What exactly does Trump think is in the Smithsonian?https://t.co/W70JjM9Xxf
— Anders Carlgren (@AndersCarlgren) April 2, 2025
Novelist / Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse [gift link]:
A few days ago, I spent 14 minutes standing in front of a single piece of artwork, a 1998 installation called “Las Twines.” Life-size, hyperrealistic sculptures of two little girls — the twins — sharing a swing. They were dressed identically in communion dresses and wore boxing gloves featuring Puerto Rican flags, but one had blonde hair and light skin and the other was dark-skinned with dark hair. They stared placidly ahead, while museum visitors like me were left to stare back and ponder how the world might treat these two girls with shared DNA and different complexions. It was uncanny, it was thought-provoking, it was beautiful and sad. I wasn’t sure whether I liked it, I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to. It’s art, after all.
It was part of an exhibit that Donald Trump had cited by name the day before, in an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The president had declared that federally run museums such as the Smithsonian were promoting a “corrosive ideology” that needed to be course-corrected. “Under this historical revision,” the order read, “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
This is, of course, a ready-made column idea — Let’s go see the corrosive art in person — but it turns out this is easier said than done: Trump cited an alleged exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but some googling revealed that the offending verbiage was actually part of an online infographic that hadn’t been displayed since 2020. He dinged the forthcoming American Women’s History Museum for celebrating transgender athletes, but how would he or I know what curators planned to include? The museum is still 10 years away. Ground hasn’t even been broken yet.
There was, however, one exhibit that seemed to be causing Trump particular consternation that I could go visit. The American Art Museum is eight blocks from my office, and is currently hosting “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” which includes “Las Twines” and 81 other artworks created between 1792 and 2023.
So, I walked over on a Friday morning. I hadn’t been in years. I spent about four hours there; I could have spent 40 more. I planned to write — oh, you can probably guess what I planned to write. This order is asinine, this president is terrible, blah blah blah. Whatever you wanted that column to say, it probably would have said.
But here’s the thing: the “The Shape of Power” is just one exhibit, on the museum’s third floor. To get to it, you have to walk past everything else, which, if you keep stopping and looking at things, as museums intend for you to do, will take you hours. And when I was done, what I wanted to share more than anything else wasn’t a screed about Donald Trump, but instead what I saw at the museum….
On my way to the exhibit that Trump says revises history and makes the country look inaccurately racist, I saw a painting from 1946 called “Frightful New York,” in which the female painter, Hisako Hibi, expressed how jarring it felt to reach the big city after spending three years forcibly incarcerated in an internment camp along with 120,000 other innocent Japanese Americans under orders from a U.S. president. That painting was made 79 years ago, so don’t tell me that we’re rewriting racism into history, it has always been there.
I saw a painting called “A Visit From the Old Mistress,” in which four women who had presumably once been enslaved reluctantly greet the White woman who had once purported to own them. The way the mistress stares at them as though she expected a better welcome. The way they look at her with hatred and exhaustion and impatience and fear. The way they know they can’t express any of this out loud. This painting is from 1876. Don’t you dare tell me this is a new way we are telling history; voices have been trying to tell history this way for 150 years…
On my way to visit the corrosive art, I dropped in on another tour group, this one containing mostly Japanese Americans. On that tour, one tourist gently interrupted the tour guide to ask whether she would like a complete translation of some of the Japanese calligraphy that was written on one of the paintings. The tour guide, who was White, exclaimed delightedly that, yes she would, she would love the full translation. And now she has learned something new about the place where she worked every day, and a painting she walked past every hour.
And that is America. That is how we tell the story of America. Together. Each one of us contributing what we can, and when we learn something new, we think about how wonderful it is to learn it, rather than burying the new information down where it can’t hurt us.
I made it, finally, to “The Shape of Power.” I spent 14 minutes with “Las Twines,” and another 45 just wandering around, through sculptures massive and small, old and new, literal and inscrutable. If you are looking for something to be shocked by, you can probably find it. But no more so than anywhere else in the museum. No more so than anywhere else in our history. America is a shocking place — shockingly beautiful and shockingly violent. And the people in it will make you weep with every emotion that can prompt tears. Jubilant, sad, ridiculous, sublime. It’s America, after all.
You cannot love America without hating it a little bit. But you cannot hate it without loving it so, so much. Wanting it to be better. Wanting it to be what we all deserve.
As I stood with the tour groups and the lunch crowd and the tired families pushing strollers and doling out juice boxes — as I stood in this completely free institution that exists for no other reason than to help America learn something about itself, that was the most shocking realization of all: The Smithsonian is not filled with hatred toward our busted, struggling, awesome country; it is filled with the deepest love, and that is what I learned at the museum.
War for Ukraine Day 1,135: There Will Be No Truce, Ceasefire, or Real Negotiation Because Putin Is Only Interested in All of Ukraine
Baud
Tornado!
frosty
I see a flaw. You wrote a title that used the words “Trump” and “think” in the same sentence.
Now that I’m finished being snarky, I’ll read the post. Glad to see you’re back on the morning shift!
Elizabelle
Good to see you, AL. Hope you are feeling spiffy.
Woke up relieved that it is Saturday. Market is closed for two days. What a world.
I think today’s protests are going to be lit.
Elizabelle
@frosty: Safe travels to DC! Represent!
Metro is going to have a good day.
Baud
Reposted from below
frosty
@Elizabelle: I’m sorry to say I chickened out on DC for a number of reasons; so I’m going to York instead. First reason was rereading Adam’s post and thinking about #1 Go With A Buddy, which I hadn’t arranged. Second reason was logistics: 50+ mile drive and navigating Metro farecards, which are completely different than when I did it in the 80s and 90s.
If you’ll be there, let us know how it goes and stay safe. And like the Sergeant-Major said, “Don’t forget to hydrate!”
Victor Matheson
I remember seeing painting after painting in my 20th Century Art History class that had been banned by Hitler and the Nazis for being degenerate art.
I mean, if the dude doesn’t want to be thought of as a nazi, stop doing nazi things.
Elizabelle
@frosty: Going to York is a fine idea. You are still turning out!
For future DC protests, feel free to check in and we can meet up.
Missed Adam’s post: did he put up something about protesting safely again?
prostratedragon
@Baud: There are two kinds of people in the world. I’m the kind that would arc around the back of the thing as it got bigger. Interesting inception footage, though.
Frank Wilhoit
Entartete Kunst.
Elizabelle
@Baud: So many military training accidents, once you look into it. Every week. Unforgiving equipment and environment, and a learning curve, along with technical problems.
