably mostly liberals, who are really quite shocked to find us where we are in America today. How did a terrible man like Trump become our President? This is not who we are as a country!

I think this sort of thinking requires a denial of the reality of United States history, both in the long view and in the more recent. Trump is, in many ways, the quintessential American President. Trump is America with the mask of politeness taken off and discarded.

Perhaps the most obvious thing about Trump that is so American is the racism. While we love to think of America as the "melting pot" of cultures, we're a nation pretty much founded on white supremacy. We were created by the genocide of indigenous Americans, and built by the forced labor of people stolen from Africa. The White House (so appropriately named) itself, the home of our nation's leader, as pointed out not too long ago by Michelle Obama, was built by slave labor. I myself am fond of reminding people that the founding fathers were made up of two groups: rich white men who loved Black slavery, and rich white men for whom Black slavery wasn't a deal breaker.

Trump’s sexism is also very American. We became an independent nation in 1776, but women weren't federally given the right to vote until 1920, nearly a century and a half later. (Oh, and that was only white women, of course.) And voting is just one right of many denied women; the right to own property, the right to have a bank account separate from their husbands, the right to not be discriminated against for employment or housing? All of those came later. Of course, one of the most important rights, the right to be able to control their own bodies and their reproductive choices? That one's still up in the air, as women are effectively given less bodily autonomy than a corpse.

What else defines Trump? Xenophobia? I would call it selective xenophobia, as ICE raids places known to have immigrants with black and brown skin, but makes no moves against communities of undocumented white immigrants. We build a wall on our southern border, but largely ignore undocumented immigrants coming across the northern border. Why? Well, those immigrants are white, aren't they? I may be wrong, but I believe the very first law in the United States limiting immigration was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, because we can't have non-Europeans in the U.S., can we? Of course before that, when the United States won a large portion of the southwest from Mexico in the mid-19th century, Mexicans in those territories were assured on paper that they would be American citizens, but apparently in practice, most of them were driven off the land, deprived of property and rights. America has never been keen on accepting non-Europeans, so Trump’s xenophobia is really nothing new.

Oh, and putting the rights and needs of rich people over those of the poor and middle class? That's just capitalism, which has also always been us. White capitalists have always ruled this country, and pretty much every President has been at least a millionaire. Bigotry against LGBTQ people? That's a western cultural norm. We used to (really still do) have laws against them existing, and barely have half a century of progress towards equality, but conservatives will constantly make up stories about how drag queens and transgender women are attacking children despite the fact that the observed reality is that the people children have to fear are religious leaders and their own parents.

This unfortunate conglomeration of lies and bigotry is what America is, has always been, and it's that reality that Trump represents. Can we change? I hope so, and so do many other Americans. But no politicians from either of the two major political parties seem to be willing to make those changes. I believe it's going to take a major shake up of the status quo that's going to require either some restrategizing in the Democratic party, or a rejection of the outdated Democratic party for a newer, more progressive set of politicians. Really, it may take a revolution of some sort, because the status quo needs to be completely rejected, and that's hard to accomplish.

If you, like me, don't want Trump’s America, then don't wait for voting in the midterms in 2026. Start strategizing now, and pushing for changes that can happen now. It's going to take a fight to reverse 250 years of history, but it's not impossible if we put in the work.

So, how about that antisemitism?

No, seriously, there were a couple of very significant posts from Caitlin Johnstone recently that talked about antisemitism, and I think both of them were misunderstood. A more recent one said that antisemitism was simply not a problem in the world anymore, and a lot of people were outraged by it, because that's not true. However, I think they were missing the point she was making, which was that there's hardly anyone who hates Jews the way the Nazis did. Yes, there are people who dislike Jews, but it's either a mild dislike, or it's for a reason other than simply that they are Jewish.

Which leads to the other point she made, which was just an aside in a longer post from earlier. I think people skimmed over this point, largely discounting it, but I think it's highly troubling. She talked about how Zionists worldwide are pushing this idea that anyone who criticizes Israel is by definition antisemitic. We see it here in America where there was actually a non-binding resolution in Congress that declared criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. The problem with this (other than the fact of its ludicrousness given that many Jews actually consider Israel to be illegitimate) is that if you keep saying this, eventually people who (rightly) hate Israel are going to decide that since they're beinge labeled antisemites, they must actually hate all Jews.

