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The Bully Pulpit

~ (n): An office or position that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue.

The Bully Pulpit

Tag Archives: Barack Obama

We Don’t Carry the Burden of Disliking One Another

14 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by jrbenjamin in Politics, Speeches

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Al Smith Dinner, Barack Obama, Government, Mitt Romney, politics, speech

Mitt Romney

“We have very fundamental and sound principles that guide both the president and me. He and I, of course, both feel the pressures and tensions of a close contest. It would be easy to let a healthy competition give way to the personal and the petty. But fortunately we don’t carry the burden of disliking one another.

Barack has had some very fine and gracious moments. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but our 44th president has many gifts, and a beautiful family that would make any man proud.

In our country, you can oppose someone in politics and make a confident case against their policies without any ill will. And that’s how it is for me: there’s more to life than politics. […]

At the Archdiocese of New York, you show this in the work you do, in causes that run deeper than allegiance to party or any contest at the moment. No matter which way the winds are blowing… you answer with calm and willing hearts in service to the poor and care for the sick, in defense of the rights of conscience and in solidarity with the innocent child waiting to be born. You strive to bring God’s love into every life.

I don’t presume to have all your support… and I’m certainly not going ask for it. But you can be certain that in the great causes of compassion that you come together to embrace, I stand proudly with you as an ally and friend.”

__________

From Mitt Romney’s speech at the famous Al Smith dinner, given around this time four years ago.

So much to like here. Though I didn’t vote for Mitt in the election — and wrote here and there why I decided not to — I admire the guy and, four years later, think he would have made a very fine president. I especially like how much of a gentleman he is — that he consistently brings value to the communities and organizations he’s led while never succumbing to pressure to take the sleazy way out. When a challenge arises, answer with a calm and willing heart.

You can watch the (very funny) 2012 Al Smith dinner below.

Images courtesy of Vice and Wiki

More:

  • Jefferson’s ten rules
  • JFK’s speech on leading through “the new frontier”
  • Booker T. Washington talks about how great men sacrifice for others

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama

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“Does It Matter?” by Siegfried Sassoon

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry, War

≈ Comments Off on “Does It Matter?” by Siegfried Sassoon

Tags

Afghanistan war, Barack Obama, combat, conflict, Department of Veterans Affairs, Does It Matter?, Iraq War, Memorial Day, Poem, poetry, scandal, Siegfried Sassoon, veterans, Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, War, War Poetry

Siegfried Sassoon

Does it matter? — losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter? — losing your sight?
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? — those dreams from the pit?
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they’ll know you’ve fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

__________

“Does It Matter?” by Siegfried Sassoon.

As we near Memorial Day, the subject is war. And on this Memorial Day, in the United States, the subject is how we treat veterans who have made it home.

In November of last year, I wrote a post in which I argued,

As of last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs has stopped releasing the number of non-fatal casualties of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The International Business Times suspects this is an attempt to conceal a “grim milestone”: the one millionth American serviceman or woman who has returned home maimed or wounded…

Yet what we should see in the homecoming of these impossibly brave people is obscured by the context in which we see them return. So often, an apparently emblematic veteran is shown coming home at the halftime of an NFL game, his teary-eyed family rushing across the field for a hug as reverent claps and raucous chants of “USA!” reverberate through the stadium. In this contrived ceremony, many Americans believe they have seen the typical homecoming: a healthy soldier in uniform, his adorable and adoring wife, proud children, and the appreciative cheers of a grateful nation. Yet far more veterans will come home to trouble — physical, interpersonal and financial trouble — which is often the direct consequence of their deployments. But at the football game, you clap, you cry, and you absolve yourself of responsibility to that overjoyed family on the field.

I received several comments and a handful of emails in response, prompting me to offer a more direct clarification:

We send soldiers on a string of protracted deployments, from which they eventually return to a VA that is thoroughly backlogged and utterly inefficient. And underlying these operational disgraces is a strategic program that entrenches them (and us) in conflicts that are completely open-ended. There is no victory without objectives, and our objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan are, and have been for a long time, either muddled or unattainable…

It’s ignoble to charge men and women like [my brother-in-law] with quixotic missions — missions which we as a people neither seriously engage with nor sacrifice for, except in meaningless, vicarious gestures… What counts is, first, adopting sound policy so American power is used justifiably and effectively in the world; and second, making sure we have the proper care and support waiting for those brave men and women when they return home.

At this point, I’m on the verge of hysterics about the Veterans Affairs Health Care scandal. I think President Obama should be too. The opening words at his press conference yesterday should not have been “… people will be held accountable.” They should have been, “Not one more veteran dies because this sort of negligence. Not one more veteran loses care because of it. Not one more veteran will wait an extra minute, in any waiting room, in any state, at any time of day, because of it… otherwise, heads will roll.”

