Reading George Fox

An actually modest proposal

By Bruce Steinberg 2025-07-12 Politics

Blame the British!

The origin of the fighting in Israel-Palestine is the fault of fucking British Imperialistism exploiting Socialist Zionism to maintain control of the Middle East before packing it up and leaving chaos in their wake.

Same deal as the Partition. Same deal as Iraq. Same deal as the Troubles.

Revisionist and Religious Zionist definititely picked up the torch. But Socialist/Liberal Zionism is a very complicated subject (speaking as an Anti-Zionist Jew who attended Hebrew school—there was a ton of “Being Jewish Means Supporting Israel” messaging while studying for my bar mitzvah. I read Said when I was 18 and I realized all the lies. But renouncing part of your identity is hard for anyone and I empathize with Liberal Jewish Zionists who find it difficult).

The big difference between the Partition and 1948 is that a bunch of surrounding dictatorships didn’t invade India-Pakistan. I can understand how that would be a pretty traumatizing formational experience for the founding generation and make prosecuting all the Zionist terrorists and war criminals difficult.

That doesn’t make it right but when terrorists can get away with killing refugees from the Shoah in 1943, how likely is it that a new government is going to be able to move against them in 1949? Bringing charges doesn’t bring justice if you are ousted by a popular coup—it just puts the most radical nationalists in charge.1

So, the current government of Israel is commiting genocide. But Netenyahu and co are not all of Israel any more than Trump and co are all of the United States.

Haaretz has published IDF Soldier’s accounts of war crimes. Our mainstream press’s idea that talking about genocide is controversial is a sign if how far Christian Zionists have pushed the Overton window. Unless you subscribe to the Protocol’s of the Elder’s of Zion, I think it’s obvious that Presidents of The United States have far more influence on the discourse than AIPAC or J Street do.

After all, by the logic of both Trump and the Biden administrations, Haaretz is more than willing to publish antisemitic propaganda by Israeli Jews! It’s downright insane that we are actually have an argument around it in this country.

A free and democratic Israel-Palestine two-state resolution a la Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland isn’t an unprecedented solution.

Just dust off the Good Friday accords, bring in the Brits to pay reparations and reconstruction costs, and get the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to gang up on a common enemy.

It would be a nightmare for the negotiators and probably take years, but it worked to end the Troubles. Nothing like getting a bunch of Semites together to complain about WASPs to make the smaller distinctions between us seem less important.

  1. This may be controversial, but, if two states had been established in 1948, I think it’s perfectly plausible that the Palestinian state ends up an analogue of Pakistan and there is communal violence against Jews. Palestinians aren’t saints and expecting them to act virtuously in the misdst of a chaotic war isn’t realistic. (This in no way excuses Zionist war crimes any more than Japanese war crimes in China exused American war crimes during WWII). ↩

Thoughts on Mamdani & New York State Politics

By Bruce Steinberg 2025-07-09 Miscellaneous

I wrote the following as a comment on Lawyers, Guns, & Money the other day but it got flagged as spam because Disqus doesn’t like VPNs:

It’s actually more likely that Mamdani will be the next Laguardia. The smart money is assuming he will win.
  And the local (as opposed to state) power brokers are also bending the knee.
  Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn is a literal crook (she’s embezzled party funds) and has been fighting off the progressive block’s attempt to remove her for years. But she’s also a survivor and she ditched Adams for Mamdani shortly after he won the primary.
  It’s the state level Dems in Congress who are freaking out and they are notoriously bad at winning (Pelosi called them out for losing the House in 2022). They are attempting to use Westchester & Long Island talking points in the five boroughs which is only going to consolidate local Dem voters to vote party line in an anti-Trump election.
  Mamdani ended up beating Cuomo by 12 points, which is why you have David Patterson (a has been) trying to get two of Adams, Cuomo, & Walden to drop out. Given the egos involved, it just isn’t going to happen.
  The combo of Mamdani & Lander (they are effectively running as a ticket as it’s an open secret that Mamdani is going to bring Lander on as a Deputy Mayor) is incredibly powerful within the city. Lander is a progressive Jew who will reassure all the liberal zionists to vote Mamdani as long as he sticks to sewer socialism1. The combo of white liberals and voters of color is by far the majority of votes in NYC. There are just not enough votes in Staten Island, Southern Brooklyn, and Far Queens to outweigh Manhattan, Central & North Brooklyn, immigrant Queens, and most of the Bronx. Even if older black voters and Hasidim turn out for Adams it won’t be enough. He’s been governing to the right ever since Trump dropped the corruption charges and everyone hates him.   All the Northern Brooklyn progressives beat their challengers and will remain on the council. Adrienne Adams term limited out so there will be a solid progressive caucus within a Democratic supermajority electing a new Speaker (out of 52 council members, five are Republicans).   The State Senate Majority Leader endorsed Mamdani & even Hochul is making cooperative noises. (Which is amazing given that her instincts are to piss off every interest group within the Democratic Party and her own lieutenant governor has already announced that he will primary her).   Gillibrand had to apologize after her racist rant on WNYC because her staff isn’t dumb and AOC is polling ahead of Schumer. Pissing off the largest pool of Democratic voters in the state is not a good way to win a statewide race even if she’s got five more years.   Bloomberg was the last non-dem mayor and the city has only moved to the left since then. It’s no longer 2008 and the Democratic Primary is functionally the general election. Zohran is going to win the general going away, staff the administration with a ton of strong local progressives with ties to Brad, and have a friendly council.   De Blasio got a lot done in his first term despite Cuomo being governor and the cops hating him. Zohran & Brad will be facing a weak governor worried about winning her own primary and a friendly legislature. Brad & the progressives on the council have legislation ready to go.   There’s a very good chance that NYC becomes a beacon of left-liberalism in a dark time.   Which means the national Dems are going to do everything they can to ignore it/make themselves look like idiots. And, if we still have elections in eight years when Mamdani terms out, he’ll likely primary someone like Dan Goldman and have a good shot at winning if he leaves as a popular mayor.

After mulling it some more around the back of my mind, there’s some additional context I’d like to add for folks not from New York: Every Democrat in Albany hates Cuomo’s guts. He personally kept control of the State Senate in Republican hands for years and the rest of the party had to primary the IDC to create the state trifecta against Cuomo’s wishes (he preferred having a Republican controlled Senate because it increased his leverage over the legislature as a whole).

Tish James’s investigation forced him to resign in 2021 and, if he regained power, he would be a threat to Hochul because he would have almost certainly entered the primary in 2030 and, given that he is the one that made her lieutenant governor in the first place, would have a plausible “Return the Throne” argument upstate.

Cuomo got the union endorsements because they were scared he would win and everyone remember how vengeful he was. Now that Zohran blew him out that fear is gone. No sane state Democrat wants to touch a Trump-endorsed Adams with a ten foot pole and I don’t think anyone in power cares enough to throw their weight behind Walden on the off chance he someone managed to squeak through when the downside risk is pissing off the next AOC.

There will be a lot of hot air expended and a bunch of billionaires will light some money on fire like Bloomberg did in the 2020 Presidential Primary. Then what happens in New York City—the Democratic nominee easily winning the general election—will happen

  1. Also, if you read what Mamdani actually said 2 it’s not particularly controversial among liberal Jews. He has condemned both Hamas & their attack on October 7 and the genocide that even some Jewish Israelis are willing to acknowledge. (It says a lot that Haaretz is willing to publish editorials calling out the genocide while no mainstream paper in the United States will).