Johnstone talked about it like a possibility, but it's my personal view that this has already come to pass. It was over a month before Johnstone wrote that when I saw something on Quora where an anti-Israel group had posted something that was...well it was essentially pro-Nazi. I commented on it that they should take it down because it was legitimately antisemitic, and the response I received was, "So? They're going yo call us antisemitic anyway, so who cares?"

It seems like since then I've seen a barrage of antisemitic posts and comments that express hatred towards Jews on the whole due to the unsavory nature of Israeli Jews. Now all Jews get painted with the same brush, and it's an ugly one. Just today on Substack, someone responded to one of my comments with, "Time to renounce your Judaism entirely?" I've been seeing this sentiment a lot lately. I am Jewish by the fact that both of my parents are Jews, but people keep urging me to stop being Jewish.

The thing is, as I keep pointing out to these people, Jews are both a religion and an ethnicity. In fact, (while the weren't called "Jews" back then) Jews were an ethnic group *before* they were a religious group. That goes for whether you believe the Biblical record, which has them as a group with common ancestry coming out of Egypt and then being presented with the law on Mt. Sinai, or whether you believe anthropologists, who suggest they lived in ancient Israel before developing the religion.

Anyway, I can denounce the religion, but I don't feel I can denounce my ancestry, as much as many people seem to want me to. Anyway, I'm seeing a lot of hatred directed at Jews online, but whenever I ask for clarification, I get told about terrible things that Jews do. These terrible things are not within my personal experience of Judaism, but rather indicative of what I hear about Israelis and Zionists: a Jewish supremacist attitude. I continue to insist that this is not how all Jews are, but honestly, it's a large enough portion of the world Jewish population (maybe even a majority?) that it's hard for people to separate it out. "Why would you want to associate with this?" people ask me, and I don't want to associate with it, but I nonetheless am a Jew.

And this is the terrible part of it: I don't believe for a moment that this was the way Judaism was ever meant to be. In Genesis chapter twelve, we read

The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Israeli Jews seem to focus on the "whoever curses you I will curse" part, while I think we miss out on the "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" which is far more important. Are people being blessed by Israeli Jews? No, I don't think they are at all. In fact, I believe that Israeli Jews are becoming a curse to Jews elsewhere in the world who are being hated by our association to them. As one antisemite said to me recently online, "But the truth is that the ‘good’ jews have never waged war on the ‘bad’ jews to stop them from making ‘the jews’ look bad." The problem with this is that unlike the "bad" Jews, the "good" Jews don't have an army.

Israel is dragging Judaism into a cesspool of evil that fewer and fewer of us seem to be able to escape, and furthermore, it even seems like they are possibly dragging the rest of the world into World War III. I wonder where God is in all of this.

Another generation

Recently on Facebook, I saw a post about how Babe Ruth, back in the 1920s, used to play baseball games with players from the Negro Leagues. Even though he was one of the greatest baseball players of all time, when he retired, he never got a job as a manager, because people were afraid he'd integrate major league baseball.

My point? Sometimes the excuse that “they were raised in a different generation” only holds so much water. There were always people who weren't bigots even when bigotry was the norm.

I'm not trying to attack your parents or grandparents here; my mother, who isn't bigoted in any way, has nonetheless said things that were offensive because she simply didn't know better. It's just that it's the 21st century, and it's time for people to know better.

Now Serving #44

From Obama's inauguration speech:

"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

Actually, oddly enough, Obama's father probably would have been served.

Many years ago, I read a fascinating article (I wish I could find it!) about a black civil-rights activist in the '60s who was refused service at a lunch counter. If I remember correctly, one day he tried coming to the same counter where he had been denied service many times, only that day, he dressed in traditional African clothing and faked an accent. He was served with no fuss.

He asked the waiter why the other black men were not being served, and an answer was given to him that indicated that apparently many Southerners were racist not against Africans, but African-Americans.

Racism is a strange thing.

From MLK to BHO

We've still got quite a ways to go. Pardon my pessimism, but it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are looking to the inauguration of Barack Obama as the realization in Dr. King's dream, and don't get me wrong, I think it shows we've made great strides, but we're not "there".

A lot of people are talking about the inauguration as though it's this moment in time that is an inflection point between the past and the future, but I don't think it's really so. I think the inauguration is symbolic of the transformation our country has undergone since the days of Dr. King, but it's not as though this day could have come unless we were ready for it, and our readiness as a nation is the real transformation, but it didn't happen suddenly one Tuesday in November, nor will it on a Tuesday in January. It happened slowly and steadily over the course of something like a century and a half.

