Antisemitism is no longer a local prejudice whispered in alleyways or scrawled on synagogue walls. It has become a transnational rupture, spreading across continents with the velocity of online hate and the fuel of geopolitical flashpoints.
The Bondi Beach massacre in Australia — fifteen lives extinguished during a Hanukkah celebration — is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a grim ledger: Europe reports record spikes in France, Germany, and the UK, where pro‑Hamas demonstrations have blurred into antisemitic violence. North America logs hundreds of incidents in 2025 alone, from vandalism to physical assaults, with August marking the highest monthly total ever recorded in the U.S. Latin America, particularly Argentina, has seen antisemitic demonstrations swell, echoing the same rhetoric that ricochets across social media feeds worldwide.
This is not coincidence. It is globalization of hate. The same platforms that connect families across oceans now connect extremists across borders. The same geopolitical flashpoints that ignite protests also ignite prejudice.
For centuries, antisemitism has not been a passing prejudice but a recurring wound in the Jewish story. From the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem to the expulsions from Spain and England, from pogroms in Eastern Europe to the Holocaust itself, Jewish communities have lived under the shadow of suspicion, scapegoating, and violence. Each era dressed the hatred in new clothes — religious dogma, nationalist fervor, racial pseudoscience — but the underlying impulse remained the same: to mark Jews as outsiders, to deny them belonging, and to punish them for imagined sins.
This history is not abstract. It is inscribed in memory, in ritual, in the very rhythm of Jewish life. The Passover story of liberation, the mourning of Tisha B’Av, the candlelit resilience of Hanukkah — all of these are cultural responses to oppression, reminders that survival itself is a form of resistance. To be Jewish has often meant carrying both the weight of persecution and the stubborn joy of continuity.
What makes the current global rise in antisemitism so heavy is that it echoes these ancient ruptures. The rhetoric may be digital now, the attacks amplified by algorithms instead of pulpits, but the pattern is familiar. Once again, Jewish communities are forced to defend their right to exist, to worship, to gather without fear. Once again, the world is confronted with the question of whether it will allow prejudice to metastasize unchecked.
The scandal is not only in the acts themselves but in the normalization of rhetoric that makes them possible. Antisemitism has shifted from fringe prejudice into mainstream discourse, amplified by algorithms and weaponized by political opportunism.
To write about this is to resist erasure. To inscribe it into the archive is to say: this is not just another headline. It is a global scandal, a cultural wound, and a reminder that prejudice, left unchecked, metastasizes across borders.
A number of years ago, I read a book called “Walking the Bible” by Bruce Feiler. It details the story of a man who fell in love with the Old Testament by seeing it through the eyes of the people who lived there. The setting is often a character in any book, and in the Bible, it is a big one. The land has been up for grabs the same way it is in current day Israel and Palestine. It’s not the same fight, but it has psychological roots that are thousands of years old. The reason it is due to psychological roots is that the region has been complicated since Moses walked the earth (or when we think he did, anyway)…. yet not always for the same reason.
I am tired of American Jews and Christians who call antisemitism on people who hate Israel. It is appropriate to hate Israel, the nation-state, not Judaism. Benjamin Netanyahu is the one that’s genocidal. He bombs integrated neighborhoods without a second thought. If he doesn’t care about Jews, why would you think that people who call him out are antisemitic? I promise, Bejamin Netanyahu does not give a shit about Jews. If he did, he would care how many of his own people he killed while trying to avoid a two-state solution. Netanyahu and American Evangelicals are great at calling people antisemitic, when in reality we are saying both peoples have value. The Israelis and the Palestinians deserve a two-state solution, because it feels like no one is reading their Bibles these days. Both Jews and the evangelical Christians in the American congress funneling money to them seem to forget that God promised to prosper both Sarah and Hagar’s families. Ishmael is not less important than Isaac, but good luck getting Israel to see it.
I am particularly incensed at American Christians, because the Quran is just as much a teaching tool as the Old Testament if you’re willing to be taught. Isa ibn Maryam is the same person as Jesus of Nazareth, because it literally means “Jesus, son of Mary.” Jesus is one of the most miraculous people in the “trilogy,” because since in Islam the virgin birth translates to “no father,” he is the only person in the Quran whose lineage follows the matriarchal line. And in fact, the ONLY person whose begat starts with a woman in any of the Abramic texts.
Hm.
It would be my dream to walk around Jerusalem, seeing all the sights from the West Bank to Golan Heights. I would like to write a prayer for all my loved ones at the Wailing Wall. I would like to ride a “ship of the desert” (camel). Having lots of military friends helps in planning these trips, because they’ve all been to the Middle East and are supportive of me going “but not in the summer….. save your sanity and go in October.”
My advice for Houston as well. 😛
It’s not just Israel and Palestine, though. I would love a road trip all over MENA (State abbreviation- Middle East North Africa), especially Cairo. I am still taken by what Egypt looks like from the back of a motorcycle, a sequence of film that runs in my head thanks to John Brennan. He wrote an autobiography called “Undaunted” (I need a new copy. I did not know he reads the audiobook and my Kindle doesn’t read it in his voice. 😛 ) The book starts when Brennan is a young adult- in my eyes, a child- riding around Cairo high as hell on hashish and just taking life for everything it’s worth. He also had an earring. So, even though Brennan is a current badass, my action figure of him is about 19. 😛
It is so interesting to me that I grew up as a preacher’s kid and now I love international relations and espionage. Those things are seemingly unrelated, but if you look up the personality “requirements” for “spy” and “preacher’s kid,” the Venn diagram is a circle. I promise. If you work for CIA and a preacher’s kid comes to interview with you, hire them and worry about the consequences later. You can teach a preacher’s kid tradecraft.
You cannot teach a spy a personality that will instantly put everyone in the room at ease, and more importantly, teach one that makes someone else want to talk to you. Spies have to come with that preinstalled, and it’s hard to find. It’s one of the reasons CIA is so picky about operatives and yet ALWAYS looking for them. It’s easy to find operatives who are skilled at photography, etc. But what about operatives that can stay calm and just talk to terrorists like you’ve been sitting on the back porch with them for 20 years? I do not get information by talking. I get information by being an empathetic listener. I find that if I just hold space, other people don’t like silence, even when it’s comfortable. They will begin to talk to avoid it. So, you join their reality. Talk about whatever they’re talking about. The information you need will often come without them realizing they just gave it, because hey…. we’re just talking about hummus and how it’s so much better in Iran than it is in Turkey, etc.
It’s akin to play therapy with children, and it seems like I’m being dismissive when I am really, really not. The best information comes when you’re doing something else.
I also want to walk Jonna Mendez’s books, because I cannot know, but I can take a very educated guess that she’s been to the Middle East a time or two…. Her books focus on The Cold War, but any operations she would have done after that are still classified. She’s a very unique spy to study; he saw two large scale operations at CIA take place. One of them was external, and one of them was internal. Externally, there was a shift to bring CIA back into the paramilitary fold once counterterrorism in the Middle East began, and at the time, they embraced it.