    Moreover, most of the liberal Zionists in New York City are the descendants of the socialist & communist Jews who voted for Eugene Debs in 1920. Zohran himself practically reads as Jewish—immigrated to the city as a young kid, studied hard, got into Bronx Science for high school, then off to a small liberal arts college before returning to the city. ↩
  2. “To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” he said. “And I think what’s difficult also is that the very word is has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic. It’s a word that means struggle.” ↩

My Current Stance on Israel

By Bruce Steinberg 2023-07-16 Politics

2025-07

My thinking has evolved a lot over the past six years and I don’t think anyone in Israel-Palestine wants a single state solution. Which means the Good Friday Accords is probably the best model. Two states with open borders and everyone is free to identify themselves as Israeli, Palestinian, or both.1

2019-07

One state with full citizenship for all. Right of Return.2 Significant reparations. A Conciliation Committee.

A South Africa+ plan basically.

  1. Moreover, like the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the whole situation started with British Imperialism attempting to use ethnic tensions to remain in power (functionally they used Socialist Zionism the same way they used tensions between Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias in Iraq. Revisionist—aka fascist—Zionism is a whole other ball of wax). And then, after WWII, they just gave up and went home leading to disaster not so different than the Partition.

    And, thinking along these lines, I believe one way to restart the peace process (after deposing Netanyahu and the other fascists from power) would be to add the UK as a third party who will be responsible for funding reparations and the rebuilding of Palestine. Not only will that make it easier for the Israeli government to make the necessary & just concessions but there’s nothing that brings two people together like a common opponent. If nothing else, Israeli Jews and Palestinians should be able to agree that the British royally fucked up in 1947/48. ↩
  2. Whether that means actually turning the land back over versus some other form of reparations I’m uncertain of. Should tearing up the communities that have been built on stolen land be the response to the crime of tearing up the communities that were there before the Nakba… ↩

American Parties & Foreign Policy

By Bruce Steinberg 2023-07-16 Politics

I’m deliberately avoiding any more arguments in this post to present the most conservative argument that the Republican Party has been a mess on the foreign policy front.

I had a conversation today about political polarization in our country. My friend was on the “both sides” spectrum, which I think overstates how much the Democrats have contributed to it. I’m going to leave aside the domestic side of the debate and focus on which party has had a better foreign policy. My friend argued that the Democrats were terrible, listing Kennedy, LBJ, and Carter, while contrasting them to Bush I’s multilateralism (which I think boils down to the Gulf War). Given the immense change that was the end of the Cold War, I don’t know if one can actually make a fair comparison without a lot of background research. Also, there’s the question of: “Does the Gulf War happen if the Reagan administration doesn’t arm Iraq during its war with Iran?” It seems a bit off to credit Bush for positive foreign policy if he helped create the underlying crisis in the first place.1

Of course, the bigger argument is how bad a catastrophe was Iraq Part Duex. I’d argue it was at least as big of a disaster as Vietnam. Probably worse given the chaotic fallout across the Middle East over the past decade plus. My friend argued that it was worth it for humanitarian reasons. When I asked why Saddam and not the numerous other dictators, he replied it was because of the oil. That the real problem was W fucked up the reconstruction. Now, let’s also leave aside the morality of lying the country into a war without a just cause2 and think about it from a broader strategic perspective.

What were the downsides of going into Iraq? Well, we certainly shattered our international support much more quickly than otherwise and shifted all our money and attention away from Afghanistan. Now, Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, but if there was ever a chance to pull a Germany/Japan after WW2, it was in 2002 with the full backing of our allies and world opinion. Moreover, staying focused on Central Asia opens up a major missed opportunity—detente with Iran. Despite their years of Anti-American rhetoric3, they did put out feelers post 9/11. After all, the Taliban (a Sunni Theocracy on their eastern border) was a threat to them too. On a broader scale, Wahhabism is just about as anti-Shia as it anti-Western. They too were no friends of Saddam; that was enough common interest to at least talk.