More war poetry:

  • “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke
  • “Gone, Gone Again” by Edward Thomas
  • “On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam” by Hayden Carruth

Siegfried Sassoon

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Will It Be Clinton vs. Bush in 2016? (Probably So, Says John Heilemann)

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Journalism, Politics

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2016 Presidential Race, American Politics, Andrew Cuomo, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Chris Christie, Democratic Party, Double Down, Game Change, Government, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kasich, Mark Halperin, Martin O'Malley, Paul Ryan, politics, Presidency, Presidential Politics, Presidential Race, Presidential Race 2016, Rand Paul, Republican Party, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, The Dish, Tim Pawlenty

Hillary Clinton

Andrew Sullivan: Look, obviously apart from the Clinton machine sitting there ready to take over, I don’t see anything on either side right now that seems even faintly in the game.

I mean I might have said Christie, but I think at this point no sane person would want that kind of personality in charge of any greater sort of power. Because once you’re wired that way, you’re just not a President. And I say that as someone who was kind of hoping for some kind of moderate, Northeastern Republican in 2016.

But I just can’t see [Ohio Gov. John] Kasich, or [Wisconsin Gov. Scott] Walker; or on the Democratic side, who’s going to go up against it? [Maryland Gov. Martin] O’Malley? [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo?

So what’s going to happen, John? Predict. Because if we’re going to face another Clinton era, I’m gonna need some help.

John Heilemann: Tell me something I don’t know. It’s a very unusual circumstance.

Just as a matter of brute political reality, in many ways she is better situated to be the Democratic nominee than a sitting President would be, in the sense that she has almost all the assets for incumbency and yet she doesn’t actually have to run the government. She is free to be a candidate, but she has all the pro weight of incumbency – she has the record, now, of an incumbent. She’s very much attached to this administration; she’ll be seen as part of it if she runs, with all the attendant benefits in terms of the nomination that that entails.

Much of the Democratic party, having nominated an African-American, now thinks it’s time for there to be a woman nominee. She has extraordinary, extraordinary amounts of loyalty from the constituencies that choose Democratic nominees: women, Latin Americans, African Americans, gays and lesbians, union households – she has strength in all of those communities. Pick an important Democratic nominating constituency, she is incredibly strong with all of them.

She is the only Democrat who can really raise money, if she’s in the race. If she’s not in the race, the donor class is all over the place. But if she runs, she locks up a vast chunk of the Democratic voter base. Beyond health issues or some self-inflicted scandal — or Bill’s health or some potential scandal he could be involved in — she effectively will win the Democratic nomination by acclamation.

But I don’t think that anyone will run against her. Biden will not run if she runs, I believe. Cuomo will not run if she runs. Martin O’Malley has said he will not run if she runs… Who is going to take her on? It doesn’t mean she’s going to be President, but it means that if she wants to be the Democratic nominee, she is close to unstoppable.

AS: How psychologically crippling would it be for the Republicans to lose two elections to Obama, and then lose the next one to Hillary Clinton? Would you not want to just pack up and go home at that point?

Jeb Bush

JH: The talk of there being a Republican “Civil War” is not radically exaggerated. It has lost five of the last six general elections at the level of the popular vote, and if you look at where the Republican party stands right now with the American electorate, the only thing that’s keeping it afloat is Obama’s weakness, which is real… The party is radically out of touch with the rising demographic forces in the country, and with what the policy implications of those changes are.

I think that most of the Republicans that people talk about as potential nominees are a joke compared to Hillary Clinton.

Who’s the strongest Republican candidate right now? You know, it’s probably Jeb Bush. And there are big issues with Jeb Bush.

But if the Republican party is going to win, they have to find someone who the establishment donor class wing of the party is really behind, and believes can win; and that the Tea Party cultural wing of the party can be energized for. Someone who fuses those two things together, and someone who can talk to the so-called “coalition of the ascendant” (minorities and single women) – not necessarily get a majority of them, but still not get only 27% of the Hispanic vote. Because you can’t win a national election with 27%; you have to get 37, 38% of the Hispanic vote, and Jeb Bush is someone who can conceivably do those three things.

I’m not saying he’s a perfect candidate, but right now, he is someone who could conceivably do those things. Can Paul Ryan do those things? I don’t think so, and I don’t think he’s going to run. Can Scott Walker do those things? That’s kind of a stretch. I mean, have you spent much time with Scott Walker? His a fine Midwestern governor – “fine” in the sense of his political skills, just as a candidate. But is he a major league ball player who can go toe-to-toe with Hillary Clinton?

