On Bari Weiss comments about the current situation (Stop Being Shocked, Oct 15 2020)

On Bari Weiss comments about the current situation (Stop Being Shocked, Oct 15 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-shocked)

A friend requests some comments about B W's piece.

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I understand this is a call to inaction... And you must think what to vote, and send your vote. Sorry for not being helpful here, I am paralyzed.

Some thoughts, as requested:

1  I'm afraid that Alexandria Ocasio is, I am sorry to be so Manichean and categorical, a bad person... Hates too much, too much of an activist. It is my belief that, if in power, she would have fewer limits than mainstream politicians. That's why this all happens (her pulling out of a Y Rabin event, other things she says, the way she shows support for bad guys).

2 Lots of people lie, not only Alexandria, and this harms Bari Weiss piece.... We are not sure that the Iranian mullahs, murderous and crazy as they are, are genocidal. When we re-ask, they consistently say that what they want is to erase the Zionist entity, the Republic, not the persons. So why Bari Weiss repeatedly claims (& many others do the same too) that the Tehran's mad mullahs wish to kill unarmed civilians en masse?

That said, if the day comes when Israel is successfully invaded and defeated, I have no doubts that there would be mass displacements of population, very similar to what we saw with Germans after WWII (the Czechs, the Poles, etc., sent Germans packing to Germany after the National Socialists lost the war). But we cannot say so easily that the victors would kill the population à la Rwandan. I may be afraid of that, but cannot write so with such carelessness.

All the other is ok to me. Ignorant, hater-in-chief de Blasio; the KIPP charter schools's stupid, cowardly change in their motto, the allusion to "the illusion of meritocracy" (pardon the alliteration). And the first main thesis, stop being shocked, and accept that what it seems strange is clearly wrong (like Alexandria's views), is ok to me.

3  The second main thesis, that we should have friendships with political opponents, is something I ardently support too. But at times this is not generally possible, it is not so widespread. And we are in such a time.

Let me add and example here I lived a few years ago: A girl in the dating forums asked for an Anarchist boyfriend. And she also said that Communists are acceptable too. Well... When the Communists were in power, they exiled, imprisoned and killed mercilessly the Anarchists. But that was decades ago, I didn't live it, and my enemies' enemies are my friends. Then, I can date a Communist.

4  B Weiss piece will change nothing. My sad note is not about that, it is that the author publishes this because she needs money to pay the rent. She knows this has a negligible effect in the opposing side. That's the (falsely) cynical view.

Being positive about the author, her comments of being horrorized by Trump and simultaneously by the "others" remind me of those I love and who opposed at the same time the Nazis and the Communists (my dear gurus Popper, Hayek, many others). They had to emigrate to England, etc., and of course had no influence at all in the big confrontation that ended in conflagration.

Which is my view... I cannot support Alexandria O (or J Biden) and cannot support Trump. I am living in a permanent toothache, and are paralyzed, as I said at the beginning.

5  My summary is: let's love the others, even if we cannot understand why they vote as they do; and be realistic, which now, at this time in history, means  let's be pessimistic.