Four years ago today, a grim, fact-based reminder of what these Nazis will do on day one

We don’t have to wonder what Trump would do to enemies he truly hates, or needs others to hate, or can make a dollar on, or whatever (or Rosie O’Donnell). He has done it. This report of deadly government vengeance is from four years ago today.

As for fascist-adjacent, lawyerly perverter of the teachings of Jesus, Trump gunsel Bagpiper Bill Barr, suddenly a reluctantly Trump-supporting voice of reason who energetically helped a vengeful fascist until it would have put him in jeopardy as a criminal co-conspirator, fuck that fucking puto and the whores he rode in on.

Retribution is Trump’s mantra for his enemies

Dangerously insane moron

“Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars,” Mr. Musk wrote this month in a post that has gained nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.”

Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “trashing Kamala nonstop” and being all in for Mr. Trump.

If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

Source

Cartoon villain
One is smart, the other nyet

The infinite sorrow of humanity

This evening, at sundown, all over the world Jews will begin their Yom Kippur fast, which is broken tomorrow night, after a long, mournful bleat on a ram’s horn, when it is dark enough for stars to be visible in the sky.

Most don’t have any real sense of why they are fasting, but it is a sacred tradition that even many secular Jews follow every year. I do it myself, though not because I feel like I’m impressing an all-loving, all-merciful, all-seeing Creator with this penitent act of self-denial. If I can’t be slightly hungry one day a year, when billions of our fellow humans live with painful hunger regularly, am I even human?

The sorrow comes in for me because everybody, with the exception of a few gleeful sociopaths, I suppose, wants to feel they are decent people, doing the right thing, living a life that helps others more than it hurts them. We want this feeling always, no matter how badly we may act, no matter what hurt we may cause others, we all need to believe in our own righteousness. We all like to imagine we’d jump into a river to save a drowning child. We admire those who do, and wish we could be like them if we realize we aren’t brave enough (or good enough swimmers). We have high ideals and believe that we always live by them.

Most people, I think, have known people we can no longer have in our lives. Conflicts arise, and if only one person has the desire and the ability to calmly discuss and resolve conflict, the conflict inevitably becomes final, fatal to love and friendship. It is possible to remain in a conflict-plagued relationship, without hope of improvement, but I’ve learned it is much better to move past that particular heartache and learn an important life lesson from it.

There are some people who reveal an ugly side of themselves, often at the worst time for you, that you cannot unsee. It’s human nature to make excuses for that person, if we love them, but once an ugly pattern emerges, usually with an insistence that only you are to blame for any bad feelings, wishful hoping will not change the person you are making excuses for or your relationship with them.

Just because you love dogs, and dream of having an affectionate lapdog, that love doesn’t turn the fish struggling in your lap into a dog.  The fish will always die, no matter how many beautiful, friendly fish you try this with.

I had a childhood friend I haven’t seen for many years at this point. He calls periodically and we speak calmly about things in our lives. The reason we don’t see each other anymore is that in spite of provoking me to anger every time we met, for years, he refused to acknowledge this, instead insisting that I have a problem with my temper. We all have a problem when we lose our temper, but that is another story. We do not all provoke our closest friend every time we get together with them. We also don’t all reflexively fight to deny that we are doing anything bad to anybody, ever.

I urged him several times over the years, if you hear me start to get upset, raise my voice, you see my muscles tense, my face redden, pump the brakes and let’s change the subject for a while. He doesn’t know how to do this. It’s not his problem. It is mine. So, in the end I did what I needed to do not to be provoked by someone who can’t help himself. I stopped pretending this handsome fish was a cuddly lapdog.

He is, sadly, unable to view his actions, and the actions of others, with the same clarity.  To him we are still friends, somehow, because I take his calls and we talk on the phone once in a while.  I always like talking to people, it is one of my favorite things to do.  I like comparing notes on what we’ve learned over our aging lives.  He listens as I recite hard lessons I’ve had to learn.  This makes him feel close to me, that I am always honest with him, and talk in a relaxed, nonjudgmental way.  I don’t mind talking to him, but that’s a much different thing than us being friends.

Friends comfort each other during painful times. Friends ask good questions when they don’t understand something. Friends extend the benefit of the doubt when the other one is off kilter, gently find out what’s wrong, how they can help. Friends accept responsibility when they hurt their friend. Friends make sure that ill-feelings do not fester in their dear ones. Friends are responsive, and honest, when a friend expresses unhappiness with the way things are. Not all friendships can always be saved, though some can. No friendship can be saved if one friend is always blamed for any conflict, unless the blamed person is a masochist.