This is like during the last cycle when people would say Tim Pawlenty may have a shot; and I would say, ‘have you been with Tim Pawlenty?’ Like, he’s a really good guy, and he was a successful governor of Minnesota, but you watch him – and I hate to use sports analogies – but it’s like a really good AA player, and you’re going to go out and play against Barack Obama? It’s ridiculous. A very good minor league player, who you’re going to put out on the field to hit against Sandy Koufax.

Rand Paul? Ted Cruz? Obviously not plausible to win.

John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

AS: Not plausible?

JH: Not plausible to win a national election. Could one of those guys, in a very fragmented Republican field, and especially now with the way they’re building the Republican nomination process, could one of them win the nomination? It’s not impossible. But they will not be President of the United States.

AS: But if you win Iowa and New Hampshire [in the primaries], you’re kind of set.

JH: Yeah, you can run the table.

AS: I’ll end on this — what does it say about America that we could be looking towards the most plausible scenario, of the most viable race in 2016, is a Clinton against a Bush?

JH: It says that America, very firmly, deeply, profoundly, and broadly believes it’s time for a change.

[Both crack up laughing.]

__________

A selection transcribed from last week’s ‘Andrew Asks Anything’ with John Heilemann, posted on The Dish.

This new feature is exclusively for subscribing members of the site, and along with the additional resources offered by The Dish, it is well worth the $20 price of a yearly subscription. The site is a current events and cultural hub that covers issues deeply and widely, and is serious but does not take itself too seriously. It’s among the first news resources I check each day. Plus, Sullivan is, in addition to an almost perfectly fluent writer, a commentator whose opinions are decidedly fresh, attentive, and apartisan. His conversation with Heilemann runs over an hour and a half, with this particular portion being just the final 3 minutes.

Above: Heilemann, left, with his Double Down and Game Change co-author, Mark Halperin.

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Eager for Slavery

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Freedom, History, Political Philosophy, Politics

≈ Comments Off on Eager for Slavery

Tags

Augustus, Barack Obama, Caligula, Freedom, George W. Bush, Gore Vidal, history, politics, PRISM, Rome, slavery, the Patriot Act, The Roman empire, Tiberius, US-984XN

Tiberius“The only Roman emperor I wholeheartedly admire is Tiberius.

He was a brilliant politician, a brilliant administrator, a man of state and of the people. He was somebody who was meant to govern the Roman Empire. When Augustus died, or was murdered, Tiberius became emperor, as the succession was working then. And immediately the Senate and people of Rome sent him an overall mandate, a carte blanche, saying that to anything he proposed — as the emperor living on the Palatine hill — they would automatically concur and accept. He was already a semi-divinity in their eyes. That had started with the death of Augustus who had been deified…

And I found out what Tiberius’s response had been to the Senate. He sent back a message — because they were very upset that he didn’t respond immediately with a million thanks — that said, ‘I cannot accept this blanket compliance with anything that might come from me on Palatine Hill here. Suppose that I go mad, or mad with power, or corrupt. Suppose there has been a coup in the palace and somebody else is in charge and you don’t know about it. Would you still want the word of the emperor to be automatic law?’

And they sent back word, ‘Yes, Tiberius. You are the law, all power is with you. Everything that you send us will be accepted and then made law.’ Well, he sent it back with the same objections.

They went on and on for about three or four times and he was getting nowhere with the Senate and they were getting above their station which he was quick to remind them: it would be his decision and his decision was no. After all, they lived through despots just before he came to the throne. Did they want that again? And they said, ‘We beg you, great emperor,’ and so on. He realized he was getting nowhere with them and he said, ‘I accept your folly but I can only make one obiter dicta. And that is how eager you are to be slaves.’

That to me is the United States today: eager for slavery.”

Gore Vidal

__________

Gore Vidal, speaking in response to a prompting about the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001.

The recent exposure of the Obama administration’s clandestine data collection apparatus, called US-984XN, or PRISM, would have (I’m sure) inspired Vidal — with his characteristic venom and vitriol — to bring up the case of Tiberius one more time. It was one of the anecdotes he reached for most often, and one which should be on our minds today.

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Bernard-Henri Lévy on Israel, Palestine, and the Competition of Victimhood

27 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in History, Interview, Politics, War

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alsace-Lorraine, Anti-Semitism, Barack Obama, Bernard-Henri Lévy, genocide, Germany, Hamas, Hezbollah, Holocaust, Israel, Jewishness, Jews, Jimmy Carter, Palestine, Rwanda, Voltaire

Bernard-Henri Lévy

“Bernard-Henri Levy never said: ‘God is dead, but my hair is beautiful.’ Still, he admires the satirist who put the words in his mouth. ‘It’s very clever if you think about it,’ he says with a small smile. ‘It was completely made up and yet it has been repeated endlessly.’

