It’s a fact, I get zero pleasure out of an assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump. As a concept, it sucks. Totally. Ever since the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, political violence has cast a shadow over my view of America. This is a violent country with too many guns. The courts do this, the courts do that, okaying bump stocks and finding gunmen acted in self-defense, but that doesn’t change the reality on the ground: School shootings and festival massacres lurk like a backdrop to our daily lives. Even with my military background, I find that every single one of these shootings makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I don’t wish to fuel conspiracy theories, but I do want to point out that there is a pattern among the perpetrators. Why should this lone-wolf shooting be any different from the others that preceded it? I expect that we will find:
The gunman acted alone.
The neighbors found the gunman to be quiet and withdrawn, hardly making a ripple in the social life of the neighborhood.
The gunman was white.
The gunman’s parents say he had become angry and depressed.
The gunman purchased his weapon at a gun show within the last three weeks.
When the authorities check his abode, they will find notebooks filled with angry rants.
The authorities will find angry rants online which the gunman posted on dark sites, but no one noticed as a tragedy unfolded.
Right now, the gunman’s motive remains unclear. We’ll see what the investigation reveals.
A typical speculation which I am already hearing is that Trump did this to himself to garner sympathy and votes. I disagree. Watching the video, you see how shocked the former president was. Getting shot came as very unwelcome news to him. It’s a hell of a note, but the raw drama of an assassination attempt will kick the Trump campaign into high gear.
Looking at the photos, Trump now has his “Washington Crossing the Delaware” moment. Blood on his face, surrounded by Secret Service agents, an American flag waving in the background, he defiantly shakes his fist at his enemies. It’s a classic photo.
The press will focus on the gunman, while the real story is the reaction of Trump’s supporters. At the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the crowd immediately turned their fury on the reporters and television crews, blaming their coverage for this act of political violence.
When judging the level of an armed conflict, gunfire is an inflection point, leading to clear “before” and “after” scenarios. With the first shot fired, there is no putting the evil genie back in the lamp.
Even during the melee and destruction of the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, there was no gunfire. No shots were fired outside the Capitol, among the crowd. Police explained that they purposely avoided gunfire, since they knew that the demonstrators were armed and a gunfight would lead to a bloodbath.
This craven act in Pennsylvania could be the first shot in an escalating series of politically violent occurrences, as America struggles with its Wild West heritage.
Naturally, Trump and his supporters are angry. You don’t poke a stick at a tiger. There is the risk of violent reprisals.
If you think I am going to make a pitch for a charitable donation, surprise!!!
Fuhgeddaboudit!
It’s June, summer is here and we’re dancing in the street. Why would I put a pall on glorious summer barbecues, refreshing days at the beach, even pool parties, over something as selfish— and shellfish— as a request that you, dear reader, give up your hard-earned cash for me, your dear writer?
Not only a writer, but a friend.
As the French say, “Don’t visit France, just send your money.”
I say, keep your money, behalte dein Geld, I am making a pitch for a charitable donut. Maybe an elevator pitch for a feature film. Wassup? Two minutes of monologue to sell a concept to risk-averse film moguls. Harvey Weinstein lives! Maybe he’s a bad guy, maybe he’s a good guy, but I love his movies.
We at the Hinterland Relief Fund (often disturbingly confused with the Hitlerland Relief Fund, of which we are NOT affiliated) have asked Sylvia de Plathelovich— the Walter Cronkite of local news— to come out of retirement and join us poolside to paw through the mail, electronic posts and legal documents to HELP SAVE THE WORLD.
Nothing less.
Tanz im der Straße in German means “dance in the street.” But why limit ourselves to German? Tanz in Urdu means a sarcastic, mocking sneer.
Nothing less!
Shades of Afghanistan.
It might seem tone-deaf to solicit contributions for downtrodden peoples in Africa, Asia and the Far East when closer to home, the Homeland of the Jews is getting pounded by Hezbollah missiles in the north and the murdering rapists of Gaza in the south. Who gives a flying banana over global warming, drought, starvation, tsunamis, political oppression and the near extinction of the armadillo when the Children of the Book are suffering ten times more? Even little climate activist Greta Thunberg has parked her Strike for School Lunch placard, donned a keffiyeh and marched in Malmö, Sweden for the eradication of Israel.
Nothing less!
Here’s the method behind my madness: Once a month, I tear open the collected solicitations from charitable organizations that come in the mail. My mom was a Certified Public Accountant who wrote tax code. When paying her taxes, she took advantage of tax deductions for charitable contributions. Giving to thirty different charities, she honed it to an art form. Now that she is no longer with us, the solicitations continue to weigh down my mailbox.
By the time I finish glancing through these appeals, I am ready to scream! Their dripping sincerity, bogus friendliness and the urgent summons made to our better nature, leave me clawing the walls.
To maintain my sanity, I end up writing a scathing blog in self-defense.
Meanwhile, the college students are marching.
I say: From the river to the sea, no Palestine for you or me!
