Let Us Lament

 LET US LAMENT ON TUESDAY MORNING

 

I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

Lamentations 3.1

 

Pandemic is the rod; so too is our language; we are distracted by tantalizing desire for an ending. Like absurd characters we are waiting for perdition.  Media torments us as we wait. The New York Times conducts daily interrogations of the actual and the real. Whether it is in print or online, the newspaper signs, seals and delivers us to fascist confusions. Cancel culture afflicts us with cognitive cancer.  We hang between Kraft durch Freude and Kraft durch Freud.

 

On May 17, Michelle Goldberg, an NYT opinion columnist, offered "Kushner's Absurd Peace Plan Has Failed."  She tried to persuade readers that "the Abraham Accords, the ersatz Middle East peace plan," which Kushner helped to construct, was a bribe.  The United States wanted Arab and Muslim nations to believe Israel and Palestine were having nothing more than "a real-estate dispute."  They have been having a deadly, inhumane  dispute since 1947.Goldberg bothers not to expose the historical grounds of dispute, but she does make one stunning claim about America's role in fomenting a world-threatening crisis.  The violence between Israel and Palestine "in recent days makes clear something that should never have been in doubt: justice for the Palestinians is a precondition for peace.  And one reason there has been so little justice for the Palestinians is because of the foreign policy of the United States.."

  [[ Reason is because? Goldberg , you must use a noun or a noun clause instead of "because" in this expression .  An English teacher deplores your carelessness. ]]  Despite the faux pas, Goldberg does make a valid point.

 

In a gesture of providing its readers with balance, the NYT juxtaposes Goldberg's opinion with the opinion of Bret Staples in "If the Left Got Its Wish for Israel."  He bids us to imagine "an alternative universe in which an enlightened Israeli government did almost  everything progressive America  demanded of it."  Stephens envisions a dystopian nightmare that would disadvantage Jewish Israelis as Hamas replenished "its arsenal with more powerful guided munitions, able to reach any target in Israel." That is so unnecessary, according to Staples, because "plenty of licit goods reach Gaza today."  Where is the evidence that his claim is true?

 

Both opinions warrant fact-checking.  They are both reminders that we live in a neo-fascist nation that has imperial longings, that has a Right which uses pandemic and cancel culture to drive citizens into obedient madness.  Such preconditions for concentration camps on American soil we do not need. We need more civility and less fascism  in our uses of political languages.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            May 18, 2021

 

 


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