Category Archives: Current Affairs

Odds and Ends

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. An excerpt from Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr., where he was imprisoned as a participant in a nonviolent demonstration in August of 1963.

I’ve grown up thinking that the Democrats were liberals, but I was only half right. The Democratic Party during my growing-up years was Fiscally Liberal with Social Security and Medicare, and, except for President Lyndon Johnson and a few others, controlled by the socially conservative southern Committee leaders. Just as the world has changed since I was growing up, so has the Democratic Party changed. It happened right in front of my eyes, and I didn’t even see it. Today’s Democrats are Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative. There are outliers like Ocasio-Cortez and a few others who are both Fiscally Liberal and Socially Liberal, but the Party, en masse, is Fiscally Conservative.

On the other hand, according to Anthony Scaramucci, Trump says his supporters are Fiscally Liberal and Socially Conservative. Not counting, I guess, rich tech entrepreneurs who Trump keeps around with big tax breaks and are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

We live in a society where money has become so important that it demands special treatment. By that, I mean money – and making money – has the status of being more holy than secular. When Trump threatened to have the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unapprove a major merger between Paramount Global, which owned CBS, and Skydance Media, a deal that many in the media said was contingent on appeasing Trump by firing the late-night comedian, Stephen Colbert, over his anti-Trump comedy, the media didn’t blame CBS or Paramount Global. The general attitude was along the lines of They had no choice.

The unspoken inference was They had no choice because it would cost their stockholders money, and that is of a higher value than doing the right thing. The unspoken part of the inference, BTW, is that the top executives will get more money at the expense of employees further down the totem pole. – I think that the Right Thing, the right choice, the moral choice, is to say “We believe in freedom of speech, which we have a moral obligation to protect and is guaranteed by the First Amendment, especially in political commentary, even though it may cost us money; therefore, we will not bow to political pressure.”

Sort of on the same subject, a couple of days ago, I heard William J. Haynes II interviewed on NPR. Hayes was with the Bush Administration on 9-11 and was one of the people, along with the more infamous John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, who gave Bush the Younger political cover on attacking Afghanistan after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Haynes was being interviewed on the Trump Administration’s use of the US Military for a strike on at least four vessels that originated from Venezuela, killing more than twenty people. The pretense was that the boats were smuggling drugs into the US, drugs that have “killed more people than have died in the World Trade Center attack”.

Haynes thought the use of the US Military to attack the boats was illegal. I don’t remember exactly why, or how, but, somehow, Haynes came up with because al-Qaeda was attacking us with intent to harm us, they were a legitiment military target. The boats from Venezuela were not attacking us, even though their cargo killed lots of people; all they are trying to do is make money, so we couldn’t legally use our military.

Speaking of NPR, sort of, I noticed that their commentary is now better, more insisive without being partisan, than I am used to. I think this is because NPR is no longer receiving funding from the Government, and they no longer have the Government looking over their shoulder with the implied threat of cutting off their funds if they were too partisan.

A couple of months ago, every newspaper I read and almost everybody I talked to was outraged that Trump was going to cut off NPR’s funding. I don’t think most people, including people in the Trump Administration, were really thinking about what would happen if NPR funding were cut off; they were just reacting to Trump, ad hominem. Trump is a petty little man who is vindictive and seems to take pleasure in hurting people. He’s a punch down, kiss-ass up kind of guy, and it is very easy to be critical of everything he does, but sometimes, what he does is better for all of us, and I think making NPR truly independent is one of those times.

Israel & The Slaughter of Palestinians

Current Affairs, Family, War, What's a man?

My father, who died just before I turned 28, was a secular Jew. However, he was proud of being Jewish. He never said that we were the chosen people, but I suspect that was more because he didn’t believe in a Chooser than anything else. Still, he thought we were better than the people who looked down on us. We were more compassionate, more inclusive, more accepting, all Jewish virtues he strongly believed in.

In a way, I grew up feeling that my compassion and inclusiveness were a result of being Jewish. In a Of course, I believe everybody should be treated equally; I’m Jewish sort of way. Now, watching Israel slaughter Palestinians in Gaza and constantly terrorizing other Palestinians in the West Bank, that all seems like a lie. To a certain extent, who I believed I was now seems like bullshit. It is more than disheartening.

If there is any consultation, it is that I am not alone in my anger and existential grief. Below is a short (-ish) conversation between two very smart, very compassionate people about Israel, Palestine, and being Jewish during the horror of what is going on. Please give it a try.

Mamdani & The NY Mayoral Race

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics
Doctored picture used by the Cuomo campaign of Mamdani with a heavier and darker beard.

Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans. Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans. Ramesh Ponnuru, the editor of National Review and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in an editorial in the Washington Post entitled How Zohran Mamdani is teaching Democrats to lose.

I can’t speak to how other people feel, but I can say that as a Jewish New Yorker and as a member of a Jewish organization, I think that Zohran has done an incredible job of demonstrating care and concern and shown a real commitment to ensuring the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, of all New Yorkers. Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at Jews For Racial & Economic Justice

I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York, President Donald Trump, after Mamdani’s primary win (and was repeated in August).

Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city. Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, US representative for New York’s 14th congressional district

The Anti-Mamdani Movement Is Fizzling New York Magazine

Zohran Mamdani is running for mayor of New York City. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – which is the largest Socialist group in the United States – is 33 years old, a practising Muslim, and, surprisingly, he will probably be the next mayor of New York City. And those are not the most surprising parts of the story. He was born in Kampala, Africa, and moved here when he was seven with his parents,  Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University and Mira Nair. The same Mira Nair who is the director of  Mississippi Masala, Monsoon Wedding, and the Amelia Earhart biopic, Amelia, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.

Mamdani holds political positions that Conventional Wisdom, and a big hunk of the Democratic Party’s leadership, think – maybe hope is more accurate – it should be impossible for him to win anything, even a Municipal Dogcatcher Position. As a short aside, about 12% of people in New York City are Jewish, and 2.4% are Indian, and Mamdani has said both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are war criminals and would be jailed if they came to New York if he were mayor. End aside. And he most probably will be the next mayor of New York City.

Mamdani is running on a platform that includes free city buses and a rent freeze in rent-stabilized housing; he advocates for universal childcare and pre-kindergarten childcare, as well as the construction of 200,000 new affordable housing units and five city-owned grocery stores—one in each borough—to drive down grocery prices. He was also an early supporter of Defund the Police and continues to support public safety reform. He supports a $30 minimum wage by 2030 and proposed giving all new New York City families baby baskets containing diapers and nursing supplies. Mamdani’s platform calls for tax increases on corporations and those earning above $1 million annually. He is running against a lot of very powerful special interests, and I am thrilled that he will probably be the next mayor of New York City.

While I am admittedly biased, the biggest reason I say he will be the next mayor of New York City is that the polls say that. Still, I have other reasons he is likely to become the mayor of New York City: he is young, personable, and, most importantly, authentic; the populace is tired of dour old men running the country for themselves, and Mamdani is running on ideas that are popular even though the conventional wisdom says they are loony tunes.

There is another reason, besides the City of New York’s—and the country’s—general discontent with the status quo, that I think Zohran Mamdani will win, and it is very similar to why Trump won in both 2016 and 2024. To back up a little, there are three ways the Main Stream Media covers elections, and the New York Times and CNN in 2016 are the best examples of that. If they like a candidate, like Hillary Clinton, they give them lots of good, thoughtful – or seemingly thoughtful – coverage. BTW, lots is the operative word in the previous sentence. If they don’t like the candidate, like Bernie Sanders, they ignore him. Just ignore him, and people will forget that the candidate is even running. Or, if they dislike the candidate, like Donald Trump, they will constantly badmouth him. The last way is counterproductive; it ended up keeping Trump in the public’s conscience, and that is what is happening to Zohran Mamdani right now.

A Quick Aside

Current Affairs, War

Last Sunday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – maybe SBU works better in Ukrainian, Служба безпеки України – conducted a series of attacks on Russian air bases that were home to much of Russia’s nuclear bombers. The attack, code-named Operation Spider’s Web, involved smuggling drone parts into Russia and reassembling them near the targets, which was widely reported in American and European newspapers.

What was not generally reported – at least I didn’t see it in the mainstream media – was that the Security Service of Ukraine hacked the website of the builder of the bombers, Tupolev (officially, United Aircraft Company Tupolev). Besides getting a bunch of confidential information, the Security Service of Ukraine changed the home page of Tupolev as shown above. The owl is a symbol closely associated with the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR), which is the mothership for the SBU.

The Met Gala or Anna Wintour Has Big Balls

Americana, Art, Current Affairs,

You can’t speak on Black dandyism, Black art, or Black aesthetics without honoring the Black women who shaped, nurtured, and redefined it all. This year, my intention was to uplift and be surrounded by some of the Black women whose brilliance moves me—artists, thinkers, visionaries who carry history and possibility in everything they do. I’ve invited Lauryn Hill, Regina King, Jordan Casteel, Ming Smith, Adrienne Warren, Danielle Deadwyler, Lorna Simpson, and Radhika Jones to my table this year. Thank you all for your presence, your power, and the gifts you so generously share with the world. I’m deeply grateful to have shared this evening with you. Lewis Hamilton on Instagram

Last Monday evening, Michele and I watched the blue carpet extravaganza of the Met Gala on YouTube. If you are not aware of the Met Gala, it started as a dinner party at which the invitees were expected to donate money to the Costume Department of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. The dinner party was a low-key affair for wealthy people who loved and bought haute couture clothing. But everything shifted when Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour took over in 1999. Now, it’s a televised fashion event that brings invite-only famous people together for the price of $75,000 a ticket.

Michele and I got interested in the Met Gala when Lewis Hamilton first got invited to the Gala sometime during the late 20-teens. He and Anna Wintour bonded over clothes and, strangely, for me, at least, over tennis, especially watching Serena Williams at Wimbledon. This year, the theme for the Gala was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, and Lewis Hamilton was one of the co-chairs.

These are dangerous times to have a political conversation, especially around DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). It is almost impossible to have a nuanced conversation. It is also a time when companies like Boeing and Google have reneged on their DEI commitments under pressure from the Trump Administration (although Apple didn’t). It is a time when a prudent person running a department in a museum that gets money from the Federal Government would not flaunt their DEI cred, but Anna Wintour is not prudent or timid.