Space man, space jam, space bum, space bump, space chum, space chump, space ball, space bail, space hall, space hail, space joy, space jail, space maul, space mail. A favorite child has many names.
As a rap band, realPfft uses funk as a go-to. Busy with other musical styles, sooner or later they always return to funk. Their only album is titled “realPfft Does Jazz Funk.”
In April 2021, they released “Speed Hump.” In August 2021, it was time for “Timewarp,” one of their most popular songs. Experimenting with artificial voices in October 2022 resulted in “Sunglasses.” These dudes love that funky music.
Sometimes three or four elements in a song are ready, but the track refuses to gel. Faced with that prob while working on a remix, Mutte took a week off and created “Space Funk.”
“This is our best song yet,” insist Mutte and Clive, which is nice to hear. Our music distributor doesn’t always understand us and our radio outlet is a dry gulch, but I like to keep the boys satisfied.
“You waved to me from the train, all blond and blue-eyed, your pale skin ruddy from the cold.” This was my grandfather Mordechai as a teenager writing to Trudi, his one great love. His devotion to her overshadowed the love he felt for my grandmother. Indeed, it overshadowed his love of anything else in life. I liken Mordechai to a radio receiver that could only receive one frequency. In his case, the other-worldly signal from Trudi’s brain, an electric motor that generated a signal strong enough to give some people actual headaches. It’s all in the love letters which she and my grandfather wrote to one another.
I emphasize the Russian side of our family, but we are also Feingolds, aus Deutschland. People who came from Germany to Sweden and, eventually, America.
Rosa, my Mutter, passed away a year and a half ago. In liquidating her estate, I have come upon a lot of greeting cards with the kind of heavy, Jewish decorative art that I learned to abhor in my youth. Arthur Szyk is a modern example of the genre. Among other things in the safe deposit box, there was this crumbling stack of letters tied in brown string. Old, from the Second World War, with German stamps and postmarks from her side and Swedish stamps and postmarks from his, the letters are in Berliner Dialekt. Written in Fraktur script, the handwriting is decipherable, but a bear to get used to. Why mom held on to her father-in-law’s youthful indiscretion, I’ll never understand, other than that she liked Mordechai.
In Berlin on business in the middle of April— Spring in the air— I took the letters with me to a philologist named Siegfried who I found online. Dare I say it? You can find anything in Berlin. I emailed Siegfried a few weeks before my trip and was amazed to receive a ready and rapid reply. He would see me. He lives on the second floor of a tan five-story apartment house on Barfusstraße in Wedding, a block from Schillerpark. Spirited, with a glint in his eye, a white beard and a gnarled face, he is in his late 80’s, one of that strange breed born prior to World War Two.
“Your parents named you Siegfried,” I blurted, shaking his hand vigorously, feeling my face go red. That was the effect he had on me. “Your name means victory and peace,” I added.
“It’s of no importance,” he assured me. “If it bothered me, I would have changed it, but it doesn’t bother me.”
“Oh, okay,” I agreed, watching him close and lock the front door before disappearing into the kitchen to make us coffee. In Germany, coffee is a must.
The walls of his study are filled with German expressionist paintings and woodcuts from the 1920’s. They must be worth their weight in gold! Serving the coffee, he read aloud from several of the letters, chuckling with amazement at their childish sentiments.
“They’re love letters by young people,” I explained lamely.
Siegfried gave me a fuller picture of Trudi’s train ride than I could piece together with my limited German. It was March of 1938. Trudi and her parents were leaving Berlin for Rostock, nearer the Baltic coast, where they spent the war.
Together with online searches, we could also deduce that Trudi’s father, Hans Schmitz, a somewhat overwrought Berliner, worked for the Reichsbahn, the state railway. So he never ended up in the Wehrmacht fighting on the Eastern Front. From his perch on the Baltic Sea, it was easy for Hans to turn a blind eye to the cattle cars loaded with Jews heading east to the concentration camps. A typical railway man, he looked upon politics as a disease and considered Hitler to be his own worst enemy. Hans turned down a promotion to Gauleiter, district chief, because it would have required him to join the Nazi Party. Trudi went to school, where they knitted socks for the troops, collected clothing for the Winter Relief and sent care packages to the front.
Quaint.
Rostock got bombed mercilessly. After the war, it became East Germany’s major seaport.
When Kristallnacht struck in November of 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, a pogrom against the Jews, the Feingolds signed over 95% of their possessions to the Nazis and decamped to Malmö in Sweden where my great-grandfather taught at the university. His expertise was ancient civilizations, which immediately put him at loggerheads with National Socialist mythology regarding swastika sun symbols and the qualities of the so-called Aryan race. The Nazis were only too happy to banish der Professor from the Reich. He was exactly the kind of intellectual Jew who made Hitler’s blood boil.
“DenTeufel,” sighed Siegfried.
“The Devil?” I asked.
“You are American.”
“Yes, that’s right, Swedish-American. Growing up, my parents sent me to live—”
“Of course,” he barked, as if broken families were as common as dirt. “What interests me is the current state of America. Do you feel that you are flirting with a devil by allowing Trumpf to run for a second term?”
