A week before the US elections I warned that Biden and Harris’s refusal for months to force a ceasefire on Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah—backed by a weapons embargo if Israel does not accept it—would cause Kamala Harris to lose the elections to Donald Trump.

Q.E.D.

In Hebrew, the equivalent acronym is:

מ.ש.ל – מה שצריך להוכיח [M.Š.L – Ma shetzarikh lehochee’ach]

It wasn’t just Muslim and Arab Americans staying home or voting 3^rd party. Massive swaths of the center-left electorate are sickened by the ongoing massacres in Gaza and Lebanon.  To a lesser degree, they are also appalled by our continued support and weapons deliveries to fund a seemingly “war-with-no-end” in Ukraine instead of focusing on economic and bread-and-butter issues which the average American really cares about.

Both these bloody conflicts are continuing solely because they are financed and green-lighted by the Biden Administration. The thousands of Americans who stayed home or voted for Trump saw the US pouring billions of dollars into sustaining and keeping alive these bloody conflicts instead of using our superpower status and economic leverage to end these conflicts.

So Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she’s a woman or because she’s black. She lost because she and her party represented war mongering and war profiteering rather than helping the average American improve their health care, their paycheck, and their job prospects.

“QED,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, IbisPaint, Clip2Comic, 2024.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who boldly supports a weapons embargo, pointed to this utter failure in his scathing letter today to the Democratic Party leadership, saying:

 Today…we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among other countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.

Today, we are left to ponder the “what ifs”: what if Biden and Harris forced a compromise on Putin and Zelensky in Ukraine? What if they stopped financing an unending, bloody conflict which Ukraine has no chance of winning anyway, and brokered a peace agreement between the two countries?!

More importantly, what if Biden and Harris—by threatening a weapons embargo on Israel — had ended the killing of tens of thousands of women and children (as of Aug. 15, 2024, per the United Nations, most of Gaza’s 40,000 killed are women and children), stopped the siege and the starvation – and brought home safely the hundred or so Israeli hostages? What if they had used that same leverage to really start a process—which admittedly will be difficult—to end the apartheid and occupation in the Israel-Palestine space?

While we will never know for certain, in all likelihood the Democrats would have prevailed—both in the Presidential and Congressional elections—and we would not be punished with the frightening prospect of President Trump.

Reprinted from The Times of Israel with the author’s permission.

David Muir and Linsey Davis did good jobs as moderators, with Muir being persistent on issues such as January 6 and his criminal record. Unlike earlier presidential debates, they “fact-checked” Trump four times. It was surprising how often Muir “yielded the floor” to Trump’s outbursts when he he let Harris successfully bait him. Muir allowed Trump to go on about his grievances, and maybe he allowed the interruptions, because he knew Trump would make a fool of himself every time he opened his mouth. There was no bias, but good tough journalistic questions based on Trump’s own public record. Some of Don’s answers made him appear more deranged than ever. Maybe the pressure has finally gotten to him.

Listening to Trump’s voice for more than half the time is exhausting and soul-killing, even with the relief brought by Harris’s sanity. The lies come so fast and furious that it’s hard to keep up, and impossible to address and debunk each one in the time allowed for rebuttal. That’s the basis of his gaslighting strategy. Trump hogged more than his allotted time, while CNN fact checked him at least 30 times. Some lies are subjective.

Some of Trump’s melt-down lines included:

-Blaming Harris and Joe Biden for the Ukraine war, which was the result of his buddy Vladimir Putin’s greed for territory.

-Saying that Harris, who on many issues is on the center-right, is a “Marxist.”

-Monstrously claiming Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pet dogs and cats in Springfield, OH — led to an instant fact-check by Davis. Trump said, “A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”

– Trump claims no inflation occurred during his presidency. But note that his disastrous handing of the COVID epidemic led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and was deflationary. His blaming of Biden-Harris, for inflation — saying “people can’t buy cereal and eggs, because they destroyed the economy.” — ignores that after COVID there was high inflation in every country in the world as the economy came back to life.

