We the People

 

Yesterday, I tuned into the daily podcast of sports talkers Tim & Sid on sportsnet.ca. After fastforwarding past a discussion of the Toronto Blue Jays, I settled in to listen to an interview with Harnarayan Singh. 

Born in Alberta, Canada, Singh was a hockey freak from his schoolyard days. His great desire wasn’t like many a Canadian youth to be a player but to become a hockey broadcaster. He has achieved his dream, but if you look at him, Singh doesn’t fit the image of a typical hockey announcer. Bearded, be-spectacled, and be-turbaned, Singh is a Sikh—and he broadcasts National Hockey League games in Punjabi.

In another interview today on sportsnet.ca,(1) Singh said of Canada, “We’re so lucky to be in a country where these opportunities are available to us.”

It should be noted that the podcast interview was conducted by Tim Micallef and Sid Seixeiro, the former of Maltese descent and the latter of Portuguese.

*

After listening to Tim & Sid, I clicked onto Yahoo News to get my daily ration of angst and agita. The president of the United States supplied it. In Pennsylvania (but not in the City of Brotherly Love), Trump railed (once again) against Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. “She’s telling us how to run our country,” Trump complained.(2) As if a naturalized American citizen is not a member of “our” country. I wonder if Trump, after the swearing-in of newly naturalized citizens which was shown during the Republican convention (another Trumpian precedent-breaking mixing of the governmental and political), bothered to inform them that they were not really going to be part of Trump’s country.(3) 

Who are the members of Trump’s country?

In another speech—this one in Bemidji, Minnesota—Trump told a fawning, nearly all-white crowd:

"You have good genes, you know that, right? . . .You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn't it, don't you believe? . . . You think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota."(4)

I must confess that for the first time in my life I have to congratulate Trump on his restraint; he did not utter the words that were crying out to be spoken: “Master Race.” Still, the words that were spoken sent a chill up my spine. As Carin Mrotz, the executive director of Jewish Community Action, stated:

"For Minnesota Jews, it's chilling to hear this language, which echoes the 'race science' used by the Nazis to justify the extermination of so many of our ancestors."

Trump is no stranger to direct anti-semitism. In a recent report, he is alleged to have complained that Jews “ ‘are only in it for themselves’ and ‘stick together’ in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties.”(5) 

*

Trump has come for Latins generally and Mexicans specifically; for Africans generally and Somalians specifically; and now there’s a miasma of gas as he (together with the “good people” who are white Christian nationalists) comes for the Jews.(6)

Jared Jewboy, what would it take to rattle your gilded cage?

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(1) https://www.sportsnet.ca/nhl/article/qa-harnarayan-singh-new-book-importance-representation-hockey2/  

(2) https://news.yahoo.com/where-came-trump-echoes-racist-001407470.html

(3) After a friend of mine, a native of South Africa, was sworn in as a naturalized American citizen, one of the first words out of his mouth was “we.”

(4) https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/donald-trump-genes-historical-context-eugenics/index.html

(5) https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/trump-anti-semite-said-jews-are-only-in-it-for-themselves-racism.html

(6) One is reminded of the words of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists?gclid=CjwKCAjw5Kv7BRBSEiwAXGDEleFRelFd5dVWZgwESugBXJCkTLthB93dtCi2GVFgcwPICOmSG2JdqBoC5w4QAvD_BwE

The Relevance of the Irrelevant

Please excuse me as I start off this post on the irrelevant by asking an irrelevant question.

Political tensions over an intensifying impeachment inquiry reached fever pitch on Wednesday [Oct.23] as Republicans “stormed” a closed-door committee hearing on Capitol Hill disrupting a crucial deposition related to the Ukraine controversy – a day after devastating testimony from a key diplomat.

A group of Republican members of the House of Representatives, chanting “Let us in”, barged into a secure office suite in the bowels of the US capitol where Laura Cooper, a top Pentagon official who oversees Ukraine policy, was preparing to testify.(1)

Question:  

Now that the impeachment hearings are in public session, how many of the storming Republicans have attended the proceedings? 