Therefore, it pisses me off that spies are viewed with suspicion and the military gets glory, because whether your loved one is a spy or a soldier, they need the same amount of love on return to the US. CIA doesn’t get it because they don’t ask for it, preferring to be shrouded in mystery. But it’s not like we couldn’t have an intelligence services day like we have a Veterans Day. There are like, 17 major intelligence agencies in the government, and up to (I think) 33 depending on who’s counting. It would not be an invasion of privacy to acknowledge every intelligence officer/agent we have in the nation.
I do feel some kind of way about including FBI, though. I am stuck in an “ACAB” loop, and the FBI is part of it. I won’t get into it, but national police aren’t much kinder than local. However, I will say for the record “Not All Feebs,” because of course not every FBI agent in the nation is a bad apple. And yet, they are. Because you don’t have nine good apples and one bad one if everyone is complicit. Everyone says “one bad apple” as a way of saying not all people are racist, bigoted, etc……. not realizing that the entire phrase is that “one bad apple spoils the bunch.”
This leads me to the second change that Jonna witnessed at CIA, which is the complete 180 on women in leadership roles. The reason I went straight from “bad apples” at FBI to women at CIA is because misogyny is part of the reason I view them with suspicion, part of the ACAB oeuvre, as it were. I wish they’d realize they’re working with broken crayons over there, because I’ve read “The Unexpected Spy” by Tracy Walder. She worked for CIA, then FBI. It was stunning the way her work life moved back in time, because “welcome to Hooverville.” Don’t think that just because J. Edgar was a cross-dresser that it made him any less racist or misogynistic.
CIA gets the gold star in this arena because they openly recruit women, people of color, and the entire queer spectrum. The best part is that once they’re onboarded, the culture really is that open. If FBI has the same way of recruiting, everything I’ve read says that once you’re onboarded, you’ll be stuck in a job where you were promised equality that never materializes. It is interesting to note that FBI works in the United States. CIA works outside of the United States. I think these two things are related, tbh.
Who would have the bigger world view in terms of what’s important? Who has seen the most in terms of how other countries do things? Who would have a less US-centric version of the world?
So, going to the Middle East allows me to study all of the things I love at once, because so much has happened there from the time the Bible was written until now. It brings alive my theology and my love of intelligence, and people wonder why my love of both is so strong. I believe in using knowledge to fight our enemies, because it saves lives. If we go in with a team of spies and steal whatever documents we need (or plans, or weapons, or whatever- it doesn’t matter), that saves a deployment of troops nearly every time.
I also think other militaries and intelligence agencies deserve respect, particularly Mossad because they are very good at what they do. However, my problem is that because Palestine is not a recognized state, only Mossad has verified intelligence in the region. With a two-state solution, both Palestinian and Israeli intelligence would be received through proper channels. It’s not about tearing Israel down but building Palestine up.
I hope that I can shed a little light on this- why the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel is such a goat-roping clusterfuck and why we can’t just say “fuck Netanyahu” and go in guns blazing to save the Palestinians (as much as I want to. Right this minute.). It would be a disaster if Mossad decided to stop sharing information with us, because they’re the best intelligence agency in the region.
It is also why “walking the Bible” is in my future travel plans, and not my current.
There is no more dangerous assumption in this election than Joe Biden is too old. There are too many problems inherent in changing horse midstream, particularly since Kamala Harris is the logical choice should the Democrats drop him from the ticket. She represents everything racists hate, which would only make the NASCAR vote bigger than the YASCAR’s…………. or at the very least, close in an election where it shouldn’t be close. If you are on the “Biden’s too old” train, you are not seeing the forest for the trees. People don’t like changing presidents in times of war. They just don’t. Biden will likely squeak by with a win just because even though we’re not at war, we’re in a war mindset. We are emotionally involved in Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine.
Let me say for the record that my heart is for both sides in the Middle East. I hate the Israeli government, not Palestine or the Jewish people. To conflate hate for Benjamin Netanyahu as antisemitism is going against the wishes of most Israelis and Palestinians, who live side by side ruled by a government that does not give a shit about its own people. If they die, they die. Netanyahu doesn’t give a shit if he “wins” when he bombs integrated neighborhoods. Antisemitism is not the issue here, Dude. Netanyahu has decided that in terms of war, he’s the one who knocks. Palestine has rocket launchers and rocks. Israel is armed with nuclear weapons. it’s not a fair fight, and Netanyahu gives absolutely no fucks.
If Trump is elected, we stand the very real chance of Ukraine not being able to stand up to Russia anymore, because if Trump extorted Zelenskyy once, he’ll do it again. That’s because he’s already gotten away with it once, the most moronic thing about Trump being a sane candidate in my eyes. That’s because for the whole Trump presidency, the GOP showed its true colors:
Jed: Theirs is the party of inclusion. Charlie: That’s what they tell me.
For the uninitiated, it’s a conversation in “The West Wing.” Jed is the Democratic president, and Charlie is his body man (and at one point was almost assassinated for dating the president’s very white, very ginger daughter). It’s tongue in cheek because Charlie is black. The GOP’s true colors are showing because they’re afraid of everything progressive. No historically intelligent Republican would take all this lying down. No self-respecting one would, either. I often wonder if William F. Buckley, John McCain, and Ronald Reagan are rolling in their graves. If we’re going to talk about the crimes of the GOP, even Richard Nixon is like, “I’m out.” He broke into Democratic headquarters (or was the mastermind, anyway). Now, Trump is making him look fucking adorable.
I think people are greatly underestimating how good Trump is at being a Russian asset, because he doesn’t have to come out and say he supports Putin no matter what he does. Putin impresses him and feeds his ego, and he gives away information freely, even classified because it’s not that he’s willing to sell secrets. It’s that he’s genuinely too stupid to remember what’s classified and what’s not…. or at least, that’s how he comes across to me. He’s a Useful Idiot, not a proud FSB operative. We are going to stumble into Russia getting whatever they want just because Trump is impressed.
Meanwhile, the United States is trying to keep Ukraine sovereign. That won’t happen under Trump, because he’ll play both sides. He’ll support the country that gives him the most, because all his relationships are transactional. At this point, we are not talking about two candidates that are the same. On its surface, the election looks like two old guys, but one of them is not like the other. We’ve already been warned by Russia about “getting involved.” So, do we fold to that pressure by electing Trump?
Let’s not.
When people talk about a Trump presidency, they generally have either forgotten or never knew how bad it was. Trump didn’t choose the best and the brightest around him. He only hired people that would toe the company line, which is how Trump does business. Hire people who never disagree with him, then don’t pay them.
This election is not about the candidates, but the baggage that comes with them in terms of staff. You are not voting for a party, you’re voting to keep things the same. Sometimes, it’s better to keep the devil at bay.
I mean, maybe there were only two Corinthians. We weren’t there. Not every sermon is a hit.
Despite my best intentions, today may be a “show about nothing.” That’s basically all I know about Seinfeld because I wasn’t a fan back in the day. I don’t remember a lot of what I watched in high school except “Animaniacs” and “Jeopardy!” At that age, I was usually sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my headphones on trying to be Miles Davis. I assure you that I always thought I sounded better when I was alone, because I wasn’t focusing on pleasing the crowd and making a show go well.