“Ah… um…” I stammered, caught off guard.
“That’s why I agreed to see you!” he harrumphed, which was okay with me, but unexpected. I took a clunk of cold coffee and gathered my thoughts.
“It’s a case of domestic politics,” I explained carefully. “There are all these politicians pooping…”
“Yes?” he asked, amused.
Thinking in a jumble of German, Swedish and English, I was having trouble expressing myself. “These politicians are screwing around. Chiefly Mitch McConnell, minority leader of the Senate, but yeah, it’s a handful of people who are oblivious to history and afraid of getting shot by Trump’s supporters. Every opportunity they have to put a stop to Trump’s candidacy, like three blind mice, they don’t do it,” I ended with an embarrassed chuckle. Why did I have to bring up mice, for God’s sake?
“What about Biden?” Siegfried asked, making the name sound like two words.
“Megalomania,” I explained. “Egocentricity. Aware of his age, he promised in 2020 to only run for one term. He claimed he was a transitional president, a bridge to the younger generation. But when push comes to shove, his high regard for himself has convinced him that he can win reelection. A nice gramps, but really, really old and doddering,” I concluded. “It’s not that the Republicans are so strong, it’s that the Democrats are so weak.”
“I keep reading that in the German press,” Siegfried replied, taking out a meerschaum pipe and filling it with tobacco from a tin. “Do you identify as Jewish?”
“Very much so.”
“So, what do you think of the war?”
“A tragedy for all concerned, on the ground in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank,” I said, more sure of my opinion. “Hamas is playing the West for fools. First they murder the Israelis and then they stir up pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel sentiment among young people all around the world. They are winning the propaganda war, which sucks.”
“Let’s go outside. I want to smoke,” Siegfried insisted. Standing with me on the front walk, lighting his pipe with a fancy silver lighter and billowing clouds of white smoke, he asked if I had considered moving to Israel.
“I am considering it. I never expected the American public to turn on me, but I am a student of history. I see America reenacting all the same mistakes as Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.”
“I lived through one world war, I don’t want to live through another,” Siegfried declared, shaking his head. “The Russians are breathing down our necks. You Americans need to stop flirting with the Devil and get your act together.”
THE HVAC TECH GUY, A DEMOCRAT, CAUSED BRAIN FREEZE!!!
We Swedes know from cold. At certain low temperatures, the human brain enters the “grossly annoyed” zone, seeing everything in a negative light. A classic example of this annoyance principle was on display for all to see in the courtroom behavior of “Palsy Walsy” and the 11 other members of the jury who passed judgment on our Glorious Leader in a Manhattan courtroom this week. The courtroom was freezing! Ergo, they voted to convict.
Even Trump complained of the cold and all he had to do was sit still and shiver.
They say Trump got a “Jury of his Peers.” Takes one to know one. How could they possibly be a Jury of his Peers unless they, too, were real estate moguls or convicted felons? Blatantly inappropriate jury selection.
Palsy Walsy and his crew should be hung by their bootstraps and given 34 lashes with a wet noodle, one for each of the indictments against our Glorious Saint and One True Leader.
Guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records?! C’mon, man, why didn’t the jurors let Trump off the hook on at least one or two counts? In the name of Fair Play and Common Decency. Shame on them! They hurt President Trump’s feelings. After all, this is Donald Trump, who has used the judicial process in 4,000 legal cases as a cudgel to hammer his opponents. Real estate lawsuits. Business disputes. Unpaid bills. Suing people for defamation. We’re talking the Donald Trump who until now has had the Golden Touch and always gotten away with stuff.
Let he who has not sinned be the first to get stoned out of his gourd. Like Jesus on the Cross, the craven mob has pounded Nails of Iniquity into the flabby flesh of a former president, while the Pontius Pilot of Public Opinion has left the rest of us thirsting for Equality Under the Law.
I agree with President Biden, “It’s time for this war to end.” We should make peace with Donald J. Trump and the Trump loyalists who have tunneled their way into the bedrock of American democracy. We need a permanent cease-fire in the constant sniping with the Republicans. So their candidate for president is a convicted felon? So what?! Where do we go from here? This is America, world leader in marketing. Let us declare hydroxychloroquine the National Beverage and get on with paying taxes, voting in elections and taking out the garbage. Anything less is unAmerican. Maybe Bolivian.
Oh, wait! Biden was referring to the war between Israel and the Palestinians. My bad.
As the DJ Trump campaign tells us, Trump is a Martyr excoriated by the salivating minions of a Lesser God. Never have so many owed a 25% gratuity to so few. TAKE HEED! More than one weighty political screed has been penned in the clammy, cloying confines of a prison cell. This is not the Beginning of the End, this is the End of the Beginning. The team of El Trumpo has not yet appealed this decision. Only time will tell, while the Air Aid Siren of Life keeps us informed of our Appointment with Destiny. As it says on the American nickel, “In God We Trust.” Fool me once, America, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!