My condolences to the families.
prostratedragon
Here’s some cell phone advice for protesters. Basically, don’t take your phone if possible and use a burner, or back up your phone if you must, and use passwords rather than biometrics.
p.a.
I heard when It was an actual New Yorker It would arrive at art & museum galas and stay for the champaign and photo ops and then screw without partaking of whatever the events were celebrating.
Even though Its wealth is overstated, imagine having what It has, living in NYC, and having NO interest and taking NO advantage of what Its wealth had to offer.
frosty
@Elizabelle: Adam’s post was easy to find as it turns out. I went to the box on the upper right that says Search This Site and typed in “Safe Protesting” His post was the first thing that popped up:
https://balloon-juice.com/2022/07/01/staying-safe-while-protesting-redux/
Ramalama
@Victor Matheson: there’s an excellent, can’t put down book called Life with Picasso, written by his lover who was also an artist. What I didn’t know until reading it was how Hitler regarded Picasso’s work as degenerate, and there was an ongoing uneasy sense of Picasso being targeted by the Nazis.
Suzanne
I am not going to make it to any protests today due to other kid stuff, but tentatively next weekend. Might have to go help Spawn the Elder move, so stuff is TBD until we get that figured out.
I went to the Cooper-Hewitt a couple of years ago, which is a branch of the Smithsonian in NYC. It was woke AF, as it should be.
UncleEbeneezer
What Exactly Does Trump Think Is *In* the Smithsonian?
Answer: Black People
prostratedragon
@p.a.: Not just stay for the treats, but plunk butt down in reserved seats for honored donors. And as you say, that utter lack of interest is telling.
cmorenc
The attempted museum purge is the work of the P25 Heritage people in Trump’s Administration – Trump has seldom, if ever, bothered to go to the Smithsonian and isn’t familiar with the exhibits and collections, except as P25 minions are directing him.
Wilson Heath
The nation is only “irredeemably flawed” if we decide we cannot or should not fix anything. And leaning into those decisions not to may be what a lawyer might call an admission.
Elizabelle
Can anyone imagine Trump in a museum, for edification? For curiosity?
For him, they are likely the venues for the society galas which did not welcome his fraudster self. They could see and smell him coming.
And museums. Woke. Now more inclusive.
Maybe he would have gone in for King Tut.
UncleEbeneezer
The problem conservatives have with the Smithsonian (and really most historical museums, textbooks etc.) is that they tell the truth about all of America’s sins and celebrate those who pushed back and the progress that resulted from that pushback. Museums like the Smithsonian, NMAAHC, Manzanar etc., show all the receipts on the Isms of America, but also center the voices of the victims. They make it impossible to deny how central Racism, Xenophobia etc. have been in the story of America. This is something that conservatives have always resented because they want to pretend otherwise. They want to deny that they benefited from these sins and mostly still approve of them (and we all damn well know it). So much easier to just scream States’ Rights!! Fake news! Woke! Etc.
Scout211
Trump doesn’t know and Trump doesn’t care. But Stephen Miller knows and we all know what he cares about.
Matt McIrvin
@Victor Matheson: They didn’t just ban “degenerate art”, they put on a lavish exhibition *showing* a lot of it with labels denouncing how degenerate it was, often listing the absurd prices these infantile and race-poisoned daubings had been sold for. (Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s every conservative jeremiad on modern art ever.) It was a huge hit. Every good Nazi wanted to go be shocked by the degenerate art.
The makers of this stuff often went on producing it in secret through the Nazi period with no possibility of a real audience.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: I have shared this anecdote before, but bears repeating….. around the time a few years back when we were taking down Confederate statues, I was debating the issue with a conservative colleague, and I noted that if there were any artistically or significantly notable ones that we took down, we could put them in museums. He responded, “Then you might as well throw them away, no one will ever see them”. And that’s when it clicked for me that really only liberals go to museums.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Also, this is the result of change. 50 years ago, our museums were very different, pushing a triumphalist interpretation of history and a primarily anthropological view of non-Western and indigenous cultures, with no centering of those voices. They want to roll that back.
Chief Oshkosh
Trick question. Trump doesn’t think.
Next?
p.a.
@Matt McIrvin: The exhibits drew considerable crowds, but a considerable number of viewers went to admire, or out of curiosity to see what they otherwise would not have a chance to see, not to reinforce a self-satisfied bigotry. They couldn’t control what people thought about the art.
artem1s
good article. wonder if Bezos read it.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
When the Museum of German Art, built on Hitler’s instructions opened, it’s reported about 3000 people a day visited. Directly across the street, where that exhibition of “degenerate art” was being displayed, the count was 20,000 people daily.
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: Yes, I remember. Cat escaping bag there.
WRT the Confederate monuments: their supporters might not be looking at them every day, but they were sure forcing them upon the rest of us.
lowtechcyclist
@prostratedragon: I’m using a burner today.
I don’t care what they might learn about me from my phone, but it would be a real PITA to not have it if they took it.
Matt McIrvin
(In an earlier thread, someone mentioned the National Museum of the American Indian as toothless, pretending genocide never happened. On my visits there, that definitely wasn’t the case–there was an exhibit on the top floor, as I recall, that talked exclusively about this and pulled no punches. But what it did do was emphasize that our indigenous nations are still here, not extinct. That seemed to be considered very important.)
Splitting Image
@Elizabelle:
Tutankhamun was part of the Amarna period of Egypt, which was notable for its abandonment of traditional religion, androgynous artwork, and prominence of strong women.
Trump would have fit better in the ensuing period, where the Egyptians razed everything Akhenaten and his family ever built to the ground and erased his memory so thoroughly that grave robbers even forgot where the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb was. (Which is why the tomb and its trove of goodies was still there to be found in the 20th century.)
Edit to add: Not that Trump would be aware of any of that, of course. As people have said, it’s not like he would ever go to a museum.
RevRick
@Elizabelle: My wife, who has only once joined me in a protest —-Hands Across America—, hand-painted two Hands Off posters! So, we’re going to the protest outside Rep. MacKenzie’s office.
TS
@Baud:
The golfing picture is what should be removed from public view – it is so hard to understand that Americans voted for this man to lead their country – I cannot understand it – never will.
prostratedragon
@lowtechcyclist: Know what you mean. I’m not going today — logistics — but if I did, that would be why I’d use a burner or backup.
NotMax
When do Dolt 47 and Hegseth get around to renaming Wake island?
“Too close to Woke.”
S Cerevisiae
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, they want to roll back the entire last half of the twentieth century, go back to when those people knew their place.
Elizabelle
@RevRick: Yay you and Mrs. Rick!! Good luck with it!