-On abortion he claims his second term, “Will be great for women’s reproductive rights.” Then he shifted gears to put about the falsehood that Biden-Harris want to allow abortions in the 9^th month, and then execute newborns with under a “radical” Democratic policy. He lied the governor of West Virginia and VP candidate Tim Walz both OK’d executing newborns. Then he crowed, “I got Roe v. Wade (back) into the states.” That’s how he spins his selection of three SCOTUS justices who were chosen only to overturn Roe v. Wade. He said, “Everyone wanted the vote sent back to the states. The people vote, not the Court. I give tremendous credit to those six Justices.” But then Muir pointed out the illegality of killing babies in all 50 states. And almost no one wanted the abortion issue sent back to the states; ( 62% of Americans said then and say now that abortion should be legal under almost all conditions.

-When Harris discussed her plan for creating an “opportunity economy” to uplift America’s middle class, Trump replied that he has a “concept” of a plan, and doesn’t need it now because he’s not president yet. Then he claimed the Wharton School of Economics (U-Penn) professors love his economic plan, though he admittedly he doesn’t have one.

-Regarding a health care plan Trump said, after nearly a decade and a half of trashing Obamacare, “I have concepts of a plan.”

When Harris pointed out he invited trade wars with the tariffs on China, while also selling US chips to China to help improve their military, he said, “We hardly make chips anymore.” (Tell that to Nvidia.)  Then the recurring all-night theme of immigration and border security was re-introduced in every answer Trump gave to any and all questions. It’s his favorite subject that plays well at his rallies, but this wasn’t one of them. He claims immigrants are ruining our economy, and every answer came back to immigration fears.

Regarding his abandonment of NATO, Trump claimed, “I got 28 countries to pay up.”  That was delivered in response to one of Harris’ fishing tactics to anger when she waxed eloquently about the importance of the European Alliance, and using it to protect Europe from further aggression by Vladimir Putin.

The contrast of the candidates was a stark illustration of darkness and light. Harris pointed out that Trump, “Uses race to divide the American people. We have so much more in common than what separates us.” She called out his gross history of racism by initiating the “birther lies” about Barack Obama, how started as a landlord being investigated and fined, because he refused to rent to Black families, and how he called for execution of the Central Park Five, who were exonerated. No boxes were left unchecked.

MSNBC: “Watch the first Trump-Harris presidential debate in 3 minutes”

Even though Harris repeatedly got the better of him, Trump could still win the election. This is because of the antiquated Electoral College, which was created to appease Southern plantation owners, at the beginning of our nation’s history; and still serves the interest of racist Americans. A vote in Nebraska negates two or more votes in California. At least a third of the country desperately wants to believe anything Trump says, even though he melted down regressively as the night went on.

Taylor Swift’s formal endorsement of Harris — a possibility Republicans were apoplectic over leading up to last year’s Super Bowl. But the popular vote is meaningless in a presidential election. Most handicappers say the election will hinge on the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. A third of the country desperately wants to believe anything Trump says; but there’s comfort in knowing the MAGA echo chamber isn’t at all dominant. The issue is getting the sane majority registered and to the polls to literally save American Democracy.

On Gaza, Harris said, “Well, let’s understand how we got here. On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. Many of them young people who were simply attending a concert. Women were horribly raped. And so absolutely, I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must when, end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal and we need the hostages out. And so we will continue to work around the clock on that. Work around the clock also understanding that we must chart a course for a two-state solution. And in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel and in equal measure for the Palestinians. But the one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel. But we must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza, where the Palestinians have security, self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”

But that isn’t how we got there. The Israelis expelled 250,000 Palestinians to Gaza in 1948 from their homes in what became southern Israel, making Gaza a big refugee camp. The population has grown to 2.2 million. They detached from Gaza its agricultural lands and left it cut off from its markets. From 1967 the Israelis came after the Palestinians in Gaza again and occupied them. In 2007 they slapped an economic siege on the Gaza Strip, imposing 55% unemployment and causing children to be malnourished. So Hamas committed horrific terrorism on civilians on October 7 last year, for which there can be no justification. But if it had only attacked the Israeli military it might have had grounds in international law, which permits resistance groups to fight foreign military occupation. Harris left out the Nakbah or Palestinian displacement by Israel, and the long decades of military occupation and siege, so she made the story impossible to understand.