Some people wonder why it's considered such a big deal, which has a couple of interesting facets to it. On the one hand, there's something almost heartening that a generation should come to pass where people don't see the inauguration of a President not of purely northern European ancestry as a big deal. It shows acceptance, and of a kind that indicates our minds have changed, and gone beyond mere acceptance. On the other hand, the pessimistic one, it may show a kind of ignorance of history. After all, if it's no big deal, why did it take over two hundred years to go from slavery to this? It may be great that we've come as far as we have as a nation, but at the same time, did it need to take so long?

Actually, I think it could have been a little bit sooner. There's a part of me that thinks the national attitude could have managed to elect an African-American President as early as the late '70s, if only there had been the right candidate. If true, this also has (at least) two facets. Maybe it's just easier for me to accept the idea since I was born in the early '70s, and therefore past the most intense turmoil of the civil rights movement, but I don't think the country has suddenly accepted black people; the seeds for the 2008 election results were beginning to sprout towards the end of the '60s. I think on the negative side, it shows some of the reason that mere acceptance is not quite enough for equality. A sufficiently qualified African-American could possibly have been elected in, say, 1980, but there was no such thing yet. Actually, some might argue (and many have) that Obama is not it either, having largely gotten elected on personality rather than an impressive record; after all, he hasn't been in politics very long. The thing is, since African-Americans were kept out of politics for so long, it's hard for them to have a viable candidate since we (rightly) expect our politicians to work their way up from the bottom. White and wealthy George W. Bush, in contrast, is a good example of someone who was never at the bottom. Not that it's his own fault, but there's a certain shame for our society that there really aren't any African-Americans of equivalent status to Bush.

It's unfortunate that we will always have to be performing a balancing act between remembering the tragedies of the past and working to put them behind us. It would be wrong to forget the injustice done--not just to African-Americans, but to various social groups in our history--and yet at the same time, one wonders if we are unable to put the past behind us, how can we let go of bitterness and move into the future? Think about how profound it can be: in some sense, the troubles in the Middle East are the result of a 3,000-year-old case of sibling rivalry. How long will we in America have to keep fighting the civil war? I suppose at least until we're truly the united states.

I sometimes wonder if we'll ever be "there". It seems sometimes like racism in particular, and prejudice in general are simply a part of human nature. Actually, it's pretty natural. When two people meet for the first time, the only thing they have to evaluate the other person is their physical appearance. We like to try to get a handle on other people, so until we get to know them better, most of what we know about them is what color and shape they are. In itself, that's not so bad, so long as we can eventually let go of our preconceived notions and see who we all are on the inside where it counts.

Barack Obama for President in '09

I've got some news for you, and you may be shocked. You see, Barack Obama's our President.

No, really.

I'm not sure whether you heard it or not, since it was hard to make it out over all the shouts and sounds of celebration. It may have been an election of epic proportions, as it seems a large portion of the population would be gathering along Pennsylvania Avenue to spread palm branches in his path as he rode to his inauguration on a donkey's colt. Meanwhile, in other locations, there would be a weeping and gnashing of teeth as people stood by to witness the abomination of desolation.

See, this is exactly the sort of thing that's been bothering me for so long, and I'm afraid it's not going to stop now that the election's over. It's been so long since we had a "normal" election, that I think we forgot what it was like. John McCain's concession speech was quite moving and humble, but a speech like that should be the norm. Politicians like McCain and Obama must live in the eye of the storm, where there is calm enough that they can actually graciously bow out of a race or accept victory. How many people were surprised and disappointed when John Kerry conceded after only a day of waiting, rather than fighting it out over weeks like we did in 2000? In the age we live in of electronic counting of votes, there should rarely be a reason that elections take more than 24 hours. This Election Day went satisfyingly smoothly, like that refreshing beer that most people would probably enjoy sharing with their candidate, but not the other. (Side note for those who still think Barack Obama is a Muslim: I thought he should have dispelled rumors by being photographed eating pork, but he was photographed drinking alcohol, which wasn't enough for some. No matter.)

I myself would probably enjoy sharing a beer with either candidate, or even President Bush, despite our differences in politics. Maybe that's my problem; that I don't try and divide people into who I'd enjoy being around and who I wouldn't. I've commented many times before actually that while I strongly despise what Osama bin Laden stands for, I suspect he's rather friendly and personable on a one-on-one basis, since he's only human. All of these people are only human. They're just people. To quote from C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian:

"You come from Lord Adam and Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content."

