​Rehumanization requires rehabilitation

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

The Fiddler on the roof was taking a big chance after two thousand years of hate

Cal Thomas, who seems to hate a lot in a journalistic and broadcasting career where he expresses his conservative views, wrote in a column that “you have to be taught to hate.” He has had a lot of terrific teachers.

He has been a political analyst and contributor on Fox Lies. He was a panelist on Fox Lies Watch, a Fox Lies Channel that critiqued media news coverage. He also hosted his own program on Fox Lies called “After Hours With Cal Thomas.” He also is on ultra-conservative Salem Radio with a daily show emphasizing Christian political talk, music, and news/talk. Cal has been a columnist for USA Today paired with liberal Bob Beckel, a political opposite in what is described as a point-counterpoint type of show. I read their columns for ten years.

Cal, an evangelical Christian, was vice-president of the Moral Majority, a conservative religious organization dominated by founders Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, for five years. He is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Falwell brought in alt-right characters such as John Birch leader Tim LaHaye, a leader of Christian ministers opposed to gay rights, and former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Fox Lies fame. Cal has written ten books on religion and politics, including one about the role of the Moral Majority in “Christian” politics. I have been reading and listening to Cal Thomas for more than 50 years. He has been both entertaining and maddening. He was a Trumper before Trumpistan was a MAGA cult. He has accused Barack Obama, a Harvard graduate, of being a hater of Israel. Harvard graduates do not hate; they analyze and empathize. He wrote that Muslims should not ever build another mosque. He has always been opposed to the LBGTQUIA+ community who make up 10% of the world’s population.

I can’t let Cal get away with crap he expressed in his “hate” column about protests against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza: “Until president Trump began depriving Harvard and other elite schools of federal grants, these institutions were getting away with effectively being accessories to murder. Would these university presidents, who have done little or nothing to curtail the hateful demonstrations, have tolerated KKK rallies on their campuses? Not likely.”

First, if Trump is going to become Dictator-Big Brother of America-Oceania, he has to put higher education under his total control like Hitler and Orban did. Second, what the war criminals of Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Front and the war criminals of Israel and Netanyahu have done to each other deserve strong demonstrations.

Jewish, Palestinian and Christian Leaders have become dehumanized

For some reason, the Middle East lacks that essential characteristic for human tribes to get along with each other. It’s called empathy. The war crime of October 7, 2023 committed by Hamas, raping girls and women and killing an estimated 1,200 and taking 250 hostages, deserved a strong response.

But Prime Minister Bibi N. went ballistic. He has built a prison named Gaza to house 2.1 million Palestinians. Almost half of the population of Gaza is made up of children under the age of 18. He constructed concrete walls and military checkpoints everywhere. So far, he has destroyed most buildings in Gaza, including hospitals, clinics, and schools. He has killed over 55,000 people doing it. And there may be thousands of rotting bodies under rubble. In the last two days, Bibi the Bloody has killed 60 and wounded hundreds of Palestinians storming well-armed distribution sites so children, at least, won’t starve to death.

The Jews and Palestinians have had 78 years to come up with a two-state solution and an international zone for the city of Jerusalem. But a civil war has consumed both Arabs and Jews since the United Nations (U.N.) made the decision to create a Jewish state in the Middle East. I have followed this civil war closely for years and have a thick file on the Holocaust. Every time a solution was possible, radical right-wing Palestinians would kill right-wing Jews and right-wing radical Jews would steal and build homes and farms on Palestinian settlements. Netanyahu is expert at this and gained support of our presidents because they needed Jewish votes in Florida and New York.

Empathy has been destroyed by both parties; that is, if they had any to start with. Bibi has become a Trumper who wants to starve all Palestinians out of Gaza so he and “The Chosen One” saved by God can build resorts in Gaza for billionaires. And Bibi wants to stay in elected office so he won’t be charged in four cases of corruption by accepting expensive “gifts.”

Famine is now covering Gaza with a black pall. A formula developed by food experts called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification predicts that 470,000 people of a population of over two million “are facing death from starvation, destitution, and extremely critical malnutrition levels.” The cost of baby formula has quadrupled, a can of peas is up 1,000% and cooking gas is up 2,400%. Most community kitchens have been forced to close. Prices of groceries by kilogram (which equals 2.2 pounds) in May in Gaza are shocking: 1 kg of rice: $10, 1 g of sugar: $22, .5kg of butter: $25, 1 kg of baby formula: $28, 1 dozen eggs: $43, 25 kg of flour: $558.