I don’t wish to intrude, but with so many highly-placed Republican vice presidential hopefuls trekking to New York to kiss Trump’s ring, I felt compelled by the Veepstakes to do even more: Now with Trump’s head on the chopping block in the Stormy Daniels trial, I too traveled to New York, but to kiss his ass.
Not wanting to arrive empty-handed, I watched as many of Stormy Daniels’ 169 videos as my eyes tolerated, read six books about the Trump presidency, immersed myself in the scandal magazine industry, perused the archives of several TV networks in New York and Hollywood, worked with U.S. government archivists to unearth as many related documents as possible, examined photographs, read seven scholarly papers, spoke with three historians who told me the court proceedings were a storm in a teacup, interviewed several lawyers who told me not to quit my day job, conversed with a half dozen dudes at federal prisons serving time for the January 6 insurrection, visited two museums and discussed family history over Zoom with purported Trump relatives at scraggly vineyards in southern Germany. Maybe they were bona fide relatives, maybe not. It’s always maddeningly difficult to nail down Trump connections to the Old Country.
I even consummated two trysts with sweet Black professional ladies from “the block,” Balto’s Red Light District, since extramarital sex appears germane to Trump’s case.
Since the journey is half the experience and ’tis better to travel hopefully than to arrive, I took a Zero Bus from Balto’s dilapidated Chinatown full of Ethiopian immigrants to Chinatown in NYC. Not surprisingly, seats on the bus were occupied primarily by Asians: Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Japanese and Chegroes. Sitting next to a pretty, 26-year-old Taiwanese, I considered myself lucky and spoke in a clucking English patois as close to Hong Kong dialect as I could muster. “Stop that,” she said. “Just talk ordinary English!” The damsel was not impressed. As the bus pulled into Chinatown in Philadelphia to disgorge and pick up passengers, I took advantage of the 15-minute layover to sprint across the street and grab dim sum take-out. Delicious!
Arriving in NYC, springtime in the air, I walked the 10 minutes from Chinatown to the Manhattan Criminal Court building at 100 Centre Street. Once on-site, I wasted no time in banging the drum for Trump:
“Trump who’s accused is not amused by being abused!
He’s got the Mar-a-Lago blues,”
I sang, loud enough to draw attention to myself but not loud enough to get arrested.
“Name’s Kevin Feingold. Can I become Vice President now?” I asked representatives of various news media. Dressed in my best dark blue suit and a red, white and blue striped tie, I also sported red socks imprinted with a black hammer and sickle, a left-over from the British rock scene of the 1980’s. I felt insanely envious of the broadcasters with their perfect hair and pearly white veneers. The networks’ assembled gear had converted Collect Pond Park across the street from the courthouse into a veritable Mars-scape of satellite dishes and high tech paraphernalia.
One-time presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy stood in the park, claiming the trial was an attempt to derail Trump’s reelection campaign. “Straight out of a Kafka novel,” Vivek complained. Meanwhile, I got a guard to let me in a side door of the courthouse to use the men’s room.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, after a fusillade of invective from Trump himself, House Speaker Mike Johnson called the trial a shame, a travesty and a partisan witch hunt. Other notables supporting Trump in a clump were North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and U.S. Congressmen Byron Donalds and Cory Mills, the latter two from Florida. “It is sad that we’re here today and not out talking to the American people,” declared Burgum.
“Who’s stopping you?” I wondered, at which point I myself went back outside and spoke to the American people.
“People will little note nor long remember what I say here today,” I intoned. Aiming for ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN or at worst Fox News, I ended up facing the single camera of the West Piedmont Intelligencer YouTube channel. I understand that they specialize in cooking tips: recipes for apple butter, corn grits, cooked possum and the like. Makes my mouth water just writing about it.
“We need a strong leader to get through these troubled times,” I declared. “That strong leader needs a strong right hand. I will be that strong leader’s strong right-hand man.
“Why listen to Senators Tommy Tuberville and J.D. Vance? Why listen to Representatives Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert from Colorado, Matt Gaetz and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Nicole Malliotakis from New York, Bob Good of Virginia and all those other groveling Trump sycophants when you can listen to my groveling instead? They have all made the trek here to New York, their pilgrimage to Mecca, but my pandering is at least as sincere as their pandering. Mine is U.S. Grade A groveling. The groveling that can Make This Country Great Again!
“When you say ‘America First,’ I say ‘Yes! First in Thirst, Leader of the Free World in carbonated beverages!’
“Thinking back to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Mogadishu, to Grenada, to Lebanon, Vietnam, Korea, the Eastern Front, the Western Front, the beaches of Normandy, the Battle of Verdun, the Halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli, I say ‘Honor our fallen martyrs! Honor the living as well as the dead.’ If elected, I will impose a high tariff on the import of tea cozies from Muslim countries. Let America find and fund its tea cozies locally, as we always have done, since the time of the Boston Tea Party.