Whether you believe in the story of Adam and Eve, whether or not you're of any particular religious persuasion, I think this is a deep truth, and one we need to apply to all of our leaders, as well as our aspiring leaders. We're all just human beings.

There's a lot of talk about the fact that Obama is now our first black President, and what an historic moment it is. This is definitely true, but I think there's something to be said about it after we savor the moment as simply a moment. A pundit on television election night made an interesting observation as he was talking with an elderly black gentleman who had been involved with the struggles for racial equality in the '50s and '60s. I don't remember his exact words, and not being connected to the Internet as I write this, I can't look them up, but he said something like, "The really great thing about this transition point in history is that unlike similar transitions in the past, there was not so much of a struggle, but simply an acceptance of it. This was the act of approval by the whole country." Yes, unlike the desegregation of our schools, our places of business, and our professional sports, which largely had to be forced, the desegregation of that exclusive 44-member club came about with about as much conflict as any other inauguration (although the actual inauguration is still two months to come).

Really, this should be no surprise on at least one level. Sure, if you want to make sure there are people of certain races in the local school, you can endeavor to force them to go there, and force those who don't want them there to accept them, albeit begrudgingly. It is, however, the nature of a democratically-elected office that you can't force this one, so of course it happened peacefully. There may indeed have been people who voted for Obama because he's black, but I doubt the number that voted for him specifically for that reason was high. Speaking for myself, I would never vote for Al Sharpton, nor would I vote for Clarence Thomas (were he to run), but it has nothing to do with their race and everything to do with their politics. It's simply the case that given the current political climate, Obama was more palatable than McCain to a majority of voters.

In some ways, it's this matter-of-fact-ness that I see as the reason we have to let this moment pass. Yes, it's a great day in our history, but it still has potential to be a dismal four years. Obama is still just another politician; I have high hopes for his term in office, but like everyone who has gone before, he will disappoint us. Not all the time; hopefully not even much of the time; but certainly some of the time.

See, that feeling so many of us feel that is seen as a moment of triumph has great potential to become a moment of sorrow. Every time we look at Obama and say, "Look at how great our President is doing...and he's black!" we give an open invitation for his detractors to say at other times "Look at how terrible our President is doing...and he's black!" Is that what we want?

I'll mention Asimov's biography again, as I've been doing ever since I read it. A Jewish friend once came to Asimov (who is likewise from a Jewish background) and said, "I'm really proud that an inordinately large number of Nobel laureates are Jewish!" Asimov replied, "Did you know that an inordinately large number of pornographic film producers and directors are Jewish?" The man was stunned. "Is that true?" he asked. Asimov replied, "I made it up, but it could be true. How would you feel if it was?"

The point here is, if you're going to take everything Obama does in his life and put it in the mental sorting bin of "African-American achievements", then you're going to have to put his failures there, too, and he will have them. George W. Bush has left behind more than a few messes to clean up that simply won't be pretty no matter what the resolution. In inheriting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, history will put part of the blame for the aftermath of those wars on Obama's shoulders. Do you think a really happy ending is likely there? Do you think it's unthinkable that yet another war might begin while Obama is in office? Contrary to the beliefs of some (and such beliefs I find offensive, even as a Democrat who is no fan of the Bush presidency), the 9/11 attacks were on our country as a whole, not on any particular administration. If al-Qaeda strikes again in the next four years, don't think Obama will fail to respond with some sort of military action.

But I'm getting off track. I think Obama is going to be a good President, maybe the best we've had since Kennedy, but we really can't know how things will turn out, can we? As a T-shirt slogan I saw on the Internet said in reference to Obama, "Dare to hope. Prepare to be disappointed." I think it was referring to the election, but really, we should have an attitude like that about the next four years.

Barack Obama is just another President, and compared to some people it makes me a pessimist (compared to many others, it makes me an optimist, of course) to believe that the next four years will just be a fairly run-of-the-mill time period. But think about it, all you Obama true believers and hopers: in comparison to the last eight years, wouldn't "run-of-the-mill" be a great improvement? I, for one, welcome it.

Add It Up

Today, another rant about a Newsweek column; this time, it's not Anna Quindlen, but the topic is definitely strongly related to feminism.

Sharon Begley, Newsweek's science columnist takes a moment to speak up on a subject near and dear to my own heart: sexism and stereotypes about learning ability. ("Math is Hard, Barbie Said") See, just in case you're not aware of it, American girls have a hard time with math, generally finding it too challenging for them, and thus we find that there is a clear gender gap in ability and achievement in this area. The thing is, though, it's all (as they say) in their minds.

