Ben Stein


Comrade Ben Stein, Do You Remember?



Based on bogus tweets from the thing in the White House, Americans are asked to believe Hebrews, Italians, and other ethnicities are locked in common cause to lead our nation into the fascist terrain of Hell.  Irony.  Ben Stein utters irony of irony in his recent suggestion that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York 14th Congressional District) makes policy recommendations that are socialist, recommendations that invariably lead to bad things: dictatorship and genocide, Hitler, Stalin, and Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.  Ah, who will buy such an Old Testament-flavored utterance?



We are not brain dead, Mr. Stein.  We have memory. We remember the Yiddish daily newspaper.  We remember, even if you choose not to, that in 1921 the Jewish Socialist Federation united with Communists.  We remember who promoted socialism, communism, and capitalism ---all at once ---in the United States of America.  Representative Ocasio-Cortez's policy recommendations are grounded in the rhetorical history of your race.  Mr. Stein, you are entitled by the First Amendment ,to utter  your opinions, but you are not entitled by divine history to utter lies!



We are not bereft of memory, Mr. Stein.  And we know how to read the rites of Amiri Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America" (2001) as selectively as your ears listen to Representative Ocasio-Cortez.



Eighteen years ago, Baraka asked many of the right questions in his poem.



Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion/ And cracking they sides at the notion.



…..



Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/To stay home that day



Eighteen years ago, Baraka provoked memory.  Like you, Mr. Stein, I am entitled to utter my opinions, including the opinion that Saudi Arabia was complicit with America's major client-state in the Middle East in sponsoring reprehensible terrorism.  The somebody who blew up has yet to be arrested, indicted, and put on trial by the United Nations and the World Court.



Mr. Stein, neither your God nor mine, likes ugly.  And misrepresenting the origins of Representative Ocasio-Cortez's policy statements is an ugly thing.  Be kosher.  Read Ira Katznelson's excellent book Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (New York: Liveright, 2013).



Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            January 26. 2019.

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