One Cries Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

Writing a newsletter in these times is a very daunting enterprise, given how many surreally awful developments unfold over the course of every single day. I feel like a wall of water is coming at me like a tsunami at all times, and I’m standing there trying to capture it in a Dixie cup while also trying not to drown.

Terror attacks in Tel Aviv, Pardes Hanna, Haifa.

Israel’s striking Syria.

Israel’s gearing back up to resume the war.

Israel’s halting humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

The latter has me in a kind of paralysis. I have heard people I love, people I respect, take as an absolute given that Israel should not allow a shred of aid to cross the border into the Strip until our hostages are returned. And I recognize the insanity of the mindset that says otherwise. That says we should provide nourishment and sustenance to a territory we’re at war with. That we should resupply our mortal enemy. Warm and feed their children as they’re strangling, raping, branding, beating, starving and shooting ours.

I hear the insanity of blaming Israel for the predicament of a territory that’s received billions in international aid, decade in and decade out, and yet couldn’t even be bothered to build a f—king water desalination plant because every last dime has been poured into terror. Why are we responsible for providing for these people, who have squandered all their ample resources on attempts to kill us?

Insanity. Insanity.

And yet.

If I imagine even one child deprived of food and water for days on end or longer, a howl rises from inside me, blotting everything else out of my mind. The situation is impossible. Figuring out the right thing is above my pay grade.

Then there’s the horror unfolding on the home front.

Fam, watching the den of lions in the Oval Office attacking President Zelensky annihilated me last week. Somehow it rivalled January 6th for the visceral distress it brought me.

Many people found it anti-Semitic, including me. I can’t remember a single other instance where that kind of bullying and abuse was heaped on a head of state during a meeting in the White House, in front of the cameras. It conformed to many dynamics inherent to anti-Semitism: the attempt to force deference, the rebuke of the Jew for being ungrateful, the pressure to submit to a pogrom on a grand scale.

All the messages inherent in that conference — that Zelensky should show gratitude, show respect, somehow bear no ill will toward the man who’s kidnapping Ukraine’s children and torturing and murdering her citizens — were consistent with anti-Semitic tropes. And watching these men — who aren’t good enough to shine Zelensky’s shoes — bully and attempt to humiliate him in that way was sheer agony.

There’s also the measles outbreak. And the cancelled meeting in which American doctors were supposed to select the strains for this year’s flu vaccine.

There’s the craven cowardice of the GOP in the face of Trump’s destruction, and there’s the failure of half this country to recognize the cliff toward which this train is heading.

Not long ago, I was listening to a podcast conversation between Call Me Back host Dan Senor and American foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead. The irony was that Mead was talking about Trump with much admiration while offering the following as the reason that al-Assad’s regime in Syria toppled so quickly in the face of insurgency:

That regime clearly rotted from within rather than — it wasn’t overpowering force, and it’s clear that Syria, that their enemies, the internal militias and all, were as surprised by the collapse of the regime as the regime was. And that’s very much a Saddam Hussein-like thing, where the guys at the top have just been hearing yes yes yes for so long. Everyone has gotten so corrupt and so cynical, the resources have drained out. It’s this imposing hollow shell of what used to be a real power. And then one day, you know, you just tap it and it crumbles to dust.

Fam, I ask you: what does this remind us of?

Can there be any doubt that this is where the U.S. is headed?

Every adult in the room has been purged. The U.S. military — one of the most complex and highly-specialized organizations in the world — is being run by a drunken Nazi frat boy.

The Department of Health and Human Services — which has so much bearing not only on national but on global public health — is being run by a crackpot anti-vaxxer who’s neither a doctor nor a scientist.

And when you gut an org like USAID, you aren’t just consigning millions around the world to a needless and awful death. You are letting global scourges proliferate unchecked — scourges that will reach our shores in the blink of an eye, and by every indication, we won’t be developing a vaccine this time.

When every career civil servant has been ousted and replaced with flunkies, yes-men and morons, we will be weak, weak, weak. Unable to mount a defense against the next pandemic. Unable to mount a defense against an attack, or anything else. At this point, I would very literally feel much safer in Israel.

Maybe the very worst thing about being here now, for me, is the sheer insanity of so many of my fellow citizens.

I posted several times last week about the Zelensky ambush, and a stranger showed up in my inbox with a tinfoil hat full of crazy. Here is the exchange we had:

If this were a one-off, it wouldn’t be so alarming, but stuff like this lands in my inbox with regularity.

There is little that’s more exhausting and depressing to me than so many people who insist up is down, black is white, 2+2 = 5.

MAGA land is crowing over the Zelensky conference, lauding that clusterfuck as a sign of strength, when it was as craven as any performance of servility by Neville Chamberlain: both the jackals around Trump in deference to him, and him in deference to Putin.

As the kids say:

MOOD:

I’m sorry not to be more uplifting today, fam. I’ll try to scrounge up a silver lining or two on Wednesday. There really are some good things happening in the resistance and I will talk about that in the next newsletter.

In the meantime, stay sane and strong. Every one of us is needed on deck.

Huge love to you all. Chazak v’ematz.

Am Yisrael Chai.