If I tell you a sad story of death, with a hard lesson I reluctantly had to learn, and you reply that it was a beautiful story of life, with an inspiring lesson that is the opposite of the lesson I described, what can I possibly say, without being dishonest, that will make us friends again?

Days of Awe

Days of Awe Yom Kippur 5785

Please rise.

In ancient times, as the days grew notably shorter, darkness appeared earlier and earlier and the nights turned cold, people fearfully began to pray. A hundred variations of “oh, Lord, please don’t destroy us!” were recited across the land, by trembling crowds presided over by priests who led them in rituals.

In Judaism these rapidly shortening days mark New Years and, ten days later, after the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The tradition is that as night falls on Yom Kippur, God closes the immense Book of Life, where He (They, actually, God is commonly referred to in the plural, Elohim) has recorded the fate of every human for the following year, according to our deeds.

During the Ten Days of Repentance, the period between New Years and Yom Kipuur, Jews are commanded to make amends with people we’ve hurt, repay debts, make peace, atone for bad things we’ve done, forgive those who sincerely seek our forgiveness, straighten out misunderstandings, right any wrongs in our power to right. The sages teach that you must try to make amends with someone three times before you can abandon the process.

Sadly, in a world where the best teachings of every religion are not always faithfully carried out, not all Jews follow this exemplary practice, even once. I would estimate that most do not exert themselves to make amends, though many fast and pray to God, rising and being seated over and over as the pages of the Yom Kippur prayer book are turned.

Any Jew who dons white clothes, fasts and fervently prays, without taking a serious moral inventory of their own actions during these days, without approaching people they’ve hurt to make amends, is, to my mind, a sorry, sanctimonious sack.

I find myself thinking about a couple of my long time close friends, universally admired sacks, in the days leading up to another Yom Kippur, high holy day of the righteous and unbearable hypocrite alike.

My closest friend of many years, whose angry wife demanded no discussion of an ugly conflict we’d had, met me for lunch a few days before Yom Kippur two years ago so that we could try to make amends before the Big Guy closed the Book. This Jew who prays every morning became indignant when I got serious and came to the point, told me I’d blindsided him and angrily stormed out of the restaurant where we were eating.

It soon became clear we would never be friends again.

Our mutual friends all took no side, except to say that I was an unforgiving sadist intent on bending others to my will and that therefore they could never forgive me. It was impossible, they said, with no consciousness of the incoherence of their righteous stand, to forgive someone who can’t forgive.

Among this crew of highly moral souls was my friend the brilliant rabbi/fundraiser. His Switzerland-like acceptance of this idiotic verdict was particularly grotesque to me. In a position to make peace between two hurt friends, and being admired and wise, able to influence others to be reasonable, he affected an impeccably neutral stance. It’s clear now he that he made a calculation, thinking only of what was worth the most to him and what was worth the least.

Our subsequent falling out was ugly enough, though friends noted that my final letter to him, though insulting, was somewhat restrained, not nearly as vicious as I am capable of making it.

The following Yom Kippur I wrote him a long, careful, peacemaking letter, many drafts of it. I was careful to set out all of the ugly things that had happened without blame, without making him feel defensive. I offered him the chance to speak like two mensches, at least one last time, a kind of do-over for the ugly ending to our long friendship a few months earlier. I persuaded him that we owed our long, affectionate friendship at least that.

He called and we were both calm, and engaging, and hoping for the best, I suppose. At one point I asked him, in his capacity as a rabbi, if he could think of a situation where it was proper for one Jew to tell another who comes to him to make amends before Yom Kippur to buzz off. “Who is allowed to act this way?,” I asked, almost rhetorically.

There was a long pause, and then my learned old friend said “Only HaShem”. Only God.

The People rest, and please be seated

Communication is needed to heal trauma

I’m listening to a fascinating audiobook, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. One of the authors, talking about the collective trauma of people living under the control of a demanding bully, states an important precondition for recovering from trauma — communicating and being heard. There are few things more comforting, when you are in turmoil, than feeling truly heard.

A person forbidden to speak honestly, and blamed for having a problem, will never be able to free themselves from the pain of abuse. The truth of this statement becomes very obvious once you hear it, particularly if you’ve ever lived the need to explain your side of a story you are angrily not allowed to tell.

