Author: A.T.

Bill Maher on Western Civilization.  (Spoiler alert: he’s for it.)

John Adams: “There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

He wrote that in 1814.  I found it in the introduction to John Avlon’s Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations.  Here we are two centuries later — with a former president who plotted a coup and a MAGA Republican Party that seems willing, if not eager, to perpetuate it.

Globally, Tom Friedman gives us the big picture:

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Step back far enough, and you can see exactly what is driving so much geopolitics today: Ukraine is trying to join the West. Israel is trying to join a new Middle East. And Russia and Iran have teamed up to try to block both.

Unfortunately, the new G.O.P. House speaker, Mike Johnson, is either too inexperienced or too ideological (or both) to see this (or to care). . . .

If it sounds like an utterly incoherent worldview that would undermine the American global leadership that has shaped a world we’ve thrived in for the past century, it’s because it is. And if it feels as if House G.O.P. leaders are small thinkers in a big time, it’s because they are. They are shameless, shameful and dangerous. Please do our country a favor and audition for Fox News on some other issue.

Because this IS a big moment — comparable to 1945 or 1989.

If Ukraine is able to escape Russia’s grasp and eventually join NATO and the European Union — with its formidable army, agricultural exports and technology prowess — it would be a giant boost for a Europe whole and free. And if Israel can be maneuvered back to the bargaining table for a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority — to pave the way for normalization between the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia — it would be a huge boost for a new, more pluralistic Middle East built around Palestinians, other Arabs and Israelis focused on strengthening their people’s resilience for the future and not their resistance to each other and to the West.

If these tectonic shifts can happen, the post-post-Cold War world has a far greater chance to handle other global challenges, like climate change, than if these shifts are stymied.

But you don’t need to speak Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Russian or Ukrainian to understand that Iran-backed Hamas launched its war to stymie the Saudi-Israel normalization and prevent Tehran from being isolated and that Vladimir Putin launched his war to stop Ukraine from expanding a Europe whole and free and prevent Moscow from being isolated. . . .

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Worth reading in full.

Have a great week.

Of the new House Speaker — second in line to the presidency and January 6th coup architect Mike Johnson — American Values Coalition executive director Napp Nazworth writes: “I’m a conservative Christian who supports the norms of democracy, Johnson does not.”

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Given what we know about Johnson, what if Republicans retain control of the House and Biden wins the next election? Would the majority decline to certify the results and would Johnson use his power as speaker to seek to overturn the results? Signs point to yes.

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Worth reading in full.

To help win back the House as we hold the Senate and the White House with a big blue wave, you know what to do.

Have a good week-end.

Anyone who thinks our democracy is not at grave risk should read Robert Reich’s latest.

This — I would remind you — is the democracy so many of our forefathers fought and died for and that, at least until recently, for all its flaws, all the world looked to as a beacon of hope.

Once lost, democracy is notoriously hard to regain.

If you can help fund the big blue wave that will save it, click here.

A life well lived.  A man neither you nor I had ever heard of.  Bertie Bowman.  In case you’re up for a little inspiration at this troubled time.

Three lives badly lived: The closer you look, the more Netanyahu resembles Trump (and Putin).

(Luttig is a Republican.)

If I were writing the movie, a huge fleet of U.S. cargo planes would be flying over Gaza 24/7 air-dropping pallets of food — ideally avoiding Hamas strongholds — with leaflets in Arabic saying:

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We Israelis and you Palestinians are victims of the same scourge — Hamas — who slaughtered our innocent civilians in a long-planned surprise attack and now sit eating and drinking in their tunnels while you starve.

This food comes from us Israelis — with the assistance of the United States Air Force — with the same good will that has long led us to treat wounded Palestinians in our hospitals; to train Palestinian doctors in our universities; and to welcome more than a million Palestinians as Israeli citizens, with full voting rights and the right to serve in our Knesset.