“The libs may find me P.U., Politically Uncorrect, but I am proudly hetero. I like young girls! I like everybody else, too. Doesn’t mean I want to shag everything that moves. When I take stock of our country, our natural heritage, I want to admit more beautiful immigrant women to our shores, not less. Where is the ‘Erica’ in America? I wear my cred as a male chauvinist pig with pride: From mulatto matrons’ majesty to the fruitfully plain, I find all these women beautiful. Just beautiful. They are energizing the lifeblood of our country. We’re a beautiful country. Just beautiful. GAMA! Get America More Amazons!
“Currently, I am gathering signatures to appear on the ballot in Maryland and Virginia. This is my two-state solution. Jihadists have got me on the run! To prove my bona fides, I have hired Mustafa al-Salim as a political adviser. Mustafa has not a single good word to say about Israel. Left-wing radicals need to take a sabbatical. Visit the encampments on our college campuses and you’ll see that all of life has become a comic book. Identity fanaticism is our way of life. Each of us is an action hero starring in a movie inside our own heads. Damn the bangalore torpedoes, full speed ahead!
“It is time to deify the downtrodden hamburger. We Trumpists wear our victimhood on our sleeves. Witch hunt! Rigged elections! We seek humanitarian aid. We demand social justice for the martyrs of January 6th! I won’t shoot your dog or your goat— or even your mother-in-law on Fifth Avenue. But as Vice President, I am offering to plant swastika-shaped flower beds on the White House lawn and declare the resurrection of the 4th Reich. Long live Trump!”
Watching the videographer worriedly pack up his equipment and scurry away, I asked myself if it was something I said. Casting my eyes upon the multitudes, I didn’t see squat. Trolls we have, but where were the needy Palestinians now that I really needed them to fill out the frame?
“Wanna party?” a raven-haired young lady in incredibly provocative brown leather thigh boots, a pink miniskirt, a white blouse and black leather jacket asked me, eyes flashing jovially. I think she applied her eyeliner with a spatula.
“Uh, I’m here running for a political party,” I stammered, feeling my face go beet red. “Republican Party. Legacy stuff,” I babbled.
“We can have a party of our own,” she giggled, her tiny white teeth peeking from between her ruby red lips.
Me like. You come to New York City, you gonna see the sights. Grabbing a cab, we proceeded to a cheap dive in the Bowery and did further research.
Returning to the courthouse, I got back just in time to watch Michael Cohen, after his day’s testimony, get escorted to a black, armor-plated sedan by federal marshals.
I spent 20 minutes handing out campaign buttons. My slogan:
Find Gold with Feingold in 2024!
While in da city, I intended to plumb the law books in the library at Columbia, but I got chased off campus by angry anti-Israel demonstrators who mistook me for an Israeli spy. These things happen. I’m Jewish.
Instead, walking the High Line in the early evening, I got waylaid by a lady sitting on a bench with a tan Pekingese. Wrapped in a black leather trench coat that looked too warm for the season, she was an eyeful. Her fluffy dog had a flat face and the personality of a lion. I thought he was going to gnaw my leg off. “Don’t you like dogs?” she asked in a deep voice.
“I like you!” I joked.
“Fuhgeddaboudit!” she exclaimed, making room for me on the bench.
Her name was Suzanne. Long story short, after accompanying Bog the Dog back to her apartment and ordering Chinese take-out, we spent the evening listening to Arab pop music and watching YouTube on her wide-screen TV. Mostly “Boots on the Ground” pro-Israeli reports from Gaza. A secretary, when I told her about my vice presidential aspirations, she laughed and said, “If you try to grab me by the pussy, I’m gonna knee you in the balls!”
Wow! My kind of woman. I stayed over and, despite my forebodings, ended up with a friend in NYC.
Failing to make a dent with the Trump people, I was going to try to be Dr. Jill Stein’s vice presidential running mate in the Green Party, but I suspect that the war in Gaza pits me far outside the pale of Green Party orthodoxy.
My younger brother Tim thinks I am a libertarian, even if I don’t yet know it.
[ This interim report constitutes a single chapter in a book-length project. ]
Three cheers for the pro-Palestinian protesters occupying college campuses all across the United States! No one is as well-informed and well-meaning as they. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and today’s young people on college campuses are angry for change.
It all feels a little unreal. Cultural appropriation at maximum level, these are white people and blacks parading as Palestinians. They don’t speak Arabic. Squatters, their plastic tents look nothing like the refugee camps in Gaza. Masks on their faces, their heads are wrapped in black and white checkered head scarves, even if no one has taught them how to properly fold and wear a keffiyeh.
The Fédération Internationale d’Occupation gives each encampment a G-rating, starting with lowest-ranked “Meh” and ascending to award-winning “Holy Shit!” Columbia, for example, came in at a penultimate top rating of “Oh, Wow!” Criteria include speed of erecting encampment, use of plywood barriers, contents of arsenal, toilet facilities, chants, media contact, number of arrests and the overall size and cleanliness of the site. While sheer size is the major determinate— bigger is always better— chanted slogans, handling of the media and the number of arrests can have a direct impact on the final decision to award a particular rating. So far, there have been more than 2,500 arrests made at 60 different universities and colleges. UVa has a somewhat boring encampment, but with the arrest of 25 students, it still garnered an “Oh, Wow!” rating based mostly on past performance.
