Eternal Vigilance

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is an observation widely attributed to the flamboyant 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum, and it says this: The folks of a given generation may catch on to a con, making it more difficult to pull off. But there’s always a new generation coming along whose members are unaware of it and therefore susceptible to it. The perennial scam favorites appear and fade with regularity, but they never stop coming back.

That’s how the anti-Semitism con works. Destructive characterizations of Jews as a people, some outlandish and totally demented and some with a certain surface plausibility,(for the simple-minded, at least) come back again and again, and are given wide-eyed acceptance and dissemination by the incoming wave of the uninitiated.

The current political climate appears ripe for just that phenomenon. Thus, Flyoverland confidently predicts the resurrection, for example, of something called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a pseudo-scholarly and completely bogus early 20th-century document that purports to be the minutes of a meeting of Jewish leaders laying out their plan for world domination through control of the press and the world’s economies, and through subversion of the morals of non-Jews. It was long ago shown to be fraudulent but it’s still around and still widely available, and repeatedly comes back into favor with a certain segment of the population when the climate is right. It’s coming soon to an alt-right Web site near you. If it’s not there already.

An article in Wikipedia lists other tropes and canards about Jewish people that have come into fashion repeatedly over centuries, all designed to justify vilification (and blame) of the hated “other.” Some of these, including the Protocols, were favorites in Germany before and during WWII. Among the things Jews as a people have been accused of:

• Control of the global financial system;
• Control of the media, Hollywood, and the music industry;
• Hatred of non-Jews and the intention to destroy Christianity;
• Ritual murder and bestialiuty;
• Host desecration;
• Poisoning wells to spread disease;
• Causing wars, revolutions, and calamities;
• Lack of patriotism and allegiance to “world jewry” instead of to their country;
• Usury and profiteering (This one, or forms of it, enjoys fairly widespread casual acceptance even among people who do not see themselves as anti-Semitic);
• Playing an important role in the slave trade;

Lest we forget: Millions of people – young and old, tall and short, fat and thin, smart and dumb, handsome and ugly, blonde and brunette, factory and office workers, doctors and lawyers, artists and writers, street sweepers, teachers, small business owners, grocery store clerks, soccer moms, gawky teenagers, little kids, and babies – were murdered by Germany’s Third Reich with bullet and rope and fire and gas, because they were Jewish.

That kind of savagery is the culmination of a process that begins with the demonization of a population through stereotyping -- often, to the casual observer, innocent -- then blaming. It can happen to any population that is identifiable – skin color, ethnicity, religion -- and has happened to Jews time after time over centuries.

Something like the Holocaust can‘t happen again? Maybe not. We certainly want to think so. But…

Such a thing could never happen is exactly what the German people thought, before it happened and while it was happening. And, as we speak, we are seeing a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic activity in the United States and in the world, particularly Western Europe, according to the Anti-Defmation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, both of which keep careful track of these matters. Historically, such activity has ebbed and flowed – it’s always there but occasionally bubbles to the surface and becomes more noticeable, and more frightening, before dying back again. Will the current “flow” coalesce into something bigger, more sinister, more dangerous?

Does this uptick have anything to do with Donald Trump? Is Donald Trump anti-Semitic? Not overtly. But he has enthusiastic supporters who could not be more overt about it, and he has said this: “[Hillary Clinton] meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty, in order to enrich these global financial powers…” Not an open reference to Jews but unquestionably part of the vocabulary of anti-Semitism over the years. And speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition a year ago, he said, "Look, I'm a negotiator like you folks; we're negotiators.” A perfect example of the casual acceptance of a stereotype. Trump didn’t know any of those people personally, so as far as he knew, not a single person in the room was a good negotiator. But they were all Jewish.

Flyoverland cannot recall a time when xenophobes, ultra-nationalists, racists, and haters of every stripe seemed to feel as empowered as they do now. Of all these hatreds, anti-Semitism, though it's intertwined with all the others, stands out as the most sinister, if only because we had a vivid demonstration just a few decades ago of the horror to which it can lead.

It's said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Just so.

