The late terrorist Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) was famous for saying one thing to American media and the opposite to Palestinian audiences.
.. To U.S. presidents and chief diplomatic correspondents he would profess his desire for peace and for a two-state solution, while to Arabs and Muslims he would impugn Jews, hint at Israel’s abolition, and incite and pay for anti-Semitic violence.
.. By the time of Arafat’s death, it was clear that any practical improvement in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship would have to bypass the Palestinian autocrat. He just couldn’t be trusted.
.. Schumer is so practiced at saying one thing to Democratic elites and another to the Democratic base that it is easy to fall for his charade.
.. a judge who was approved to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals with Democratic support — including Schumer’s — and whose fans include President Obama’s former solicitor general and legal scholar Cass Sunstein is somehow a jurisprudential freak who should be prevented from joining the Supreme Court by extraordinary means.
.. But what is Schumer telling his caucus behind closed doors?
.. Especially if the Democrats are aware that McConnell probably has the votes to go nuclear, which would not only leave them with Gorsuch on the Court but also free Trump to nominate Bill Pryor or Mike Lee or Kid Rock the next time around? Having the nomination squeak through would allow Schumer to have it both ways: animating his base with a meaningless pose while preserving his leverage. There’s a reason he smirks so much.
.. This is the self-proclaimed “guardian of Israel” who said he opposed the Iran deal — but then did absolutely nothing to stop it.
.. leading the opposition to the Iran deal wasn’t in his self-interest. Taking a stand against President Obama would have sunk his chances for career advancement. Besides, he must have thought, the deal was going to happen anyway.
.. Ellison is on the far left of the Democratic party, has a history with the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, and supports Bernie Sanders in his war against the Wall Street bankers that Schumer represents
What was Schumer doing? Here’s what he was doing: He knew Ellison had no chance, that the White House would oppose Ellison, that the opposition research would bring Ellison down, but he supported Ellison anyway just to shore up his left flank. He was telling the base he was with them, while telegraphing to the Democratic elites alarmed at Ellison’s rise that he was with them too.
The Strange Persistence of Guilt
American life has secularized and grand political ideologies have fallen away, but moral conflict has only grown. In fact, it’s the people who go to church least — like the members of the alt-right — who seem the most fervent moral crusaders.
.. Whatever donation I make to a charitable organization, it can never be as much as I could have given. I can never diminish my carbon footprint enough, or give to the poor enough. … Colonialism, slavery, structural poverty, water pollution, deforestation — there’s an endless list of items for which you and I can take the rap.”
.. McClay is describing a world in which we’re still driven by an inextinguishable need to feel morally justified.
.. people have a sense of guilt and sin, but no longer a sense that they live in a loving universe marked by divine mercy, grace and forgiveness. There is sin but no formula for redemption.
.. The only reliable way to feel morally justified in that culture is to assume the role of victim. As McClay puts it, “Claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one’s sense of fundamental moral innocence.”
.. We see events through the lens of moral Marxism, as a class or ethnic struggle between the evil oppressor and the supposedly innocent oppressed. The moral narrative of colonialism is applied to every situation. The concept of inherited sin is back in common currency, only these days we call it “privilege.”
.. the Middle East, the Israelis and the Palestinians compete for the victimhood narrative.
.. Sin is a stain, a weight and a debt. But at least religions offer people a path from self-reflection and confession to atonement and absolution. Mainstream culture has no clear path upward from guilt, either for individuals or groups. So you get a buildup of scapegoating, shaming and Manichaean condemnation. “This is surely a moral crisis in the making,”
.. I notice some schools and prisons have restorative justice programs to welcome offenders back into the community. They tend to be more substantive than the cheap grace of instant forgiveness. I wonder if the wider society needs procedures like that, so the private guilt everybody feels isn’t transmuted into a public state of perpetual moral war.