I do remember the highlights. I was more happy that I impressed Doc than impressing a crowd, because I did a solo in “Come Rain or Come Shine” and Doc’s response was “Leslie Lanagan! 9th Grade, ladies and gentlemen. NINTH GRADE.” I was also the soloist on a local Houston TV show called “Black Voices” (yes. Really. But it wasn’t because Summer Jazz Workshop was all white. It’s because I beat out everyone else. I got that solo from Konrad Johnson, director of one of the most famous jazz bands in the nation- Kashmere High School. I’ve mentioned this before, but Kashmere got a chart on the soundtrack to “Baby Driver,” and Konrad, who has now passed, is memorialized in a bigger way than just locally in Houston.
When a black jazz director picks the white boy for a solo on a television show called “Black Voices,” it means the fucking world. I have rarely felt more “I’m on top of the world” than that. It’s also really funny in retrospect.
If I had to describe my sound, it’s very much like Wynton Marsalis. This is because he’s who I studied the most closely to learn both jazz and classical. Let me tell you about the time I met Wynton. I walked right up to him and said, “Wynton, I’ve waited my whole life to meet you.” It’s funny because I was 15 and also true. I’ve been listening to Wynton since I was in the womb because my dad is also a trumpet player. You can see him most weeks on the Second Baptist broadcast in Houston, or streaming over the Internet.
My dad’s claim to fame is that when he was in high school, he went to the 50 yard line and played “The Star Strangled Banana” all by himself instead of having a singer and accompaniment. I have no doubt that it was absolutely gorgeous, because I inherited his “elements of style.”
Speaking of which, a bookstore worker was talking on Reddit about how this person came in and said she needed a book for her daughter, who was a writer. It was by “shrunken white,” and EVERYONE was confused. But what writer wouldn’t have known it from “shrunken white?”
(It’s “Elements of Style,” by Strunk & White.)
If I have any advice to give writers (because I’ve done it so many years, not because I think I’m “all that and a bag of chips”), it’s write where you feel the most comfortable. Sometimes, it’s at my desk. Sometimes, it’s under the covers.
Write where you feel the absolute least threatened, because your emotions will flow through you a lot easier that way. You’re still writing about your own head when you’re in fiction mode. It’s just expressed as your characters.
That’s because we’re making it up as we go along, hoping you’ll track with us. Even if you’re an architect to plans in advance, that’s no guarantee that people will track with you. It’s your system, not theirs. I am not an architect. I’m a gardener. I start at one place and dig down. Otherwise, it’s not my diary.
It’s trying to impress the crowd, and this time, I don’t want to do that. I want to move and challenge people so that they’ll come along with me and not the other way around. The right people will gravitate, and whether that’s a hundred or 10 million is of no consequence to me because I’m obviously going to write whether people think it’s worthy of money or not. I don’t have to be validated by anyone else. I have received enough praise and been compared to enough people better than me that I feel solid. I don’t have to worry that I’m so far not successful because of lack of talent. If Margaret Cho and Jonna Mendez both think I can write my ass off, then I fucking can.
So, I don’t have to believe the people who say I’m a hack anymore.
In terms of writers to whom I’ve been compared, I get David Sedaris the most frequently. I can be as funny as he is, but I’m not. We don’t often share the same goal, which is to make people laugh outright. Mostly, I can’t because I don’t feel like it. When I’m not feeling funny, I’m not.
And that’s why people come here- to see both the good and the bad- not because mine is better than anyone else’s, but that mine exists over people who aren’t writers. There are lots of people with web sites that don’t actually say anything. I don’t want mine to be one of them.
I would be a powerful speaker in public if I liked my voice, because I have been told I already am a powerful speaker in public. I know this solidly because I have preached sermons multiple times that have been well received. You don’t graduate from being a preacher’s kid without having picked up some tricks over the years. Just because I’m not a minister doesn’t mean I don’t have that patois when I’m writing or in front of a crowd.
I don’t have to believe the people who say I’m not a good preacher.
My grandfather always said “write it tight” because he was a publicity man for Lone Star Steel. He actually learned the same type photography as Jonna Mendez, basically hanging out of an airplane to take overhead photos. It’s interesting to me that she was a spy and he was publicity and yet they learned the same tricks.
In terms of writing it tight, I do in certain sentences because it fits a mood. That mood is the one I’m in at the moment. I am INFJ, neurodivergent, nonbinary, queer, poly, etc. Therefore, I have never made a decision on what kind of person I am in my life.
“The Counselor” personality is a thousand years old when it is born. We are born with a desperate need to search inside ourselves for answers, because we have an absolute neediness when it comes to wanting to improve the world. We need to feel wanted and valued, but the way we do that is by trying to lead people by laying out our vulnerabilities first. It is not a narcissistic game, but a realistic understanding of what it will take to create connection and resolution vs. power over.
My personality is enormous in the smallest of ways. I don’t approach this blog like I’m a god, but that I am whispering into the night and hoping it resonates with other people. This is true among people who do not know me, but is not true among people who know me.
Therefore, I feel like I know Jesus on a deep and spiritual level, and anything written to amplify his life into being divine is not the message and never should have been in the first place.
Sticky, sticky blood theology bothers the everliving shit out of me. That’s because it’s focusing on what I believe was a marketing campaign to spread his story. That I don’t have to have mystery and magic to think that the historical Jesus is valuable and actually taught people things to which they should pay attention. Our entire religion backfired during The Crusades because supposedly religious superiority launched war off a nomadic preacher who taught people to love each other.
Again, it’s the strangest transformation in history.
The first mistake was turning Jesus from a brown person into a white person, and blaming Jews for the crucifixion and not the Romans. He was a destitute homeless person, basically. But he did it by choice.
I do not understand people who trade his supposed glory for what he was actually trying to say– to you and to all the other people in history who have colonized others. My favorite line in The Gospels is “render unto Caesar what it Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” This is because it’s like he’s telling power to its face “you do you, but okay.”
It’s the messages they’ve missed in the middle of the mess. And I am so tired. Evangelicals are exhausting because they treat Jesus like this professional Christian superhero when he was basically thrown away like white people have thrown away black people for hundreds of years.
There is no reason for this foolishness…. And yet, they persist.
Focusing on the resurrection is not about any of that. It’s being willing to believe that if you will be forgiven for your mistakes, it means you’re allowed to make them. It does not mean you don’t have to say you’re sorry….. And that’s the kind of Christianity that’s woven into the Republican Party.
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
I am extremely patriotic, but there’s a lot of this country who wouldn’t see it that way. Al Franken wrote about my kind of patriotism in “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” (one of my favorite books since 2003, and if I were you I’d get the audiobook because he reads it). I’d thought something like this for a very long time, he just said it more eloquently than I could. I’ll paraphrase him because I don’t have a copy of the book anymore.