Competition is fierce, especially among top tier universities.
Thanks to the ubiquity of social media, encampments are instantly aware of changes made at other locations across the country. When Columbia saw violent clashes at UCLA grabbing media attention, the protesters in New York decided to regain supremacy by occupying Hamilton Hall, a campus building. As in chess, each player tries to outfox their competitors with tricky tactics and new slogans. Palestinian students have the added incentive of protesting the hellscape in Gaza.
That the protesters’ primary focus is the carnage in Gaza is a typically false narrative used as a smokescreen to hide their true intent, which is the eradication of Jews and the overthrow of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the West, in favor of an Islamic caliphate. It makes sense that they harbor an authority complex: These young activists will be saddled with the mess left over from the missteps of current governments all over the globe. Student activists in the 1960’s shouted “Burn it all down!” Today’s vanguard chants “Globalize the Intifada,” which is basically the same thing, a fiery resistance movement for whom the only acceptable outcome is the total destruction of the existing power structure worldwide.
Is that all?
No one has any right to criticize these young freedom-fighters. Their grievances are real: A $60,000-a-year college tuition is no joke.
It’s a little hard to speak out against the student activists when their teachers and the mainstream media egg them on. In what may be a first, the teachers and faculty of Manhattan’s New School, thinking outside the box, have set up an anti-Israel encampment inside a campus building. Six nylon tents in a row in assorted colors, it looks like an art installation. Rating: Meh.
When they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” the protesters are, of course, referring to the River Nile and the Red Sea. Voracious, militant and long-suffering, the Gazans want to be the canary who swallowed the cat: Skipping the arid Sinai Peninsula entirely, they want to appropriate Sahara elSharqîya, the entire eastern seaboard of Egypt, with Luxor as their capital. Tricky.
No friend of Israel, Ethiopia recognized Palestine on February 4, 1989.
The Palestinians in Gaza are only too glad to get the support of college students everywhere. As they say in Sweden, “I’m not antisemitic, I’m pro-Palestinian.”
The pro-Palestinian activists on our college campuses are learning important life lessons like how to spit on Jews, kick Jewish students, diss the media, occupy buildings and trash libraries. While the unenlightened bourgeoisie among today’s students focus on final exams, graduation ceremonies and securing summer internships, the pro-Palestinian protesters gird for a major disruption of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. Chicago, of all places! Google “1968 democratic convention protests” to see history repeat itself.
At both California’s Occidental College and Pomona College, Jewish and Israeli students have been verbally harassed, physically surrounded, followed, threatened and intimidated by protestors, who have shouted “Go back to the gas chambers!” “Kike!” “Fucking Jew!” “Fucking Zionist!” and “Murderer!”
Extra points for the protestor who gave a Hitler salute in front of Jewish students during a demonstration at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. While not a new phenomenon, it shows that some demonstrators know their history. Signage at DePaul University in Chicago includes the gem “Netanyahu is a modern day Hitler and Biden is his b****.” Someone is a poli sci major! Kudos.
The fun isn’t limited to colleges, as big brother’s and big sister’s activism gets copied at the high school level. A pro-Palestinian riot took place at Hillcrest High School in New York. A Jewish teacher was the victim of a targeted attack at a school in Sheepshead Bay. The New York City school district has suspended 30 students for “unacceptable acts of antisemitism” and a dozen staffers have been disciplined.
Guilty secret, I too have been a demonstrator! When coffee pods caught on in 2004, I spent my Saturdays and Sundays at the local supermarket, demonstrating pod-based coffee makers. Takes one to know one!
Overworked and looking at video footage, I am forced to ask: Don’t these young people have anything better to do all afternoon than sit among their tents on the quad popping speed and toking marijuana? To deny rampant drug use among these pot heads is another false narrative.
Considering that 99% of the demonstrators have never set foot in Gaza, that doesn’t stop them from being thoroughly convinced of the infallibility of their opinions. They feel strongly. They share the conviction that Third World people are suffering. They envision a “Free Palestine”— with no Jews and no Israel. Despite the murder, rape, torture, dismemberment, burning, pillage and hostage-taking carried out by Gaza militants on October 7, these students from the American middle class see Israel as the aggressor! “What about the 13,000 (or 30,000 or whatever fantasy figure the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza comes up with) Palestinian dead?” they complain. Never having served in the military or experienced combat, these youngsters do not understand that war is hell and that there are casualties. It’s 5,675 miles from Columbia University to Gaza City. It’s 7,584 miles from UCLA to Khan Yunis. These protesters should hop a plane, go there and see for themselves. Instead, they occupy their college campuses and they riot. They don’t know what they are talking about.