RevRick
@frosty: I’d say the local York protest is way more important, because it will get local news coverage. Make Scott Perry worried again.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle: That moment has kind of stuck with me, because I have a theory that white people aren’t really one singular demographic anymore. (That is not to say that racism and white supremacy are not still very real and potent.) But I am increasingly observing that white people have sorted themselves out quite a bit — geographically, culturally, educationally, financially. Moments like that remind me that there’s some big differences.
Geminid
@Suzanne: When Charlottesville finally took down its statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the Lee statue was eventually cut up and melted. The Jackson statue was sent to a museum in LA, but so far as I know it yet to be displayed.
I remember readingbefore the controversy that while the Lee statue was thought to be on the mediocre side, Jackson’s statue was considered a fine example of equestrian statuary. I could see it, too; Jackson and his horse seemed to be hurrying somewhere, like Little Sorrel knew there were some oats waiting for him at their destination.
Elizabelle
@Splitting Image: Did not know. Thank you.
Was going more for the engoldenfication. Shiny and bright, for The Felon.
Matt McIrvin
@S Cerevisiae: And in the specific case of art, they want to roll back the first half of the twentieth century too, and maybe part of the nineteenth–go back to the academic standards for art from before Impressionism.
Elizabelle
@RevRick: Agree. The important thing is to be seen, in numbers. All over the place.
frosty
@RevRick: Good point, thanks for the encouragement. I’ve had my coffee, I guess it’s time to get my butt out of the recliner and get ready. It’s a leisurely rally – starts at 11:00 and only goes until 2:00.
H.E.Wolf
There are some exceptions, one of which caused my jaw to drop (metaphorically).
In 2019, we visited the National Portrait Gallery. There was a special exhibit, “UnSeen”, along one of the corridors.
It included paintings by Titus Kaphar in which the painted canvas appeared to be pulled off the frame to reveal a painted image of a Black person beneath.
First photo at the link is a sample of Kaphar’s work: Thomas Jefferson on top, a Black woman under him. (My phrasing.)
https://www.culturetype.com/2018/03/28/titus-kaphar-and-ken-gonzales-day-explore-unseen-narratives-in-historic-portraiture-in-new-national-portrait-gallery-exhibition/
As we considered the Kaphar paintings, a white woman with a young (age 8-10) white daughter arrived next to us. With an audible sneer in her voice, the woman said to her child, “And this is supposed to be ‘art’.”
I said cheerfully to the daughter, “Isn’t it great that we can see so many different kinds of art here?” and moved onward.
But oh, how sad, not only to be unwilling to look at something new, but to be impelled to denigrate it.
S Cerevisiae
@Matt McIrvin: As an American Indian myself I agree with your take on the museum, we are resilient and still here. I also got a kick out of the t-shirt in the gift shop that featured the “merciless Indian savages “ line from the Declaration of Independence, I should have brought one.
TONYG
The likelihood that Donald Trump — and any of his supporters — have ever set foot in a museum, is close to zero.
Jackie
@UncleEbeneezer:
Does he know who built the White House?
Answer: No clue
narya
@p.a.: And, at the same time, he wants them to RESPECT HIS AUTHORITAH! and wants to be accepted into their social circles. Not gonna happen, which is what pisses him off. Javanka, too, has this burning desire, and it gives me no small amount of pleasure that no, it won’t happen. Yes, I can be petty as fuck. This is also what’s behind the Kennedy Center takeover, too. The whole maladministration is a collection of grievances in concert.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Going by Mar-a-Lago Trump’s idea of art are portraits of him done in a book cover art style. AI should be up to the challenge.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Some of those Confederate statues were made by craftsmen working at local foundries who didn’t really have much artistic training or skill. So many of them are just kind of….. bad. Some of them were made by far more skilled sculptors, and IMO are worth saving and recontexualizing under skilled curation.
Fun fact, for those who may never have thought of it: usually the sculptor credited with a work wasn’t involved in the actual casting of the finished piece. The casting is done at foundries run/operated by skilled tradespeople…. but those people usually aren’t sculptors. So lots of smaller cities and towns couldn’t afford a good sculpture and they just ordered something from the local place, the equivalent of ordering from Temu. And about the same quality.
Matt McIrvin
@S Cerevisiae: In my first post I was thinking about the contrast between that museum and the old dioramas in the Museum of Natural History (which carried the subtitle of “National Museum of Man”) when I was a kid, which portrayed indigenous Americans in much the same way they exhibited extinct human ancestors.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: I was kind of sorry when Richmond took down Matthew Fontaine Maury’s statue; Maury really was one of the leading oceanographers of his time and that’s mainly what the statue commemorated. But Maury fell in with a bad crowd towards the end of his life so his statue had to go.
RevRick
Trump translation: corrosive ideology = anything that makes MAGA uncomfortable in their beliefs. Also, anything that refuses to gloss over the truth, especially when it’s painful.
Jeffg166
Paul Krugman and Zachary D. Carter in Conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F-MQHUSS2U&t=997s
S Cerevisiae
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, things have certainly improved in museums in recent decades. I went to the Heard Museum in Phoenix 20 years ago and they had an exhibit on the boarding schools that was incredibly powerful. You entered through a darkened corridor hearing children talking in indigenous languages and pictures of them and then suddenly you come upon barber chair under a bright light with dark hair and braids all around it. So powerful.
RevRick
@Suzanne: Here’s me contextualizing a Confederate statue:
“This statue portrays God-damned traitor X, who caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, all in service of the God-damned institution of slavery, one of the most barbaric creations of human history.”
That would be the only reason I would not melt the God-damned thing down.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
Excellent read.
Sitting on the back porch, drinking coffee, listening to the birds. There’s a red-shouldered hawk out there somewhere …
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Fake news and Al Gore is fat.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: True. And I regret not making rubbings of the base of his statue. Stylized fish and sea creatures and animals, I think. They destroyed it too.
Ramalama
If you want a video to pep you up today – before going to protest or help protestors protest – check out this town hall held by Beto O’Rourke and Gov Tim Walz. I normally don’t bother with these kinds of videos but I needed something less newsy on in the background while I did some work and this got me so revved up.
They’re in Houston, talking to a diverse crowd of people, including a ton of veterans, and asked them what they wanted Democrats to do.
It was the best thing I’ve heard/seen in a long time, politically. Like, I’ve been avoiding any analysis of the Harris campaign, because I’m still too much in a rage/heartbroken to listen. But this was entirely different.
Fckin Brilliant.
Nukular Biskits
@UncleEbeneezer:
Well, actually, mentions of human beings who are NOT white.
RevRick
@S Cerevisiae: A year ago, August, I was part of a delegation of UCC clergy and laypeople who toured what’s left of the Carlisle Indian School, which is on the grounds of Carlisle Barracks. It was a haunting experience looking at the children’s graves and then at some of the buildings.