More importantly, where did the terrorist threat actually come from? At least ideologically and monetarily—Saudi Arabia. In a pure realist sense, the last thing we should have done is rely more on them. And Iran is the Saudi’s natural enemy; it was a prime Nixon goes to China moment, balance one opponent against another. There’s even the comparison of letting down an ally (Taiwan/Israel) for our national interest. We had managed to deal with China for 30 years without them invading Taiwan, which is a much harder feat than preventing Iran from actually threatening Israel’s existence.4 Just the possibility of warmer relations with Iran would have given us leverage with the Saudis.5 Maybe pressure them to stop funding Wahhabi schools and mosques? A friendly Iran also reduces our dependence on Pakistan—the country that harbored bin Laden for years! In 2002, Iran was actually the most logically strategic ally in the Middle East—it was estranged from its Islamic neighbors by religious and strategic tensions and, pre-Axis of Evil, was probably willing to trade security guarantees for oil. A much simpler and far less risky method than invading a powder keg of a country that had no historic reason to exist other than British colonialism.6

Now there is the argument that the Ayatollah is a crazy religious nut who can’t be trusted. But is he really that much less reliable than Mao? There’s been no Great Leap Forward causing a famine that killed millions. Iran hasn’t started any wars since its revolution. Yes, it has sponsored terrorism, but that has been driven just as much by strategic reasons7 as ideological. Even its pursuit of a nuclear weapon is decidedly a realist goal. The most powerful country in the world has been vocal about regime change and listed it as one of three targets. We invaded the target without nukes (Iraq) and have not invaded the country with them (North Korea). Iran’s government has every reason in the world to create a viable deterrent.8 9

I think it’s clear going into Iraq was a major mistake on a pure strategic level: it placed a major drain on our economy, strained our alliances, and there were potentially better ways to achieve our goals. So, what if there were no hanging chads and President Gore10 was in charge on 9/11? Do we still pivot to Iraq? While it’s possible, I doubt he would have filled his administration with people who had been advocating for invading Iraq since the late ’90s. I think it’s much more likely he continues the emphasis on NATO unity from the intervention in the Balkans. While Bush I may have been a multilateralist, his son certainly was not11 and the rest of the party has abandoned that approach, while the Democrats at the very least still use multilateral rhetoric.

So, I think a plausible alternate history would be: a more stable Afghanistan;12 no sectarian civil war in Iraq->no Al’Qaeda in Iraq->no ISIL->a much different Syria->a more constrained (w/o a Shiite Iraq) and potentially more friendly Iran->less death13 and chaos in the Middle East. And the fallout from that would have led to a very different and probably more stable world.

For my generation at least, the likelihood that the Democratic Party doesn’t make that horrendously bad decision is reason enough to rate them as far better at foreign policy.14 15