Is it any wonder why Palestinians are killing Jews and Jews are killing Palestinians? The U.N. says “Gaza has become the hungriest place on earth” because Bibi and Israel have blocked food shipments for two million people for three months.

Is it any wonder starving Palestinians have attacked trucks hauling food and attacked distributors just to get a scrap of food for their kids? Both parties have committed war crimes. The U.N. should send troops to Gaza, feed the population and arrest leaders and charge them with war crimes.

I depend upon one person in the Divided States of America government to tell the truth about Gaza and Israel. That’s Senator Bernie Sanders.

“As the atrocities in Gaza leave many in a civil society dumbfounded, what is the long game here, I ask? That’s a difficult question, and I don’t know the answer,” said Sanders. “I will tell you the U.S. has had a long relationship with Israel, and there are many people who have intellectually chosen not to understand that Netanyahu does not represent the Israel of 20 years ago. The moderate democratic society is now controlled by right-wing racist extremists who have done, and are doing today, absolutely horrific things to the Palestinian people in violation of American law and international law. They refuse to recognize that.”

In other words, Bernie says the right-wing Israeli wackos display dehumanization and need rehabilitation to become rehumanized. It’s a complicated human problem that must be resolved. Even my buddy Shakespeare took a whack at Jews by having the witches in Macbeth throw a “liver from blaspheming Jew” into their boiling caldron.

Joyce Denn, a Jewish woman from Woodbury sums up her view. “We are being demonized because of the actions of the currentIsraeli government, actions with which the majority of us, American and Israeli Jews alike, find horrifying,” she said. “I am a strong Zionist. I believe that Jews and deserve and need a homeland of our own. Many will be surprised to learn that I also believe the Palestinians deserve a homeland also, but along the Jewish state, not as a replacement for it.”

The Old Testament has a lot of wars between tribes, countries and families. So does the New Testament. Does a war over economics have the same intensity as a war over religion? Remember the Crusades, where streets ran deep in blood? Historians claim there were at least eight major Crusades and at least seven minor ones between Christians and Islam before 1400. They are still going on — but we don’t call them Crusades anymore. They are called wars or “incidents.”

Before my teenage days, my French Catholic parents would make disparaging remarks about Jews, so when their favorite president Franklin Delano Roosevelt denied entry to the U.S. for the SS St. Louis carrying 937 Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany in 1939, I hardly noticed. When I was 15 and a sophomore at Little Falls High School, the United Nations decreed on November 27, 1947, that Jews would have the opportunity to work toward a two-state solution in the land previously controlled by Great Britain known as Palestine. By that time, I had several Jewish friends in classes and in music groups. They were overjoyed about the decision, so consequently, so was I.

Will churches evolve because evolution has brought us gender fluidity?

There’s an interesting picture of eight California high school girls standing on seven platforms indicating how they placed in the state championship track meet. One white girl and one Black girl are standing on the first-place platform. They tied for first in the high jump. One is a transgender person and the other is a Black person.

Ab Hernandez, at 16 years of age, is known in sports circles around the world because the “two-gender” president of the Divided States of America is trying to keep her from participating in female athletics.

There is no longer any doubt that at least 10% of the population is homosexual. The bigoted and ignorant Trumusklicans think there are only two genders: male and female. Genetic experts have recognized 74 genders with possibly more to come. This means that the Divided States of America is blessed with at least 26.4 million members of the LBGTQUIA+ community and an estimated 1.6 million transgender persons.

Ken Sims of Moorhead (and Catholicism) writes about how same-sex relationships and abortion contribute to the breakdown of family and traditional marriage. Ken, social science research shows that same-sex couples raise very happy and healthy kids. Google the subject. Not a single word is written about the members of the LBGTQUIA+ community who live in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Your church says those people are “intrinsically disordered.” They might be your neighbors and fellow parishioners. The Catholic bishops of Germany have decided that gays are not “disordered,” and have decided to form a Catholic system that welcomes gays. Because of churches refusing to live in the 21st century, people are becoming more de-churched and de-Christianized.

P.S. As for the breakup of the Trump-Musk bromance, why not settle it with an old-fashioned American duel with bump stock AR-15s armed with 100-round drums at eight paces? Maybe the president of the National Rifle Association and Attorney General Pam Bondi would act as seconds for the duel with America’s favorite rifle. Do the world a favor.