Ramalama
@Splitting Image: Even now my obsession with King Tut reignites as I read this.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: I like how Arthur Ashe ended up the last man standing on Richmond’s Memorial Avenue. I always liked the Ashe statue.
Have you seen the Rumors of War statue, of a young Black man on a horse? I need to check that one out next time I get to Richmond.
prostratedragon
@Nukular Biskits:
Well, actually, mentions of human beings who are NOT
whiteTrump.Matt McIrvin
@Ramalama: A thing I’ve avoided doing, in that connection, is generalized grousing about “Democrats” or “the Democrats” as toothless or spineless. Complain about Senate Democrats approving Rubio (which the administration was careful to get in early) or Chuck Schumer supporting the continuing resolution all you want, but if people are not specific in such complaints, that closes off avenues for improvement. I suspect a lot of that is being stirred up by right-wing or Russian trolls.
Nukular Biskits
@prostratedragon:
I stand corrected.
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: I’m about to head out, decided to go on foot to the one in my town instead of heading into Boston. It’s early though (maybe because some people are planning on going to the Boston one after).
Geminid
From the Boston Globe:
Nukular Biskits
It’s been a long week and I had forgotten about protests/marches.
Turns out there’s one in Gulfport today:
https://www.mobilize.us/handsoff/event/771865/
Dorothy A. Winsor
Trump never voluntarily goes to a museum. He’s not interested. And he thinks people who do like museums look down on him. The whole thing makes him think he’s not smart.
Dorothy A. Winsor
A small group of my neighbors are going to the Hands Off protest in Arlington Heights today, though I elected not to go. I’m sorry I decided that way now.
Searcher
America has always been this weird collaboration between some people who are earnest and hopeful and caring, and some people who are just the worst most awful and selfish people in the world. Our founders were philosophers and idealists and sometimes ahead of their times and slaveowners afraid their slaves would be taken away.
It’s depressing and shameful, looking at all the terrible things which didn’t have to happen, all the bargains and treaties and laws which just had to be honored.
But it also brings me a little bit of hope. If we had such monsters in the past, and we still came so far, maybe, if we try, the monsters we still have today won’t stop us from going so much further.
narya
There was a great BlueSky thread yesterday by mtsw (here) that talks about WHY the billionaires want to crash the economy. Basically, many consumer goods are accessible to many/most people, so they can’t get much status by having a Thing. But if the economy is shitty, they can harass employees and pay them shit wages because said employees don’t have other options.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Totally OT but thought you might get a kick out of this fun watch. Quote below from a portion of it:
Now that’s a book review.
“It was written in serious and honest good faith and deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot….”
– Mark Twain
;)
Eolirin
I’m very concerned they’re going to start destroying the art.
Nukular Biskits
@Eolirin:
Yeah, but think of all the liberals that would be owned.
You can’t put a price on that!
/sarcasm
cmorenc
@Suzanne: The relative lack of skilled artistic sculptors in the post-civil war south explains why the monuments to confederate soldiers on the grounds of southern courthouses are mostly obelisks rather than sculptures.
YY_Sima Qian
Not sure if this has been posted, but I am not sure whether to laugh or cry at the idiocracy (click through the link for the more detailed explanation):
Surely Trump & MAGA will not correct the mistake & adjust the tariffs.
Interesting that the smack down comes from the conservative/neocon AEI, but I have found AEI to be somewhat more tethered to reality than the Heritage Foundation, if equally primacist & militarist.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Gonna walk down the disaster area that is now East Colfax to the Capitol to meet mistermix and his wife. Last time, Steve the Ultimate Lurker joined us.
I will be taking my cell phone cuz the gubmint knows me all too well, I can’t hide now.
Geminid
@Eolirin: They might just sell the art to insiders for pennies on the dollar and claim a profit.
Baud
@TS:
Same here. But people who see things the way we do are a small minority. I wouldn’t even necessarily put all Harris voters in the same boat.
Ohio Mom
Slow steady rain here today — the sun will not come out again until Monday afternoon. Still, Ohio Dad and I are going to the rally, may not stay the entire, depends on how cold and wet I get. Ohio Dad is hardier than I am.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: Holy cow. That guy went to great length to fake his English translations.
YY_Sima Qian
OT, but since this is an open thread: lost among the world-historical events of the past 72 hrs, atrocities are still a regular occurrence in Gaza (gift link to the NYT article below):
The IDF is really vying w/ the Russian military to be the most vile in the world (video & account are not for the faint of heart).
Booger
@Geminid: Yes, that statue is gobsmacking and double-triple take inducing.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: That story is getting a lot of attention both outside and inside of Israel.
Elizabelle
In the Metro garage in Springfield, with my signs out, waiting for my friend. People who are passing are waving and thumbs up when they see the signs.
and it is misty and cool here in Northern Virginia. Went back to my hotel room for a sweater. Nice problem to have.
Eolirin
@YY_Sima Qian: We are in some ways fortunate that they’re going to blow up the economy in a way that’s going to hard to blame on anyone else, or else that Republicans will be forced to stop them.
If they were more competent autocrats, able to tune things down just enough to stay on side with public opinion, we’d really have no chance to stop them.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: My friend Joan is coming up from Charlottesville. She sent me a pic of herself and a bunch of other people on a bus.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: you must!! Artist Kehinde Wiley modeled it on the now removed JEB Stuart monument.
Big Frida Kahlo exhibit opening today. Be in touch when you come to RVA. Can give you a driving tour, and we can have a tasty beverage
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: Even though the way in which it was handled was bad, it is increasingly looking like the CR was the right call.
All of the attention is on the effects of tariffs that are very clearly Trump’s fault and that the Republicans now have to take more active steps in rebuking Trump to undo if they don’t want the damage to occur.
And there’s no government shutdown to muddy the waters.
Another Scott
Good art makes you think for yourself. The Smithsonians, and all good museums, challenge visitors to think.
It looks like it will be a good day in DC. High 77-80F or so, cloudy, nice breeze.
I had toyed with going, but got up too late. I haven’t tried to pay for Metro trips with my phone before, so I set that up last night but still have some trepidation about it. I don’t want to have issues if the place is packed…
C-Span.org – National Mall Rally to Oppose Trump Administration Policies starts at noon. I’ll try to watch a bit.
Have a good day everyone!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: Thanks. I might do that my second trip. I’m pretty much a loner and have been limited in driving– a long story– and I’ll be making my first trip a solo one.
My friend Debbie is coming out today to check on her bees. Joan was coming until she decided on rallying instead. Debbie will pick up some sliced pork jowl meat for Joan and herself. They like to use it for spaghetti carboronara.
