Will Trump Make America Macho Again? Defy the courts? Take Gaza? Wear Kanye's swastika shirt? Dr Seuss. Michael Moore. P. Beinart. T. Coates. S. Johansson. H. Cox Richardson. Films. Feminism. Books.

Newsletter #169

POLITICS

*Feeling depressed, discouraged, disgusted, disenfranchised, and defeated? Worried about becoming hopeless, powerless, and overwhelmed? Michael Moore has your back. Read him on the inevitability of Trump’s cooked goose.

* “The court decisions are coming quickly against President Donald Trump and his administration,” said the Washington Post, reviewing his legal losses. But don’t celebrate yet. Dictator Don’s contrarian streak isn’t easily squelched. To wit: He ignored some of the court orders meant to reinstate grants. He delayed enforcement of the TikTok ban passed by Congress and upheld by the Supremes. His attack on birthright citizenship flies in the face of the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedent. Watch PBS News for a crystal clear 5-minute explainer: “5 things to know about birthright citizenship.”

* Now, the question on everyone’s mind is, “What if he just refuses to comply with a judicial decree? Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, CBS News legal analyst and host of “Passing Judgment,” says as long as the Administration keeps appealing decisions, he’s within the bounds of the legal process. “But failing to adhere to a decision — that is a three-alarm fire.” To stop Presidential pyromania, judges need to roll out the hoses. The Brennan Center for Justice maintains that “Obeying Court Orders Isn’t Optional.” And explains “What Courts Can Do If the Trump Administration Defies Court Orders. As concerned citizens, our job is to support the work of the Center, and, dig deep in our pockets to help fund ACLU lawsuits.

* Some people who fell for Trump’s hype, hyperbole, and hypocrisy are feeling swindled as he savages federal programs that are dramatically affecting their lives. GOP Congressman Gabe Amo of Rhode Island said Trump “is betraying the American farmers, businesses, organizations, and universities who worked with USAID now left without the payments they are owed. . . And removing USAID amongst an Ebola outbreak in Uganda leaves the American people at risk of the disease spreading to our shores.”

*It’s tempting (not really) to feel sorry for those who believed Trump’s promise to Make America Macho Again when, in fact, most men in his political domain have been pitiably reduced to serving as his lackey, flunkey, flatterer, puppet, brown nose, and sycophant.

* I feel sorry (not really) for those who expected to ride his crude coattails to a more muscular retrograde manhood only to be emasculated by his tight grip on the ship of state (and , if you’ll forgive me, their balls).

*I feel sorry (not really) for GOP Senators and Congressmen who expected the president’s toxic, arrogant masculinity to rub off on them and redound to their benefit when, in fact, by expanding his executive powers and usurping their legislative prerogatives, he has emasculated them, exposed their impotence, and created a cadre of spineless, groveling Yes men.

*So long separation of powers. Bye-bye checks and balances. RIP U.S. Constitution.

NATIVISM, FASCISM, ANTISEMITISM

* Nearly 85 years ago, Dr. Seuss published a cartoon in NYC’s progressive daily newspaper, PM, that “satirized the isolationist ‘America First’ movement of the early 1940s” . . . its nativist underpinnings and moral absurdity.” Recasting the Big Bad Wolf as Hitler, Seuss stuck a swastika on the storybook to punctuate his point. Today, the drawing speaks volumes about DJT’s immigration “reform.” Like many of us, the cartoonist was “a little bit racist.” (Click link to hear that song from the musical, Avenue Q.) But when it came to fascism, Theodor Seuss Geisel saw the threat unvarnished.

*Speaking of swastikas, they’re getting more mainstreamed by the minute. Witness Kanye West’s ad on Super Bowl Sunday, which directed viewers to the only item for sale ($20 each) on his brand’s website — a black T-shirt with the Nazi symbol on the front. Fox strongly condemned the ad on Monday but not until Tuesday did Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, the platform that hosted Kanye’s site, pull the shop down. Finkelstein calls himself “a proud Jewish entrepreneur [and] . . .a proud Jewish community member,” adding that being Jewish “is a big part of my identity.” He also posted this blatantly self-serving quote, clearly identifying himself with “the strong man” and the “doer of deeds:”

Let’s hope Mr. Finkelstein “dares greatly” more quickly from now on.