I love parenthetical statements, don't you? (Okay, maybe it's just me.) "As they say" is really the operative phrase here. The fact is, while girls in America and Japan have consistently lagged behind men in mathematical ability, that gap has been far narrower in communist nations where supposedly they take a more liberal view of the ability and worth of the individual, regardless of gender. It would seem--and to many of us, there's no surprise to this--that girls do badly in math because society has told them that they will have this failing.

The result, according to Begley is something more than simply a self-fulfilling prophecy of "Tell somebody they can't do something, and they probably won't be able to do it," but actually an emotional response. Tell a girl she can't do something, and even if she doesn't believe you, the fact that you gave her discouragement will cause a distracting emotional reaction. How well are you going to be able to focus on factoring a polynomial when half your brain is screaming out to you, "How DARE they say that!"

This fact is very personal to me for two reasons. One of them is that despite that my degree is in mathematics and I know I tend to be very good at it, there was a time around fifth and sixth grade when I struggled with math. I had a couple of math teachers who, instead of encouraging me to do better, essentially took time and effort to embarrass me and tell me I was a failure. I never considered the fact until just now what a boon it was for me to have a seventh-grade math teacher who was completely incompetent. I've always wondered how a guy like that ended up teaching math when he obviously had no skill in the subject, but in retrospect, I wonder if it helped stroke my ego to recognize that my own ability was better than the teacher. (This was the first of many teachers that I had the habit of viciously correcting on a daily basis, pointing out his errors at every opportunity, which came frequently. On the same note, it was probably oddly useful for his ego that he clearly just didn't care.) I realized long before seventh grade that mathematics was the method of understanding reality on a basic, foundational level, and seeing it taught with such ineptitude goaded me into always being the best I could be.

But I was lucky. As a boy, when I showed ability in math and science, society approved and egged me on to greater achievement. The second thing that's always bothered me about this topic, and this one even more so and more repeatedly at every chance it had to come into my mind, was the fact that my sister did not go into a college major in math or science. Sure, all things being equal she might still have chosen the path she did, and I'm not aware of any regrets on her part; she's been very successful in the things she's set her hand to as far as I am aware. What irks me is that I do feel she was shorted in the area of praise for her abilities. I became the math major in college, I was the one that people actually called a "math genius" repeatedly in high school. (Note that when you go to a small-town high school, and then graduate to a large university, you tend to find that most areas where you were considered excellent are now areas in which you are merely average; I don't claim to be anything special today.) Nobody ever called my sister a "math genius", but I always suspected that she was far superior to me.

Once when visiting home from college, I was rummaging through some papers in my mother's house, and came across some standardized test scores. A test taken sometime towards the end of elementary school revealed that while I was above average in my mathematical aptitude, my sister was truly the cream of the crop. Yes, my sister was the real "math genius", but where did that genius go? Fast forward from elementary and rewind from college to the beginning of my senior year. This is the time that you start looking at your grades and test scores and pick what schools you want to look into. The school guidance counselor called me into his office and informed me of what was supposed to be great news. I knew my SAT scores were good, but apparently, in my small rural county of Northern California, I had set the record of highest-ever SAT score. I might have reveled in that announcement if it weren't for the very following sentence with came before the first had a chance to sink in.

"And the person who previously held the record was your big sister!" I was told with a big grin. How about that, Brucker? Consider the irony! Oh, I did.

"Uh... Was my sister informed when she had set the record in the first place?" I asked. "This is the first I've heard of it."

The smile disappeared. "Um, well, I guess not."

"Why the hell not?!" I responded through gritted teeth, and I got up and left. I was always somewhat aware of the problem, but that day, it hit home in a special way. Friends come and go, but my sister will always have a special place in my heart, and I couldn't forgive the injustice done to her or to all our sisters everywhere. As I said, I get the impression that my sister was satisfied with the academic course her life took her on, but I can't help but feel that nonetheless she was robbed of a full set of options.

Thus comes the real problem, the larger problem as I see it. Sexism and racism aren't just bad, but hurtful things that cause often nearly irreparable harm. Our society is closing down gaps all over the place, but will the wounds of the past ever be healed? Within a few months, it appears we will likely have our first black President, but will a single black President make up for centuries of slavery and oppression? When the day comes that a woman is placed in the Oval Office, will that make up for all the years they were treated as slaves in attitude, if not in name?