Trauma takes over your body after you are mistreated and hurt, and then, instead of being listened to with sympathy, are harshly blamed and censored. When your feelings are dismissed by the people you go to for support, the trap of trauma closes around you. It is this lack of empathy from those you trust that sears the traumatic event into a lifelong disability. Abandonment by others underscores the painful feeling of hopeless isolation that is one of the hallmarks of trauma.

I had a rabbi/fundraiser friend, an old, close friend of mine, tell me, after a year of my struggle to make peace with two mutual friends of five decades, adamant in their insistence that I am insanely unforgiving and unloving, that he had already made it clear that he’d never speak to me about them or to them about me. “If that’s not good enough for you, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he concluded.

Set and match, actually. No amount of talk or understanding, no honest peacemaking, can resolve this conflict, this close mutual friend of ours concluded. There is only eternal enmity for both of you and your permanent ostracism from the entire group of old friends who take no side, except that they can never forgive someone who can never forgive. If you have a problem with that, asshole, what do you want me to do? If you expect me to listen to “your side”, with any kind of sympathy, when you are so wrong, you’re truly nuts. If the suddenly severely limited friendship I offer is not good enough for you, I don’t know what else to say, except fuck off and die, my friend.

I’m thinking about this universally admired dickhead a lot in the days leading up to another Yom Kippur, high holy day of the righteous and unbearable hypocrite alike. He claimed, during our last calm chat (after I’d exerted myself to extend him the chance to talk like a mensch one last time), to have had unconditional love from his parents during his childhood. He had already demonstrated, in his wild attack while attempting to silence me the last time we spoke, that he was lying about unconditional love too, to himself and to me. Someone who was raised with unconditional love does not explode in rage when an old friend is in pain.

We live and learn in this world, or we remain perpetual two year-olds, ready to explode in rage any time we feel frustrated, instead of calmly listening to people who have always treated us with kindness when we needed it.

The Grey Lady, late to the party and weak

It was big news across the nonauthoritarian-leaning side of the internet the other day when the NY Times finally published an article about the many signs of Trump’s seeming mental decline (not to mention his blooming psychopathy) and his apparent unfitness for office, headlined:

Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age

With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.

Fair enough, as far as they go in their detailed chronicle of his more and more demented statements as he campaigns to become president again, presumably by a combination of voter suppression, a surgically precise, razor-thin Electoral College win, strategic support from a corrupt and incompetent postmaster general, various MAGA election officials, MAGA state legislatures and MAGA state courts, his friends in Congress, The Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Robert Mercer, Ginni Thomas, General Flynn, Q, X, a corrupt 6-3 MAGA Supreme Court and, in a pinch, an army of angry low flying monkeys desperate to avenge the Confederacy’s inglorious military loss in 1865. 

The Grey Lady steers gracefully clear of violating anything like the sacred Goldwater Rule (no public comment on elected official’s dangerousness by mental health experts unless the elected psychopath in question agrees to be publicly psychoanalyzed) [1]. It quotes several who know the Republican candidate well and appear to think he’s just fine.

The Grey Lady also does not comment directly about how increasingly insane his rantings are. They simply provide many examples so an intelligent reader can draw the inference, if they so choose, that the man who says these things is dangerously insane, rather than a serious world leader for this perilous moment in human history. The Grey Lady seems to tastefully avoid (she’s nothing if not tasteful) the most hateful and violence-inspiring things trump constantly spews. Then she muses:

The former president has not been hobbled politically by his age as much as Mr. Biden was, in part because the incumbent comes across as physically frail while Mr. Trump still exudes energy. But his campaign has refused to release medical records, instead simply pointing to a one-page letter released in July by his former White House doctor reporting that Mr. Trump was “doing well” after being grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt.

Yo, Grey Lady, you leave out an obvious and immense part of why Biden was hobbled by fears about his age and you sell your influence short. Former president trump’s mental capacity was never written about negatively in the news section of the paper, as Joe Biden’s was, hundreds of times on the front page of the NY Times. Joe Biden’s every stutter and misstatement was amplified and questioned, his fitness for office constantly questioned, in news reports and editorials. Trump’s clear cognitive decline has been tastefully not spoken of (on the rationale that him being an inanely riffing, opinionated, fact-free asshole is not news) while the Grey Lady’s scrutiny of every Biden gaffe, stutter and misstatement was a major factor in Biden being forced to abandon his candidacy after a highly accomplished presidency.

One more, then you can go read the catalogue of trump’s idiocy yourself, at this gift link.