Today the French philosopher’s hair is beautiful and defiant — standing out from his head in leonine waves – and his trademark outfit (a black Charvet suit and white shirt, unbuttoned to the navel) has a Gallic shrug of its own (‘Oui – et alors?’).

Levy has barely slept. ‘I’ve never needed much sleep,’ he says. ‘I prefer to work at night.’

This could be because the 63-year-old writer, intellectual and defender of the world’s oppressed has less noble pursuits during daylight hours. After all, it was the man, not his satirist, who said: ”You can’t make love all day.”

‘Literature and lovemaking demand the same energy,’ he says. ‘And since one cannot make love all day, one must write for some of it.’

Was his childhood difficult? ‘No, no. Easy. Gifted. Blessed. With nearly all that you can desire in life.

When did his consciousness of politics arise? ‘Vietnam War.’

His father? ‘When he was seventeen, he involved himself in the Republican camp of the Spanish Civil War. Then, when he was eighteen, he volunteered for the French Army at the beginning of the anti-Nazi war. Then he came, after the defeat of the Free French…’

On whether he regrets this: ‘No. Number one, it was my father’s business, not mine. Number two, he did not remain so close. He withdrew just after the war. Maybe when I was born, ’48, ’49. But he kept his sensibility all his life; even when he became a wealthy man, he kept this philosophy.’

____

Interviewer: What is the state of anti-Semitism today? Is it coming? Going away? Doing both at the same time?

Bernard-Henri Lévy: It’s doing both at the same time. Going away in its old shape. And coming back in its new shape. As always. Anti-Semitism has no fixed pattern; it does not present itself always in the same form. It’s like a virus which changes. What are the workings of its changes, what is its logic is tied, simply, to what is acceptable. It is as if anti-Semitism — without giving it an intelligence, which it doesn’t have — is searching for the precise words or intellectual schemes for allowing itself to be heard, to be supported by the most people. It is as if it were searching for the words which might help it advance, not under the flag of pure evil, but under the flag of an evil aiming sort of in a good direction.

When some Christians were anti-Semitic, they did not just say, ‘We hate Jews.’ They said, ‘We hate Jews because, unfortunately, they committed the great crime, which was to kill Christ.’ When Voltaire was anti-Semitic, he did not say, ‘I hate Jews because there is something in their essence which deserves hate;’ he said, ‘I hate them because they invented Christ.’

And this is the sort of tricky way of assembling a big number of people around the speech of hatred. Barring that, you would have very few anti-Semites. So today, all the old processes of legitimacy are dying, are more or less dead. Not so many Christians really think that I killed Christ. Not so many followers of Voltaire really think I am guilty of having invented Christianity. Fewer and fewer believe in the racist identity of the Jews, of which people like me would be the bearers.

But we are facing the installment of a new scheme, with new arguments, new reasons, new logic, trying to make anti-Semitism again acceptable, relatively, according to the general mood of the times. In the chapter you allude to, I try to identify the words with which anti-Semitism must express itself in order to gather under its flag a reasonable number of people, which is a real danger, of course.

What are some of those ways?

There are three: which are denial of the Holocaust, the competition of victimhood, and the demonization of Israel. If you put the three together, you have the portrait of a people, a community, who are guilty of three crimes. Which is the crime of being crooks, moral crooks, inventing or exaggerating their own martyrdom, doing that in order to overshadow others’ martyrdom, and the whole thing in the interest of an illegitimate and deeply guilty state, which is Israel. If you can put it into the brain of some people that Jews are people who exaggerate their martyrdom, who therefore [minimize] the martyrdom of other people, all this with the sole selfish aim of saving Israel, you give to some people some new motives, arguments, reasons for feeding the old hatred.

We’ve certainly seen at least one leader in the Middle East, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, attempting to deny or voice doubts about the Holocaust. Are you finding denials of the Holocaust in the United States and in Europe?

Of course.

In relatively mainstream places?

Mainstream, no. Fortunately, it’s not mainstream. But you have either denial or minimization or banalization. You have some pseudo-scientific historical studies in California, Paris, and London, which say that the gas chambers didn’t exist. And so, yes, you have that in America. The godfathers of this delirium were French, but the focus of the generalization is probably California today, the biggest source of that.

Is this what Ahmadinejad drew on for his Holocaust deniers conference last year?

Ahmadinejad relied on some of these people. So you have this in America. Competition of victimhood: we are fed up with the Holocaust; please, there are other things to think about. This idea exists in Europe, of course; it is what Palestinians say — what a lot of people in the Arab world say. And you have that in America and in France. If you listen to some of the radical groups, the African-American groups like that of Farrakhan, it is more or less what they say. Competition of victimhood. You have to choose, Jews or Blacks. You cannot support both. You have to choose your victims. You have to choose your cause.

