The Yahrzeit of Jan 6 is Upon Us

Yahrzeits make us remember and give perspective

For years I have been taking blood pressure medicine. It began probably because of a combination of being overweight and bad genetics. Later older age was added to the list. For the last 5 years regulating it was even more complicated, courtesy of Donald Trump. Just writing the name is probably causing a spike right now.

I have tried to ignore him, flush him from my immediate data banks, but like a bad penny he keeps resurfacing and my pressure spikes. I listen to less news and more NHL radio where my beloved Panthers are being taken seriously even if South Florida has not yet woken up to them, but as I look at the calendar, I realize that we are 2 days away from the Yahrzeit of the armed insurrection against our country.

I cannot block Donald Trump out of my mind especially when I hear he is planning a press conference from Mar A Logo on the 6th. It is as if I had yahrzeit for a loved one who was murdered by a person who got off on a technicality and then on the Yahrzeit called a press conference to declare his innocence.

Today is the launch of a new book by Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, titled,” It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable-And How We Can Stop It”. I don’t need to tell you what the “it” is that can happen here, and it is all that much closer to happening, courtesy of the hate and chaos caused by and continued by Donald Trump. How much can one take? That is why I am compelled to once again write about him, who like Voldemort should remain the evil force whose name can not be mentioned.

In response to a recent blog, one of my readers wrote to say that Donald Trump was an antisemite. I wrote back a little too flippantly I later thought that he was not an antisemite, as that would have required him to have an ideology of some kind and he was intellectually and psychologically incapable of that. Rather he was driven by only one impulse. Was the statement or action he was saying or undertaking going to advance the cause of Donald Trump? In his world, strength, power, avarice and loyalty were all he understood, and he suffered no tolerance for those who could not or would not provide it. It turns out that I was not flippant at all as a New Yorker magazine article came to the same conclusion.

The article tells of Barak Ravid, a veteran Israeli reporter who wrote a book in Hebrew called, “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East”. On a podcast promoting the book he brought parts of an audio recording of an interview he conducted with Trump for the book.

I must preface this with the acknowledgement that I truly believe that the Abraham accords were a major advance for peace in the middle east, and Trump gets all the credit for it, yet he does not see it that way. He is only capable of seeing things in terms of loyalty to him and so he says of the Jewish community in America, “people in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country. It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress and today I think it’s the exact opposite, and I think Obama and Biden did that. And yet, in the election, they still got a lot of votes from Jewish people which tells you that the Jewish people-and I’ve said this for a long time-the Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel”.

Tropes that congress was run by the Jews are classic anti-semitism, but for Trump it is not antisemitism that motivates him but anger at the betrayal of Jews who don’t reward him for his efforts but still vote for Democrats. In his thought process where is the loyalty, where is the fealty to him?

If that is not persuasive, the next quote from Trump should be conclusive. No one was more supportive of Trump than Bibi Netanyahu whose appeal to voters in his last elections was that he was close to Trump. His loyalty to Trump was absolute and Trump’s admiration for Bibi was total until it wasn’t.

In the interview with Ravid Trump said of Bibi he,” made a terrible mistake” because he congratulated Joe Bidden on his victory in the 2020 election. It was unforgivably disloyal, and then in his own refined and classy way Trump said of Bibi Netanyahu, “Fuck Him”. It was not antisemitism or ideological or strategic differences, it was the cardinal sin against Trump, disloyalty.

Trump craves loyalty but also absolute power. He envies strong men who have changed democracies into tyrannical rule by a strong man. Putin comes quickly to mind. He just this week endorsed (have you ever heard of a past president endorsing a foreign leader in an election) the Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban for reelection in the spring.

Orban has changed Hungary’s democracy into what he proudly calls, “an illiberal democracy”, in which the press and the judiciary are now controlled by him. Not surprisingly, Orban had previously endorsed Trump. He may well lead his country to being kicked out of the European Union.

The other foreign leader endorsed by Trump since leaving office was Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, another autocratic leader who like Trump did not take Covid seriously and according to a Brazilian Senate report was responsible for thousands of the 600,000 who died of Covid. According to the report his ultimate goal was rapid contagion so that Brazil would reach herd immunity.

Donald Trump is not an antisemite, he is anti-anyone who stands in his way of receiving power, adulation, and loyalty. As the New Yorker article ends,” What matters to Donald Trump is Donald Trump”.

I hope we will never see the time when Jan 6 will be the yahrzeit for American democracy.

Please share with family and friends, especially with those who might not agree with me. If anyone would like to join the blog please send your name and email to me at ravpp1@gmail.com