The Fight Before Us

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

I woke up this morning, checked the headlines, and could barely drag my ass out of bed. This is the worst I’ve felt since 2020, the first time since then I’ve been truly afraid that Trump could win again. The events of the last couple of weeks feel to me like a perfect storm.

There was Biden's disastrous debate performance.

Then the king-like powers of immunity granted to Trump retroactively by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Along with this past weekend’s assassination attempt casting bunker-skulking “Suckers-and-Losers” “I like people who weren’t captured” Five-Time-Draft-Dodging Nepo Kid Exemption McBone Spurs as a tough guy willing to take a bullet for his people.

And all the while, the click-bait-grubbing media’s been attacking Biden ten times as hard and as often as they have Trump.

All of it feels overwhelming and apocalyptic.

It’s hard to believe we’re here as a nation, and yet it’s undeniable that we are.

And so to me, the question comes down to this: are there enough of us?

Are there enough women who care about our sisters bleeding out on the table in botched back-alley abortions? Enough women who don’t want 12-year-olds forced to carry their rapists’ babies to term?

Are there enough Black voters who want to keep the voter-suppressionist, history-revising, white supremacist party out of power?

Are there enough voters in the queer community who don’t want trans people denied gender-affirming care or made public scapegoat #1?

Are there enough members of the American intelligentsia who haven’t gone full jihadist? Who won’t let a madman retake the White House out of sheer anti-Jewish spite?

Are there enough citizens who care about the future of our democracy? The future of Ukraine? The future of humanity itself on an ailing planet?

Are there enough centrists who will recall that Trump literally tried to murder half of Congress? That he led a violent insurrection against the United States? That he stashed America’s nuclear secrets next to a case of Diet Coke in a bathroom at his golf resort?

It’s a marker of how troubled, dysfunctional and unwell our country is that we are here. It is, in fact, stark raving insane that we’re here. It’s surreal. It’s sickening. It’s stupefying.

So many of us grew up wondering how ordinary Germans could do this, how they could do that. Now we know. The crazy seeps in by imperceptible degrees until a seemingly “advanced” civilization, educated and thriving by global standards, is unrecognizable to itself.

I’ve been saying for a long time that the political left — which considers itself much more in touch with reality than the right, much less prone to entertaining conspiracy theories — is becoming as disconnected from reason as the MAGA faction.

I was startled and highly alarmed at the sheer number of people on the left who were sure the assassination attempt on Trump was staged, despite the fact that it left two people — including the shooter — dead.

We have reached a point in the AI-driven, bot-ridden, disinformation-pumping, Big-Lie-spreading American discourse where people can no longer distinguish what’s real from what isn’t.

To say our media isn’t helping would be a wild understatement. I’ve read countless calls for President Biden to leave the race and none for the convicted rapist, 34-count felon, would-be dictator-on-day-one to step down.

So when I opened my eyes this morning, I wanted nothing more than to burrow deeper beneath the covers and close them again. I wanted to curl into a fetal position and not move. I wanted to call in sick to work.

Then I remembered that as of February, I have a boss who knows there’s nothing physically wrong with me (since I now answer only to myself in this earthly realm).

I remembered that I’m the one who’s said, countless times during the past nine months, that despair is a luxury we can’t afford.

I remembered that we have almost 4 months until the election and the average American has the attention span of a gnat.

None of us can allow ourselves to be paralyzed by this fear and dread. As Simon Rosenberg, my favorite pundit likes to say, we need to do more and worry less.

My reward for pulling myself upright was the news, not long afterward, that Trump’s VP pick is J.D. Vance, a shamelessly craven extremist and opportunist who dove into line behind Trump despite recognizing him as a would-be Hitler when it became clear that his ambitions depended upon kissing the ring and groveling for pardon.

In 2022, I read a profile of “The New Right” in Vanity Fair which featured J.D. Vance along with others like Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin. And Vance said things in his interview that were so chilling that I remember them, nearly word for word, more than two years later.

“I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left,” he told the magazine. “And turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.” To me, this conjured the re-education camps of North Korea.

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he went on. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

But the most chilling part by far was what he said next:

”And when the courts stop you,” he concluded, “stand before the country and say: the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

In other words, Vance openly stated he would advise Trump to execute a fascist takeover of the United States.

Furthermore, Vance wants a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions, not even for rape or incest. He’s a full-throated election denier, a January 6th apologist, and a fierce supporter of Project 2025. He’s against the Affordable Care Act and he has deemed Social Security and Medicare “the biggest roadblocks to fiscal sanity”.

Fam, it goes without saying that we have to fight a Trump / Vance ticket with everything we have. I implore you: do something, anything. If you’re able to give money, give as much as you can. If you can canvas or phone bank in battleground states, please do that. Talk about the issues. Write about them. Post about them. Encourage the young adults in your life to vote. Make sure the people in your circles know what’s at stake.

We have four months left and we need to make every day count.

Jews know better than anyone that it doesn’t take a majority for evil people to seize power. It takes the support of a passionate minority along with the apathy (or resignation) of too many others.

There are a lot of forces beyond our control right now, but our own choices aren’t among them.

Let’s fight with everything we have throughout the time we have left.

I’ll be back with you Wednesday. Let’s hope the current week will be better than the last.

Much love to you all.

Am Yisrael Chai.