A 2022 study by a pair of University of Montana scholars found that Mr. Trump’s speech complexity was significantly lower than that of the average president over American history. (So was Mr. Biden’s.) The Times analysis found that Mr. Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, lower than rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who speaks at an eighth-grade level, which is roughly average for modern presidents.

It’s a tic, I suppose, to miss no opportunity to prove their unflinching fairness by once again pointing out that Biden too is, vocabulary and speech-complexity-wise, unfit for the presidency.

Are you smarter than a fourth grader? If so, read the NY Times with a critical eye for these fucking tics. The Grey Lady is all atwitch in these twitch-worthy times.

[1] OK, can’t resist one more. Note the Grey Lady’s lack of specificity, or an embedded link, in its reference to the recent conference of an anonymous group of mental health, national security and political experts whose 2017 New York Times bestseller the New York Times (in conjunction with the American Psychiatric Association,) successfully removed from public discussion during the trump presidency (and since):

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe he is too old to be president, and his critics have been trying to focus attention on that. A group of mental health, national security and political experts held a conference at the National Press Club in Washington last month on Mr. Trump’s fitness. The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group of former Republicans, regularly taunts him with ads like one calling his debate with Ms. Harris “a cognitive test” that he failed.

My first note to Dr. Bandy Lee

This was my first comment to Bandy Lee, a few days earlier. At the end is a link that explains why I think Ryan Reynolds would be a good person for her to contact (assuming he shares our concern with the unthinkable possibility of a violent madman becoming “president” again, against the will of the majority of voters).

What you have to say is so important, so crucial, to protecting our society. I learn something new from every interview you do and every article you publish.

I wish you would have your media team put out 15 to 30 second shorts that could go viral. Take one great point at a time and just present it to the camera. No undecided voter could remain undecided after hearing what you and your colleagues have to say about the clear and present dangerousness of Trump and his myrmidons.

I’ve been thinking you bury the lede when you save this for paragraph two:

At no time has mental fitness in leadership been more important. Yet, at no time have we had a presidential campaign where mental fitness has been a more precarious issue.

Keep up the good work, and please, please, create some short clips that can become memes. This is, sadly, the age of information and public relations we live in. Although it couldn’t be further from our purposes, check out this short for an example of the power of well-wielded social media: https://youtube.com/shorts/cesrZd73sQY?si=26eefs5di6eb3e9X

At another point I suggested this very compelling story I’ve heard from her, which she told in about half a minute:

Your story about the American Psychiatric Association gagging public discussion of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump might make an excellent illustrative short. 

A powerful psychopath feeling under attack, in a position to reward a US government-funded organization with a record allocation and a new $10,000,000 headquarters in DC, who then rewards them for their favor, ably put into effect by no less than the venerated/hated NY Times, gagging all experts by publicly enforcing the association’s own voluntary rule as if it was federal law.  

That story of the “inviolable” Goldwater Rule, and its always clear political intent, and how it was used to silence the experts to the advantage of the dangerous, powerful psychopath, is too good not to be shared by millions before the election.    

The story of that Trump-facilitated nationwide gag order of professionals acting out of a duty to warn of imminent danger is the perfect illustration of how this malignant type gets away with this open corruption. 

Help Bandy Lee’s message go viral!

Bandy Lee is a forensic psychiatrist who has great, and highly relevant, expertise from years working with violent psychopaths. Feeling that she had a professional duty to warn, based on her observations of newly elected President trump, she convened a 2017 conference on the Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Lee and twenty-six highly respected colleagues, including Robert J. Lifton (author of, among other works, “The Nazi Doctors”) published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, NY Times best-seller and invaluable primer on malignant narcissism. I recommend that book to everyone.

Trump’s allies were able to marginalize the indispensable guide to Trump’s pathology and largely remove it from public discussion. The conservative American Psychiatric Association, ably aided by the powerful NY Times, attacked and vilified the book as a clear violation of the APA’s Goldwater Rule.

That rule (binding only on members of the APA, but treated as an inviolable federal law) states that, no matter what public evidence exists, psychiatrists are forbidden from offering their informed opinions about any public person they have not personally interviewed — and may publicly draw psychiatric conclusions only if the person in question authorizes it.

In other words, the Goldwater Rule states that, if an angry psychopath in a position of public power is cool with public discussion of their rage and unslakable thirst for revenge, after personally consulting with a shrink, only then may the psychiatrist publicly speak about it.