He said that Republicans seem to love America like children. To criticize anything means that you’re not a good American because everything America does is good and right. Democrats seem to love America like adults, that we’re calling out bad behavior that needs to be changed. We can think we live in a pretty great country and also admit there are problems. It’s costing us, because we argue like rabbis.
You can tell the difference by the types of media we watch. Both MSNBC and I will call out the president when they deserve it. Fox News viewers think that every Republican is perfectly perfect in every way, as evidenced by the fact that they’re still fuming about Hunter Biden, the 2016 election being stolen, and classified documents on a small scale.
Biden and Pence both had a few, both gave them back- no harm, no foul. At no time did they try to flush them down a toilet or hide them in the bathroom. Where the cult part comes in is that everyone else in the Republican Party has become a persona non grata because apparently Trump is the only one capable of running the country and they’re choosing to ignore 91 indictments (so far). I called him a bunch of names the other day, and I left out “rapist.” The E. Jean Caroll case is just one more thing that Republicans will sweep under the rug, because the party has one message. It’s simple, and that’s how they win.
Republicans are not interested in subtlety or nuance, which is why soundbites work on them, and why they’re in lockstep instead of working out issues amongst themselves. Seriously, when was the last time you ever saw a Republican in the media arguing about a plan for anything? When do they contribute to the discussion at all? Even if there was no bipartisanship, I would still expect ideas to originate on both sides. The plan for the last, I don’t know, 30 years? has been that the Republicans will say no to everything the Democrats put forth without ever putting anything on the table of their own. Their only job is to stonewall.
Republicans, you have to ask yourselves if this is really what you want from a political party. You have absolutely no voice in Congress, because the people you elect are just running out the clock. They don’t give a shit about you. If they did, your concerns would be on the floor of the House and Senate as well…… because Republicans would have actually come up with something on their own. You think you have elected “the best and the brightest,” when really it’s “the petulant and the indolent.”
Yes, part of it is laziness. Why wouldn’t it be if you’re only there to say “no?” You should wonder what they’re doing with all that free time instead of their own policies.
Name five Republicans you think are actually capable of running the country that are in the line of succession. “Designated Survivor” was a hyped up TV show, but the title absolutely is a real thing during the State of the Union. Name a Republican you’d want in that spot should disaster happen. I can think of one person, and that’s because the Republicans don’t like her, either. The Republicans are going to rue the day they kicked Mary Cheney out of their little cult.
I could also put up with Mitt Romney (keeping in mind that this is a fictional exercise), because he’s not as conservative as he had to be in order to get elected president. I really thought we were going to get universal health care back then, because it was such a raging success in Massachusetts, and he was the governor through all of it.
To be perfectly frank, the most surprising part of the rise of Trump is how many well-respected Republicans drank the Kool-Aid as fast as the ones who’s already earned my Molly Ivins death stare.
I have faith in two people out of a cast of hundreds, and neither of them will ever be elected again, unless Mary Cheney becomes a Democrat, and I’m serious because she can have a vote in Congress and that’s great. But Independents rarely win because they need the funding of the party. If nothing else, I hope she does it because she’s way, way more conservative than I am, but we need everyone who has had their blinders ripped off on our side, and I mean everyone. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I think that was Abraham Lincoln, who could speak in complete sentences and managed to be a good Republican in spite of it.
The Democrats have a long history of racism, and I feel that now we’re the only ones who are struggling with it. Everyone else wants to sweep it under the rug because of course they do. No one wants to acknowledge that there’s an equal shot we’ll end up reflecting “The Handmaid’s Tale” as stumbling toward Panem….. and I am not Jennifer Lawrence.
This is because systemic racism and wanting to change it is a very, very violent proposition in this country, but luckily it’s a minority. It has just gotten more popular to be openly racist and violent because the Republicans have been quietly supporting the system until Trump came along and it wasn’t so quiet anymore.
I do not know what to think of this for my country, because on one hand, it’s terrible and I wish I had the power to turn off the neckbands that seem like jewelry until they make your head explode…. which is the problem entirely. Trump has his entire base by the short and curlies without a single shred of evidence he can actually do the fucking job.
Democrats are tasked with trying to keep the country together so that Trump doesn’t get a second shot at trying to become Hitler. Again, I do not believe that Trump is Adolf Hitler in his later years. I just believe that Trump has learned a lot about fascism from him (see also Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping). I don’t know if he’s actually read “Mein Kampf” or not, but he certainly loves politicians who’ve taken the same route that book laid out. Otherwise, how would a know-nothing idiot be able to get people to follow him?
By ignoring all the laws and congressional procedures and focusing on telling people that their problems were Mexicans and Arabs….. only the two cultures I’ve found to be the most welcoming. I would love to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria (particularly because Damascus is meaningful to me for Biblical reasons), and even Saudi Arabia (because I want to see where Franklin lived and worked, not that I’m interested in Saudi itself).
That’s because I know that for the average Arab, when I showed up at their house they would literally feed me until I exploded and then ask why I didn’t eat that much. Here, have some pie. I am not worried about what their government thinks of me, because I’m probably not going to meet them personally. If I’m going to Iran, I hope it’s to meet a Persian grandmother who will pass on her secrets because it won’t get back to her friends that I have her recipe and they don’t. 😉
I’m bad at transitions, and I would still move to Mexico in a heartbeat. My sister and brother-in-law feel the same way. Lindsay and I have both been to Enseñada, and she and Matt go to Mexico City all the time, one of their favorite cities in the world. It would actually be a good move for me to go to Mexico, because I think I could make more of my inheritance there than I could here. However, I would have to rent because only Mexicans by blood/birth have the right to purchase property. It’s similar to Hawaii, where you can only get a 99 year lease. What I know for sure is that I would freak out at the transition at first, but the pace of life is so different that I might adjust easier. Who knows? What I do know is that I already know enough Spanish to have simple conversations, and the more I spend in immersion, the more I remember from past trips and high school Spanish.
I am so grateful to my church in Sugar Land when I was a teenager, because if we hadn’t moved there, I wouldn’t speak Spanish nearly as well as I do (which even that much makes me feel like a toddler, but it’ll get better). This is because I took my first year of Spanish at HSPVA, and my second year at Clements. Loved one teacher, hated the other. I won’t say which was which. Then, in the summer between PVA and Clements, I went on a mission trip to Reynosa (our hotel was in McAllen). Because I’d just come out of first year Spanish, being immersed reminded me of Matthew and Bryn, who were and/or are lifeguards (and siblings, so that’s why it sounds the same coming from both of them). This is because it was a very short leap from a swim coach saying “do your bubbles… do your bubbles” to “hope you don’t drown.”
By the time I came back from Mexico, I was sold. I could do this whole Spanish thing. Interestingly enough, I don’t have conversation issues in Mexico because I know that there’s no reason to write anything down. I have to dance with them what brung me. I can’t disappear into my writing personality with them.
Then I got to my second year of Spanish, where my teacher and I both hated each other. That’s because she was so frustrated by my performance, and why it went up and down. In retrospect, it’s because only half the grades given were over conversations in person. The rest was writing. I had to study Spanish for a little while to learn that what she was looking for was more formal than I’d learned in Reynosa and Progreso.