***

Throughout the public sessions, there have been repeated attempts by Republican committee members, Foxites, right-wing trolls, and Trump himself to divert attention from the substantive revelations by sworn witnesses by lobbing mostly irrelevant goofball observations, questions, and complaints about said witnesses. 

Probably the goofiest of the goofy was the tsk-tsking about George Kent’s water bottle:

“Fish are not this hydrated,” [Fox] network contributor Raymond Arroyo told “Ingraham Angle” host Laura Ingraham. “It was like a medical sized water silo.”(2)

The leader of the Loony Tunes brigade attempted several diversionary ploys, one of which was to attempt to undermine an expert witness on Ukraine by ranting about her service in Somalia:

In an extraordinary step, Trump attacked Yovanovitch during her testimony. “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” he wrote on Twitter.(3) 

In another swipe at a witness, Mr. Bar Mitzvah suit elbowed his way into fashion etiquette by complaining about Lt. Col Alexander Vindman’s testifying before the impeachment panel in his military uniform:

The implication from the president and congressional Republicans is seemingly that Vindman, an Iraq War combat veteran and active duty Army officer, has used his dress uniform as a prop as part of a partisan performance. 

But Army regulations state that "when an invitation calls for business attire, the appropriate Army uniform is the service or dress uniform." The regulations further state: "All personnel will wear an Army uniform when on duty, unless granted an exception by the commander to wear civilian clothes. "

In short, Vindman has been following US military protocol, and it would be a violation of Army regulations for him to show up to congressional hearings out of uniform.(4)

*

But all of the above irrelevancies are molehills of diversion next to the Everest of slanderous innuendo directed at Lt. Col Vindman because he just happened to have made the mistake of choosing to be born in Ukraine instead of Amurrica. That, to the GOPers, Foxites, and other purebloods set off sirens warning of treason:

Alexander Vindman, the lieutenant colonel who testified before impeachment investigators in Congress on Tuesday, introduced himself in his prepared statement as an immigrant. For some of Donald Trump’s prominent supporters, this fact was enough to begin painting Vindman as a double agent, a traitor, or a spy. On “Fox & Friends,” perhaps Trump’s favorite program, Brian Kilmeade said, ominously, that Vindman “tends to feel simpatico with the Ukraine.” Fox’s Laura Ingraham suggested that Vindman was working on behalf of Ukraine from within the White House, leading her guest, John Yoo (most well known for his co-authorship of the so-called Torture Memo), to question whether these conversations amounted to “espionage.” The CNN commentator Sean Duffy, who  also expressed alarm about Vindman’s loyalties, opined that Vindman “is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense . . . We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from. Like me, I’m sure that Vindman has that same affinity.”(5)

Vindman’s family emigrated to the US when he was three years old. He is now 44. One marvels at the idea that for 41 years, Vindman has harbored such a Rosebud longing for the national dishes of his birth land—borscht, holubtsi, and varenyky—that he would undertake treasonous acts against the country whose flag he has served under in combat.

The implication by the Trumpites that naturalized American citizens are possible traitors, fifth-columnists, or spies—by virtue of their being born outside the borders of the US—is abhorrent. 

But the horror of the implication is even worse when one considers that Alexander Vindman is Jewish. It is no stretch of the imagination to see operating here the age-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews are a rootless people with no allegiance to the country they dwell in and, thus, dangerous aliens who must at best be kept under scrutiny and at worst be imprisoned, expelled, or exterminated.

*

It has been my experience over the years that in a discussion or debate it is important to pay more attention to the irrelevancies that are dragged in than the actual on-point arguments. Call it: “The Relevance of the Irrelevant.” That is where the truth will be discovered. 

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(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/23/chaos-erupts-as-republicans-barge-into-trump-impeachment-inquiry-hearing

(2) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-kent-water-impeachment-hearing_n_5dcce471e4b0a794d1fa8282

(3) https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-impeachment-hearings-the-presidents-attempt-to-intimidate-marie-yovanovitch-backfires

(4) https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-slam-vindman-wearing-army-uniform-impeachment-hearing-2019-11

(5) https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-trumps-supporters-distort-alexander-vindmans-very-american-origin-story