*In a video that immediately went viral, Jewish celebs including Scarlett Johansson, Drake, Jerry Seinfeld, Mark Zuckerberg, and Stephen Spielberg, appear to be wearing T-shirts that show the outline of a hand with a raised middle finger, a Star of David on its palm, and Kanye’s name below it (with “Havah Nagilah” playing in the background. The images gave an eloquent up-yours to the Hitler-loving hiphopper, so I was bummed to learn that the photos were fakes generated by AI. Johansson, whose likeness was used without her consent, demanded that Congress pass legislation limiting uses of Artificial Intelligence: “I am a Jewish woman who has no tolerance for antisemitism or hate speech of any kind. . . [but] we must call out the misuse of AI, no matter its messaging, or we risk losing a hold on reality.”

*As long as “Letters from an American,” the daily missives posted by Heather Cox Richardson, are a few keystrokes away, none of us can claim we didn’t know or couldn’t understand the extent of the MAGA menace. The preternaturally prolific American history professor, our century’s Paul Revere, has been sounding alarms about the dangers posed by Trump’s autocratic initiatives, often rooting her analyses in the context of instructive events in our nation’s past. Her Newsletter, Substack’s most successful, boasts more than 1.3 million subscribers. I think everyone should subscribe. You can get it free, but I think you’ll want to pay 50 bucks a year in gratitude for her work, clarity, and smarts.

• ISRAEL-PALESTINE

  

  *The people I sincerely feel sorry for are Arab Americans, especially Palestinians, who fell for the mad King’s gold-plated bullshit. Somehow this white supremacist, Christian nationalist, America-First billionaire convinced them that he’d be a better friend to their relatives in Gaza and the West Bank than Biden was, or Harris would be. Nearly half of Arab American voters deserted the Democratic party for Tricky Trump, and got f**ked.

  

  *Buyers’ remorse hit them hard when the “stable genius” unveiled his plan for the U.S. to “take” the Gaza Strip, expel all its inhabitants, and replace the rubble that once was Gazans’ homes, schools, hospitals, and playgrounds ,with high-gloss Trumpian resorts, swimming pools, and gambling casinos. (Let’s make the 2026 midterms a definitive course correction, okay?)

*One of the Israeli hostages recently release by Hamas had an unexpected message for the world. Despite his 482 brutal days in captivity, many spent in isolation, Gadi Moses, 80-year-old grandfather, humanitarian, and agronomist, said he hopes to return to Gaza and help revive the territory’s agriculture. See the last slide.

*His first name means “fortunate” in Hebrew, and his surname conjures our Torah’s most celebrated leader, the Prophet,Moses, renowned for his humility, patience, and wisdom. Those traits are inherent in Gadi, suggests his niece, Efrat Machikawa: “He knew that after everything he had gone through, he could have come back completely broken—mentally twisted or changed. But his first message was: ‘Do not worry. I am alive. I am normal.’” To Gadi, normal didn’t mean vengeful, it meant ready to plant crops alongside the “enemy” and work together for a peaceful end to the conflict.

FILM

*Nominated for many prestigious awards including an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, “No Other Land,” is this year’s “critics’ favorite” and a must-see for anyone with the stomach to confront the truth about Israel’s brazen land grabs in the Occupied West Bank. The movie, made by a Palestinian-Israeli film collective, depicts the growing friendship between a Palestinian activist who spent years filming the IDF’s repeated destruction of his small village, and an Israeli journalist tormented by his government’s heartless displacement of another people. The pairs’ amateur videos capture Israeli bulldozers totally leveling modest houses thus consigning entire families to live in caves; an elementary school being crushed as easily as if it were a cardboard diorama hit by a sledgehammer; a children’s playground flattened; brusque Israeli soldiers fouling a well, the community’s only source of water and stealing a generator and all of a man’s tools. The film shows Israeli officers committing these heinous acts with gusto, openly and shamelessly, while the two young friends, powerless to intervene, can only turn on their phones and keep filming.

*As they sit together in the gathering dusk smoking cigarettes, talking, and weeping with despair, we sit in a darkened theater and absorb their dread of a future of endless violence, sorrow, and loss. And we wonder how our government can let Israel get away with this behavior and why we haven’t stopped it. Click here for where to watch “No Other Land” in theaters.

