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Call your Congresscritters! Keep Calling!
I’m re-posting this column from October 10, 2023 as a bonus post. At the time I was not too confident about how Congress was behaving and had dark forebodings about Israel’s reaction to the October 7th attacks by Hamas.
Turns out I was practically a cockeyed optimist compared to what’s still going on in Congress and in the Middle East today.
This is a free episode, available to everyone. To be able to read and comment on all episodes, plus access the full archive, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $1/month or $10/year
Note: Everything in this post is my personal opinion. If you don’t agree, set up your own Substack. Or, leave me a comment.
OCT 10, 2023
Wow. What a week!
First off, the so-called “Freedom Caucus” of the Republican party in the US House of Representatives had a temper tantrum when their leader, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, worked across the aisle to pass a continuing budget resolution to keep the US Government from shutting down.
He advertised it as a “clean” CR, but it was loaded down with all kinds of changes to the current budget that Democrats would not normally agree to, but time was running out so the CR passed with both GOP and Democratic votes.
This is the way our legislature is supposed to work. Compromise is the soul of our democracy.
So, what did the super-right-wing of the GOP do? They voted to remove McCarthy as Speaker. He received no support from Democrats, possibly because he’s shown himself to be untrustworthy, walking back previous agreements, supporting an investigation of President Biden with no supporting evidence of wrongdoing and trashing the Democrats in the House who had just supported his flawed CR.
At the end of the vote to remove McCarthy as Speaker a loud voice was heard saying, “Now what?” Nobody knows, because this is the first time in US history the Speaker’s chair has been vacated.
Personally I think the Democratic caucus should have had enough representatives in safe districts vote “present” to allow McCarthy to retain the speakership, especially when I see the GOP candidates to replace him.
Better the devil you know, and McCarthy has shown willingness to work across the aisle if needed to pass essential legislation, e.g. the House’s one job, funding the government.
Then on Saturday Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip invaded Israel, killing, raping and kidnapping civilians. My first thought was, “To what end?” Surely they understand one of the most militarized countries in the world, currently being run by a right-wing radical, will respond with overwhelming force.
If their intent was to call attention to the plight of Palestinians under Israeli rule, they’ve definitely done that. I think their best bet right now is to down their weapons, return any hostages they’ve taken and sue for peace, with the understanding that Israel needs to sit down with Palestinian leaders to resolve the conflict that’s been going on since Israel was established in 1948, a year before I was born.
But that won’t happen. There’s too much adversarial history on both sides. So over the next few months I expect that there will be a bloodbath in Gaza as Israel’s forces attempt to find and capture or kill every single member of Hamas. There will be a lot of collateral damage (i.e. dead civilians who were just trying to live their lives and got caught in a meat grinder).
I don’t have any answers to this. I can understand Israel not wanting to retreat to its original pre-1967 borders. That would mean parts of Northern Israel would be only about 15 miles wide.
Then again, I can understand Palestinian frustration over the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have not only been allowed but even encouraged by the current Israeli government.
Like or not, it appears that Palestinians living under Israel’s rule are no more than second-class citizens. I can understand their wish for a homeland where they can live and work and govern themselves without Israeli interference.
It seems to me that sometime in the last 75 years it should have been possible to carve out a Palestinian homeland that both Israel and Palestinians can agree on.
Then there’s Jerusalem. There are sites in Jerusalem that are considered holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims. Not surprising since all three of religions trace their origin back to the prophet Abraham. I.e. they worship the exact same God; they just disagree on the best way to do that.
This seems like a really stupid reason to be killing each other, but that fight’s been going on for centuries.
There are even disagreeing factions within the three religions. Many Sunnis hate Shiites and vice versa.
Many Baptists are sure Catholics are going to hell, and vice versa. Nobody seems to like Mormons.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews tend not to get along with Orthodox and Reform Jews.
Where’s it all end?
I’m certainly not bright enough to figure out how to get these children of God to work and play well together. Obviously, neither was our last president’s son-in-law. I know, cheap shot. Sue me,
So, no answers this week. We’ll see how things play out in the House of Representatives. I have low expectations and I still expect to be disappointed.
And I really hope that both the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas show restraint over the next few days, weeks and months. Blood in the streets tends to harden positions and make diplomacy difficult.
Enough.
Musical Coda:
It seems like most of the protest songs from my late teens and twenties are once again relevant. Like this one:
Call your Congresscritters! Keep Calling!
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