Tuesday, May 30, 2017

New York and the Jewish Political War in Washington


 For better or worse, I see much of the dispute between Trump and the media as Jews versus gentiles, and Democratic Jews versus Republican Jews.  Clearly Jews are not unified.  There is AIPAC and J-Street.  Bernie Sanders, a Jew, versus the Jewish establishment that backed Hillary Clinton.  Jews in Trump’s camp -- Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, Steve Mnuchin, and a number of others -- versus the Democratic Party establishment Jews -- Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Adam Schiff, David Axelrod, Raum Emanuel, Al Franken, Sidney Blumenthal, Tony Blinken and many others, but not including Bernie Sanders.  Two Secretaries of State claimed not to know they were Jewish, but were the children of Jewish parents, Madeleine Albright and John Kerry.  In addition to politicians, the media is very Jewish.  The New York Times is owned by Jews and has a number of Jewish reporters.  Many TV network executives are Jewish, and many of the talking heads on TV are Jewish, particularly on CNN and MSNBC, the channels  most overtly leaning toward the Democratic Party. Jewish talking heads who appear as fixtures on TV include Andrea Mitchell, Richard Haass, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Gloria Borger, Dana Bash, Richard Engel,  Of course, Jews are very successful financially.  A high percentage of the richest people in the United States are Jewish, including Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Michael Bloomberg.  Five of the ten richest people in the US are Jewish according to Forbes.  Jews are also influential in science and the arts, winning many Nobel prizes and literary awards.   

There is a reason Jews are so successful in the US; they are smart and they work hard.  They have put New York at the forefront of much of America’s intellectual life.  The New York Times earned its reputation as the paper of record.  The New Yorker, currently edited by David Remnick, who is Jewish, has published many of the best American writers, I read the New York Times, the New Yorker magazine, the New York Review of Books also filled with many Jewish writers, New York magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and probably some other publications strongly tied to New York and Jewish intellectuals, like the Atlantic, edited by the Jewish Jeffrey Goldberg. I love Woody Allen’s very Jewish movies, although I prefer the ones in which he is not the main character, like Midnight in Paris.  But I also like Manhattan, a love poem to his favorite city, which he portrayed as being very Jewish.  

In the last day or so, the Democratic Jews led by Jewish Congressman Adam Schiff have pulled more and more of Trump’s Jews into their gunsights  It’s Jew on Jew revealing bitter internecine hatred. It must be a bloodbath in Washington synagogues. The Democratic Jews are not just trying to destroy fellow Jew Jared Kushner any more, they have added what appears to be more Jews tied to Trump, threatening to subpoena Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, and  Boris Epshteyn, another Trump associate, according to the New York Times.    


Another viewpoint is that there is nothing racial between the Trumps and the Jews.  The Democratic Jews just go after anybody connected to Trump, whether they are Jews or not.  If that is the case, it just points out the preponderance of Jews in our political system.  They are leading the fight on both the Democratic and Republican sides.  In addition you have Bernie Sanders leading a big section of the Democratic party that opposes the mainstream Democratic party.  Meanwhile the mainstream Democratic Jews almost in their entirety supported Hillary Clinton for President.  And Trump operated in environments that were very Jewish, New York real estate and television.  I think there is something there, some sort of racial bias, but at the moment I can’t figure out what it is.  

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