She is much better than Biden in at least expressing some empathy for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians Israel has killed in Gaza. But empathy, while better than nothing, won’t stop the killing, which is daily and directly enabled by US supply of weapons and ammunition (the Israelis ran out months ago).

The cease-fire deal she is touting does not exist. It was just a cheap trick pulled on Biden by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to giving him breathing space to continue the war, Netanyahu has constantly tacked on new conditions, most recently his occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor south of Rafah, which he knows Hamas (and even Egypt) will never agree to.

There is no two-state solution to be had, and politicians should start being honest about it. Gaza is rubble and there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters in the Palestinian West Bank. Where would you put a state?

Trump’s response was to say that the war would not have happened on his watch because he starved Iran of money. That assertion is not true and it isn’t a policy. It is just a narcissistic boast that he can magically control the world. He can’t.

As usual, what he said is arrant nonsense. The CIA assesses that Hamas did not tell Iran it was planning Oct. 7. Iran had nothing to do with it.

Further, Biden has kept all the Trump sanctions on Iran, which is not a good thing. It puts the US on a war footing with Iran. Washington tries to interfere in Iran’s normal commerce such as selling its oil. There are no grounds in international law for this behavior. The US has even sanctioned the Iranian national bank, making all economic transactions with Iran a form of terrorism, including sending food or medicine. It is unprecedented to call the national bank of a country a terrorist organization.

Trump has no policies, just insults, such as that Harris hates Israel and even hates Arabs because her hatred of Israel will get Arabs killed. I couldn’t follow the argument because of that arrant nonsense thing.

CNN: “Watch the full Second Presidential Debate Hosted by ABC”

Afghanistan was the other country in the greater Middle East that came up.

Harris expressed her agreement with President Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan, noting that four presidents had sought to withdraw, but he was the first to do so, saving the $300 million a day that the fruitless war was costing taxpayers. She said that “And as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”

Harris blamed the debacle of the withdrawal on the “weak deal” negotiated directly with the Taliban by Don Trump, which she implied rather detracted from his reputation as a deal-maker. She said he by-passed the Afghan government and as part of his deal he released 5,000 Taliban terrorists. She expressed outrage that he would invite the Taliban to Camp David.

Harris is correct about the cost of the Afghanistan War, which came to $2.313 trillion over 21 years. That is $110 billion a year. Divided by 365, it comes to $301 million per day. Although al-Qaeda plotted the 9/11 attacks from Afghanistan, it is not clear that they told the Taliban what they were planning, and it was kind of odd that Afghanistan, rather than the al-Qaeda network, should have been thought the danger to the U.S.

I’d say her account was accurate regarding the favorability of the deal Trump proposed to the Taliban. It is also true that Trump really wanted out of Afghanistan and kept telling his generals to get out, and they slow-rolled him. In some ways the story shows that on this issue Biden and Trump agreed. It isn’t for sure that Biden could have gotten a better deal than Trump on withdrawal. As for leaving the Afghan government out of the negotiations, that was weird. But given the way it collapsed and its top leaders were implicated in large-scale theft, it is not obvious that if Trump had included them in the talks, they could have obtained more favorable terms.

I don’t agree with her allegation that “there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.” I think the 800 US troops at Tanf in southeast Syria are in a war zone and that they are actively still fighting al-Qaeda, but also Shiite militias. Although the 2,500 US troops in Iraq are now classified as trainers, they do appear to be providing back up to the Iraqi Army in mopping up operations against ISIL in northern Iraq.