Even ignoring Arabs’ long history of difficulty dealing with the truth, the Gazan Health Ministry’s outlandish claim of 30,000-plus deaths is a crock of shit. It never happened. Here is your false narrative exposed to the light of reason: Step back a second and look critically at this Big Lie. Thirty thousand dead bodies don’t disappear like a wisp of smoke. Where are they?! That many dead would be stacked like cord wood. There would be endless photographs and video, just like in the concentration camps after the Holocaust. We’re TOLD that they were stacked in the corridors of Al-Shifa Hospital, but the rest is a pipe dream. It wouldn’t matter that the Palestinians exaggerate, but all these marching young people protesting on college campuses complain of the disproportionate casualty rates, when it simply is not true. There aren’t even any lists with the names of the deceased. No bodies, no photographs, no names, just an empty claim. Shame on you, Gazans, for being liars. Congratulations on harnessing this worthless claim and turning it into golden propaganda!
When the protestors claim that Jews are “white colonizers” of Palestine, they’re full of bilge. Colonizers, colonizers, more than two thirds of Israel’s 9.2 million citizens are people of color from lands across the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Mizrahi from Arabia, Sephardi from Spain and Portugal, black Jews from Ethiopia.
Anyone accusing the Israelis of genocide shows their unfamiliarity with urban warfare. Genocide is the extermination of a people, something which the Israelis have gone to great lengths to avoid. Genocide is the Nazi war machine systematically killing 6 million Jews during World War Two, the Turks wiping out Armenians in 1915, Hutu militias murdering the Tutsi in 1994 during the Rwanda Civil War. Yes, the Israeli war effort has caused a mass migration in Gaza; the majority of the population has been displaced. But no one is carpet bombing their tent cities, no one is strafing civilian population on the roads. It is the Israelis who use roof-knocking bombs, noisemakers that land on the roof of an apartment house, warning the residents that they have only minutes to evacuate before the building is bombed. The IDF’s war is with Hamas, not the civilian population of Gaza. The Israelis warn the civilian population in advance before carrying out military operations. They do what they can to avoid civilian casualties. Yes, shit happens. Seven members of José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen were killed in a night airstrike. Accidents are no proof of genocide.
While the encampments on college campuses are full of hot air, the effects of global warming cannot be entirely ignored. Intermittent flooding has been reported in some areas.
Young militants claim their revolution is led by angry out-groups, but if you want to know who is behind these protests, follow the money trail: SimSalaBim Palestinian Flag Co. of Qatar, Keffiyeh Looms, Inc., Americana Tent Company, Apex Mask Apparel and Luxe Megaphones. “Kapitalismus über alles,” as Karl Marx would say.
The liberal left-wing media is appalled that police have used riot gear, tactical vehicles and flash-bang devices to clear tent encampments and school buildings occupied by the activists. What happened to freedom, equality, human rights, social progress, justice reform and international solidarity? These virtues must not be impeded, just because some anti-Israel demonstrators are disrupting campus life, threatening fellow students, painting swastikas on the doors to the dorm rooms of Jews and tramping on the Israeli flag in public. Where is police solidarity with the working class? Long live Yasser Arafat, who popularized the black-and-white checkered keffiyeh headscarf!
[ A separate chapter will deal with American mainstream media’s narrative about the poor little Palestinians getting beaten up by the big bad Jews. Palestinians are murdering rapists. That sad history will also be covered in a separate chapter. ]
An unexpected occurrence in New York City and Portland, Oregon is the influx of homeless people onto college campuses. Taking advantage of a fluid situation, they erect their own tents among those of the protestors. To the students’ credit, they shrug off these interlopers as meaningless excess baggage and unimportant to the Palestinian cause. One direct result of this occupation within the occupation has been that the number of actual students arrested on campus is constantly only a fraction of the total number of persons incarcerated.
Playtime in a sandbox, filled with self-importance, these kids are having a blast, giving the bird to the authorities. Often, their demands include that all disciplinary action against demonstrators be expunged from their university transcripts.
Enduring such protests, the question every university administration must ask itself is this: Is it better to expel 150 Palestinian exchange students and take back the campus or should they cave to the pressure of left-wing institutions and the media, letting the occupiers call the shots? Who are the grown-ups in the room and who is the 800 lb. gorilla?
Dr. Jill Stein, presidential candidate for the Green Party, announced on X on April 27 that she, her campaign manager and her deputy campaign manager were among 100 people arrested while trying to set up an encampment at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. It will be interesting to see how presidential candidates use the continuing turmoil to their advantage during the upcoming campaign season. If Dr. Stein manages to monopolize the Muslim vote, she could well siphon off support that Biden desperately needs to get re-elected.
The good news is that even arrested demonstrators from encampments with a low rating of “Meh” have been invited to visit Congress by House of Representative members Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri. “Those who refuse to stop the genocide in Gaza think they can arrest and brutalize their way out of this,” said Bush at a news conference on the steps of the Capitol with five of the students who had been arrested. Afterwards, a young man with long brown hair, a bush hat, extensive piercings and dressed in baggy jeans paraded in front of the Capitol chanting “Go back to Poland!” and waving a sign saying “END the WAR in VIET NAM.”