My sentence structure was all wrong, and I’m sure to some degree it still is. However, our job that week in Mexico during the summer before the first semester at Clements was to put on what we in the States would call “vacation Bible school.” Just fun activities for the kids who are so poor they don’t get much play time.
Also, I’m not an ordained minister in a major denomination who preaches every week… though I can do some stuff; I got ordained in the Church of the Latter Day Dude to do Bryn’s wedding, which ended up being very Methodist/Episcopalian while also taking out the religion aspect and tailoring it to the couple.
It absolutely worked, because it was formal enough to feel like you’d been married by someone who did their homework, when in reality the most embarrassing thing about it was having to pay for ordination instead of earn it.
This is an aside, but I think one of the reasons my church plant wasn’t a success was because of a really old tape that I didn’t think to work out in therapy when I was young. That tape is “the Methodists kicked me out, so why would anyone else want me?” It wasn’t logical because I was 15, and I did meet other Christian lesbians who were ordained. By then, I had imposter syndrome.
The only reason I had the courage to come up with an idea for a homeless ministry in Silver Spring is that I got over my fear by preaching at my church in Oregon. I have never in my life asked to preach a sermon, but I was not the same preacher at 16 that I was at 24 or 5. It all ties together, my friends. The people on the trip told me that even though I wasn’t ordained, I had to do the sermon at the closing worship service because no one else knew enough Spanish. So, the second semester at Clements was harder than the first because my teacher was so frustrated and angry that I got Cs all semester and then a 95 on the final. She called my dad in so fast.
Now, my dad wasn’t a bully to my teachers, ever, because he actually knew I was fallible……….. but at the same time, he held them accountable and never lost a thing any of them said because he’d write in his notebook throughout the meeting and have the teacher sign it if it was accurate. I really liked that because it made both my teacher and me live up to a bargain instead of a lose-lose situation…. which Spanish was, because since I’d only studied hard with a tutor who unlocked writing for me (people who know her, Nancy Wells saved my ass) it didn’t seem possible that I was capable of an A and there was no way to prove it except to give me a second exam, and for some reason she didn’t think of that. She just fumed like she knew I’d gotten away with something and I was glad there was only a couple of weeks of school left, and no more required Spanish.
I won’t let you go, I just wait to see whether I’m a priority in your life because I don’t always want to be the one that initiates contact. I don’t want to be around you if I always feel like I’m nagging to get a simple answer out of you, or afraid to contact you because I feel like I’m bothering you rather than showing care. I wait to see if you show interest when I put something out there, just receiving you if you show up. I am able to do that so easily because I’m a writer. All artists have an easier time turning their attention away from obsessing over a problem when they can get it out.
My blog is ridiculously personal because what I have learned over my entire life is that no one will be honest with you if you’re not honest with them first. It’s what art is supposed to do- it’s supposed to make you feel something. However, I do not think of your reaction as my responsibility. It is your right to state your opinion and decide whether you’re owed an apology or not, because I do believe in freedom of speech, I just have limits.
For instance, I will never get any more specific about Zac’s other partners than I have been now. The one I was talking about in a previous entry likes coffee mugs and Diet Dr Pepper, like most of America. However, they do not get to be “characters” here except in the most vague of terms because I don’t directly talk to them and I don’t write hearsay. I talk to Zac, and our relationship is completely separate and apart from anything else in his life. I feel like that’s a small reason it’s easy for us to open up to each other.
He absolutely can tell me things in confidence (about our personal relationship- I keep saying that because he’s civilian intelligence M-F and Navy Reserves intelligence in his copious amounts of spare time). I just stand next to him with a “dumb yet excited” look on my face. The thing about government agencies, no matter which one, is that they look impressive and intimidating all at once. My favorite is the black and white seal on the floor at Langley, and for a long time my desktop wallpaper was a hi-def shot of the custodian mopping it. It was a reminder to me that even though people like George Lazenby, Martin Freeman, Daniel Craig, Melissa McCarthy, Piper Perabo, and Jennifer Garner make it look exciting, at the end of the day it’s still just a regular floor.
People accuse me of being a drooling fangirl (:::stares in Lindsay and Zachary:::), but that’s impossible if you really study the history of the agency. My favorite era so far is the space race, which shows up in everything from “For All Mankind” to “The Queen’s Gambit.”
“What part of the State Department did you say you were from?”
I have no doubt that CIA is trying to stop nuclear war right now. Whether the bombs are small or large, either Russia or The Middle East will have absolutely no problem with pushing the big red button. Also, it just occurred to me. You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel. You know who doesn’t? Palestine. Listen to me when I say that Benjamin Netanyahu does not give even half a shit how many Israelis die as long as it means “beating Palestine.” Palestine might be able to handle rocket launchers, rocks, etc. It remains to be seen whether nuclear threat is on the table, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised.
If nothing else, I think there’s going to be sort of a second movie like “13 Days,” where when the op is declassified the movie will show just how close Russia came to nuking the Ukraine or just how close Israel came to nuking Palestine- or just how close Iran got to figuring out how to make them on their own.
The other thing that makes the space race really interesting to me is that it wasn’t about discovery or hope or any of that Camelot bullshit. CIA was receiving legitimate chatter that the Russians’ plan after winning the space race was to put nuclear weapons on the moon. That’s why we were relentless in getting it done, why the “computers” saved our asses, why Houston is so dear to me, and Star City as well. Star City has been treating my Houstonians like warm friends for years now.
There were many, many Russians who became our assets in country, and many of them died for us, especially when Aldrich Ames gave the Russians all their names.
That did not stop private Russian citizens from helping us, because they ultimately thought they were helping Russia by stopping the Cuban Missile Crisis as well. It came down to some people who gave us Russian intelligence, and one very brave man, and no doubt the person on which “Crimson Tide” is based. The Russians were locked and loaded, and this man saved all our lives:
Thankfully, the captain didn’t have sole discretion over the launch. All three senior officers had to agree, and Vasili Arkhipov, the 36-year-old second captain and brigade chief of staff, refused to give his assent. He convinced the sub’s top officers that the depth charges were indeed meant to signal B-59 to surface — there was no other way for the US ships to communicate with the Soviet sub — and that launching the nuclear torpedo would be a fatal mistake. The sub returned to the surface, headed away from Cuba, and steamed back toward the Soviet Union.
Thank you, Russia. We really owe you an apology for thinking you were Gene Hackman instead of Denzel Washington.
Depending on the operation (because you can’t and shouldn’t agree with all of them), it’s an apt metaphor for The Company. For instance, there have been many times that CIA has gone into a situation and rescued people exactly like the houseguests, as huge a mop job yet completely unnoticed. Case officers don’t win awards in public. On the other hand, CIA has had misstep after misstep since 1947. Trying to overthrow governments, trying to kill Castro, the government giving the torture program to CIA when it never should have happened in the first place, etc.
