Thursday, December 29, 2016

A Very Not Good Positiion

That's what the incoming POTUS would call the particular branch of Shit's Creek that we are, collectively, up.  This should be news to no one, but here's a pattern emerging:

Take Israel.  The news today was all Sec. Kerry's hand-wringing about Israel's undermining the sacred two-state -er- distant goal.  Meanwhile Netanyahu is all p-o'd  about the UN calling its new illegal settlements, well, illegal settlements.  Naturally the Donald has no idea what he is on about and very little to say about it, but he says it very aggressively and proudly.  Would that people with something to say would say it so proudly, but Xmas is over.  The surprise act that popped up out of the floor in this circus was an idea so preposterous in American politics that the only one to mention it is Kerry, who raises the unmentionable subject out here in front of god and everybody only out of wit's-end frustration with Netanyahu and the Orange One and to illustrate the disastrous path they are on.  Dear god, he is saying, if you undermine the holy two-state solution that we dangle in front of war-weary Jews and Arabs like a half-eaten dry carrot (2SS), you can only be left with Door Number One, a single (tyrannical) Jewish state or Door Number Two - horrors! - a multiethnic, democratic state in the Area Formerly Known As Palestine (AFKAP).  Think, ferchrissakes!  Think about what you are doing!

What no one says, not Kerry, not Netanyahu, and of course not the Willfully Clueless Incoming (WCI), is that the Obama Admin blocked a similar resolution a few years back, and the illegal racist Israeli incursions into AFKAP, euphemized as "settlements," have been fruitful and multiplied like rabbits during his eight.  Kerry is only frustrated because the support-Israel-only-99% club of which he is a leader is losing traction to the less nuanced killers in the WCI party.  (Cynics might say the real fear is that the brasher position threatens to expose the entire charade.)  The outgoing Sickretary is still 49% away from that crazy lefty idea of a multiethnic democratic state behind Door Number Two (Sheesh!  Who would want that?) and only willing to vent because he is outgoing. 

And just think: all this bowel-loosening fury and the US didn't even vote for the plain statement, true on its face and lacking any teeth whatsoever, condemning actions described in international law as illegal for almost seventy years - when any other country flaunting international law to the extent that Israel (and the US) habitually flaunt it would be labelled "rogue states."

The sophomoric mistake would be to assume that because Netanyahu and the WCI are rolling up their pant legs and dancing on the holy 2SS, they are closer to the position of rational human beings than the better-sounding sociopaths we have been used to.  Sorry, no cookie.  Moving away from the violent expropriation of the holy 2SS just does not equal moving towards a multiethnic democratic state if your whole thought in your whole little orange head is that, yeah, Door Number One sounds just fine.*

I draw one analogy (mercifully, for my friends who say there are too many).  It is this: health care.  What we need is single-payer, or, better, a national health care system.  The much-maligned/touted Obamacare (aka Romneycare) is neither.  But the WCI's dismembering of the ACA brings us no closer to rational, humane solutions.  The explicit goal of these snake oil salesmen is to relieve the better-off of the burden of helping anyone else and leave four-fifths of us to scrap over the scraps, Wild-West-style.  This much is clear.  I fear the WCI attacks on the rest of the Clintonite sacred cows (trade, etc.) will be similar.  (OK, that's another analogy; so sue me.)


*As long as the US can control it, or rather employ it as a very effective client state in an important strategic, oil-rich region.

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