  1. There’s also the question if any US President has had a good foreign policy? Probably FDR, but fighting WW2 wasn’t that hard of a decision. Before that? Washington? Most of our Presidents have been bad, immoral, or both when dealing with foreign countries. ↩
  2. I actually think the “Because oil!” argument is unfair to W’s administration. At least some of them actually believed invading Iraq would bring democracy to the Middle East. Now that belief was absurd, but some of them held it. (Other than Germany/Japan post-WW2, I don’t think any military invasion has successfully created a democracy and I don’t think you can separate that example from the beginnings of the Cold War). ↩
  3. Which was well deserved: we had assassinated their Prime Minister, installed a dictator, and backed their opponent in a war shortly after their revolution. If Iran had ended up a secular democracy, they’d still have plenty of reasons to hate our country. Imagine if Britain had assassinated George Washington after the Revolution then funded an eight year war by a confederation of Native American nations. How do you think we’d have thought about them in 1800? ↩
  4. Hezbollah does not have the capacity to invade and destroy Israel. China’s a massive country sitting right across a strait from Taiwan and has both ideological and strategic reasons to invade. Iran gains more by distracting its populace with the bloody shirt than it would waging a full scale war. And how would it get an army to Israel? Iraq under Saddam wouldn’t have let them much through and Jordan still wouldn’t. ↩
  5. And there’s no moral or ideological reason to favor the House of Saud—it’s a religiously fundamentalist absolute monarchy. While Iran is also a dictatorship, it at least has political institutions that could evolve into a democracy. Structurally at least, it looks more like England under Henry VIII than France under Louis XIV. The elected government does have some control over policy, within the limits set by the ruling religious authorities. There’s a plausible path for the Ayatollah to gradually cede power until they become the ceremonial Head of State. In Saudi Arabia, it would probably take a bloody revolution. ↩
  6. Going back to the Germany/Japan example, the idea of a German and a Japanese people went back centuries, if not millennia. “Iraq” dated from the 1920s and was created without thinking about the identities of the people that lived there. Changing governments is hard enough; creating a Nationality at the same time is probably impossible. ↩
  7. Before we did Iran the favor of removing Saddam, the only other countries where Shiites held political power were Lebanon and Syria. Of course, Iran supported the Shi’a forces in those countries. ↩
  8. And if one thinks they would use a nuke aggressively against Israel, one needs to posit that the Ayatollah is suicidal. Unless Iran manages to completely disable Israel’s arsenal, a ton of missiles are going to come right back. I doubt the current regime is valuable enough to Russia or China for them to veto a UN resolution against the first state to launch a nuclear attack since 1945. The United States instantly declares war along with most of Europe. The Sunni world would not be a fan of a Shiite state that has aggressively used nuclear weapons—at best they remain neutral. India certainly would be worried, so Iran would have to rely on Pakistan to deter any action on their part. While the two nations are close, Pakistan going against worldwide opinion seems unlikely. In short, there’s no better way to ensure regime change than to actually use a nuclear weapon. For medium-sized states, nukes are a much better deterrent than offensive weapon. ↩
  9. Which is also why it was pure madness to pull out of JCPOA. At the same time it built trust, it also preserved our leverage. Once Iran has a nuclear weapon, any military action becomes much more risky. Simply slowing them down was to our advantage. ↩
  10. Let’s leave aside the likelihood that he would have continued the Clinton administration’s focus on Al’Qaeda, which would probably have some effect on what happened. ↩
  11. You’re either with us or against us. ↩
  12. This is a pretty low bar. ↩
  13. At the very least, less American deaths ↩
  14. And, if you add the few years in, it’s inarguably that a President Clinton would not be attempting to undermine the post WW2 liberal order. My friend acknowledged that Trump was an end product of our recent history (if not simply the Republican Party’s recent history), so if Trump represents the future of the American right, the left is pretty much the only sane option on the foreign policy front. ↩
  15. In terms of my own views, I dislike both parties’ policies. A never ending, ever more abstract war is bad for our country and the world. In less than a year, there will be adults who have lived their entire lives during wartime. That’s a first in American history and a terrible sign for the future. It is no more possible to win a war against “Terror”, than it’s possible to win the one on “Drugs”. Abstract concepts don’t have a capital to occupy. ↩

Alleah Taylor Was Almost Killed (And I Am Conflicted)

By Bruce Steinberg 2021-02-14 Miscellaneous

Over at Defector, Diana Moskovitz has two recent articles about Chad Wheeler almost beating Alleah Taylor to death.

I feel really conflicted about writing this. I don’t want to excuse Wheeler’s violent assault and near homicide, nor ignore Taylor’s trauma. Domestic abuse is a huge problem in this country.

But so is abominable mental healthcare. Wheeler does not belong in jail; he belongs in a compassionate and effective psychiatric treatment facility. (Compassionate because without that effective treatment is impossible).

I suffer from severe depression and have lived at a treatment center for the past three and a half years. For all my struggles, I thank god that I don’t have bipolar disorder.

Mania really is the opposite of depression. At my worst depths I truly believe that I am the worst human being to ever live. Worst than Hitler.

People in the midst of mania believe the opposite. I have known enough of them to be pretty sure that Wheeler truly and utterly believed he was akin to Jesus Christ when he demanded Taylor kneel down before him. The sudden change from being a loving boyfriend to being a nightmare is so familiar. I’ve known people who have betrayed their spouse’s trust in the most profound ways imaginable; who have put their children in danger without a second thought; who have spent their family’s life savings over a weekend.