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Let me read one quote from your manuscript for Left in Dark Times. You were writing that Jews had nowhere to go during the Holocaust since Nazis wanted to wipe the very trace of them from the earth. You go on to write, on the other hand, that ‘a Cambodian could, theoretically at least, flee Cambodia; a Tutsi could flee Rwanda, and outside Rwanda, at least ideally, would be out of the range of the machetes; the Armenians who managed to escape the forces of the Young Turk government were only rarely chased all the way to Paris, Budapest, Rome, Warsaw.’ Does that not verge on competition of victimhood?

Competition of victimhood means there is limited space in your brain or mine available for sorrow, and therefore if you use it for the Palestinians, there is nothing left for the Jews, if you use it for the Tutsis, there is nothing left for the Cambodians, and so on.

No. Of course not. It verges simply on trying to understand the specificity of historical events. What is the peculiarity of one event, the singularity of another one, what allows the comparison, what is out of the comparison. It’s the task of the intellectual, of the historian. I hate competition of victimhood. But I also hate the idea of a big, huge, and empty concept of suffering, one in which you would put an accident, the Holocaust, the genocide of the Tutsis, a murder across the street, an accident on the road, all in the same bag.

So at some point, we do have to compare degrees of the victims?

You have to compare different things. So the Cambodian genocide is different from the Tutsi genocide, which is different from the Armenian, which is different from the Holocaust.

It’s true that in terms of military resources, the democrats cannot intervene, cannot help all the victims of all the atrocities of the world. This is a truism. It is not competition of victims; it is realism. You cannot—America, France, Germany, Spain, the few democracies in the world—cannot help at the same time the Burmese, the Chinese, Darfuris, and so on. It’s policy. Policy is the art of the possible, what is doable, and so on. Nothing to do with competition of victims.

Competition of victims says something else. Competition of victims relies on the idea that what is scarce is not a scarcity of resources but is the scarcity of the ability of mankind to cry, to sympathize, and to have sorrow. The theory of the competition of victimhood means there is limited space in your brain or mine available for sorrow, and therefore if you use it for the Palestinians, there is nothing left for the Jews, if you use it for the Tutsis, there is nothing left for the Cambodians, and so on.

And this is completely untrue; it is the contrary. The military resource, that—of course—you are probably right. But the capacity for sorrow, the pity capital, these work in a different way. The more you feel sorrow for the Tutsis, the more you will be able to feel for the Jews. The more for this, the more for that. The proof of that is that it is always the same; those who mobilize themselves for Darfur, those who get immediately what is happening in Rwanda, those who see the red light in Burundi, they are always—no exception—those who know exactly what happened with the Holocaust.

I see it in myself. I would probably not have become aware so quickly of what was happening in Bosnia if I didn’t have the memory—and more than the memory: the concern—of what happened in the Holocaust. It’s true. I know that it would have taken me much more time to catch what was going on in Darfur if I’d never had Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Jewish experience in mind. So it is not this or that. It is that because of this. This is why this argument of competition of victims is just untrue and stupid.

This theory of competition of victimhood is running slowly through America, too. And one of the reasons I am so much in favor of Obama is that his tenure might be, will be a real end to this tide of competition of victimhood, and especially on the specific ground of the two communities, Jews and African Americans, who were so close in the 1960s. And some parts of them have felt the need to separate. The Obama election would reconstitute the grand alliance. And this is the duty of our generation.

Do you suppose this is partly why some right wingers have tried to smear Obama’s record on Israel? You told me in January that you asked around in Chicago about Obama, as you did about all the candidates and players in the election.

Absolutely. Of course. Chicago is one of the cities where I feel very comfortable in America. I go there from time to time. I have some friends in the Jewish circles in Chicago. They have no doubt; they know Obama well. They have no doubt about his commitment, his record. And myself, I just do what you have to do as far as a politician is concerned. I listen. I read what he says. I cannot find a single sentence where he goes against Israel. And the more recent declarations should fill us with joy when he says he is a supporter of Israel.

To go from the present (and perhaps future) of the Democratic party to its past: Jimmy Carter is a different story for you. You’ve strongly condemned his recent trips to the Middle East.

Jimmy Carter is precisely this type of person who believes that if you have sorrow for one, you can’t have sorrow for the other…

Are you saying he meets with Palestinians, but not with Israelis?

No, but he belongs to this category of people who believe that you have a capital of sorrow, and to have sorrow for the Palestinians means there is nothing left for Israel. He is guilty of—there is no other name for it—fascism when he says that Hamas…

(His wife comes; she is leaving for the airport. He introduces her, walks her out, and returns shortly.)

Where were we?

Jimmy Carter.