Bandy Lee is brilliant, courageous, articulate and she has a CRUCIAL message that would wake up millions of undecided voters, if they were exposed to it. She has assembled great experts, and recently held a second conference on trump’s dangerous unfitness at the National Press Club [1]. What she has not been able to do is disseminate her message widely, in a way succinct enough for the average distracted, traumatized, non-intellectual American voter to digest, or even encounter.

Bandy Lee’s website is http://www.bandylee.com. Her Substack newsletter is at https://bandyxlee.substack.com/. You can read her detailed assessments and hear long form interviews at those sites, along with a video of the full recent conference. Sadly, you will never encounter her CRUCIAL information in a short, shareable form that could (and should, and MUST) go viral.

I URGE ANYONE READING THIS to put on your thinking cap and find a way to recruit a Ryan Reynolds, or some other genius of social media manipulation, for help getting Bandy Lee’s crucial message out to millions, particularly as it could well be the deciding factor for the “undecided” voters out there.

As I wrote to her on Substack:

Corporations (including a democratic forum like Substack) control most communication in the US, one way or the other.  There are only two ways to influence mass public opinion, both engines for disseminating persuasive information/content, true or false, are problematic.  

The corporate mass media news and editorial narrative leaves out context, engages in false equivalencies, allows lies to air unchecked, consents in the destruction of norms, normalizes pathology, etc.  Profit-driven mass media, whose only motive is financial gain, exerts tremendous influence on most Americans, particularly older voters.

“Social Media”, odious and divisive as it also is, is a powerful driver of public opinion, for better and for worse.  A meme is born when it hits quick, memorably makes a good point, and makes people want to share it.  Billions of shares of a video featuring a memorable dance to a song called Gangnam Style.

I don’t know how to use social media myself, as I’ve learned again recently trying to get answers for why trump appointees Louis DeJoy (slow the mail, cut costs) and Joseph Caffari (Homeland Security IG who, uh, accidentally let all January 6 secret service evidence be irretrievably destroyed) are still in positions of power, but there are geniuses in the field of internet marketing with expertise in how to create viral short videos.  Talk to the folks at Meidas Touch about how to make important, individual points in shareable 30 second bytes.   

Your expert insights need to be set out in short, shareable videos.  If undecided voters are exposed to your message, it’s hard to believe many would vote for trump.   You should be in touch with the Lincoln Project, for example, their take on your main points about Trump’s dangerousness, coming from experts in violent pathology assisted by experts in propaganda, would get wider exposure.  Talk to Anthony Davis about creating some shorts from your interviews with him, I have seen many 30-60 second sections of those talks that would make great shareable shorts.   We need 30 second clips of some of your best points, points that can instantly be shared. Millions of people need to hear them!

Your best-selling book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump is an indispensable primer for understanding the personality type capable of pathological violence.  That we have a presidential candidate for a major political party possessing all the clear warning signs of destructive rage, on steroids, is CRUCIAL for undecided voters to know.  

Trump’s brand is violence, fighting, oppositionality, never admitting fault or defeat.  A classic psychopath.   He’s already fomented criminal violence in his name that he’s promised pardons for, as well as constant threats of, and pardons for, future violence.   His handpicked (by his handlers) Supreme Court majority recently ruled that his pardons may not be questioned or appealed, even if they are offered for sale.

Blah, blah, blah. . . Dr. Lee is busy and I haven’t heard back from her.

On the well-funded extremist right, they always march in lockstep, speaking in one voice, defiantly repeating the same disproven lies over and over until they wear people out. On the non-fascistic side of the spectrum there are a million voices, ten million shades of nuance, and those diverse and personal messages have neither the persistence nor the compelling public force of a unified, infuriating talking point grunted over and over and over and endlessly amplified by mass media.

Bandy Lee correctly diagnoses the danger we face right now — Trumpism is a public health emergency, like the recent pandemic. Trump contagion (which, to be fair, emanates as much from Charles Koch, Leonard Leo, John Roberts and their filthy ilk as from their current performative avatar, the Orange Polyp, himself) has made millions admire and imitate his lowest impulses, impulses he cannot control. This way lies rage, more and more violence and eventually mass murder, guaranteed.

Want a nice factoid? In 2014 there were 912 antisemitic incidents in the United States, a number that has gone up every year since Trump’s (oops, trump’s) 2016 election — last year there were 8,873 reported antisemitic incidents [2]. I would assume all hate crimes in the US have increased in similar numbers, remember the violent aftermath of trump’s witty, peaceful Kung Flu call to violence?