But the statement is also a little misleading because so many U.S. military interventions are aerial. The U.S. has been bombing Yemen regularly because the Houthis have been targeting container ships and oil tankers in the Red Sea in support of the people of Gaza. You can’t just make this mini-war disappear because there are no boots on the ground. The US routinely bombs the al-Shabab extremist fundamentalist movement in Somalia.

In fact, in the past year the US has also bombed Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria in reprisal for their attacks on bases housing US troops in those two countries. The Shiite militias struck at the US in Iraq, Syria and Jordan in an effort to punish it for its heavy support to the Israeli total war on Gaza. When you are actively bombing Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Iraq you can’t be said to be entirely at peace.

“Prize Fight,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

Trump boasted that in the 18 months after his deal with the Taliban, no US troops were killed in Afghanistan. This is true, but it is because he promised to get out of Afghanistan shortly if the Taliban ceased the attacks.

Trump said that the leader of the Taliban is “Abdul.” He was probably referring to the Taliban political chief in 2020, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Abdul is not a name on its own. It means “servant of” and is followed by a name of God. Abdul-Ghani means “servant of the All-Sufficient” (that is, God does not need anything because his essence is intrinsically rich). Baradar signed the deal for a complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 2020.

Biden essentially followed the Trump treaty, though he delayed the promised US withdrawal from April 2021 to August. Although Trump is correct that the withdrawal was done chaotically, he was the one who guaranteed that it would be by his pledge to completely withdraw by a date certain. Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is ridiculous.

( Tomdispatch.com ) – One of the nation’s best-known Black Republicans is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In the twenty-first century (and perhaps ever), no African American woman rose higher in Republican politics than Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and then his secretary of state, both firsts. Like her or not, agree with her politics or not, she brought significant experience, knowledge, and professionalism to those positions.

Donald Trump’s first public words about Rice date back to 2006 when he labeled her with a vile term. In a speech before 8,000 people in New York City, he said, “Condoleezza Rice, she’s a lovely woman, but I think she’s a bitch. She goes around to other countries and other nations, negotiates with their leaders, comes back, and nothing ever happens.” There was no justification for Trump using such repulsive language other than his own toxic petulance and racist misogyny against Black women.

His vulgarity and sexism toward Rice foreshadowed a political future of hateful attacks on women — particularly women of color — with whom he disagrees. That incident provides some context for a recent New York Times report that, in private, Trump has referred repeatedly to Vice President Kamala Harris, his most formidable challenger for the 2024 presidential race, as a “bitch.” His campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung shamelessly and unbelievably stated that, when it comes to the person many would view as the most profane president ever, “That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala.” In fact, Trump’s longstanding and fixed sense of patriarchy and the cruel slurs against women that go with it are well documented. 

The stunning upheaval in the 2024 presidential race has, in fact, brought into sharp focus Trump’s longstanding animosity toward and war against Black women. President Joe Biden’s June 21st decision to drop out of that race propelled Harris to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, which means Trump now faces the one opponent who not only threatens his return to office, but also triggers his worse racist and sexist behavior.

Trump Goes After Harris and Other Black Women

In her first weeks running for president, he has publicly called Kamala Harris “dumb as a rock,” “nasty,” a “bum,” and “real garbage.” In front of thousands of his followers, he has deliberately and repeatedly mispronounced her name, claiming, “I don’t care” when called out on it. At his rallies, some of his supporters can be seen wearing and selling T-shirts that say, “Joe and the Ho Must Go,” or some variation on that, deplorable mantras that date back to 2020. Neither Trump nor his campaign have ever denounced such unacceptable activities. His effort and that of many MAGA adherents to “other” Harris is not just meant to humiliate her but degrade and dehumanize her as well. 

Nor is this one-off focused on Harris. Trump has done the same to other Black women and women of color for decades. Before, during, and after his presidency, he specifically targeted Black women with a kind of venom he rarely aimed at white women or men.

