Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2017/01/)
Looking over the history of opposition to direct democracy in the United States, we find the electoral college stands on sordid ground. Recent results discourage new voters and make the U.S. a laughingstock when we claim to “export” democracy.
Some are furiously galvanized and organizing like mad. Some feel trapped in a surrealist movie, overwhelmed by confusion. Some have subsided into defeat and demoralization. The clash of paradigms is titanic, a tidal wave of protest crashing against the colossal ego of a uniquely unhinged and malevolent executive. We have not been here before. Tons of insightful analysis and practical advice are issuing from progressive groups.
As the group stood on the sidewalk across from the governor’s mansion, a Native man was snatched from the sidewalk by the police. “There were other clergy there who had made a conscious decision to get arrested, but the police instead chose to arrest this man who wasn’t doing anything simply because he looked Native,” Mickiewicz said.
The clergy negotiated with the police, saying they would disperse if the police let him go. The police did end up releasing him and the protesters dispersed.
“It was dirty,” Hotchkiss said about the trade, but it’s also the oldest trick in the book. Oppressed human beings have always been used as pawns in the game to gain more territory and power.
America is an exceptional country in certain interesting ways. Most large democracies today have a parliamentary system of government. The vast majority of democracies with a strong presidential system like ours have experienced either a period of dictatorship or a military coup at some point in their history. America has had neither of these. We’ve always had a peaceful transition of power, and even after some hard fought and contested elections, the losing candidate has always recognized the other as the legitimate winner.
At the dawn of our new American era — an era of lies and bluster, of threats of family displacement and dispersion, a time of cruelty and bigotry and peril — how fitting that the main locus of resistance will be in coordinated “women’s marches” throughout the country. Like the women of power and principle that surround and safeguard Moses, it is women who are leading the way toward liberation from Pharaoh.
Such actions by the mainstream media and such highly visible pundits point to not just a retreat from responsible reporting, discourse, and a flight from any vestige of social responsibility, but also the further collapse of serious journalism and thoughtful reasoning into the corrupt world of a corporate controlled media empire and an infantilizing celebrity culture. Normalizing the Trump regime does more than sabotage the truth, moral responsibility, and justice; it also cancels out the democratic institutions necessary for a future of well-being and economic and political justice.
As President-elect Trump consummates the victory of his racist and demagogic campaign, Israel’s discriminatory demolition of homes in Umm Al-Hiran yesterday signified another step away from democracy and towards Jewish ethnic domination. Human identity — the sense people have that they are Homo sapiens and morally responsible for other Homo sapiens — recedes before our eyes in both Israel and America. Trump and Netanyahu make clear in speech and policy that they do not see human beings as human beings but only as particular identities, such as Jews or Arabs, Americans or Mexicans, Christians or Muslims.
In the fall of 1969, hundreds of young Americans had begun traveling to Cuba. They were part of a group called The Venceremos Brigade, volunteering to help with the great 10 million-ton Cuban sugar harvest that season. Three friends of mine were part of the second “brigade” in the spring of 1970. They returned excited by what they’d seen and recruited me for the third brigade, set for August.
Recently, the Jewish newspaper, The Algemeiner, released its list of the “40 Worst Campuses for Jewish Students in the United States and Canada.” Included in this list of infamy were such internationally known institutions as Columbia University (#1 for hostility against Jewish students), the University of Chicago, the University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of Washington, Vassar College, New York University, and many others. UCLA, where I have taught for almost four decades, came in at number 6. The Algemiener list is scarcely the only one of its kind. UCLA also makes the cut from the notorious David Horowitz, who is always on guard for any sentiments, especially on college and university campuses, that offend his right-wing agenda.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault hosted the foreign ministers of some 70 countries on January 15 at a Paris conference to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “re-launch” the peace process. Mr. Ayrault hoped that the meeting would “reaffirm the necessity of having two states.” France supports “a viable and democratic independent Palestinian State, living in peace and security alongside Israel.” Jerusalem would be the capital of both states. The border between them would be based on the ceasefire lines prior to the Arab-Israeli War of June 1967, with mutually agreed modifications and equivalent land swaps.