Bernie Sanders Versus the Jews Who Run Wall Street

 Bernie Sanders’ America ad is great.  I have no doubt about Bernie’s loyalty to America, unlike some Jews, who I think may be more loyal to Israel than to America.  One person I suspect of this is Senator Chuck Schumer of New York; another is Mayor Raum Emanuel, who served in the Israeli military, rather than the American military.  They may be okay, but many Jews, and others, including most Christian evangelical politicians, seem to view Israel more as a 51^st state rather than a foreign country.  Although Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was orchestrated by the Israeli embassy, the main proponents in Congress were Christian Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner. 

Just a thought…  Did John Boehner do a favor for rich Jews by leading the campaign for Netanyahu’s speech to earn a good post-politics job, just as Clinton did a favor for rich Jews by pardoning Mark Rich as one of the last acts of his administration?  They both wanted to make sure that there would be some rich, well connected Jews waiting to take care of them when they left office.  The Clintons went the extra mile when they encouraged Chelsea to marry a Jew, assuring that their grandchildren (like Donald Trump’s) would be Jewish.  Bill Clinton’s main contribution to Jewish interests was probably the elimination of the Glass-Steagall controls on banking at the urging of his Jewish Secretary of the Treasury, Robert Rubin, which inspired the huge financial speculation by big New York banks that led to the 2008 Great Recession. 

I don’t see any of this divided loyalty between Israel and the US in Bernie Sanders.  He is American; he can’t help it that his parents were Jewish.  But his candidacy means that Jews increasingly dominate American life, not just in politics, but in business, media, art, and many other areas.  Hanukah increasingly shares the Christmas holiday, even as Christmas becomes less religious and more commercial.  Bagels have become standard breakfast fare.  So, you find Bernie leading the inequality fight against the super wealthy, a disproportionate number of whom are Jewish.  Jews lead both sides of the inequality fight. 

Of course, Bernie’s alter ego on the inequality issue is Elizabeth Warren, not a Jew.  I would like to know more about why President Obama refused to name her to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  I think Obama did it under pressure to please Jamie Dimon (a gentile) and many of the leading Jews on Wall Street, who opposed her strenuously.  Their opposition to her is a virtual admission that a big share of banking profits comes from cheating ordinary citizens out of their money.  Warren’s election as Senator was a clear rebuke to Obama’s cowardice and corruption vis-à-vis the bankers.  I wish that Warren were not so quiet now, but I guess maybe she just wanted to do good for ordinary people.  She really just wanted to head of the bureau she created, and she only became Senator because she was denied that.  Maybe she sees her job as being a good Senator for the people of her state, unlike Cruz and Rubio. 

I don’t know whether it’s better to have a Jewish Bernie Sanders running against the New York Jewish banking interests, or a gentile Elizabeth Warren, which might appear to be partly an ethnic conflict.  In any case, I’m glad Bernie is there, and that he doesn’t appear to be concerned about his Jewish ancestry, which he does not run from.  He basically says, “I’m Jewish, but so what?”  We need more politicians like him and fewer Jewish (and Christian) politicians who want America to kill Muslims for Israel, as we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in other countries.  The invitation to Netanyahu to speak to Congress was basically the Republicans saying they would be happy to bomb Iran, as Senator McCain sang in his variation of the old Beach Boys song, “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” 

Trump or Who?

It's true that Donald Trump is sort of a bully, but at least he is my kind of bully.  He's a white Christian of western European background.  When he read from the Bible at Liberty University, despite saying "two Corinthians," he appeared to quote from the King James Version of the Bible, rather than some newfangled version.

Trump probably has mixed feelings about immigration, just as most people do.  He and I are willing to give immigrants a break, as long as they have the potential to contribute to the country and not to threaten it.  We're willing to help someone down on his luck, or who is being threatened by some joint enemy, but we are not willing to risk the survival of out country to do so.  This includes the assumption that at some point the immigrants will benefit the country productively and not just be an economic drain on it.  There is a concern that we would take a great, prosperous country and turn it over to immigrants who just want to collect the freebies, without contributing to its future.  

I tend to see the whole Muslim immigrant issue as political correctness.  If we shouldn't automatically exclude Muslims, also we shouldn't automatically include them just because they are Muslims.  If there is aquestion about whether they will benefit the US, that is a legitimate question that deserves an answer.  The only test should not be whether they need to get out of Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, which we have sacrificed thousands of lives and billions of dollars to make safer, more livable places.  