*Catherine Gund’s “Paint Me A Road Out Of Here,” an engaging, often galvanizing documentary that won a rave review from the NYT, explores themes that are very much up my political alley: feminist art, sexism, racism and their connection to mass incarceration. It follows the efforts by the artist Faith Ringgold and others to find a marvelous mural of hers that mysteriously vanished from its wall after she donated it to the women’s jail on Riker’s Island. The film is currently playing in Manhattan at Film Forum, and some showings include a post-screening talk back with its creators. Add your name to the Watchlist to be notified about future streaming options.

*Another Oscar nominee, “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” a delightful 34-minute documentary about Orin O'Brien, the first woman to become a full-time member of the New York Philharmonic is well worth your time. Hired in 1966 (by Maestro Leonard Bernstein, O’Brien, who played the double bass in the orchestra for 55 years, says in the film that she never wanted to be a soloist, always eschewed the spotlight, relished being a supporting musician, and took pleasure in the addition of more and more women join the orchestra. On that last point, me, too. Sometimes, during a difficult to love 12-tone piece, I amuse myself by counting the women on stage and they often outnumber the men. Watch the doc on Netflix.

BOOKS

*Peter Beinart’s short but emotionally shattering volume, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, (which is #10 on next Sunday’s NYT Bestseller List), has mostly fine reviews while provoking strong negative reactions from the right —no surprise since Beinart has been branded radioactive by mainstream “pro-Israel” groups, and is banned from speaking by many synagogues — but also from the radical left, corners of which consider him irremediably, unforgivably Israel-centered. I know Peter to be a brilliant thinker, a person of conscience, a seriously observant Jew, and a relentless seeker of justice. He began his political odyssey as a liberal Zionist and for well over a decade has been struggling to reconcile his most profound Jewish beliefs and values with the Jewish State’s unconscionable treatment of the Palestinians. Ultimately finding the two contradictions unreconcilable, he opted for his Jewish values and evolved into an outspoken critic of the Zionist enterprise. I haven’t given up my liberal Zionism, but I have infinite respect for Peter’s process — his willingness to wrestle publicly with “inconvenient truths,” and let his principles win the struggle, even if that choice continues to exact a painful price: his ostracism from most of the community he loves.

*The other week, my 28-year-old grandson, Ethan, a 2-L student at Columbia Law School, and I schlepped to Brooklyn to attend a sold-out event sponsored by Jewish Currents magazine — a colloquy between Peter Beinart and Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself a controversial figure because of his latest book, The Message. Both Ethan and I were were mesmerized by their nuanced discussion of complex issues that, to us, are as personal as they are political. Watch recording here. Buy Peter’s book here; Ta-Nehisi’s book here.

MUSIC

*I don’t know who the woman is but her hijab indicates that she’s a Muslim. I also know little or nothing about the Quran, Islam’s bible. But Wikipedia says the religion considers musical instruments offensive to the Prophet Muhammad. From my perspective, the woman playing a horn through an opening in her face covering is an avatar for millions of people who’ve chosen to fulfill many dictates of their faith while rejecting laws and customs that repress or prohibit artistic expression.

FEMINISM (ANIMAL AND HUMAN)

* “So how’s your day going?” is the title of an video that shows cars backed up on a Connecticut road as far as the eye can see, while in the foreground, a mama bear tries to coral four tiny cubs who keep scattering across the pavement. Amusing as the scene may be, multiple news reports made the connection between the bear’s lot and the daily frustrations of human moms overwhelmed by the challenge of caring for multiple children with no help. Which is not a laughing matter.

*Nike’s electrifying Super Bowl ad had the Grammy-winning rapper-singer-songwriter, Doechii, reciting a string of soul-crushing “You can’t” messages echoing those that, for centuries, squelched women’s athletic aspirations. Superimposed over her narrative were energy-charged videos of top ranked female sports stars doing everything that phys. ed teachers, hysiologists, psychologists, biologists, coaches, sportswriters, and everyday naysayers, used to say women couldn’t or shouldn’t. As we new forms of misogyny creep across the land, we need to keep the door wide open to every athlete who wants nothing more than to be allowed to train, compete, and win.