For forty years, I’ve been in favor of the Palestinian state. A sovereign one. I wrote that for the first time in 1969, forty years ago. But, I am able to recognize, and one should be able to see differences among Palestinians (as among any people) between the democrats and the fascists. The problem with Jimmy Carter is that he is unable to do that. When he treats Hamas as responsible people, Hezbollah as respectable people—both as regular interlocutors—he is just blinding himself and trying to blind us to this main difference, without which we are in dark times. Hamas is a fascist party. They rely on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, they believe in it, they have it in their chart, they have a cult of martyrdom, they have a religion of the blood, a conception of the race and anti-Semitism, by the way, which are the components of a new form of fascism, a new version, which just by its being Arab does not make it innocent. You can have a French fascism and an American fascism; you can have an Arab fascism.

The problem may be that some Americans hear “Islamo-fascism” for the first time from partisans with a very right-wing agenda. What your book does, what Paul Berman does, and what others have done is to point out that this is a very concrete tie.

It is not a slogan. It’s a concept.

BHenriLevy

It’s a fact, according to your book, according to Berman.

It’s a fact. I gave all the historical evidence on one side, ideological evidence on the other, of this tie. It is not a fatal tie. I don’t believe in eminent guiltiness. I don’t believe that there are blessed people or damned people. No angels and no beasts. You have in Islam, like in France, like in Europe, a battle, a very fierce fight, between those who want equality for women, anti-racism, the triumph of human rights, and those who want the values which have been built and popularized by the fascists. It’s a battle.

When I was a very young man, I was told, You should not criticize the Soviet Union because the French Right does it, too. So what. I’m going to bless the killings of millions of people in concentration camps on the frivolous motive that I have some stupid right-wing Frenchman who agrees with me? He will be forgotten. Bush is the same. Bush is nothing. I take rendezvous with you in two years, and nobody will care about Bush. I take rendezvous, and Bush will be opening his library. You will see, it will be a non-event. So I’m not going to sacrifice, I’m not going to let die, I’m not going to betray all these heroic women, courageous young men who fight for democracy because Bush seems to want to help them also. Maybe he does, by the way. I don’t care. Bush is nothing. He was something. He is nothing now.

Here’s what Carter said, “If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government.” He said later that, to show their good faith, no terrorist acts have been claimed by, committed by, or attributed to Hamas since August 2004. He also said careful engagement could help them become peaceful. But, even if you disagree, how do you fix the long-standing problem in the area without engaging Palestine’s elected leaders?

Number one: not committed terrorists acts? What about shelling Sderot? I visited Sderot, which is a city near Gaza, a ghost city, [and it was] shelled and bombed all day long by Hamas. Shells and rockets thrown by Hamas-controlled patrols every day. Number one.

Number two: To be elected is a proof of what? It is not a reason to treat them as reasonable people.

And number three, there are ways to deal with people like Hamas. Ways which weaken them, or ways which reinforce them. You have ways to legitimize them, ways to de-legitimize them. As far as I know, the visit of Carter to the area did not make peace advance one foot. Hamas did not make one step in favor of recognition of Israel first.

President Carter said on Charlie Rose that some high-level officials told him that Hamas would recognize Israel within the 1967 borders.

The fact that Carter said it is not very interesting. I would like Mr. Meshaal, the chief of Hamas, to say that. And which borders? The return to the 1967 borders? Nearly everybody agrees with that. It is more or less the position of Israel.

Carter was not alone in noting how the security wall, which goes outside those borders, outside Israeli borders into Palestine, means that it is not, in fact, the current position of Israel.

Obama said he will speak with enemies of the United States. That’s not a problem. Since war is such a horrible thing, it has to be the very last resort—so, of course, he should speak.

No, no, the wall includes 6, 7, maybe 8%, maximum, of the Palestinian territory. It’s not so far. It’s a negotiation, as far as I know. Israel did not conquer the occupied territories—this is admitted by all historians. Israel was attacked and in the process of defending [themselves], they advanced and occupied the territories. Okay. They said they are ready to give back, let’s say, 90%. It’s a lot, as a basis of negotiation—with people who want your annihilation. It’s a lot. When Germany had Alsace-Lorraine—they said 0% [was what they would] give back. It had to be decided by force. Today, you are a state which was attacked, which—in the process of defending itself occupied a few kilometers… and which is already ready to give back most of it, frankly before negotiating—92, 93, let’s say 90%. Then the negotiation begins. The 92 may become 95%. There can be some exchange of territories, and so on and so on.

One of the things that Obama has been criticized for by his opponents is for his statements that he would sit down with the United States’s “enemies” and do exactly what you warn against above—Carter with Hamas—and perhaps legitimize leaders now considered our enemies. Is this problematic for you?