He’s gone after Black women, whether elected and appointed officials (Republican or Democrat), journalists, athletes, prosecutors, or celebrities. Here are just a few examples of his loathing:

• Former Representative Mia Love (R-UT): “Mia Love gave me no love and she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that Mia.”

• Former Apprentice contestant and then Trump’s White House director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Manigault Newman: “When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

• Four congressional women of color — Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI): “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came?”

• CNN journalist Abby Phillips: “What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot — you ask a lot of stupid questions.”

• CNN reporter April Ryan: “April Ryan… You talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing… She’s very nasty.”

• Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA): “an extraordinarily low IQ person.”

• MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid: “Who the hell is Joy-Ann Reid? Never met her, she knows ZERO about me, has NO talent, and truly doesn’t have the ‘it’ factor needed for success in showbiz.”

The examples of Trump’s enraged responses to Black women who criticize or call out his lies, ineptitude, insecurities, and ignorance are endless. He is also fully aware that his attacks put targets on the backs of those women. In fact, that may be exactly the point.

While the journalists and celebrities that he goes after are part of his bullying approach to life, with some added racist and sexist spice, he clearly feels most threatened by Black people and Black women in particular who could send him to prison. Georgia Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and Washington, D.C., District Judge Tanya Chutkan have all felt the pressure of Trump’s inflammatory wrath as they oversaw legal cases attempting to hold him accountable for his criminal behavior. They have all experienced countless death threats since taking on his cases. In addition to referring to them as “racists,” “animal,” “rabid,” “liars,” and worse, he also called Willis and James “Peekaboo,” a nickname he has yet to explain but that seems awfully close to the racist slur “jigaboo.” It’s an obvious dog whistle similar to his calling them and others prosecuting him “riggers,” which, of course, rhymes with the “N-word” and which he normally spells out in caps in social posts to make sure it gets attention.

His attacks on Judge Chutkan led to the arrest of a woman in Texas who threatened to murder her and a swatting attack on her home, bringing the police to her house in response to a false report of a shooting there. Chutkan is attempting to move forward with the case against Trump in Washington, D.C., although there will clearly not be a trial before the November election. If Trump loses the election, the case will likely go forward with the strong possibility that he’ll be convicted and punished. If he wins, he’ll undoubtedly order the Justice Department to drop it.

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While Black leaders in politics, the media, women’s groups, and community organizations consistently denounced Trump for his chauvinist attacks, there was dead silence from his best-known Black women supporters. MAGA devotees like far-right commentator Candace Owens, social media celebrities like (the late) Diamond and Silk, conservative abortion extremist Reverend Alveda King, and others said nary a word as he raged and ranted.   

A Record of Exclusive Hiring

Notably, in his businesses and during his presidency, very, very few Black individuals were either in Trump’s employ or in his inner circle. In his White House, only three Black women held high political or staff positions: the briefly tenured Manigault Newman, the briefly acting Surgeon General Sylvia Trent-Adams (from April 2017 to September 2017), and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) official Lynne Patton.

Only Patton worked for Trump for any period of time. Prior to 2016, she worked for the Trump Organization and the Eric Trump Foundation for at least a decade, eventually becoming a “Trump family senior aide.” After taking office, Trump appointed her administrator of HUD Region II under Secretary Ben Carson. Like Carson, she had no background or expertise in housing policy, yet was put in charge of hundreds of thousands of public housing units in New York and New Jersey. She made excuses for Trump’s unsuccessful effort to cut millions of dollars from the New York Housing Authority budget that could have led to a potential 40% rent increase for public housing residents.

She was scandal-ridden throughout his tenure, caught, for instance, misrepresenting her education background on her government résumé, implying that she had attended and graduated from Quinnipiac University School of Law and Yale University when she hadn’t. She dropped out of Quinnipiac and only took summer classes at Yale. When caught, she responded: “Lots of people list schools they didn’t finish.”

Her most notorious scandal occurred on February 27, 2019, when she volunteered to be a political prop for then-Representative Mark Meadows at a congressional hearing. To repudiate the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was accusing him of being racist, among other charges, Meadows had Patton stand silently behind him while he ludicrously stated that Trump couldn’t be racist because Patton had worked for him and she was a descendant of slaves.