I don’t love CIA like the Republicans, where everything mommy and daddy says is correct
That summer was when my dad decided to leave professional ministry and just become a member at his own church, somewhere he could be anonymous. We ended up at St. Martin’s Episcopalian, which is how I got to meet George H.W. Bush and James Baker III. Because the story of how Jonna Mendez “masked up” to show Bush how their new technologies worked, I kidded her in person that we had mutual friends. And in fact, the first time I saw James Baker, it was because he was taking up way too much damn room on a pew and my stepmom told him to move over like four times. She didn’t know who he was, but it doesn’t matter. It’s church. There’s no hierarchy as much as your admin board might think there is. I have noticed from some pastors that money tends to grease the wheel. It’s not politics, it’s gratitude. It takes some real hustle when you work in a cathedral, because generally those buildings are old as shit. Renovating the pipe organ at National Cathedral is literally going to be 14 million dollars, because I looked it up on their web site. And that’s just ONE of the multimillion dollar projects they have to have going to conserve the building.
Since we’ve been talking about politics, let me make something clear. Calling it “National Cathedral” is not because it’s supported by taxpayers. It’s because so many state funerals have happened there, as well as memorial services. When it is acting in its formal capacity as the ministers who carry out those services, it ceases to be an Episcopalian congregation and turns ecumenical quickly.
In reality, what I’ve noticed over time is that it’s a bunch of social justice warriors who show up every Sunday, and they generally only have to use one part of the sanctuary for that because of course they don’t fill up the whole thing each week. It seems to have two modes, and it’s every bit as drastic a change as being a Transformer™ and being a trans person. 😉 This is because every Sunday of its life, “National Cathedral” is actually a smallish congregation named “St. Alban’s.” It’s just that sometimes thousands and thousands of people show up, like Easter comes more than once a year. My dad was particularly good at that on a smaller scale. Making an event at church that people didn’t want to miss and it didn’t matter what you believed or which church you attended. It was community building, not evangelism.
It’s funny, I’ve evangelized more to atheists than I have to anyone else, and not because I’m trying to change them. I’m trying to change their perception of me. Do you know how hard it is to get an atheist to believe you’re not part of the “What Would Jesus Bomb?” shitshow? I don’t give a shit what others believe, because as Pete Rollins so beautifully said, “A/Theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.” (I heard Pete on “The Robcast.”)
I loved the four episodes called “Pete Rollins on God” that they’re the only four podcast episodes on my cloud drive………………….. and absolutely nothing about my rabid love for that podcast miniseries comes from the fact that when Rollins said that quote, it was one of the sexiest things I’d ever heard; he has an absolutely gorgeous Irish lilt. I could listen to him read the phone book. If you subscribe to The Robcast, all four parts are still in the archives.
I feel I have to explain something. By saying that a/theism is the greatest love story ever told, I do not mean to endorse The Crusades, colonialism, white supremacy, etc. I am saying that the question has always intrigued and eluded philosophers and therefore the argument was the only one we studied all semester in Logic I. However, it wasn’t pushing a religious agenda like you’d think in a Texas school. The first half was spent proving God exists. The second half was proving that they don’t.
It is not logically possible either way in the language with which logic is encoded. P and Q statements, all that. Basically, you believe or you don’t. To what degree is malleable, because I believe agnostic is just as valid as atheism, probably because most things in my life are a spectrum. We are not all programmed to see in black and white like Fox News.
Therefore, I cannot offend anyone with my views on God because I am giving the most pious and the most godless freedom to be them. It’s all valid, because I didn’t say that God does or does not exist, because I can’t remember how to do it now, but I used to be able to write it out like math. If my friend Jesse sees this, I’m sure he could tell me, because his dad taught in the same department as my professor. I’m betting Jesse picked up a thing or two about philosophy and the symbols to express it.
Atheists also cannot argue with gathering together for community. To have someone to lean on when you’re in a crisis or whether you’re protesting the Iraq war…. which I did. Many times. If I had been in Portland during those marches, I certainly would have been gassed. That’s because protesting in Portland is, a lot of the time, how we socialize as a church. We have to have breaks between the chants, catching our breaths because we are also walking. That’s when discussion turns to things like Angela’s mom, Grant’s child, Amy’s granddaughter. I don’t know that it helps God to know that I’m praying for them, but it certainly makes me spend time empathizing with what they’re going through. If I can analyze what the problem is while I’m praying, I can help support people through it…….. because that’s how prayer works.
I learned all this when a friend checked herself into rehab and I went apeshit because we were so close. I wanted to be there at every family day, every open meeting, etc. At first it was because I was worried about her. Then, it was “this is better than church.” On the serious. It’s sort of like being at a Quaker meeting, it seems, because there are lots of “sermonettes” and an unshakable commitment to God.
AA is not religious at all. If you don’t have a God, find one. What you need is a higher power, not evangelism, especially if you weren’t religious before. No, what you need is something to get your ego out of the way. You might not be able to believe in a god or gods, but you can believe in your child being your higher power. Your spouse. Your parents and siblings, your co-workers, basically everyone in your life who is trying to tell you that the common denominator is you. If you can’t believe in those things because you’re single, I don’t care if your God is Dr Pepper and donuts.
“Look, I don’t want to get into a semantic argument, I just want the protein.”
That’s because when you acknowledge that you are not the center of the universe and just a piece of it, you become startlingly aware of just how much you’ve touched other people’s lives and how makes you sick to your stomach.
Flat out AA does a better job of healing people than church. FLAT OUT. There is no way for a church to dig that deep with you unless they’re really committed to it. I know you see AA meetings at churches all the time, but that’s because they rent the room in the church so people who aren’t members don’t feel uncomfortable. The only time I’ve really dug deep with other parishioners is when we did a six week grief course together. No one had died, I was just in grief because I’d broken up with Kathleen and moved, trauma jointly and severally. And in fact, most of us were there for divorce support.
It’s where politics fades away, and how we’d solve a lot of problems in this country. If we stopped training ourselves to only show our pretty parts on social media, it will cut down on the amount of time people spend doing it in real life. I honestly think that life has imitated art, because we don’t make time for care and connection in groups. We make time to sit on the couch and look at our friends without checking in. Time goes by and you haven’t responded to anything they’ve sent, because you’re neurodivergent or just busy or whatever the case may be. And then it becomes the guilt of not responding rather than just saying “you haven’t fallen off my priority list. I just don’t have time right now because for as much as I adore you, my X has to take precedence.”
I do not object to those words in the slightest, but I’ll run pretty fast if you don’t get back to me for months, because I want to ascertain whether you’re contacting me because you enjoy me or whether you’ve decided that you needed something from me; you had to reach out in a pinch. If you have contacted me because you only needed something from me and aren’t interested in true friendship, I don’t want to repeat a pattern I’ve had since childhood. I will not let myself fall into a campaign to prove my worth when I’m getting a trickle’s worth of love when I deserve a fire hose, and because of community, to be able to return that love just as “bigly.” It’s always been my “strategery.”
I would bet a great many people in my life wish I was a painter. Do they not know that a picture is worth a thousand words? A gallery of my art might give me more blowback, not less. 🙄 😅
I get out my pain onto canvas just the same. I use whatever language I want because this is not Facebook. This is church. This is AA. This is a real account of what’s happening in my life, what has happened. These entries are as intimate as anything I’ve ever share in a meeting.