True Believers

So numerous were the bizarre utterances, ranging from uninformed opinions to outright lies, coming out of the mouth of Donald Trump during the campaign that any one of them could be easily lost and forgotten. And most were, as each day’s nonsense eclipsed the previous day’s. But one which won’t soon be forgotten, because it has turned out to be so perfectly descriptive and prescient, is this:

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters,"

That was Trump’s way of paying homage to the gullibility, capacity for self-deception, and cult-of-personality devotion of his followers. He was making a joke at their expense – laughing up his sleeve at them and expressing supreme confidence that he could say or do anything and they would continue to worship at his altar. They didn’t get the joke. And, as we all now know, his confidence was fully warranted.

Take the Carrier business in Indiana, a remarkably transparent publicity stunt by which he would have his followers believe – in vivid testimony to his contempt for their intelligence – that he was making good on his tough-guy campaign promises to bring to heel those companies who wanted to move production facilities, and jobs, to Mexico. He would impose a 35-percent tax on goods those companies wished to bring back into the U.S. and sell here, and that would show them who’s boss. And it would do it without offering them tax incentives and other inducements, which he vigorously disdained.

But we now know, of course, that it was precisely through those kinds of inducements, engineered by his gofer Mike Pence, that persuaded Carrier to refrain from moving at least some of the jobs it had planned to move. Godfather Trump didn’t use his his highly-praised (by him) negotiating skills to make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. No, he made them an offer they didn’t want to refuse: He paid them. Seven million dollars over ten years. And he used taxpayer money belonging to the citizens of Indiana to do it. And with that payment, he bought a photo op for himself.

And then there’s the Obamacare-Medicare-Medicaid-Social Security discussion. Again here, Trump and the GOP leadership in congress show their contempt for the intelligence of the folks who voted for them by immediately getting about the business of dismantling these programs, exactly as they promised to do. Trump himself has been all over the map on these matters but make no mistake: He’s the leader of a party whose most fervent wish has been to get the government out of these undertakings and turn them over to private enterprise. He said he would not disturb Medicare and they believed him. And he knew they would believe him. Even though disturbing Medicare was, and is, at the top of the GOP’s to-do list.

One shudders to think what it will be like for these voters as the reality of what Republicans are doing – what those voters have done to themselves -- sinks in, or, God forbid, actually comes to fruition. They will be as bugs hitting a windshield.

“Medicare’s history, folks. Here’s some dough, a tax credit maybe, for you to buy medical insurance on the open market. May or may not be enough – probably won’t be. You’ll now have to rely on the tender mercies of the insurance companies, and every year, you’ll have to go through the mind-numbing process of trying to figure out which policy works best for you. If any. Every year. Good luck with that!”

Or “What used to be Social Security where you could rely on a monthly check, is now going to be in the form of your own brokerage account. Just think, your very own account! Sure, it could lose half of its value in an hour (and, of course, cut your income by half), but, hey, it’s the stock market. It’ll recover. You’ve got plenty of time. You’re only 76 years old. Good luck with that!”

Then there’s The Donald’s far-flung business interests. He knew his constituency would buy his breezy assurances that those businesses wouldn’t interfere with his fun new career as president. Now it’s beginning to look like his fun new career as president won’t interfere with his far-flung business interests. Nobody on planet earth, with the possible exception of Kellyanne Conway, believes that turning things over to his children has any meaning whatsoever, and that he won’t run afoul of at least the emoluments clause of the constitution.

And the villainous Goldman-Sachs, which Trump repeatedly told the gullible that he was implacably against and which he cited as being in the forefront of everything that’s corrupt in the world of high finance – the very world that’s responsible for sticking it to decent hard-working Americans -- and the company he blasted Hillary Clinton for cozying up to. Well, avert your eyes, decent hard working Americans, as the president-elect names former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin to be his treasury secretary and Goldman’s second in command, Gary Cohn, to be his budget director. Oh, and there’s one other former Goldman-Sachs operative on board the Trump train – the redoubtable Stephen K. Bannon. cheerful defender of the swastika-happy alt-right.

And finally, there’s the fantasy that Trump would have won the popular vote had there not been millions of fraudulent voters. Even Kellyanne doesn’t believe that one. But Trump, who knows his followers well, was pretty sure they would. And, apparently, they do. 

Yikes.