Like other White House staff under Trump, Patton repeatedly violated the Hatch Act, which doesn’t allow federal employees in the executive branch to engage in political partisanship. She was first warned by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in September 2019 but continued her transgressions. She and other Trump staffers broke the law, but the Trump administration did little to enforce it. However, when Biden came into office, the OSC did apply the rule of law. In response, Patton was forced to admit her violations and reached a settlement. She was fined $1,000 and banned from holding any federal government position for four years. And yet she still remains loyal to Trump.

Following his recent disastrous interview appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump’s campaign issued a statement claiming that Trump, who slung insults, spewed endless lies, refused to answer questions, and hurried off early, was the victim of  “unhinged and unprofessional commentary.”  His most noted unbalanced remark — and there were plenty of them — was his contention that Kamala Harris had only in recent years “happened to turn Black.”

At the Republican National Convention, where African Americans were only three percent of the attendees, eight speakers were Black, seven of them men. The only Black woman given a prime speaking spot was rapper and model Amber Rose, whose Trump-loving father converted her to support him. Rather than include an elected official, state party leader, or conservative scholar, Trump selected someone who fulfilled his gendered view of Black women as either spectacles or subservient.

Trump’s Gendered and Racist Policies

It’s not just Trump’s hateful words but the policies and initiatives he pushed while in office that harmed Black women as well as millions of other Americans. Much of what he’s done and is planning to do is laid out in policy proposals detailed in the Heritage Foundation’s racially discriminating Project 2025 report, written by many of Trump’s former officials and those aligned with him. These include policies relating to abortion rights, education, criminal justice, civil rights, and healthcare access, among many other concerns.

In addition, Black women have been disproportionately suffering from the abortion bans implemented since the significantly Trump-built conservative Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade in 2022. According to the Democratic National Committee, “More than half of Black women of reproductive age now live in states with abortion bans in effect or with threats to abortion access.” Close to seven million Black women, ages 15 to 49, reside in those states. Worse yet, Project 2025 advocates a nationwide ban on abortion for a future Trump administration. He himself has become increasingly coy in addressing such an electorally damaging issue by deferring to whatever states want to do, fearing otherwise that he might lose a majority of women voters, but not wanting to anger the Christian nationalist extremists in his base.

That same Trumpified Supreme Court also ended affirmative action at colleges and universities. In 2023, it ruled that colleges and universities can no longer consider race in admissions. As yet, it’s not clear whether acceptance rates have fallen, particularly at elite schools. What is clear, thanks to the ruling, is that many colleges and universities have cut or dramatically redefined hundreds of scholarships worth millions of dollars that were previously targeted for Black and Latino students. This particularly hurts Black women students (who attend college in disproportionate numbers compared to young Black men).

Black women voters have responded in kind to Trump. In 2016, he won about 6% of the Black vote overall, but there was a stunning gender gap. While he gained about 14% of Black male votes, 98% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton. Four years later, in 2020, Trump garnered about 8% of the overall Black vote, but only 5% of Black women.

Black Support for Harris Swells Despite Trump

Given those numbers (and his sexism), it’s clear why Trump has focused his “Black outreach” on Black men. However, the wedge he seeks to build may not be as stable as he imagines. Not only have Black women rallied behind the Harris-Walz ticket, but it appears that Black male voters are shifting as well. In a poll conducted in late July by the Howard University polling service, the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion (HIPO), of which I’m a member, we found 96% of Black women and 93% of Black men expressing their intention to vote for Harris. Meanwhile, a Zoom gathering of 40,000 Black men voicing their support and suggestions only days after Harris was rising to become the nominee suggested that the Trump campaign’s hope for an irreversible gender split among Black voters wasn’t on target.

As New York Times columnist Charles Blow noted, Trump is the “totem” of contemporary patriarchy. He is also the embodiment of what Black feminist scholar Moya Bailey terms “misogynoir,” the marriage of misogyny and racism.