Nukular Biskits
Thinking about attending the Hands Off protest/march in Gulfport.
Any other Jackals down here?
Marcopolo
About to head out to my local protest. Looks like a lot of rain. Sign is made & cling wrapped. Muck boots have been dug out of the back of the closet. Yeehaw.
To my fellow protesters today have fun, stay safe, make a little good trouble!
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: Absolutely horrifying account from the sole survivor of the massacre:
The Israeli war of vengeance in Gaza has killed reporters & aid workers at unprecedented rates, a world-historical development, too.
Chigail
I’m remembering years ago when he was just a pompous buffoon that he owned a painting that he touted as authentic which most people would have recognize as a COPY of a famous Renoir owned by and exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Geminid
Rep. Chis Pappas (D-NH) announced a couple days ago that he will run next year for the Senate seat held by Jean Shaheen, who is retiring. Pappas represents NH01 in southeastern New Hampshire.
I expect Pappas will be the likely favorite in the primary. The 44-year old is a another member of the talented House Class of 2018.
catclub
@cmorenc:
There is an amazing 1865 sculpture in the Worcester MA art museum. Not a southern artist.
catclub
Not no more. I moved north 1500 miles.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Sure to generate fresh outrage in the “Arab Street” (& in any Muslim country). I hope it gets more & sustained scrutiny in Israel, too. The fact that the IDF failed to secure & disappear the video should result in greater impact than mere words on pages & screens can.
Overall, I think it has been clear for a long time that the IDF is no longer a disciplined force, unrestrained by meaningful ROE, LOAC or IHL.
Nukular Biskits
@catclub:
Wise decision. LOL
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: The IDF’s indiscipline has been apparant since they first entered Gaza in late October of 2023, and it seems to be getting worse.
I remember some reporting last year after an IDF drone unit killed the four World Kitchen workers. An IDF intelligence officer who disapproved of the strikes was quoted: “People do what they want in the[Gaza] Strip.
Ed. This latest incident is getting attention in Israel both for the savagery of the attack itself and the fact that the IDF was caught flat-out lying about it.
OldDave
@Baud: I grew up 20 miles or so away from Lake City. Moved to Florida. I hate hurricanes. Hate tornados even more – so little warning.
Old Man Shadow
What we love about America, MAGA and their enablers hate. What we hate about America, MAGA and their enablers love.
There’s a moral divide. They want a xenophobic, racist, white supremacist state even if they won’t use those words.
Me? I love the accident of my birth living in Southern California for most of my life where I can drive 10 to 20 minutes in any direction and kind of visit the world, taste the food, see the art, listen to the music and realize that all of it is a big and beautiful part of America’s story. It’s not just my story. It’s all of ours.
There’s something wonderful about that. E pluribus enum. A microcosm of the world living in peace with each other, sharing more in common than we have in differences.
Soprano2
It’s rained about 5″ here since Wednesday, and it’s raining again. We’ll probably have gotten 7-8″ by the time it’s done sometime this afternoon. Then tomorrow – snow! It won’t stick, but still geez. This is why I don’t plant flowers until the beginning of May. My sump pump is coming on about every 5 minutes, thank God, but having some of the cracks in the basement sealed made a difference.
UncleEbeneezer
The Times has a great interactive story/map titled The Ghosts of Altadena. We knew this block very well as it was one of our regular dog-walks back when Juniper was still with us. Check it out. Scroll. Read the stories and see the devastation.
Another Scott
@Chigail: Yup. It showed who he was, for anyone who cared to actually look.
Vanity Fair (archive.is version, from 2017):
I can’t find a date for the O’Brien conversation, but his book “Trump Nation” came out in 2005.
So 47’s been that way at least 20 years…
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I will pose my perennial question: how is the grade at your foundation? I’ve seen a lot of problems caused by backfill around basements settling over time, so that water no longer drains away from the foundation. This happens a lot, especially at inside corners.
Scamp Dog
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Good luck and happy protesting!
prostratedragon
@NotMax:
Oh, thank you, thank you !
ryk
@OldDave: Me too! Paragould
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Eolirin: They talk on TV as if they’re pleased with how well they’re blowing things up.
Kristine
FWIW…
Had an email from ssa.gov in my inbox this morning. It contained the info that I had been approved, the amount of my payment, and when I would receive it. So that part worked at least.
I screenshot everything, including my income records and how much I had paid in over the decades.
ThresherK
Is “Washington as Cincinnatus” still in The Smithsonian?
Would Trump understand it before explanation? After explanation? Or would it just make him want a sculpture of himself on a throne in marble?
Another Scott
@Geminid:
Or since the Liberty “incident”.
There’s a long list going back to the beginning, and maybe even before then.
:-(
War is a nasty, ugly, deadly business. There are no angels when wars are fought. But Israel seems to have more than its share of “accidents” and “mistakes” that just happen to result in advancing their interests in clearing out the land that they want…
Grr…
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So many of them have major demeanor problems.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@prostratedragon: The Press Secretary among them. You’d think the ability to avoid smug snideness would be a requirement for that job
Shana
@narya: speaking of grievances I have this theory that he’s going after the Ivies that didn’t accept him back in the day. I saw last night that he’s now going after Brown. Let’s see if Penn is on the eventual list or somehow exempted.
Scout211
I think smug snideness may actually be a requirement for the job in the Trump 2.0 term.
ArchTeryx
@Baud: That was a nasty one, too. We’re in the midst of ANOTHER Super Outbreak, the first since 2011. The one before that was in 1974. A whole lot of people died in the last two. I hope this one is less tragic.
No One of Consequence
At risk of being a late punner, nah, fuck it.
Cheeto Benito has heard that there is the Spirit of St. Louis in the Smithsonian, and he’s afraid of ghosts. He won’t set foot in there until he sees the steaming trap from the Egon himself.
I’m here all week. Try the veal.
-NOoC
Scout211
USA Today is live streaming the protests today:
USA Today live stream
ETA: I was looking for other live streams to post and Fox News has one entitled, “Liberals rally against Trump’s policies.”
Damn those libs! LOL
Phylllis
@narya: That ties into my conspiracy theory about the real reason for shutting down TikTok–that a not insignificant number of folks figured out how to monetize their talents and unchain themselves from whatever soul-deadening desk or cash register holding them captive. Gotta keep the proles under our thumbs, you know.
prostratedragon
Rachel Maddow is aggregating rally posts from around the country. Here’s one from a small town in Alabama.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Looks like a good crowd in DC at the Washington Monument. Rev Barber is just starting.
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Whoo! That one sends me flying.