All we have ever wanted is to be left alone.  When we left Gaza in 2006, we hoped you would build a prosperous nation.  Instead, some of you attacked us even as we were leaving . . . devoting enormous resources to building tunnels and weapons to kill Jews, Hamas’s stated goal.

We have never wanted to kill you any more than most of you have wanted to kill us.  Our goal is to free you — and us — of Hamas once and for all.  It is the only road we see to peace.  May God be with you.  Shalom.

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Obviously, it would be written much better.  But that’s the gist.

Make any sense?

Any chance?

> Reich Is Right.  Or always worth listening to, at least.

“The tragedy unfolding in Gaza,” he writes, “requires clear thinking and a moral compass. I’m not observing a lot of either.”

He debunks what he believes are six wrong-headed views.  See whether you agree.

> Does a black guy have to be crazy to support Donald Trump?

Well, yes, judging from Kanye West’s remarkable story.

Immensely talented and a force of nature; but . . oh, brother.

> I bought HYMC yesterday at 22 cents a share . . . down from $15 three years ago, and from the $1.19 AMC paid 18 months ago (though they also got warrants to buy shares at $1,07, which sweetens the deal if the stock goes up).

According to HYMC’s website, the company was sitting on well over $100 million in cash at the end of June — and a whole lot of gold and silver.

They have debt about equal to their cash — but no payments due until 2027.

The bet is that mining will be underway by then at a large profit.

My bet is that “tax-selling” has helped drive HYMC down of late . . . that the folks selling yesterday at 22 cents are completely disgusted with this awful stock and don’t much care what price they get; they just want to lock in their loss before year-end.  (If it drops a bunch more, I may buy a bunch more.  That’s how crazy I am.)

Meanwhile, the company will be reverse-splitting one-for-ten in a couple of weeks.

Reverse splits are usually the kiss of death (or, perhaps more aptly, a “death rattle”) and that may well prove true here.

Or it could be a gold mine.

Only with money you can truly afford to lose.

I hate Halloween, but that’s another story.  Have fun.

> Jews have never wanted to kill Arabs; Hamas has Israeli genocide as its stated goal.

> Jews have never celebrated the death of Palestinian civilians (indeed, Israel treats Palestinians in its hospitals and trains Palestinian doctors); Palestinians behead Jewish babies, then dance in the streets.

You’ve probably already read Tom Friedman: Please, Israel, Don’t Get Lost in Hamas’s Tunnels.

Equally worth your time is Joseph Cox: Getting to a Free Palestine!

Have a good week.

Watch this Pakistani Brit, Kasim Hafeez.

Or read the transcript:

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I was born to hate Jews

It was part of my life. I never questioned that. I was not born in Iran or Syria. I was born in England. My parents moved there from Pakistan. Theirs was the typical immigrant story: Move to the West hoping to create a better life for themselves and their children.

We were a devoted Muslim family, but not extremists or radicals in any way. We only wanted the best for everyone – everyone except the Jews. The Jews, we thought, were aliens living in stolen Muslim land, occupiers involved in a genocide against the Palestinian people. Our hatred was therefore justified and just. And it left me and my friends vulnerable to radical extremist arguments. If the Jews were as evil as we’ve always believed, shouldn’t those who support them – Christians, Americans and others in the West – be just as evil?

Starting from the 90s, speakers and teachers in mosques and schools began repeating this theme endlessly: We were not western. We were not British. We were Muslims, first and foremost. Our allegiance was to our religion and to our fellow Muslims. We owe nothing to western nations who welcomed us. As westerners, they were our enemies.

All of this had its desired effect. At least it did on me. It changed the way I looked at the world. I began to look at the suffering of Muslims, including in Britain, as the fault of Western imperialism. The west was at war with us, and the Jews controlled the west. My experience at the university in the UK only reinforced my increasingly radical conviction. Hating Israel was a badge of honor. Set up an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rally, and you were sure to attract a huge, approver

While in uni, I decided that the protests and propaganda against Israel were not enough. Real jihad requires violence. So I made plans to join the real fight.  I wanted to drop out of college and join terrorist training camp in Pakistan. But, fortunately for me, fate intervened — in a bookstore.