It’s not quite clear what Obama said on this topic, which is Iran, number one. Number two, going to Tehran, greeting Ahmadinejad, telling him he’s a great man, encouraging him to continue, [this] would be one thing. Going to Tehran, telling Ahmadinejad that he will be out of the [group of] civilized nations if he enriches his uranium, addressing oneself to the civil society of the Persian nation in order to separate them from the regime, [this] would be another thing. I don’t know what Obama will do. Obama said he will speak with enemies of the United States. That’s not a problem. Since war is such a horrible thing, it has to be the very last resort—so, of course, he should speak. But to say what? My feeling is that Obama is not the sort of man who would treat Ahmadinejad as a democrat. I may be wrong. I don’t think so.

__________

Excerpts from an interview about Israel, Palestine, and Victimhood with the world’s coolest public intellectual, Bernard-Henri Lévy.

BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

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Election 2012: A Prediction

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Barack Obama, Democrat, Electoral College, Larry Sabato, Mitt Romney, Nate Silver, President, Presidential election, Republican, swing states

Electoral CollegeI generally think that the media’s obsession with pre-election polling — and the frenzied, horserace nature of it — is a particularly idle waste of our collective time and attention. The vote tally tomorrow is the only poll that matters.

However, with that said, I want to put on record what I think the votes will show. I do this not to promote a particular point of view (I am voting for Obama, to be clear), but instead am writing my predictions here in order to grade myself — and allow myself to be graded — once the votes have in fact been tallied.

The sources I am using to compile this state by state forecast are Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog for the New York Times, Public Policy Polling, YouGov’s data collection, and my professors of American Government and fellow classmates here at Georgetown. We have been tracking and debating these numbers for months now, and here’s what I think we will see on Wednesday morning:

Romney takes the dead Right give-aways. For the sake of this list, “dead Right” denotes states whose Republican advantage lies above 7% (the threshold for a “lock”) as well as the major national polls’ (Pew, Rasmussen, RAND and Politico) margins of error. So, here are the states that we’ll most assuredly see red come tomorrow (electoral college votes are in parenthesis): Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), North Carolina (15), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), Utah (6), West Virginia (5), Wyoming (3).

The final tally of these numbers: 206

Obama will take the far Left leaners. In my calculation, again, a “far Left” state is one which major national polls show to be Democratic, beyond the 7% threshold and poll’s particular margin of error. Thus, these are the states that will turn blue Tuesday: California (55), Connecticut (7), District of Columbia (3), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (29), Nevada (6), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (20), Rhoda Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12)

The final tally of these numbers: 243

Electoral College

This leaves seven states swinging in the balance.

Colorado (9) – Colorado may be the closest state to call this election, and from what I can tell, it’s almost a dead heat. The state was a surprise win for Obama in 2008, as Coloradans are known for their aversion to big government and embrace of more libertarian policies. However, I think Obama will carry Colorado, and I say this for two primary reasons. First, Democrats won Senate and Governorship races in Colorado in 2008, signaling a paradigm shift in the state’s partisan leaning. Secondly, Politico and YouGov both give Obama a slight (1-3 percentage point) lead in the state, while Reuters (via Ipsos) is the only poll showing a lead (by 2%) for Mr. Romney. Both Sabato and Silver give a slight advantage to Obama, too.

Florida (29) – In light of its particularly sluggish economy and slack housing market, I believe that Florida will most likely tilt away from the incumbent who carried it in 2008. Mitt Romney is showing as much as a 5 point lead in some polls, as the swaths of senior citizens, which populate key counties in the state, will surely show up in high numbers to pull the levers for Romney — a man they see as less threatening towards Medicare.

Iowa (6) – As of Friday, every major poll shows that Obama is winning in Iowa (by between 2-5%). Ann Selzer and Jennifer Jacobs, who are the most rigorous state-level pollsters in Iowa, also have Obama in the lead (by 5 percentage points as of November 3rd). Thus, despite Romney’s dynamic campaigning in the state, Iowa will be blue once again.

New Hampshire (4) – New Hampshire became a surprise concern for the Democrats this year, and in response, an unusually high amount of campaigning has been done (particularly by Vice President Biden) to try to close the usually Democratic state. In contrast to its neighbors, New Hampshire is traditionally known for its moderate voting patterns, and the fact that Mitt Romney maintains a second home in the state further pulls the electorate to vote for what they see as a native son. However, despite this, I am calling New Hampshire for Obama based on the polls done by Gravis, YouGov, Politico, and the University of New Hampshire, as well as the astute analysis of the state done by Nate Silver. Larry Sabato has also called New Hampshire for Obama. NH is going D.

Ohio (18) – The candidate who has won Ohio has won the last 12 presidential elections, and there are very few scenarios in which Romney can take the White House without first taking the Buckeye state. Thus, Ohio is key to a Romney victory. However, as polls show and analysts seem to agree, Obama is holding on to an excruciatingly close lead in the state, bolstered by a growing state economy and his support for the auto bailout (and related smear campaign of Romney’s opposition to it).