H.E.Wolf
@S Cerevisiae: That’s brilliant and heartbreaking. Thank you for mentioning it. I plan to search the Heard Museum website, in case there’s anything about it in their archives.
ETA: https://heard.org/exhibition/away-from-home-american-indian-boarding-school-stories/
[with an extensive drop-down menu]
Scout211
Another live stream:
PBS live stream.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Barber – (roughly) “… we must repent of the Apathy of that has too often slipped in …”
+1
Best wishes,
Scott.
eclare
Wow. The photo of the day is stunning.
Steve LaBonne
Thanks for this excellent column. I just shared it on my FB page via an archive link. Now waiting for my daughter to get here so the three of us can head up to Medina Square for our local Hands Off demonstration.
prostratedragon
Elsewhere today:
ArchTeryx
@Splitting Image: And that’s some decent information, including stuff about Tutankhamun I never knew before. That’s why I go to museums in the first place… to learn. Even the company town my mother lives in in North Central Michigan has a first class museum/art gallery in it. It ain’t just liberal visiting it either.
Another Scott
Rep. Raskin just finished his barn-burner remarks in DC.
Rep. Maxwell Frost is starting now.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
Our local protest (Haverhill, MA) just wound up. I’d estimate it was on the order of 1000 people, lined up all along Main Street from the river up to City Hall on both sides of the street (minus the block obstructed by a construction site on the left side). So, a big one, for this town.
It struck me that the theme of the “Hands Off” rally is basically conservative, in the small-c, “Chesterton’s Fence” sense. People are mostly protesting radical attacks on things they already have, institutions that have existed for the most part before we were born. Hands off science, hands off Social Security and Medicare, hands off vaccines and the rule of law. I’d say the majority of the crowd was over 50, which you can take as a good or a bad sign as you please (but it’s an aging town too). If they start violently cracking down on these local protests, the optics are gonna be terrible because they’ll be beating up 70-year-old guys in veteran caps holding American flags.
Lots and lots of people driving past started honking in support, a few rolling down their windows and hollering for us, some with supportive signs *in the car*, which surprised me. One trucker blowing his air horn.
I only saw a couple of drivers trying to clap back or start shit–some guys in one car yelling “TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP”. One guy at a red light who rolled down his window and tried to start an argument, which led a couple of the protesters to start waving signs at his window–could have gotten dicey. Eventually the light turned green and one dude shouted “Move along, buddy, you’re blockin’ traffic,” which was probably the best call.
Ruckus
@frosty:
Naw, not a flaw, it just pointed out two things that are impossible.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Well it’s certainly a qualification. Incompetence, malevolence and mendacity are requirements.
It’s hard to find good help these days.
Matt McIrvin
@No One of Consequence: Pfft, the ghost of Lindbergh would be Trump’s best friend. They could hang out with the ghost of Henry Ford.
Geminid
@Another Scott: The indiscipline in this war that I was talking about is different in kind, I think, than what lt has gone before. The IDF has always been ruthless but they now they show a kind of kind of petty vindictiveness I do not see in accounts of the 1967 and 1973 wars.
And they are sloppy. In January of last year the IDF leaked a preliminary study of its ownncasualties that estimated that 20% of its KIAs were from friendly fire. That is really high. This was around the time the IDF started demobilizing the Reserve units that had been thrown into Gaza, and I suspect most of those friendly fire incidents were among the reserves.
During the Iraq “surge” 2006-7, the US Army would run National Guardsmen through a several week course in urban warfare before a deployment. IDF units typically do not train for urban warfare; a few regular units do.
The IDF’s reserves train regularly like our Guard and Reserve units, but unlike ours they did not undergo a round of intensive training before deploying into the battle zone. I expect that casualties from enemy action wete abnormally high, just as friendly fire casualties were.
Now, Reserve units are fighting in Gaza again. They have to, because while the regular units are still in the fight they are worn down by fighting in the Strip and Lebanon.
A lot of responsibility lies with the political echelon– the Netanyahu government– that has pursued a bankrupt strategy, if it can be called a strategy. They have never planned for “the day after,” because any realistic strategy requires an Arab peacekeeping force backing up Fatah security forces, Fatah being the armed wing of the Palestinian Authority. The Saudis proposed a plan along these lines early last year; Egypt and Jordan back it, and the Biden administration did too.
Qatar does not, and here we get into the period leading up to this war. Netanyahu was facilitating the transfer of $30 million in cash from Qatar to Hamas every month. It had to be cash because the ZUS would not make a sanctions exception. So every month the Israelis escorted a Qatari agent with a suitcase full of cash to a crossing into Gaza.
The security agency Shin Bet told Netanyahu the money was being spent on weapons, and Hamas still intended to do Israel damage but Netanyahu blew it off. He thought he had bought Hamas off until.the whole project blew up.in his face with the worst massacre of Jews since the Second World War. And it wasn’t just Jewish Israelies, over 25 Israeli Arabs and 50 foreign a farm worker were slaughtered as well.
This is one reason Netanyahu is prolonging this war. He’s putying off a stare inquiry into the events leading up to October 7.
As for the Liberty incident, among other sources I’ve read Congressman Paul Findley’s chapter on it in his book published ~1990; an account very critical of Israel. I also read the 10-12 pages David Oren devoted to it in his history of the Six Day War. That is a very comprehensive and thoroughly researched book published about 10 yeaes ago. Oren puts the best face he can on Israel actions but he gives a straight account. From these and other accounts, I’ll just say: that was not a matter of indiscipline.
That’s it for me on this question for now, because my friend Debbie is done with her bees and is waiting for me to load up for Stanardsville.
Gvg
@Suzanne: real old fashioned style conservatives did go to museums. These people are i believe called reactionaries. Its a religious fanaticism thing with them. This is the inquisistion and red scare and witch burning nutters, not stuffy respectable bankers.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
I see a problem with this. shitforbrains doesn’t think.
He’s so smart he doesn’t need to think. He knows everything.
Just ask him.
And no, this isn’t a joke – it’s not funny in any way, shape or form.
They Call Me Noni
@Old Man Shadow: I was born an Army brat so we moved every other year in the middle of the school year. I never got to make and keep childhood friends through adulthood but I did see a lot of places and grew up surrounded by all kinds of people who didn’t look like me. Taught me early on that the world is very diverse and for that I am thankful.
Matt McIrvin
MAGAs love to talk about how everyone who opposes them hates America. If I really hated America I’d be voting for those guys. Or I’d GTFO or just keep my head down and let it roll.
