Remember when newspapers tended to root for the plucky underdog? Just like the paperboy who tossed the paper right on your porch from his bicycle, or the milkman who brought cow squeezings right to the front porch, it's a thing of the past, one with the dodo, dial telephones and Congressionally-declared wars:
Hillary Clinton Made History, but Bernie Sanders Stubbornly Ignored It
That's how the headline reads. No matter which of them held the most delegate votes, history would have been made; the closest the United States has ever had to a Jewish Presidential candidate until this election was Barry Goldwater. This also ignores the reality of party primaries: Candidates can win 'em and still not get the nod at the convention. When you vote in a primary, you're only offering guidance to that party's convention delegates from your state; they can change their minds and their votes.
(Read the article if you must; it's a pretty standard example of what passes for political reporting at the nation's newspaper-of-record and they spelled most of the words correctly. Even C students have to work somewhere, after all.)
Once upon a time, there were a series of classes taught in High School lumped under the heading of "Civics," in which such matters were explained. It appears this is no longer the case; voters don't grasp what primaries are, Presidential candidates don't understand the powers and limitations of the office they're running for, and the New York Times has forgotten that nominating conventions are not simple confirmation celebrations.
--Oh, look, here comes Caesar, on triumphal parade in all his finery....
Bemoan the candidates all you like. There's plenty to weep over in the "choices" offered for high office in this election season. That doesn't worry me nearly so much as the loss of a grasp of the functioning of the actual system, now buried under the weight of dammed-fool notions that overwhelm both the Constitutionally-defined and painfully-evolved structure and traditions of American government and politics, replacing it with a kind of moronic elected monarchy in which Presidents are the source of all virtue or all evil and rule by fiat, a nitwit's paradise in which the deliberations of a legislative body are dismissed as "obstructionism" and the composition of the highest court in the land is just another partisan football.
Horrific candidates are just a symptom. The disease is an ignorant, short-sighted, malleable electorate, fed on the most inane pap by way of news and hungry for cheap thrills.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
8 comments:
Just a comment.
Goldwater's father was a Jew, but his mother was Episcopalian.
He identified with his mother, but declined to bring religion into politics.
gfa
"Closest," I wrote. Like in horsehoes and hand grenades and with the same implication as the old saw the refers to them. I figured any reader who didn't know Senator Goldwater's family history could look it up. Along, perhaps, with the word "matrilineal."
Guffaw, in the Jewish faith, the religion is passed from the mother to the children. A woman can convert, and her children are automatically considered Jewish forever. A man's children are the faith of the birth mother. And "once a Jew, is always a Jew" is how Jews see the issue.
Thusly, according to Judaism, he is Jewish. Just like the President is "black" because he is a mulatto. And someone who converts from Islam is still considered Islamic by other Islams.
That second line should say "A woman can covert to Judaism..." Sorry.
Yes, and Jews used to deal with traitors in their midst pretty succinctly.
"He's dead to me."
Despite all the media propaganda, Ms. Clinton is not the first woman to run for president by 144 years. Look up Victoria Woodhull. So, first woman to run for president in this century?
Thank you, Jay Dee! :)
Andrew, you seem to have misunderstood something. Goldwater's father was Jewish (non-practicing, IIRC), his mother was Christian, and he was not raised as a Jew. By Jewish law, he wasn't Jewish.
OTOH, to antisemites, who were plentiful in the US when he was a young man, he was a Jew with a stereotypically Jewish last name. (Nazi law would have classified him as a 1st-degree Mischling - meaning that if he'd been German, they'd check for powerful associates or special usefulness to Das Reich before sending him to the extermination camps.)
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