You want to argue about whether Trump is dangerously, violently insane, an American Hitler or not? Put him in back power, surrounded by loyal MAGA appointees, wait a couple of years and — guaranteed, I’ll meet you in a death camp somewhere (if we’re lucky, that is). It took the actual Hitler twenty full years, from his violent attempted coup, to the opening of the first true Nazi death camps. All these creatures need is time.

[1] Bandy Lee, earlier today:

The theme of our conference was that fitness is not a subjective, partisan, or even political “opinion” but a scientific finding based on extensive research, clinical experience, and uniform application of medical standards to military officers, officers handling nuclear weapons, surgeons, and executive officials.  The consensus at the conference was that mental fitness is critically important for the U.S. presidency and that Donald Trump is decisively unfit.  It should become widely known that Trump’s mental unfitness has now been objectively measured in multiple ways; that mental health expertise is critical to explaining what he is and is not capable of doing; how dangerous it is to have a mentally unfit person in a position of power; and how his psychological dangers can quickly spread into social, cultural, and geopolitical dangers, by rendering domestic legal and political institutions, and global balances and alliances ineffectual.

source

[2] Reporter Bob Garfield, in a particularly brilliant post, includes this:

The preemptive blame, of course, is meant to both intimidate Jewish voters and rally the violent among MAGA faithful, such as the ones who attacked the Capitol over his 2020 “stolen election” lies, such as the “very fine” neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” such as the mass murderers who shot six Jews to death at a deli in Jersey City, NJ, such as Robert Bowers, guilty of gunning down worshipers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, such as the perpetrators of 8873 antisemitic incidents in the United States last year alone (in 2014, the year before Trump’s first presidential campaign, there were 912, and the number has risen every year since), such as the Proud Boys, Goyim Defense League, Blood Tribe, Ku Klux Klan, QAnon, Black Hebrew Israelites, Atomwaffen Division and other hate groups.

source

A few thoughts for 5785

This is from a happy new year email to my cousin who lives on a moshav in Israel, not far from Jerusalem.

Your assessment of Jewish values and the reality of living in an antisemitic world was very good.  If only the values you rightly attribute to us were practiced by all Jews.   It is a trap, like antisemitism, to believe that just because someone is in your tribe they are motivated by only the best of the tribe’s moral code.  The bulk of humans are somewhere in the middle, with the best and worst being small minorities of any group (although the worst have the biggest influence, it often seems). 

I have experienced a Jewish lynch mob, composed of my dearest old friends, all good people and fine Jews, all of whom now consider me dead and have cut off their adult children from me as well, and I have to say, there is nothing more horrific.  To have a rabbi friend (who merely held a torch and remained tactfully silent during the lynching) tell me, when I asked him under what circumstances is it permissible for one Jew to angrily tell another who comes to make amends during the ten days of repentance to buzz off (as my closest friend had), that only HaShem [God] is allowed to do that — the idiotic, blasphemous icing on a disgusting cake.

The mark of a good person is treating other people fairly. No group has any monopoly on this excellent trait.

I just wrote a chapter about the difficulty of learning lessons you don’t want to learn, such as that your closest friends will abandon you en masse when a charismatic member of the group spreads a vicious lie about you (in my case that I am a sadistic, unrepentant torturer who tries to bend others to my will and is totally incapable of love or forgiveness). I certainly didn’t want to learn what I learned about my only sister, about most of my closest friends.  I resisted learning it for decades, believing in the undefeatable power of goodwill, humor, kindness, patience, extending the benefit of the doubt, until the power of those things was eventually defeated by a determined will never to be wrong, at any cost.

I’ve been forced to learn (much against my will) that there is a personality type who can never be wrong, no matter what, who will fight to the death if made to feel insecure, and if they are able to, will always exact fatal revenge for defiance of their will (this can be almost anything, this type is very thin-skinned).  Trump is an example that comes readily to mind.  

I had to finally understand that this also, tragically, defines my sister’s worldview.   My sins against her can apparently never be tallied and so she’s been required to lie to her children a few times to protect herself from the existential threat I pose to her and to them.  It’s awful, it’s terrible, it’s like antisemitism — reason, fact, cause and effect, love, kindness, patience, giving the benefit of the doubt, appeals for empathy — poof!  A desperately held belief may never be changed in this personality type (and others loyal to this type) it seems.