I won’t let you go, I’m just waiting to see whether I’m a priority in your life because I don’t always want to be the one that initiates contact. I don’t want to be around you if I always feel like I’m nagging to get a simple answer out of you, receiving you when you show up.
I remember when I wanted that life, because as an INFJ, you know you have a lock on it because you’ve read everything you can find about that personality type and they all end up as social workers, teachers, writers, ministers, and anything else that needs the wisdom of people who have been a thousand years old since the nurse laid their baby in their arms.
However, I am not kidding when I say that the dream died with my mother for two reasons. The first is that I am a completely different person than I was before she died.
I am not willing to go back into “show mode” in order not to get my crazy spatter on other people for the rest of my life. “Show mode” has done nothing for me except to convince people I am perfectly normal….. “you don’t look autistic.”
I don’t often publish anything without running it through Google Translate, because even if I can’t read every word, I know enough to know when Google is being too formal, but I did get the idea right. When I went on that first mission trip, I still knew more Spanish than everyone else, so I was asked to give the closing message. It was terrible, according to my friend Mikal who understood me, but my mother cried, as she always did during my sermons….. however, this time it was just watching my face because she didn’t understand a thing….. except me.
The reason the second semester was harder than the first is that I also went to Reynosa/Progreso for Christmas break, again being immersed, so then my performance was really up and down because I could understand some conversations better than others because I’d had to use those words before. I honestly don’t think she did a very good job of asking me about my trip. I could have told her all about the fact that Hector and Fabiola were getting married soon, that they had been sweethearts for a number of years. Did I want a lemonade?” Etc. I think if she’d ever offered to spend some time with me after school (she flat out told us she couldn’t do that), she would have seen that I was doing fine in her class, but I wasn’t, because I was ACTUALLY speaking Spanish for days at a time with no problem at all. I love and fear Spanish all at once. It’s a much easier language than English, much harder to put yourself out there when you know you suck. However, in Mexico, I’d just gently be corrected and told the right words. I never got a C.
I have also never experienced prejudice against white people in Mexico, especially if you show that you’re making an effort to speak their language and fit into their culture rather than the typical American who expects everything to be the same. It’s the attitude of an Imperialist dictator who loves his country the way people love their mommy and daddy. It can do no wrong because I say it can’t.
Meanwhile, the smart people are talking less and less. The people of color get arrested more…….. and not just because of prejudice. Felons can’t vote, and black people aren’t a monolith but tend to lean Democratic. This is not about locking up black people in its entirety. This is about a more complex, disgusting way to limit voters at the polls. It’s not the whole issue, but it doesn’t hurt. People who are racist are generally Republican, but they weren’t the party that was always known for it. The realignment of the parties started in the ’70s because back then the Democrats were the party of the Deep South. Slowly, the parties started crossing over until the Deep South was solidly blue. Then, in the 80s, the white supremacy Jesus apologizers took over the Republican party, though they were warned. They just didn’t care. They turned their whole party into supposedly loving the Bible and screwing poor people every chance they got.
I would say that this is the thing that should be in the United Methodist Discipline under “incompatible with Christian teaching” instead of homosexuality.
So let’s bring it back around:
I love my country like an adult, because it gives me enough access to history that I can actually have an informed grasp of how this all works. In short, we are all but Citizens of Locker C, yet half of us are begging for Trump’s watch….. old and busted. The Republicans’ biggest problem is that they all know he’s a nutjob and can’t figure out how to get elected without him, so they just clench their teeth and do nothing. They couldn’t find “the new hotness” with both hands.
It’s time to tell them they’re fired because they can’t even manage to finish a coloring book, much less a bill. I honestly think that the reason Trump did everything through executive order is that he didn’t know how to introduce legislation. People have lost touch with the reality of what this job takes, and how it’s not about them. They can go off and have their little cult in the woods, because a man got elected who didn’t know the first thing about government. I doubt he’s been past sixth grade social studies/civics.
This entire essay is all connected, because it’s all about how my faith has influenced my politics for many years. How my young life has shaped me as an adult. How the Trump era was when I finally realized that I was old enough to have an opinion and as long as it stayed in my space, where I owned it and wasn’t hogging a conversation, why not? I don’t want there to be a chance there’s a criminal in The White House, and I am mystified as to why anyone would.
Why were so many people willing to gloss over Trump’s role in convicting The Central Park Five? Why wasn’t making fun of the neurodivergent kid not the end of it? Pretty sure “grab them by the pussy” on tape during a campaign if there wasn’t something about Obama that was off-putting and they just couldn’t put their fingers on it. Racism and sexism won Trump the election, because people have hated Hilary Clinton for some unfathomable reason since the 80s. She started the ball rolling on universal health care with the Patients’ Bill of Rights, so instead of seeing that she started it and Obama finished it, they’re mad at better health care and mad that a woman dared run for office, especially one that was already very unpopular and shouldn’t she know it?
I am going to bet that for 99.99999% of you, you’ll never meet the head of state in another country. A lot of you, if you look up how many passports are active, will never even leave the US to be able to compare it to anything else.
Which leads to things like thinking Obama is not American because most people don’t actively think of Hawaii as a state. It was easy to convince lots and lots of people that either Hawaii wasn’t a state, Obama’s birth certificate was forged on the date so that Hawaii wasn’t a state yet, or forged in the “Place of Birth” field because he was actually born in Kenya.
Trump’s biggest scandal is that he committed high crimes and misdemeanors and blackmailed Ukraine. Obama’s big scandal was wearing a tan suit (I’m being facetious, but still….. Obama’s biggest scandal was blinking on Syria, but he’s the kind of person that knew it and apologized. I can’t imagine Trump knowing himself well enough to know when he owes an apology to anyone. If you’re a narcissist, everyone owes an apology to you.
I also hate broken campaign promises…. just one.
The only campaign promise I’m really pissed about is that there aren’t taco trucks on every corner.
And because I’m not a complete monster, I’m not going to make you sit through all my political opinions without a reward.
It’s a picture of Oliver, who is a dog. He’s dressed up for Valentine’s Day and I asked Zac if I could post it.
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
I don’t know how to quantify giving a million dollars to a mysteriously labeled “crazy people,” but I do know that according to an Apple commercial from the 80s, people who think they’re crazy enough to change the world are the only ones who do.
That Chiat/Day commercial runs through my head all the time, because it lends an authority to something I know, but don’t. In some ways, I am smarter than everyone else. This is not said with a hint of megalomania, because neurotypical people try to prove to me why they’re smarter than me all day long and twice on Sundays. It’s not a case of smart or less smart. It’s a case of “I see it and you don’t.” That works in both directions, it’s just that neurotypical people are taught that autism, ADHD, and retardation are all the same thing. Autism and/or ADHD change how information is processed, but doesn’t limit the amount I’m capable of knowing. Right now I’m sitting in my bed with a Bluetooth keyboard and tablet. It’s 0524, but my scope isn’t limited here. My mind is in the Middle East……… again.
