“In My Country” by Thomas Ha in Clarkesworld magazine.
As an aside, and totally unrelated to why this is an important story (and especially so right now), this piece both explains and perfectly epitomizes why I love the stories I love, and what’s missing from those I don’t love, for whatever that is worth.
This is one of those situations where the title says it all: my mom was watching the inauguration, livid, and looked up to see this fella watching alongside her. I’m sharing it because my son found it funny, but the sketch itself didn’t sit will with me. In reality, the deer looked gravely concerned about the future of democracy, where-as in my sketch he comes off as mildly outraged that humans have once again stepped in it and tracked it all over the rug. I imagine that maybe this was a case of the artist’s feelings tainting the clarity of his vision.
Anyway, I included the quick thumbnail I sketched afterward in the bottom left, because I felt like it more faithfully captured his true posture in Mom’s snapshot. That said, he still looks pretty angry. Or maybe not angry, precisely, just disappointed. He expected us to Be Best, and we fell far short. Sorry, m’man.
(I do a fair bit of reading, which I track over on Goodreads. Trying to move some of that value over here, prior to the inevitable enshitification.)
This book is a little like heavy metal poisoning. Its impact is pernicious, deep, and likely permanent. You’ll be powerfully tempted to pigeon-hole this as an allegory (about world-wide overconsumption of meat, about climate change, about patriarchy, about the deadly tendency to humor wealthy idiots)—but, jeez, don’t. That’s just a defense mechanism, your brain’s white blood cells trying to contain and thus destroy an interloper. Don’t cop out like that. Just let the story fully in, let it blossom and consume you.
It’s really a helluva book. In many ways, this is the exact opposite of Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, in that it blessedly lets no one off the hook.
For those interested in other art Dave compares favorably to heavy-metal poisoning, consider Merhinge’s film Begotten.
I strongly urge everyone—especially my fellow left-leaning folk—to listen to this in its entirety with an open heart.
FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: American Politics Has A Respect Crisis
Snippet:
related: “A recipe for cooling down American politics”
I’m mostly posting this for archival/documentary purposes. But I’m also posting this because I think that the “Is anti-Zionism antisemitic?” argument is stupid; you can go to these protests and demonstrations yourself, or look at comprehensive coverage, and decide for yourself if what you see is primarily motivated by a love of the Palestinian people or a loathing of Jews.
I captured all of these video at the weekly protest held outside Beth Israel Congregation each Saturday, during morning Shabbat services. This protest has been held mostly weekly for the last couple decades, and has been mostly the same throughout that period. The pictures show all of the signs that were on display that day. Some have been the same for years (I’ve lived less than one mile from this site for 20+ years), others are relatively new. I think only “Jews Bomb Hospitals” and possibly “Jews Bomb Churches” are new since the pogrom of October 7 and intensified bombings of Gaza. The entire video of my stroll past the demonstration is included at the bottom, for those curious.
I never spoke a word to these men, nor was I wearing anything inflammatory. I had on a plain black shirt and this hat, which I wear basically everywhere:
I wouldn’t rule out that these two protestors knew I was a Jew: the “Jewish Space Lasers” button on my hat is pretty legible (folks have complimented me on it) and, besides, I’m active in Jewish communal life here, and it’s just not that big of a community.
I mention this because near the beginning of the video you can hear the mustachioed protestor begin by talking about dead Palestinians (reasonable, at a nominally pro-Palestine demo) and then abruptly switching gears to talk about the “fact” that gas chambers never existed. I don’t know why he jumped topics like that, although I’d been warned that these two men (who both wear GoPros) would try to goad me into a fight. A portion of their signs are clearly intended to offend, and especially to offend Jews–like the families with small children who were arriving to attend religious services as I arrived.
Remember when you were a kid and would fight over who got the bigger slice of cake, and so your mom made one of you cut and the other choose, in order to ensure fairness and decrease the amount of kvetching and whining she’d have to deal with, so she could just get on with her life?
Well, turns out you can fix gerrymandering exactly the same way (more or less): Schneier on Security: A Self-Enforcing Protocol to Solve Gerrymandering
This protocol is self-enforcing (i.e., it requires no outside arbiter or commission or oversight board or judges), mathematically verified, and fair—all of which taken together basically guarantees we’ll never ever ever use it, because (waves hands) will-of-the-people-constitutionalism-orginalist-intent-textualist-consistent-with-traditions-blah-blah-bullshit.🤬🇺🇸🔥
An interesting take on some recent research:
“Who Are the Least and Most Antisemitic Americans by Ideology?”
“The upshot is that the least antisemitic Americans are mainstream liberals and conservatives. The most antisemitic are the extreme left, the extreme right, as one of the theories noted above suggests, but also low information voters, who skew survey results by often self-identifying as “moderate.””
In other words, modern Jew-hate in America isn’t a right-wing thing (as most progressives insists), nor a horseshoe (as often seems to be the case on the ground, as a Jew), but instead a “W,” where the Left and Right peaks correspond to strongly ideological folks blaming Jews for this or that social ill (e.g., Jews are both the all-controlling capitalist puppet-masters AND the socialist-communist shadow agents driving the Great Replacement), and the middle peak is composed of average/moderate/centrist folks who mistrust the “mainstream” media, don’t identify as anything, and get their news from increasingly biased and ignorant spheres.
Hence:
Oy. 😕
(For those wondering about the image that leads this post, my schpiel on this shorthand.)
The thing that I most connect with in this comic is that the Jews look like ghosts. I identify with that, as I’ve often felt like a ghost here in my Homeland. I guess the big change for me since October 7 is that before I felt like a ghost passing largely unnoticed or unacknowledged. That was sometimes annoying, but usually fine. Or, at least, I was used to it, which made it seem fine if I didn’t think about it too much.
Now I feel like some portion of the population has noticed us and decided we need to be exorcised and banished, while another portion has noticed us and wants us to summarize 3000 years of history in seven words or less and then explain what the hell is up with a bunch of other ghosts in some other country who we don’t even know, while a third portion have noticed us and insist we aren’t ghosts at all—just pale “regular” people who should get over whatever unpleasantness happened in the 1930s and 40s in Europe, or last October, or last week, or last night, or tomorrow, because it’s all the distant past and in our heads and maybe didn’t even happen or certainly isn’t or wasn’t or won’t be as bad as we say it was/is/will be.
But the biggest portion look at me and say “You’re a ghost? I had no idea you were a ghost!”
‘cause I don’t look like a stereotypical ghost.
But I am a ghost.
I’ve been a ghost this entire time.
… and hate living it now.
(Incidentally I don’t recall the bit with Stuart Russel at the end being part of this when I first watched it, and feel it dilutes its power now: there is no reason to say “Given developments in A.I. and drones, someday soon this is going to be real!” It’s already real; it’s called guns: 1 out of every 20 Americans owns an AR-15; 3 in 10 own a gun of some sort. Only half of those guns are stored under lock and key, and only a third unloaded.)
… ’cause that’s pretty fucked up, man.
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