Prejudice says, "We're not going to allow you to be equal." When pressed, it says, "Okay, you can have the right to be equal, but you will never really be equal." Eventually, after centuries of beating down the oppressed, be they members of a race, gender, or other social group, the members of the oppressive group ask the oppressed group, "Why are you so bitter about all that stuff? It's in the past!" There is a tendency to miss the fact that the fight against oppression is an uphill battle, and even when the playing field is leveled, it's hard to shed the weight of the past.

When Begley points out that the very fact of being told that you can't do something impedes the brain from doing it, she points out that it doesn't have to be personal. A girl doesn't have to be told that she is incompetent in mathematics, she need only be told that historically, women have underachieved in comparison to men, and the discomfort that sets up in her mind is sufficient to impede her thought processes. This is the sort of thing that goes beyond self-worth, and turns into an evaluation of the worth of the group to which one belongs. We tell people that they are inferior for long enough, and some of them believe it; among those who have the determination to not believe it, more than a few will still be burdened by the injustice of the sentiment.

You don't have to be a member of an overtly downtrodden group to experience this for yourself. Think about the situation we have here in America with respect to the learning of foreign languages. There's a joke I've heard a few times that goes like this: "A person who speaks two languages is called bilingual; a person who speaks three languages is called trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? An American." Why is it that Americans have such a hard time learning foreign languages, but so many Europeans and Asians seem to typically speak three or four languages? I know Americans in general won't accept the argument that these people are somehow intellectually superior to us. I personally believe that we as Americans don't learn foreign languages because we've decided it's just too hard. This is not something indicative of any subset of the culture of the United States, but seems to pervade us in general. We either believe that we just can't do it, or we think we might be able to, yet we look around and note that few people are doing it and get discouraged. This isn't even the result of anyone acting prejudicial towards Americans, but merely a culture that has shifted into a sort of self-prejudice. Imagine if it were a matter of prejudice; instead of simply struggling through your language classes worrying about how difficult it is to conjugate verbs and learn the gender of nouns, you also have to keep thinking about how everyone's expecting you to fail.

But here's where my cynicism cuts in and takes over again. Begley points out that things are getting better for women, and they are beginning to be accepted more often as the intellectual equals of men, but will equality--true equality--be realized in our lifetime, if ever? If we as Americans can slip into a feeling of hopelessness over our inability to acquire languages without any sort of external oppression, how can people who have been actively pushed into a state of hopelessness rise above it? Perhaps asking such questions is largely adding fuel to the fire, but it needs to be said anyway.

I don't believe that we escape the evils of the past by simply trying to forget that they ever happened. We escape from them by actively fighting to overcome them. As a father of two daughters, there's a significant battlefront of this culture war located within my own household. It's a hard responsibility that's been given to my wife and me to see to it that our daughters are never told that they are any less capable of anything simply because of their gender. Really, that's the only thing we can do: try our best to raise up a new generation better than the past. Do we do this by never mentioning the sins of past generations towards their mothers and grandmothers, or by entreating them to actively strive to overcome the vestiges of that shameful past? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe it would take a woman to figure it out?

The book of leviticus

I'm sure I've mentioned it to everyone who knows me, and yet, I never feel like anyone knows, because in a sense, I don't even know it about myself: I am Jewish. Or am I?

See, my father was (and still is) Jewish, but my mother is not; at least not in the technical sense. For most people, this implies that I also am not in the technical sense. Yet I was raised by my father to believe that I was a Jew, and he called me one, and so I genuinely thought I was one. Anyway, a large portion of society feels that having any Jewish ancestry at all makes one a Jew.

Certainly I will always remember a moment in my freshman year of high school when I was waiting patiently behind a fellow student who was trying to negotiate another few points on his physics exam, and the instructor told him he would have to take his grade as it stood. This classmate of mine actually slapped his test on the teacher's desk and exclaimed, "I can't believe this. That's so Jewish!" This was probably the first time in my life that I lost my temper at an insult not leveled directly at me. This guy was bigger, stronger, taller, and older than me, and I saw red and gave him a shove and said, "Oh hell no! I don't know what problems you have with your grade, dude, but *I* am Jewish, and you owe my people an apology!" I don't know if I had steam coming out of my ears or what, but I've never seen someone back down from me so quickly.