I came across a book called The Case for Israel by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. The case for Israel? Which case could that be? The title itself infuriated me, and I started reading the pages almost like a travesty. How ill-informed, how stupid, can this guy be to defend the defenseless? Well, he was a Jew. That must have been the answer

Still I am reading. And what I read challenged all my dogmas about Israel and the Jews: I read that it was not Israel who created the Palestinian refugee crisis, it was the Arab countries, the UN and the corrupt Palestinian leadership. I read that Jews did not exploit the Holocaust to create the state of Israel; the movement to create a modern Jewish state dating back to the 19th. century, and eventually to the beginning of the Jewish people almost 4000 years ago. And I read that Israel is not engaged in genocide against the Palestinians. On the contrary, the Palestinian population has actually doubled in just twenty years.

All of this just pissed me off. I had to prove Dershowitz wrong to see with my own eyes how racist and oppressive Israel really was. Then I bought a plane ticket. I would go to Israel, the home of my enemy. And that’s when everything changed.

What I saw with my own eyes was even more challenging than what Dershowitz had written. Instead of apartheid I saw Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisting. Instead of hate, I saw acceptance, even compassion. I saw a violent, modern, liberal democracy, full of flaws, for sure, but fundamentally decent. I saw a country that wanted nothing but to live in peace with its neighbors. I watched my hate melt before my eyes. I knew just then what I had to do.

Too many people on this planet are consumed by the same hate that consumed me. They have been taught to despise the Jewish state – many Muslims through their religion, many others by their university professors or student groups.

So here’s my challenge to anyone who feels this way: do what I did – seek the truth for yourself. If the truth can change me, it can change anyone.

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Another book to read — highly and quite properly sympathetic to the Palestinian people: Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth.

Bill Maher on Israel (a couple of years ago) — under two minutes.

Tom Friedman on what needs to happen — long but worth it.

And Steven Erlanger — also long but worth it, concluding:

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Only Washington, which now has unprecedented moral prestige in Israel, is capable of assembling the pieces from this war, said Bernard Avishai, an American-Israeli who has taught at both Dartmouth College and Hebrew University.

“Only the United States can provide some degree of hope,” he said, that a new paradigm will be established “in which Palestinian self-determination will finally be addressed.” American statements on a two-state solution and the settlements “have been seen as platitudes,” he added. “But to do something concrete now, it’s not too late.”

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This clip is worth your time:  former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens on The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.

Near the end, Claire McCaskill makes the point that all 8 of yesterday’s Republican candidates for Speaker were white males who had voted against re-authorizing the Violence Against Women Act, against women’s right to birth control, and against codifying equal pay for equal work.

Stevens thinks this is one of the reasons the Republican Party is drawn to Putin – “How many women in power do you see in Russia?”

But watch the whole thing.

And surely you’ve seen some version of Trump’s favorite chief of staff flipping on him.

I’m guessing Trump will no longer be calling Meadows his “great chief of staff — as good as it gets.”

Could sanity be on the edge of the verge of beginning to return?

Now that Tucker Carlson is known to hate Trump?

To have called him “the world champion of destroying things“?

That may be too much to hope for — cults are not called cults for nothing — but if any of our Trumpist friends or relatives show signs of wavering, I hope we can find ways to show that we share their concerns — the border crisis is serious; the price of gas and groceries does sting; crime (though higher in many “red” states than blue and lower than it was in many decades past) is a very real concern — but then make the case that, all things considered, it may make sense to give the Biden team four more years to address these problems and to build on their very real successes. 

And to preserve the dignity of the office. 

And a calm, steady, pro-democratic approach to governing.  

My two cents.