Current Events: Trump's Antisemitic Dinner, and Biden's Embrace of America's Enemies

 

   A few comments on current events: 

   There are a bunch of anti-semitic controversies being reported on, lately. A NY Nets basketball player named Kyrie Irving shared a link to an Amazon.com post of an "antisemitic documentary". He says that he was not promoting the documentary by tweeting a link to it, which falls flat in the face of social media reality. If you share something controversial, if you don't openly condemn it, you are promoting it. (Full disclosure: over my almost 20 years blogging, I have posted content that I disagree with, and not proclaimed my opposition.) He eventually was forced to apologize, after being suspended from the team for several games. That's how public life works, but I have a question: Is nobody questioning why Amazon is selling this "antisemitic" documentary? It's still up there.

   Of course, Kanye West had to "one up" the story. Before defending Irving, he had gone on his own crazy antisemitic rant, which cost him a bunch of lucrative sponsorships. Then, in a bizzarre twist, he attended a dinner party thrown by Pres. Trump, and brought along with some young man named Nick Fuentes. I have to be honest, I never heard of this guy, just as Trump claims. However, if I was a former president, with a huge staff to vet people I invite to dinner, I would not have that excuse. Further, this guy Fuentes is 24 years old, which makes his political experience extremely brief, and his knowledge of history even more suspect. I'm a "free speech" proponent, so I say let them all spout their antisemitic BS and conspiracies. I don't see it as an equivalent to any historical pogrom or persecution of Jews, but it's not something I am comfortable seeing.

   My job, as a free individual, is to condemn these idiots, as well as refute their incoherent arguments. First of all, Pres. Trump, while he supported Israel in foreign policy as president, has lost all credibility as a supporter of Jewish Americans. I won't even deign to respond to a basketball player, a pop star, and some 24 year old kid who I never heard of before last month, other than to say they are misguided. I will say unequiviocally that claiming "Jews" control the world, or hollywood, or anything in general is way off base. Jews are people, just like everyone else. They are not a monolithic block, that act with one mind, contrary to what some people think. It's almost funny, because those are the same mistakes that people make about "minorities," in general, and the assumptions those people make about the "majority" of people, in America. If Jews and whites run Amazon, why is that documentary still available there?

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   Russia is obviously losing the war against Ukraine, and China is watching, as it decides about invading Taiwan. Iran is doing its best to help both of them, and itself. The Biden administration seems intent on kissing both China and Iran's asses, as it is forced to support Ukraine, by public demand. There is supposedly a large faction of Republicans that oppose supporting Ukraine. I'm not sure of that, but I know that Tucker Carlson opposes supporting Ukraine, and he can sway some part of the GOP base. Again, I won't say that Tucker is "a Russian agent," or any such nonsense. I just disagree with his assessment of Ukraine.

   Maybe it's because of my age, but my view of global geopolitics is that there has always been a global struggle between nations that are politically free versus authoritarian nations. I don't think that most younger Americans, or citizens of other Western nations realize what a huge thing it was, when the USSR collapsed. One would think that Germans, who were on the front lines of it, and actually reunified their nation, would be more cognizant of the threat that Russia still posed, but they didn't. As I remember, we all thought that Russia was going to become a free, democratic nation. Along came Putin, who thought that the demise of the USSR was the greatest tragedy in history.

   The US signed on to a treaty, promising to protect Ukrainian sovereignity, in return for them sending their nuclear weapons back to Russia. Now, Russia is threatening to use nukes in Ukraine, and who is talking about the treaty? Nobody. It's not just the Biden admin, either. Russia's previous incursions in Ukraine (2014) went unanswered, though they didn't go further while Donald Trump was president. The future is scary, but inevitable. There are several possible outcomes, and I can't guess which is most likely, but I'll try.

   Ukraine is destroying Russia, and drawing military resources from Iran, North Korea, and China, in return for Russian oil. I think Putin's nuclear threats are empty, now, because he has rattled that sabre a few too many times. At this point, I doubt his military will follow a nuclear strike order. The demoralization of the military is too apparent, and Putin's power is hanging on by a tenuous thread. This should not lead to Western overconfidence, though, because the arsenal of drones and other weapons that his allies are providing are inflicting real damage to Ukraine.

   It's also not clear that China has committed any significant weapons to Putin's war effort. They definitely still have designs on Taiwan, and sooner, rather than later. If Western analysts think that Putin's failure in Ukraine is dissuading China from attacking Taiwan, they are mistaken. China has never been a true ally to Russia, except in the eyes of "anti-Commies," which I can admit to being. I also watched the history of the US playing the two biggest Communist powers off of each other, all the while suspecting that they hated us more than each other. When Pres. Xi said their friendship "knew no limits," it sounded as if my worst fears were confirmed. However, I'm also very familiar with Communist propaganda, and that was what that was.

   China has it's own domestic problems, as do Russia and Iran. The global economy is slowing down, and nobody has spare money to throw around waging war. The US still has the strongest global GDP, but the Biden administration policies are handicapping us as much as the CCP's lockdowns and political control of business are killing their economy. It just boggles the mind that such a simple thing as allowing domestic energy production could flip the whole economic equation, but the Biden people prefer to make deals with Iran and Venezuela. I haven't seen a worse foreign and economic policy since the 1970's, with the oil embargo under Pres. Carter.

   Interestingly enough, that was over our support for Israel, and now, the Arab nations that were involved are now aligned with Israel, against Iran. The nation that is cutting off oil supplies is the US, under President Biden. I know Pres. Trump had dinner with some antisemites, but he's a private citizen, now. Pres. Biden is actively courting Israel's enemies, who are openly antisemitic, and relieveng sanctions on them for false promises of oil production that US suppliers are being banned from providing. Disgraceful.