And all of them, once the mania had subsided, were horrified by what they had done. It’s what makes the depression part of bipolar even worst than monopolar depression. My miscalculating a tip and leaving 18% instead of 20% does not make me the world’s greatest monster, even if sometimes I am convinced it does. People in the midst of a manic attack actually do terrible things.

Depression leads to suicide attempts; mania leads you to harm those you love most.

I wish that was more widely known so Taylor would never have thought for a moment to try to help Wheeler in the midst of his mania. We live in a society that doesn’t teach people that doing so can be truly dangerous. He needed a trained medical professional who knows how to help people in a manic episode while staying safe themselves.

It also breaks my heart because it sounds like Taylor was falling in love and it doesn’t sound like she understands that Wheeler really is both the person she was falling for and someone with a disease that leads him to horrific actions. I’m not suggesting she forgive him, but I can imagine the self doubt and trauma coming from “misreading” an intimate partner. I think it is likely that there was nothing in his behavior that would have been a red flag. Though he is certainly responsible for not warning her of what he might do while manic.

Moreover, I think Wheeler’s attack has a significant difference from most violence against women. If we do someday create a world without toxic masculinity and impunity for powerful men, people Wheeler’s size1 will still be a physical threat to others when they are in the midst of mania. A person who truly believe they are God will always be capable of horrible things.

Moskovitz rightly focuses on Taylor. I just wish she had added a little more context around bipolar disorder. Because what it would have taken to make Taylor safe is different than the changes that must happen to prevent most domestic violence.

  1. I once had a roommate in a trauma ward who was a big guy. He had reoccurring dreams in which he relived his childhood abuse and that would lead him to bang his head against the wall. I saw a nurse who didn’t know how to deal with such patients wake him poorly and he took a huge swing (“at” his childhood abuser) that left a dent in the wall. If that punch had connected, the nurse would have been seriously injured. ↩

Of European Anti-Judaism & America Racism

By Bruce Steinberg 2019-07-19 Politics

One thing I’ve thought about recently is how perhaps European anti-Jewish1 prejudice is a close analogue of our anti-black racism.2 The struggles of the British Labour Party with actual anti-Jewish prejudice feels so weird from this side of the pond. An MP openly blames Jewish financiers for the slave trade and a huge swath of the party supports him. While our Democrats freak over criticisms of Israel than many American Jews also make.3

It feels a bit akin to how folks like Biden can still wax poetic about working with segregationists.4

I was also listening to a podcast discussing Marx and Bakunin, which mentioned their anti-Jewish writings. The historian made the point that to a first approximate everyone openly hated the Jews—that it was a central identity dividing line. Just as, to a first approximately, every white American was racist. And pogroms seem pretty similar to Tulsa 1921 or Colfax 1873 or the hundreds of others—often drummed up pretexts for lynchings to justify stealing their land.

Of course, the Shoah marks a big divergence. Germany actually paid reparations and has confronted their crimes to an extent unimaginable anytime soon in our country. Anti-Jewish prejudice is still around, but there hasn’t been a Southern Strategy.5

I don’t think this explains anything about the divergence between Jewish politics from other white ethnic groups. But it did make me think about my ancestors experience in a different way.6

  1. I am perhaps too woke and have stopped using anti-semitism since plenty of Muslims are semites too. ↩
  2. Not that other racisms don’t exist, but I do think the black/white dichotomy is closer to the core of our nation’s psyche. ↩
  3. Hell, the New York Times made the same point about AIPAC & wealthy Republican Jews as Representative Omar did in February. No one freaked out then—because money from American pro-Israeli Jewish groups does have a political impact. Just as American pro-IRA money had an impact on our Ireland foreign policy. The mainstream left in this country does not have a problem with anti-Jewish prejudice, but Bernie still struggles admitting solutions for the inequalities of class are separate from solutions for racism. ↩
  4. If anything, the Democratic Party, or at least the activist left, has become less tolerant of racism than Labour. In fact, it’s Momentum that are the most tolerant of anti-Jewish prejudice. Every claim of an MP saying something disgusting is interpreted as an attack on Corbyn. If Bernie campaign for a candidate who smeared Black Lives Matter as an anti-white terrorist group, there’d be hell to pay from the left side of the party. (Yes, legitimate anti-Zionism complicates this, but the MP was again linking Jews to slavery. No prominent progressive could survive use similar language criticizing any minority group). ↩
  5. Though this might be a closer comparison to how Native Americans are treated in our politics. In Eastern Europe, as in the States, the genocide was pretty effective. Perhaps unsurprising as Hitler modeled those killings after our nigh elimination of Native Americans. ↩
  6. It also makes the migration of the word “ghetto” perhaps even more appropriate. ↩