I know I’m not safe from these motherfuckers but I’m safER than someone who’s an immigrant, or brown, or trans, or a woman, or poor. And I figure that gives me a responsibility to stick my neck out a little, take some risks. I’m an inherently anxious and timid person; it takes a lot to get me out on the street. They’re a lot.
OldDave
@ryk: We must discuss this, seeing as how I am also from that oddly named town.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: That sounds more like these spalpeens. “Destroy it? When we can make serious bank under the table from it? HEH!”
Ruckus
@Scout211:
You left out “trump thinks?”
He just knows. Now he’s wrong 99.9% of the time of course but still he “knows!”
scav
@Splitting Image: Even better, recent research indicates that King Tut’s mask was originally probably for not only for a female, but a female ruler and then modified in a rush job. All because of pierced ears and a different type of gold.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Can’t say it any better.
Matt McIrvin
@ThresherK: He probably would want something like this one, Washington sculpted after Zeus at Olympia–his fans already love this kind of imagery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_(Greenough)
There’s a lot of really questionable deified-Washington art from the 19th century. That ceiling painting in the Capitol rotunda showing him ascending to some mythological heaven. (And, yes, people were calling it out as silly at the time.)
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Check out the Unpacking Israeli History podcast episode on the Liberty. I think Noam Weissman does a pretty good job of explaining the complexity and craziness of all that happened and why it can be seen as a terrible confluence of unfortunate mistakes in the fog of war, more so than the purposeful atrocity framing that story has become.
Lily
protest near here was early, leaving me time to watch coverage in Boston (and Boston is lit) — live coverage started w long aerial shots over the commons, govt square etc. as crowd streamed in. rn Ayanna Pressley is speaking, after a bunch of impressive others. https://www.nbcboston.com/ In other years I’ve felt the safest anywhere when marching in Boston thanks to the organizers.
Professor Bigfoot
I’ve been a science fiction reader literally since I learned to read; and down in my heart I always hoped the Terran Federation would find its roots in the American Constitution, specifically it’s Bill of Rights.
Alas, ‘tis not to be. :(
Juju
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: But his tiny hands would have extra fingers. Bahahahaha.
Citizen Alan
@Elizabelle: I could see Trump taking a tour of the Smithsonian to decide which paintings he liked enough to have removed and shipped down to Mar-A-Largo to be hung in a bathroom or something.
Lily
@Lily: “In other years I’ve felt the safest anywhere when marching in Boston thanks to the organizers.” by which I mean feel safest from police, who were obv there but at those times under control. Large numbers and good organizers help reduce risk for ppl who know they’re vulnerable. (See also, talks by Dr. Erica Chenoweth about their work and personal safety.)
WTFGhost
See, Republicans think you cannot love America unless you can proclaim it’s perfect, in every way, and are willing to accept every decision of a Republican administration with great love and reverence for the awesome brilliance and power of the current President.
Otherwise, you might tell the current President “no” when he breaks the law, violates the careful wording, and full spirit, of his duty to see the law faithfully executed, and not permit massive firings, such as Republicans had dreamed of, to hurt people, for many, many years.
So, why does the President only want pro-Republican propaganda at the Smithsonian? Duh, he thinks it helps his side win, plus, he’s a hateful, Republican, twit, which is multiply redundant.
Ruckus
@UncleEbeneezer:
Yep.
I do like your style!
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Conservatives know what they want and that is a world with only them in it. They never want to see, hear or experience anyone but themselves getting anything. Air, money, power, etc. They want the world to look not like the world but like the nightmare that lives in their heads. If they had their way the life they want would have to be supplied by slaves, which of course they wouldn’t mind, because they are incapable of providing most all of the things the living requires. They want to sit on their thrones (the only ones they have now are in those small rooms we all have in our residences) IOW they wouldn’t mind the return of slavery and absolute pompous arrogance. But it amazes me how many of them would end up on the opposite side of their desired life, being the slaves they want everyone else to be, because in their world there is only one use for everyone but the uber wealthy, and most of them wouldn’t qualify. Or even come close.
The world of humans exists in one of two ways. Uber wealthy and everyone else or in a world like we have where equality is the rule, like where we live, and even if that rule is not perfectly followed. But then it is humanity after all and perfection is not even a pipe dream.
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost:
Except that they are perfectly free to claim that millions of Americans are insidious foreign elements poisoning its blood, which need to be extirpated to make it Great Again.
Ruckus
@narya:
The whole maladministration is a collection of grievances in concert.
This.
As a country we have a history that is not always the best attempt at humanity. But then we are humans…. And a large portion of this segment of humanity recognize that we are living, breathing, possibly thoughtful beings who might recognize our history and realize that not all of it is rational or humane. The concept of survival is something that all animals have and some humans see that survival as using others as walls and paths to that survival. I’m not sure that other animals don’t do that as well. The difference is that as a society most humans have build walls that separate them from those that they think will attempt to take/steal life from them. Both metaphorical and actual walls. And as a diverse and often crowed group of animals many think that the worst danger is others who very likely would do exactly like they would, if given any chance whatsoever.
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction: the book about the 1967 war was written by Michael Oren* and was published in 2002. The title is, Six Days of War: the Making of the Modern Middle East. Oren devotes maybe 35% of the book to the actual fighting; the rest covers events leading up to the war, and the roles of the Soviet Union, the U.S. and the U.N. during that period and the war itself.
There is a lot of material about decision making in Tel Aviv, Cairo and Damascus. One thing I learned: Egyptian President Nasser had no intention of starting a war but his Army chief of staff forced events. He and Nasser– and Anwar Sadat– were friends and partners in the military coup that brought Nasser to power in 1955.
Nasser had developed diabetes in the early 1960s.The general took advantage of Nasser’s debilitation to build a power base of his own, and he then drove the events that led to the war. The Soviets encouraged him until they realized war was imminent. Then they tried to rein him in, as the U.S. tried to restrain Israel; but it was too late.
Nasser’s chief of staff lost his nerve once the war began, which contributed to his army’s rout. He killed himself 10 weeks after the war ended, probably to avoid trial for treason.
Nasser lived another three years. His last act was to broker an end to the fighting of Black September, when Palestinian forces revolted against King Hussein of Jordan. The fighting threatened to engulf the other Arab nations. After successfully ending the war through round-the-clock mediation, Nasser returned to Cairo and collapsed in his bed, “never to rise again.”
Oren’s brief account of the October War of 1973 sheds some light on Anwar Sadat’s motivation: Sadat did not intend to destroy Israel; he believed that Egypt and its armed forces had to recover the honor lost by their ignominious defeat in 1967. Only then could he negotiate the peace brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978.