But am I Jewish? I won't take anyone using a racial (or similar: sexist? homophobic?) slur around me without getting a bit ticked off anyway, but of course, this was a bit more personal. I can't help but identifying with the Jewish people to some degree, no matter what I might be told about the fact that my status as a half-Jewish, non bar mitzvah Christian puts my Jewish identity at question. Oddly, to some extent while one would expect the Torah--a document chronicling the creation of the Jewish nation and defining its laws--to give a definition of what a Jew is, really any sort of official definition has come later in extrabiblical writings.

If I stay on the originally unintentional thread of these last few musings, I suppose I would do well to mention A Jew Today by Elie Wiesel, a book of writings in which the writer explores what it means to be a Jew in 20th century America that I happened to pick up from the same used-book bin where I picked up my copy of Marx/Engels. A much larger book than the Manifesto, I haven't had time to read more than small portion of the first chapter, in which he talks about how often being a Jew means being a stranger in the gentile world, where people will always look at you as something strange and foreign. It's an uncomfortable feeling, and yet it's a feeling that the average Jew holds within themself with a great deal of pride.

A book that I did read recently that's in a very important way about being a Jew is Responsa from the Holocaust, by Rabbi Ephraim Oshry. The author details what it was like to be a Jew in Lithuania during the horror that was World War II, and how it effected the Jews of Europe. Throughout this horrible time, when the lives of European Jews were daily on the brink of total destruction, individual Jews continued to consult with their rabbis concerning how to practice their religion in the midst of persecution. If Nazis seem to be more likely to attack Jewish men with beards, should we shave them off? We only get the food that the Nazis let us have, and it's clearly not kosher meat, what can we do about that? Is it a crime to commit suicide when all indications are that you are not long for the world anyway, and the powers that be are seeing to it that every day you live is intense suffering?

It's tragic, but at the same time inspiring. These people did their best not to let their oppressors keep them from doing what they believed to be right, even seemingly little things (to a non-Jew) such as whether they should say Sabbath prayers on a Saturday when they were suffering through forced labor seven days a week. These Jews held strongly to their beliefs and identity in the face of torture and death. How many people today avoid stating their beliefs openly simply for fear of ridicule?

The thing that really struck me about these stories however, was where Oshry and his fellow rabbis allowed exceptions to general rules and where they did not. Can't find kosher food? Well, you can't starve yourself, so eat what you can. A 12-year-old boy wants to have his bar mitzvah ceremony early because he suspects he will not live to see 13? The boy seems mature and earnest in his desire, so luckily he is granted his request, and indeed he died a short time later.

But where were exceptions *not* granted? Perhaps oddly enough, in the one place that might have been the one sure-fire way to save their own lives: the rabbis never once wavered from their conviction that pretending not to be a Jew was an unacceptable compromise, although it would seem that it was for this one fact that they were being killed. Steal if it takes care of your family, kill if it's in self-defense, defy the law if you believe it unjust, and lie: lie about where you live, what you do for a living, how old you are, who's in your family, but never, NEVER lie about being a Jew.

It's a strange thing to an outsider perhaps, and it may even be strange to Jews themselves, but when all else has been stripped away, either by an evil, tyrannical government or by an individual's apathy towards the strictness of the Mosaic Law, there still remains an essential fact of identity that is central and indelible to Judaism. The Jews of Europe essentially said to the world that you could take away their beards and special clothing, take away their kosher foods and festivals, take away their temples and holy books, but you can never take away their Jewishness.

Hindsight is 20/20 and color-blind

Sometimes when I write these posts, I mull over a subject for a few days, and then commit my thoughts to the blogosphere, where surely few will read them, but at least they're out of my brain for a while. Today, I'd like to rant on something that either has occupied my mind for less than an hour (I was sparked into considering this subject by something I caught on television less than an hour before I started typing) or for most of my life (this subject has interested me since I was a kid; I guess I've always been a bit of a cynic).

Racism and closely related topics are often difficult to talk about for a number of reasons. It's a sensitive subject obviously. It's something ugly that we would rather just go away. It's something that most of us harbor in some form, although we hate to admit it to ourselves. Let me come out and make an admission: I have a certain amount of irrational fear and hatred towards Germans. I think admitting it to myself helps me deal with it, but it's still there. Being raised Jewish, my older family members and people within the Jewish community talked a lot about Nazis. As a young man, I didn't really understand what the term meant, other than knowing that in my father's lifetime, a lot of Germans killed a lot of Jews. Thus I associated an (arguably) irrational fear of Germans, making an internal association due to a limited grasp of history that rationally I know to be false, in general, but still get the creeps about nonetheless. So there's that off my chest.

