So Annoying
Poor Tom Friedman; he is but a human echo chamber
Once a rumble starts in the Left, you know, sooner or later, our Tommy will amplify it.
I hate to write about this, but I have actually been to this play before and it is really disturbing.
I was in Israel interviewing Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin just before he was assassinated in 1995. We had a beer in his office. He needed one. I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.
And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish settler as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did.
Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.
What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.
Gee Tom, without defending the facebook poll, which is indefensible, let me pose another question. What kind of madness is it to refer to Bush-Hitler for eight years? Or to make a feature length film about the assassination of Bush? I’ll stop here because, like an alcoholic I know that if I continue down this road, there’s no stopping me. But our readers get the drift, even if the NY Times crowd pretends to be oblivious. They are not stupid; it’s all an act.
I agree with one thing that he wrote:
Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work.
The “we” was taken care of the way an avalanche forms, slowly at first (the Bork hearings in the ’80s) and then faster (Clinton hatred) and faster (Bush hatred). I would argue that Obama hatred is milder than Bush hatred, but I live in Massachusetts and may not be getting a good reading. We now have a split in our society to rival and possibly surpass the Vietnam era. This is not particularly the fault of Rush or that nutjob on the Left whose name I always suppress… on MSNBC… oh yeah, Olberman. It is the result of years of screaming and lying and discounting reasonable perspectives on the other side. If Friedman had written this during the frenzy of Bush hatred, I would have respected him for it. Instead, this represents more of the same.
- Aggie
judi said,
September 30, 2009 @ 10:00 am
I agree that the “we” has had a gradual decline, but it fell off the cliff because this president is anti-american. I never liked Bill Clinton. Many never liked George Bush. We disagreed on what was best for America. But now we are not on different philosophical sides with our president on what is good for America, our difference is in wanting what is good for America.
Marcus said,
September 30, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
the splits that were in our country at the beginning make today look like a pillow fight. rebellions, dueling, nastiest election in our history, half the country not wanting to fight the british in 1812. and yet here we are. through a civil war that ravaged half the country. yet here we are. the country began putting itself back together, and we’re still continuing that work (proof that civil war is never acceptable).
through regions that have little in common with one another other than being “an american” we’ve persevered and we’re here. when was this mythical time that america was full of amiable people having coffee-house discussions on policy? we caned one another, shot and stabbed, and developed the good ol’ american f*ck you.
this is us. we take part in this. one thing americans have always been able to do well is bitch.
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
September 30, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
You’re probably right. I remember an era that was calmer though - the 50’s, early ’60’s, and 80’s. Parts of the Clinton era was also calmer. This is nasty, but you’re probably right that we’ve always been nasty.
- Aggie
Marcus said,
September 30, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
one of my history professors once asked, “what age do we live in?” some answerd, “modern” (whatever that means), others answered, “postmodern” (which is nonsensical). after making these people justly aware of their shortcomings, he said something that made a lot of sense. it’s one of the few things a professor ever said that i agreed with.
“either,” he said, “we are approaching the end of an age, or, as is my belief, we are in transition between ages.”
people, i think (me now, not the professor) have a nasty habit of micro-dividing the history in which they are living. modern, postmodern, etc. these are all just words the junk historian (read: political scientist) uses to make himself feel he is among the rank of historians.
the idea of being between ages fits with numerous fringe ideas that have been proven right over the past 20 yrs. among them hegemonic transition theory and clash of civilizations, both of which predict a long, bloody transition into a new age. like how the middle ages were a transition from rome to the rennaisance.
thus the nastiness. the past 100 years have been frought with passion and ideas and the battling of ideologies. and now capitalism, communism, islamofanaticism, and other -isms have met for the great defining battle. couldn’t ask for a better time to be alive.
zee said,
September 30, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
Maybe part of the problem is incompetent lying journalists like Friedman demonizing conservatives. His analogy to the Rabin assasination is garbage.
It wasn’t “extreme right-wing settlers” trying to delegitimize Rabin, it was mainstream opinion that was opposed to him. He had to openly bribe two Knesset members to pass the accords by one vote.
His assassin wasn’t a “settler”, he lived in within the Green Line.
The pictures of Rabin in a SS uniform werre created by a government undercover agent (Aishai Raviv) who’s job was to villify the goverment’s opponents. Sort of like an Israeli Donald Segretti.
Friedman should be writing infomercials.
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
October 1, 2009 @ 7:29 am
That’s interesting, Zee. I didn’t know any of it and I imagine that almost no one in the US did.
Thanks for taking the time to fill us in.
- Aggie