Ideally, we would have a good leader to be the next President.  If it is not Donald Trump, who is it?  We seem to have a group of midgets, except for Trump, Clinton, and Sanders running for Presdent.  We have no other outstanding political leaders as governors or other national political figures.  Al Gore would be a possibility, but he has been off the national stage too long.  Bernie Sanders is a good man, but he seems more like a gadfly than a national leader.  He doesn't have the charisma that we would like a President to have.  He is very strong on domestic issues, but not so much on international and security ones.  Joe Biden is better on international issues than Sanders, and he is a much more honest and decent person than Hillary Clinton, but he has taken himself out of the race.  

I worry that Trump's main appeal is his celebrity.  The US has become obsessed with celebrity, particularly with the rise of social media.  Celebrity comes with unfavorable publicity as will as with good, e.g. Bill Cosby.  There are not business or military leaders who have the aura to make them Presidential material.  The military profession has fallen into disrepute since the Vietnam War draft.  And business has become more and more corrupt as corporations and banks have become larger and larger with less restraint on the morals of their leaders.  American business is largely led by blackguards, as illustrated by the subprime mortgage crisis.  If we got someone from the business community they would probably turn out like a Warren Harding, and if we got a military man, he would probably turn out like a Ulysses Grant.  So, Trump does not have a lot of competition.  

Charleston Shooting and the Confederate Flag

Virtually all of the news pundits have linked the shooting of nine blacks by a young white man at the AME church in Charleston to the Confederate flag, while the same pundits have tried to delink killings by Muslims to any Muslim organization, saying Muslim killings are about the individual people, not the organization.  I argue that the same is true, perhaps more so, of the Charleston killings.  The perpetrator, Dylann Roof, appears to have had mental problems, like many of the people who have committed such mass shootings.  I think the main culprit was the mental problem, not the Confederate flag.  He apparently was more obsessed with Rhodesia than with the Confederacy; so, why did the Confederate flag become the scapegoat?  It’s just political correctness, part of Nikki Haley’s campaign for Vice President. 

The real problem is giving guns to mentally ill people like Dylann Roof.  Nobody is doing anything about that because of their fear of the NRA.  It’s easier to attack the Confederate flag than the real culprit, guns in the hands of dangerous people.  

Cuban Refugees

I'm not going to vote for a Cuban refugee for President.  The President should be a real American, not someone whose world vision is shaped by a hatred of Fidel Castro.  .  So, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are off of my list of potential Presidents.

Atticus Finch, Big Jim Folsom and Malcolm Gladwell

In connection with the release of the Harper Lee sequel to “ To Kill a Mockingbird,” Malcolm Gladwell tweeted about a New Yorker article, “The Courthouse Ring,” that he had written years ago which compared Atticus Finch to Alabama Governor Big Jim Folsom.  I thought this was interesting because I vaguely remember Big Jim Folsom being governor, probably during his second term from 1955 to 1959.  The main impression I have of him, no doubt from my parents, was that he was corrupt, a guy who promised anything to anybody. 

Gladwell’s criticism of Folsom and Finch is that they favored fairness and equality for blacks, but on a separate but equal basis, rather than abolishing any separation between the races.  Gladwell’s position seems to be that instead of planning to appeal the conviction of his client, Tom Robinson, Atticus Finch should have raged against the judge and jury for being racists, although it’s not clear how that would have freed Tom. 

There is something to be said for working honestly within the law.  When Tom is lynched, it’s because the law was violated.  Atticus tried to encourage obedience to the law, rather than rebelling against it, unlike the lynch mob.  Big Jim Folsom probably did little to improve race relations in Alabama, but perhaps he helped some.  His problem was that he was corrupt and thus did little to gain respect for other aspects of his governorship, like improving race relations.  People just wrote it off as some cheap political trick to get votes.  Atticus was an entirely different kind of man, a man of honorable character who was respected by the community. 

A lot has been made of the fact that Harper Lee’s father was less of a reformer of race relations than people thought before the new book came out.  But I think Atticus should be judged in the fictional world created by Harper Lee, not by some real world person on whom he may or may not have been modelled.  As a half-black man, Malcolm Gladwell is obviously carrying a lot of hatred and resentment against white Americans.  That’s understandable, but it doesn’t mean that American policies on race should be driven by hatred and rate.  Atticus’ quiet decency is a better model.