* Michael Oren was born upstate New York in the late 1950s, as Michael Bornstein. His father was a veteran of WWII and Korea. Bornstein emigrated to Israel in 1979 and changed his name to Oren, which means “pine tree” in Hebrew. After fighting in the 1982 Lebanon War, Michael Oren returned to the U.S and earned a History PhD from Princeton. Besides teaching and writing, Oren served as Ambassador to the U.S. 2009-2013 and as a Knesset member 2015-2018.
Martin
@WTFGhost: Yeah, this isn’t so hard. Trump doesn’t believe in nice things. Everything is a struggle for power, and the Smithsonian isn’t doing its part. Trees should be cut down if they don’t have MAGA carved into them. Birds should be killed if they don’t chirp his name. Trump is the state and the state must encompass everything.
WTFGhost
@Matt McIrvin: True that.
different-church-lady
They hate learning. Learned people can’t be manipulated as easily.
They hate self realization. It would lead to doubt, and they are so terrified of being wrong that they will try to destroy anything that might tell them so.
They are monsters.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: “Those aren’t Americans.”
Geminid
@Geminid: The book by former Rep. Paul Findley I referred to is titled, They Dare to Speak Out: People and Instiutions Confront Israel’s Lobby (1985). Findley (1921-2019) was first elected to represent the downstate Illinois 20th CD in 1960.
Paul Findley was a moderate Republican and an early and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. He co-authored the War Powers Act enacted in 1973. Finlay was also very strong on Civil Rights. In 1965, after consulting Minority Leader Gerald Ford, Findley appointed a young constituent, Frank Mitchell as the first Black Congressional Page since Reconstruction.
Findley also advocated for the rights of the Palestinians. He believed that this– along with redistricting– led to his defeat in 1982 by Richard Durbin, now Senator.
Afterwards, Findley wrote his book which included an account of the attack on the Liberty which was very critical of IIsrael’s role. Findley served as a Navy Lieutenant during the Second World War.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: We need some of that energy, though, to attack not people but ideas. We’re too honest to admit that racism, religious bigotry and various kinds of authoritarianism aren’t as American as apple pie, in a descriptive sense, but we can call them un-American in a normative sense.
It worked in World War II propaganda (and after the war, we were challenged to confront the contradictions of that position in a US that was still officially segregated and had persecuted Japanese-Americans for who they were–but it was because people had bought into the ideals).
Ruckus
Monica Hesse said it best.
as I stood in this completely free institution that exists for no other reason than to help America learn something about itself, that was the most shocking realization of all: The Smithsonian is not filled with hatred toward our busted, struggling, awesome country; it is filled with the deepest love, and that is what I learned at the museum.
We are human. We don’t have to love or even like every other single US citizen human.
But we do have to recognize that freedom is bonded to responsibility and recognition of the others in this nation. Citizens and non citizens. It is a pretty, damn good country. There are other pretty, damn good countries in this world. And a few that are less so. I signed up for a 4 year stint in the USN and served 42 1/2 months and as Vietnam was over was honorably discharged. I had some experiences that I rate as not so much fun and and some that I rate as very much fun, amazing even, saw a lot of the Atlantic ocean, from standing on Antarctica ice to the northern tip of Norway – the eastern side, from Cuba to the Saint Lawrence River – the western side. Not many stand on that ice and few see that northern tip. I doubt many have been to Guantanamo Bay – 3 times, or to Cape Town, South Africa. I can’t say I liked every minute of the USN for those 42 1/2 months – because I did not, but there were some spectacular places and people I met. So all in all, 50+ years later, I have to say I’m not sorry I took your money for my crappy pay and ate food (such as it often barely was) at your expense.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: When Israel committed atrocities in the past, there was cold-blooded calculation toward deterring its aggressive neighbors. Now it is often out of bloody mindedness, because there is no repercussions domestically or internationally. I think the change happened w/ the ‘82 invasion of Lebanon, which coincidentally is also roughly when Israel started to see itself as a regional hegemon.
kalakal
@NotMax: You would love
The book of heroic failures
by Stephen Pile in which poor old
Carolino has a featured spot.
It’s hilarious
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I think the lack of interernational repercussions surprised Hamas. That was a flaw in their strategy when they began this war. Israel’s savage response burned up a lot of good will among Westen citizens, but their governments never broke with Israel like Hamas hoped.
It’s been pretty much the same with the Arab states. With the exception of Qatar’s, Arab governments regard Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad as malign actors who need to be marginalized, and they don’t care that much how this is done. They’re pretty ruthless themselves.
Arab governments (and Turkiye) seem much more concerned by Israel’s destabilizing actions in Syria, probably because Syria affects their vital interests in a way Palestine does not. So does Lebanon to a lesser extent.
I expect they are pressing the U.S. hard to rein in Israel’s attacks on Syria , and they– especially Saudi Arabia– swing a lot of weight with this administration.
Turkiye seems to also; Trump made a long-time friend, Tom Barrack, Ambassador to Turkiye. Erdogan and his right hand man Hakan Fidan seem.to have figured out how to play Trump. I guess we’ll see over the next few weeks if this so. The U.S. already gave Turkiye what it wanted in Northeast Syria by telling the SDF commander to compromise with the Damascus government.
Israeli PM Netanyahu will visit DC on Monday to confer with Trump– or more accurately, to kiss Trump’s ass. That will be interesting because Trump.knows that Netanyahu is in trouble at home. I don’t think Trump much likes Netanyahu.
Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will be in Qatar Monday. Witkoff will try to close another Gaza ceasefire agreement, and he just might.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: Because most Weatern governments did not break w/ Israel despite the well documented war crimes & crimes against humanity, the price is they now have zero credibility advocating for liberal values around the world, or advocating sanctioning authoritarian regimes for violating such values.
Ruckus
@H.E.Wolf:
Some want to go back to a time we never really had but they fully believe we did. Now that may not be true for every square mile of this country, but it is true for quite a bit of it.
Ruckus
@Jackie:
That’s not fair.
Because that’s a legitimate answer to what he knows/understands about any question. He may give an answer but actually knowing the answer? Naw, I mean he might know how old he is, but I’d bet it’s a bad bet to say that’s true.
Ruckus
@TS:
I’d bet that the people that voted for shitforbrains didn’t really give a rats ass about the president other than he is one of them. A far right idiot who thinks the world revolves around the stick up his butt. And you know he has one of those because he is FULL of SHIT. It can’t get out. At least not till it reaches his tiny, ignorant brain. The it comes out of the upper outlet port. And you know that because only shit comes out of there…..
Pi
@Ramalama:Picasso was not a very nice guy and his art is, IMHO over rated. But he was definitely a character.
As to his art being “degenerate”? I’ve seen degenerate art and Pablo falls short on that metric.