Flag Aesthetics

By Bruce Steinberg 2019-06-21 Design and Art, Politics, Sexuality and Polyamory

Also, I hate to admit it, but my first reaction on seeing the intersection flag was, “They made the flag ugly.” My friend replied that she thought it was beautiful, and she was right—the idea is beautiful. But the aesthetics? Not so much.

The problem was rolling around in my head on the subway ride home, so I took a shot at improving it:

Alternative Design for Intersection Pride Flag

It’s a quick and rough job, so the proportions of the stripes are off. But I do feel like it is an improvement. In the Philadelphia version, the flag feels unbalanced with the black and brown sitting atop the bright rainbow. By interleaving the stripes, the flag becomes more cohesive. I also think the symbolism of this version works better too—POC are within the broader LGBT community/rainbow.

All the Colors of the Rainbow

By Bruce Steinberg 2019-06-21 Design and Art, Politics, Sexuality and Polyamory
Intersection Pride Flag

I feel uncertain about the added stripes to the Pride Flag. I completely understand the initial impulse in Philly—clearly the gay community has a huge problem with racism. On the other hand, POC are not the only marginalized group in the LGBT community. Trans women made up a significant proportion of the rioters during Stonewall, yet they were quickly erased from the mainstream narrative. Less than four years after Stonewall, Sylvia Rivera had to grab the mic at a rally to shout that they would not be erased.

An artist has tried to incorporate that history into a flag, but as the article says it’s a design disaster.

Moreover, this point about the history and connotations of rainbows feels important:

[Gilbert] Baker1 described the rainbow’s universal, all-embracing resonance best: “The rainbow came from earliest recorded history as a symbol of hope. In the Book of Genesis, it appeared as proof of a covenant between God and all living creatures. It was also found in Chinese, Egyptian and Native American history.”

It may not be possible, but I wish there were a way to reclaim the flag for all. The problem of racism is very real and needs to be acknowledged and made visible. Adding the stripes is one way to do it. But some of the clarity of symbolism is lost too.

On the other hand, the white gay cis men who are up in arms about the change are clearly racist. If anything, their pushback makes me think the clarity needs to be sacrificed. They are not facing the problem so maybe it needs to be blasted in their faces.

  1. The designer of the original flag. ↩

Expanding the trope?

By Bruce Steinberg 2019-02-13 Politics

I wonder if the people calling out Congresswoman Omar would be as upset if she said that Sheldon Adelson massive donations to Trump played a large part in his decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem?

Because I don’t remember an uproar about the New York Times leading an article about the move with:

Ten days before Donald J. Trump took office, Sheldon G. Adelson went to Trump Tower for a private meeting. Afterward, Mr. Adelson, the casino billionaire and Republican donor, called an old friend, Morton A. Klein, to report that Mr. Trump told him that moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would be a major priority.

While the article also acknowledges the influence of evangelicals, it doesn’t mention them until the fifth paragraph and it clearly stresses Adelson’s money (and AIPAC) as the leading motivation.

The anti-Jewish trope is about shadowy Jewish Financiers secretly controlling politics. There’s nothing secret about AIPAC sponsoring congressional trips to Israel or major politicians from both parties making a pilgrimage to speak at their annual conference.

Calling criticism of AIPAC anti-Jewish is expanding the trope to any Jewish use of money in politics.