Looking abroad, we see that the coastal town of Malmö in southern Sweden is hosting the 68th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. Under Palestinian flags and the banner NEJ TILL FOLKMORD (“No to Genocide”), 12,000 protesters marched on May10th to the concert venue at Malmö Arena in the center of the city. Among the protestors was climate activist Greta Thunberg. Accusing Eurovision of allowing Israel to “artwash” its image, fans and musicians have called for Israel to be banned from the contest. More protests are expected as the contest finals approach. The Swedes are hosting because they won last year. Around 180 million people all over Europe and Asia will watch the grand finale live on TV. Claiming to be politically neutral, politics has always lurked under the surface of Eurovision. In 2022, Ukraine won with the heart-breaking anti-invasion rap song “Stefania,” while Russia was banned from the proceedings. This year, Israel’s entry in the song competition is called “Hurricane,” based on the October 7 attack. The protesters ask why the West cares so deeply about Ukrainians but not Palestinians. Maybe because the Ukrainians aren’t murdering rapists. The choices life gives us are seldom easy. Queers for Palestine have called on Britain’s entry to boycott the event.
Paris, France is such a disappointment. Tent villages spread around the city are full of migrant workers from Africa and Asia seeking asylum and employment, yet few of them are willing to risk deportation by joining the students in front of Sciences Po University to protest la guerre en Gaza.
Mountaineers huddle inside their yellow, single-walled tents pitched on the South face of Mt. Everest. They act as if Gaza is three thousand miles away. Which it is.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Gaza, Israel is forced to invade Rafah to ferret out and destroy the underground leadership of Hamas. With Hamas’ threat of continuous repetitions of the October 7th terrorist attack, anything less is untenable. Once Hamas is defeated, the Israelis and Gazans will return to an uneasy co-existence, rebuilding the Gaza Strip amongst the wreckage, this time without tunnels and rockets.
The first six letters of “demonstrators” spell “demons.” The lasting damage is that by their actions, these pro-Palestinian demonstrators are ushering in the quick and easy re-election of Donald Trump.
Poetry for grown-ups, “Worry Wart” marries soul music with comic memories, before relentlessly veering into current events.
If you like playlists and similar tunes, Worry Wart’s genres are Philly Soul, Amapiano and Lo-Fi Hip Hop. Finally, some interesting genres!
A reaction to the dramatic female singers currently dominating the charts, at 72 BPM, the track features a calm male vocal and his peppy girlfriend. Who finishes his sentences.
A throwback to Ed Ames’s “Who Will Answer?” and Johnny Sea’s “Day for Decision,” the track fills a void in today’s pop music scene. Or maybe that’s aiming a little high.
Music maestro Mutte Fjutt in Uppsala, Sweden and punk rocker Clive Flatenbad—a k a rap duo realPfft— continue their odyssey through the world of AI-generated sights and sounds.
Mutte accessed the Suno music app at Microsoft Copilot, using the prompt: “Create a song about a broken tooth.” AI generated a complete track— music, lyrics and singing voice— even if the music was fuzzy, the vocal only 37 seconds long and the singer forgot some of the lyrics. Mutte deconstructed the music and re-recorded it, adding flourishes, solos and final mix.
Graphic artist Kuny used Bing Image Creator DALL-E for the artwork. Prompt: “Show a handsome man and woman kissing.” AI rules!
Since March 2018, Mutte and Clive have been grinding out their quirky version of hit music. They started their collaboration doing political satire and have branched out from there into rap, hip hop, rock, pop, R&B, soul, jazz, bebop, K-pop and whatever else tickles their funny bone. “Everything we do is comedy,” insists Clive.
Sweden is joining NATO (my old stomping ground), Donald Trump is up for re-election, there’s heartache in Ukraine and headache in Gaza. Extreme weather plagues the planet and mass extinction looms on the horizon. Rarely have we been more in need of a laugh. Love that funky music!
Kev
My Broken Tooth
It tasted blood on my tongue
When our lips collided, something came undone
A rush of pain, a moment’s hesitation
But I couldn’t resist the thrill of your sensation (ooh-yeah)
You left a piece of you in my broken tooth
A bittersweet reminder of our reckless youth
Every time I smile, I’m reminded of the past
But I wouldn’t change a thing, those memories last (yeah-yeah-yeah)
Taking his inspiration from Mason Williams’ April 1968 hit song “Classical Gas,” Mutte Fjutt in the Swedish rap duo realPfft has created his own symphonic pop instrumental. It’s a classic.
In 1967, the same Mason Williams created an art installation titled “Bus.” A life-size color photograph of a Greyhound bus in 1:1 scale, this unusually large poster mural measures 10 feet by 36 feet. It consists of 16 sheets of silkscreened billboard paper which three people taped together using double-sided Scotch tape. Williams said it took nine man-hours to tape together each copy. Produced in a numbered, limited edition of 200, each one sold in a specially designed and printed cardboard box.
In celebration of Williams’ concrete art, Kuny, who does realPfft’s cover art, designed, photographed and labeled his “Classic” box, as seen above. Dimensions: 4 inches in height by 5 ½ inches wide by 3 ½ inches deep. Signed prints are available.
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