More cloudless sunshine today and I didn’t make it through the vice presidential debate. Gov. Walz was earnest, honest, reassuring and an educator, through and through, but jd’s smarmy demeanor and constant lies made watching, even on mute, impossible.
The moment of the night probably is and rightfully should be when jd apparently complained that his blatant, disproved lie about Haitian immigrants being undocumented was challenged by the truth, whining plaintively (I imagine, I’d muted him by then):
“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check.”
I mean. Combine this with Gov. Walz reminding everyone that jd said he would make up stories to get attention and that should be that. That it isn’t, well, that’s just weird.
But I caught something in my short watch I haven’t really seen anyone else talk about. Asked about Israel and yesterday’s attack by Iran, after blabbering about himself for a while, jd meandered back and then mentioned what he dubbed “the Israel question.”
That might sound innocuous to you, and no doubt, like so many others of these little insertions meant to slip past most people, many people think it means nothing. But these comments, like “serial numbers,” “one really violent day or hour” and “the Israel question” are aimed at two audiences: the ones they are intended to terrify; and the ones who are itching to do the terrifying.
And then the people who find excuses for these very strange and specific things to say become the enablers, the gaslighters, the ones who preserve the opportunity later to exclaim “I had no idea.” Let me give you the idea now, before these nazi wannabes every get a chance to grab power.
The reason the phrase “the Israel question” hit me so sharply is it echoes the fundamental nazi philosophy of “the Jewish Question.” Including the fact that a whole bunch of people, full-on nazi through garden-variety antisemites, use “Israel” as a substitute for “Jewish.”
“The Jewish Question” was the basis for the Holocaust as it posited the existence of Jews was a problem that needed solving. You see how this is going, right?
Maybe it’s more comfortable to believe that donald and jd just don’t know what they’re saying. But come on, that’s simply not the most rational explanation, given donald and jd using essentially blood libel against Haitian immigrants, given donald’s affinity for white supremacists, given the reports from donald’s first wife, Ivana, that donald kept a copy of mein kampf by his bed.
Here’s a story a from year ago with donald claiming “he didn’t know his immigration rhetoric echoes Hitler.”
So is it more rational to believe he still doesn’t know it now or that, like everything else, he lies when it’s most convenient to do so?
People don’t really talk about the people who call others hyperbolic, who say that things mean something different or don’t mean what they facially say. Their efforts to avoid any responsibility and remain invisible, like white men who vote for trump or republicans who give women second class status, are generally successful. Instead the focus goes elsewhere.
But they are the facilitators. They are the ones who make it possible. They create the cover and the support for the white supremacist patriarchy.
Sometimes they don’t even realize they’re doing it. Maybe you don’t even realize you’re doing it.
Occam’s razor is a principle that suggests most often, the simplest explanation is the correct one. And given all that we know, all that we’ve seen, all that they’ve said, the simplest explanation is that jd and donald are actual white supremacists with a very dangerous vision for America.
And we don’t have to wonder what that looks like because the world has seen it before. We’ve gotten a glimpse of donald’s bottomless cruelty before. And donald’s Project 2025 advances Christian nationalism, which, I think we can all agree, has never been a good thing for people who aren’t Christian.
Do not close your eyes or ears. Listen and hear, really hear what they are saying. And if your reaction to this post is that it’s “hyperbolic,” do some searching about what trump has said and done over years, what he did to children, what he did to people in detention, what he suggests, the language that he uses, page after page after page and ask yourself what the simplest explanation is.
Don’t be an enabler.
Have a good Wednesday.
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