(For some people, it's not racism, but some other form of prejudice: I once knew a guy who had had a bad employee who had graduated from a certain college, and ever since had not liked anyone he met who was from that college. A lot of us have a certain degree of sexism as well that manifests in many differing ways.)

Maybe is just that I am a cynic, but I think if we are honest with ourselves, we won't look at racists and say, "I'm so much better than them," but rather,"There but for the grace of God..." The thing that sparked me this morning was a children's program talking about racism (I think; I only caught about a minute while channel-surfing). A young white girl was asked to imagine herself living in the early part of the 19th century, in a family that owned slaves; how would she feel? She responded, "I would feel really bad about it..."

Would you really, though? It seems more likely to me that you would take it in stride. Obviously most of the people who lived in what would later become the Confederate States of America took it as a given that slavery was acceptable, proper and even good. It was necessary for the thriving of the cotton plantations and other agriculture to have a constant supply of cheap labor, and so slavery continued. Tell me, do you feel bad for migrant workers in 21st-century agriculture who work all day in the hot sun for less than minimum wage to feed their families, knowing that they will probably never be accepted by mainstream culture? When you think about it, it's a lot like the early days after the abolition of slavery in the South, when many former slaves had to stay working on their old plantations without pay because it was the only way to make a living in a culture that didn't want you to get ahead, slavery or not.

Why do you suppose it is that it seems so obvious to us today that slavery is wrong, and yet there seems to have been few people who voluntarily gave up their slaves before abolition? In Santa Cruz, there was a local historical figure named London Nelson who was a freed slave. His first master died and left him to his eldest son, who continued to use him for cotton picking. Eventually, Nelson was set free when his new master decided to go west in the Gold Rush. The story interests me because it seems to illustrate the point that on the whole, the way we humans treat our other humans has less to do with what we feel to be morally right, and more to do with what will bring us economic prosperity.

I actually recently discovered that there is a shocking (but perhaps not surprising) strategy that some businesses use to dispose of wastes of certain kinds. Electronic equipment is recognized to be very dangerous and toxic, being filled with lead, mercury, cadmium and other deadly substances. It's illegal to put electronic waste in American landfills, so the preferred method is to break down old computers and extract the toxic substances, recycling them into new computers. That's difficult and costly to do, however, so many companies have found a cheap alternative: ship the stuff to India, where there are no laws about dumping these substances. Thus, our toxic chemicals end up in landfills sometimes literally in the back yards of impoverished Indians. I found myself thinking: the Nazis killed off millions of Jews out of hatred, but if Americans kill off millions of Indians out of mere convenience, who is worse? I don't know, but it really bothers me. If I am a person who stands by and lets this happen, am I any better than the average German citizen who didn't stand up to the Nazis? Heck, my life wouldn't even be put in danger to stand up to this sort of evil!

One of the unfortunate things about prejudice is the fact that most of us don't notice it or confront it unless it's directed at us. Remember the movie Philadelphia in 1993? Tom Hanks plays Andrew Beckett, a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for wrongful termination because he believes he lost his job in part because of homophobia. On what does he base his claim that his employers were homophobic? In a flashback, we see a group of lawyers together at a gym, swapping jokes as follows:

What do you call a woman who has PMS and ESP at the same time?

I don't know, Roger, what do you call her?

A bitch who knows everything.

Sounds like someone I know.

Hey Walter, how does a faggot fake an orgasm?

He throws a quart of hot yogurt on your back.

The thing that bothered me about this scene from the first time I saw it was the fact that Beckett is laughing along with the others when the sexist joke is being told, but the smile melts away when the gay joke is told. I wanted to step into that scene and ask him, "So Andrew, it sexism better than homophobia? If telling a joke about 'faggots' means they must hate you, does that imply telling a joke about 'bitches' mean they hate women? Why were you laughing before, and why did you stop now?"

I remember a time when I was at work alone with a co-worker who said, "Hey, all the women are gone, let's tell some politically-incorrect jokes." He proceeded to tell a black joke, a Polish joke, and a Chinese joke, laughing up a storm. I laughed too, then I told him an Italian joke. My (Italian) co-worker said, "Ouch..." and joke time was over.

Don't think you're better than anyone else just because you're not a Nazi. Most of us aren't Nazis, and most of us aren't particularly nice.