Certainly, he dreads with every fiber in his body the rise of Harris and the intensity of her support, and also the organizing might of Black women voters. In Georgia, in 2021, it was the on-the-ground mobilization of Black women that led to the defeat of Trump’s preferred Senate candidates and the victories of senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

Count on one thing: Donald Trump is now running scared. What he assumed barely a month ago would be an essentially uncontested victory has been transformed into his worst nightmare: facing a smart, confident, younger Black woman who has stolen his momentum and whose possible victory in November would be a defeat from which he could never recover.

Copyright 2024 Clarence Lusane

Via Tomdispatch.com

Scientists are trained to be cautious and to base anything they assert on firm empirical evidence and close analytical reasoning. They want to see a long term, consistent movement in the data before they will rule out random chance as an explanation.

Some 83% of respondents said that they worried about climate change “a great deal” or “quite a bit” and another 14% worried “a moderate amount.” In scientist terms, their hair is on fire. Only 3% are lackadaisical, and 3% of any human group are screw-ups.

There’s more. Two-thirds of them felt very strongly that fundamental changes to society, politics and economics are required to deal with the crisis. Another 25% strongly agreed (without the “very”),

Being practical people, these scientists did not expect the mere everyday working of technology or individual “lifestyle changes” to solve the crisis. There has to be big, systemic change — getting rid of gasoline-driven cars and increasing the energy efficiency of homes and buildings. They gave away their conclusion in the very second question they answered. Do we need big “fundamental changes to society, politics and economics?” They said resoundingly, “Yes! Yes we do.” And here’s the thing. Only governments operate at the scale and with the resources and nation-wide impact to effect such an enormous alteration.

That’s why they largely believe that environmental activist groups can make an impact, implicitly by lobbying legislators and politicians. That’s why they speak out on climate change. But I think we can conclude that most of them know that the carbon economy has to be extirpated root and branch, and fast.

The US government had outlays of $6.1 trillion in 2023. That is a gargantuan lever. As Archimedes said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act dedicated $369 billion to clean energy and fighting climate change. That sum is bigger than the GDPs of numerous countries in the world, including Egypt, Pakistan, Chile, Greece, etc.

In Europe, the European Union’s installation of wind, water, solar and batteries and the turn in some countries to electric vehicles — along with greater energy efficiency — meant that total CO2 emissions from burning fuel in the European Union declined by almost 9% in 2023, even as the economy grew.

This is the kind of thing we need a lot more of. We only have 26 years to get the world to carbon zero. If we stop burning fossil fuels (gasoline, fossil gas, coal) by 2050, then the world will immediately cease heating up. And all the hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere since 1750 will be absorbed by the oceans. Some 65% to 80% of CO2 goes into the ocean over 20 to 200 years.

But if we go on putting billions of metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere past 2050, we will outrun the absorptive capacity of the oceans and everything, 100% of what we burn after that year, will stay in the atmosphere for centuries. The average increase in the temperature of the earth’s surface over 1750 could exceed 5.4º F. (3º C.), which scientists are afraid could throw our climate system into chaos.

The changes in the earth’s climate that we are already seeing, including massive wildfires, extreme heat waves, ocean temperatures over 100º F. (37.7º C.), massive hurricanes, and biblical floods, are unexpectedly severe for this stage of climate change. These surprises indicate that in the near future climate could get very, very nasty if we don’t change our ways. What if all the electricity lines get blown down? Civilization doesn’t work without electricity. What if all buildings have to be rebuilt to stand 160 mile an hour winds? What if we are driven underground by unbearable temperatures on the surface?

“Medicane,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v. 3, 2024.

What can stop the worst of this mounting catastrophe from striking us, our children and grandchildren? Governments.