Virginia (13) – Obama won Virginia by seven percentage points in 2008; however, it looks like Romney will take the state this year. Due to its rapidly shifting demographics, Virginia is a new battleground state, one which has seen some of the most intensive campaigning of this election cycle. Ipsos, YouGov, Politico, and NBC are each currently showing Obama with a slight lead, yet the margins are slim and fluctuating and fail to account for the state’s shifty voter turnout. I think it’s in Romney’s hands, but this could very well be the closest call of the election.

Wisconsin (10) – Democrats have won in Wisconsin the last six elections (yes, even Dukakis carried it in 1988). However, the Republican ticket’s addition of Paul Ryan — a native of Janesville, WI and Representative from the state’s first district — has pulled the state towards the center. However, polls still show Obama with a slight lead in the state, and Sabato has officially predicted a Democratic victory. Nate Silver has even taken Wisconsin out of his “swing state” column, giving Obama a 94.5% chance of victory. I won’t argue with that.

As a result, my prediction can be summarized in three sentences. Mitt Romney wins 248 Electoral College votes. Barack Obama wins 290 Electoral College votes. Bo the dog will be first pup for another four years.

Electoral College

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The Highlight of the Election

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Humor, Politics, Speeches

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Al Smith Dinner, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney

Barack Obama And Mitt Romney Address Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation DinnerI’ve enjoyed this election. Unlike a lot of people, and unlike in 2008, I’ve generally found this race to be both serious and stimulating in its own right and a good starter to some (sometimes fruitful) political conversations.

Last night, Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama spoke at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City. Their speeches represent — at least to me — some of the highlights of this campaign, as they’re full of alternating self-deprecation and zingers on the other guy, and each ends on notes of graciousness and rapport. The Al Smith dinner speeches are a tradition started by Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960, and they represent some of the values — of disagreement without disagreeableness — that should make us all feel that cliché phrase, proud to be American. 

Amidst the bitterness and venom of the election season, it’s refreshing to watch the following clips. (You don’t have to take sides as to who won.)

__________

Mitt Romney

“President Obama and I are each very lucky to have one person who is always in our corner, someone who we can lean on, and someone who is a comforting presence. Without whom, we wouldn’t be able to go another day. I have my beautiful wife, Ann, he has Bill Clinton.”

Barack Obama

“This is the third time that Governor Romney and I have met recently. As some of you may have noticed, I had a lot more energy in our second debate. I felt really well rested after the nice long nap I had in the first debate.”

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The Poetry of the President

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry, Politics, Psychology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Barack Obama, Pop

Young Barack Obama

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and flam of the world, since
Things have been easy for me;
I stare hard at his face, a stare
That deflects off his brow;
I’m sure he’s unaware of his
Dark, watery eyes, that
Glance in different directions,
And his slow, unwelcome twitches,
Fail to pass.
I listen, nod,
Listen, open, till I cling to his pale,
Beige T-shirt, yelling,
Yelling in his ears, that hang
With heavy lobes, but he’s still telling
His joke, so I ask why
He’s so unhappy, to which he replies…
But I don’t care anymore, cause
He took too damn long, and from
Under my seat, I pull out the
Mirror I’ve been saving; I’m laughing,
Laughing loud, the blood rushing from his face
To mine, as he grows small,
A spot in my brain, something
That may be squeezed out, like a
Watermelon seed between
Two fingers.
Pop takes another shot, neat,
Points out the same amber
Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine, and
Makes me smell his smell, coming
From me; he switches channels, recites an old poem
He wrote before his mother died,
Stands, shouts, and asks
For a hug, as I shrink, my
Arms barely reaching around
His thick, oily neck, and his broad back; ’cause
I see my face, framed within
Pop’s black-framed glasses
And know he’s laughing too.

__________

Pop by Barack Obama.

In the Spring of 1981, Feast, the student literary journal of Occidental College, published two poems by the then-freshman Barack Obama. “Pop” was the longer of two works which show, if not perfected poetic skill, the work of a young writer attempting to play with metrical elements like enjambment and unconventional line breaks.

“Pop” is certainly not a masterpiece. But it’s not trash (at least by the typical undergrad’s standards), either. The subtext of the poem is that “pop” and the speaker are the same person — they share the same stain, same blood, same smell, and same reflection — and that is somewhat striking, given that “pop” is also, apparently, a hardened and fermenting couch potato. Obama’s understandable adolescent struggles with his racial and cultural identity are well known and well documented, and this poem seems to be another piece of that psychological puzzle. Moreover, the poem’s dark and dusky tone probably signal something about the psyche of our Commander-in-Chief.

I’m just not sure exactly what.Young Barack Obama

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