Mossad got caught with their pants down on a fight some say has been going on since the 50s. Some say the fighting after Abraham’s death never really stopped. Either way, a massive intelligence failure. Doesn’t mean that Mossad is stupid. It means that there was a missing link in the system, just like there was when President George W. Bush took office and failed to pay attention to an upstart little shit named Osama bin Laden. Clinton left plenty of clues, and the W. administration can look as dumb about it as they want. Doesn’t take the stink off ’em.
Because this is the problem weighing on my mind this morning, it doesn’t seem like a million dollars will do anything for it. A million dollars wouldn’t even buy blankets for all the people who needed them after an attack when you start thinking of shipping them from here. A million dollars also won’t bring Israel its safety and security back, and that’s dangerous. The United States has already decided that Muslims aren’t people and they need to stop that shit immediately. Obviously, CIA doesn’t think that way because we have to have Muslim friendlies in the Middle East to be able to get our jobs done. But an EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CONGRESS is not going to get off their asses to bail out Muslims from Jewish oppression. So, even the do-gooders we hire to work in that part of the world don’t have the million dollars they need to hand out blankets.
A million dollars would be a nice amount of money to get started in a country like Palestine if you were going to start a humanitarian organization. I’d love to be able to help as long as this is just a thought exercise. Things are heating up because Palestine is trying to show Israel it has bought its big boy pants and I don’t think they care if they’ve bitten off more than they can chew at this point. I am pro-Palestinian because they do not have an established government or military. I believe in a two-state solution. I do not believe that killing children is the way to get there, and the issue only gets more complicated as each side makes themselves less redeemable.
Maybe the million dollars I have is greasing wheels to get information and goods where it needs to go. I don’t know who needs what right now, but I know it’s enormous. I know everyone is shitting on Palestine right now, but they’re only the current aggressor. It turns over and it soon will.
They need a two state solution and keep bombing any chance they have at it whether other countries step in to help Palestine or not, because everyone seems to think “poor Israel.”
Especially the Evangelicals in Congress, who love Isaac more than Ishmael.
I do not have a dog in the fight except for keeping Americans safe, and there are Americans all over Israel and Palestine. What Americans do not have is a US embassy in Palestine. The US embassy for Palestinians is in Jerusalem, which as you can see is not problematic at all. Thankfully, we do have a US Office of Palestinian Affairs, so we are recognizing Palestine to the point we’re able, but we could do so much more.
I feel like I understand countries fighting because I understand individuals fighting. Who you support depends on when you entered the war. For instance, if you only read about me and my friend “Supergrover” yesterday, you’d probably think I was absolutely insane. But I’m going to bet that you wouldn’t feel that way if you’d been in my head for the last 10 years, not the last 10 days. I am still laughing over the “spinster in the attic” joke because what I know that she doesn’t is that lesbians are very concerned for my well being and are trying to Mary the hell out of me and can’t understand why I don’t want someone who’s not Claire. I waited for the right person with Sam, even though she was the wrong person in the end. I wanted something that was better than having Supergroer to myself, which I only mean in terms of the amount I can pay attention without guilt, as her issues aren’t piddly shit. All of the sudden, I didn’t really care about my problems when the seemed so incredibly small.
It’s not that I couldn’t move on. I just wanted signal without noise, and I waited until I found it. Someone I could lose myself in to the appropriate amount. She just lied. Full stop. Here I’m talking about both women, slamming neither. Neither one of them knew themselves well enough to tell me the truth. They both thought they were so cool.
Supergrover told me that she wanted to be my fan quite clearly, and wanted to be my friend in a smaller voice so it has never been clear what her boundaries actually are. I feel like her lie to herself was centered on the fact that she could be friends with someone who used to be into her. That she could trust me afterwards and feel secure in our attachment. She didn’t know how and she didn’t ask. She tried to run everything from her own mind and it bit her in the ass because I got tired of having to read her mind all the time because when I got it wrong, her dragon fire was immediate and harsh. I would say the same thing about me, because I felt like her heat was oppressive due to the nature of our power imbalance.
Supergrover has a military, and I don’t even live in an organized state.
For Sam, her lie to herself was that she was a successful business owner who didn’t have time for a girlfriend, so let’s not be exclusive until I really have time to think about it. We talked about it for weeks, and she lied to herself all the way through them. She lied to me all the way up until I was at Zac’s house, after talking to me on the train while I was going there. What she really wanted was monogamy from minute one, to be absolutely obsessed with each other. She could have had that if she’d asked for it. I refused to read her mind, and I gave up a relationship that was a huge deal for me. But I also won, because I wasn’t stuck with a girlfriend who wouldn’t tell me the truth and expected me to read her mind at all times. That’s been a disaster in my other relationships and a red flag for which I’ll always have a hard out.
I am “AuDHD.” I have two modes. Complete buy-in with the rules or “this is stupid and God themselves wouldn’t move me.”
Palestinians can’t read minds and are also tired. Palestinians are tired of oppressive heat because it makes you feel defensive all the time. Palestine throws rocks to make sure they’re heard. Israel throws rocks to make sure they’re the only ones that are heard.
Meanwhile, and this is true of both sides, the call is coming from inside the house.
If you understand conflict, you understand conflict. So, $250,000 to Palestine, Israel, Supergrover, and Sam to figure out what it is they actually want. Sam can just go tell someone else, because she’s the outlier who completely walked away without putting any negotiation on the table. You can’t have a hard line and expect buy-in, and you won’t get buy-in if you’re going to constantly treat me like a liar afterwards. Sam was never going to get what she wanted from me because she decided not to trust me before she even knew me.
Meanwhile, if you take the names out, you really can’t tell whether I’m talking about the global or the personal……. and it’s worth a million dollars to figure it all out. We spent more than that trying to figure it out yesterday. I just hate that Evangelical Christians are the ones treating Palestinians as lesser than because they don’t fit their narrative of child of God, as if there is one.
There’s a wholly different problem at stake here. In believing the Christian right, you believe statistically in people who haven’t been anywhere. Haven’t been to the Middle East except as white saviors from these great United States from whom all blessings flow. It’s trusting Y’all Queda to figure this out instead of CIA, who isn’t even charted to work in the United States, so everyone in that organization knows what they’re talking about and I cannot say that about Baptists at gunpoint. I may be a Southern, polite preacher’s kid but never underestimate how ready and willing I am to call out anything that feels unfair. Biblical literalism is killing this country one bass ackwards Bible college at a time. If you want to be a minister, go to Harvard, Oxford, or Yale colleges of divinity with the rest of the real grown-ups.
Here’s my pitch for being crazy. Giving my whole ass million to the United States government to help provide infrastructure for moving the US embassy out of Jerusalem. They knew they were mixing church and state unnecessarily and they did it anyway. What in the actual fuck were they thinking? In terms of US interests, we are sitting ducks going down on the wrong side of history. I’d give anything to be able to do something.
I want to change the world as much as Richard Dreyfus told me I would.
Stories That Are All True 