The 2024 American election is the most consequential in world history. Trump and his Project 2025 have made absolutely clear that they will gut all the climate progress and legislation of the Biden administration. They will put in even more incentives to burn coal, fossil gas and petroleum. They will vastly increase the US carbon dioxide emissions (4.8 billion metric tons in 2023, down from 4.9 bn. in 2022), taking us back to 2007 when we put out 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The whole world puts out 36.8 metric tons of CO2 annually. The US, with 4.23% of the people in the world, produces 13% of all the CO2. Moreover, the US is a world opinion leader, for better or for worse, and has enormous political and economic levers to move other countries in a green direction.

In contrast, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have in recent years become activists against climate change and will build on and expand on Biden’s green turn.

You have to rank issues in a two-party system. Maybe we can open up the two-party system over time (states can do this, as Maine has), but for the moment it is what we are stuck with. One party literally wants to destroy the earth for the present-day grubby profits of a few. The other party is at least somewhat committed to fighting climate change, and is susceptible of being pushed even harder in that direction.

Nothing else matters as much. The war in Ukraine does not matter as much. The US-China confrontation in the South China Sea is not as pressing. The Israeli total war on Gaza civilians, horrific as it is, and Hamas terrorism against civilians, as horrific as that is, does not matter as much as the fate of the globe. It matters a great deal to me. It gives me nightmares. I’ve gone blue in the face arguing that this military campaign must cease immediately. But in fact both Israel and Gaza are destined to see significant loss of coastline to sea level rise over the next century (and even as early as 2050), with the potential for massive displacement of populations. Huge Medicanes or Mediterranean typhoons of the sort that washed Libya’s Derna into the sea last year will strike their towns. Unbearable heat waves will kill the elderly and children. The region is heating up at twice the global average. The Israelis and Palestinians will not survive if they do not put away their weapons and cooperate to adapt to these changes. In my view, the main onus for this about-face lies on Israel, which is currently gripped by a far right wing ethno-nationalist expansionism, since it is by far the stronger party. Israeli technology and Palestinian familiarity with traditional methods of making the land flourish will be crucial. But we are speaking about a few million people.

There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees in the world by 2050.

Nothing else is as important. Vote Democratic. Tell your friends. Whip up enthusiasm. Once the Dems are in, if you don’t like their policies, argue with them and pressure them and change them. Trump and MAGA are not susceptible to grassroots pressures. They are in the grip of a handful of selfish billionaires and they want to dig your grave and then charge you to be buried in it.

He rightly stepped aside after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump, but he continues to lose a far more disastrous debate with Israel’s Prime Minister, weakening the basic principles of US foreign policy. Alongside his humiliating failure to achieve any “red lines” on civilian casualties, Gaza is having significant, long-term moral impacts on Christianity and Judaism.

So far, Democratic Convention organizers — and nominee Kamala Harris — have not agreed to any airtime for Gaza. Yet simply saying “Trump would be worse” to the Uncommitted million primary voters, and the protesters outside, will devalue whatever feel-good effect she may achieve.

As a Holocaust survivor’s son, I was raised to despise antisemitism and support Israel. Over five Middle East visits, however, I learned that Israel is not the beleaguered little guy, but a country enabled by blank-check US support to operate without normal political consequences. Our billions in military aid strengthen the most repressive elements of Israeli society, which denies most Palestinians citizenship. Thus, while criticizing Israel’s government is not antisemitic, the worldwide rise in antisemitism reacting to Gaza is alarming and unsurprising.

To a Presbyterian ethicist, Gaza clearly violates the “Just War” principles of proportionality, avoidance of civilian casualties, and goal of a just peace. Israel’s use of enormous bombs is indiscriminate as the Israeli Army authorizes massive casualties in pursuit of combatants — including 17,000 children, so far.

Aryeh Neier, the co-founder of Human Rights Watch, concludes that yoking one-sided onslaught and deliberate starvation constitutes a genocide. Destroying universities, schools, mosques, churches, libraries, and hospitals — a cultural genocide — makes “just peace” less likely.

Diplomats’ resignations underline our complicity and isolation as Israel’s defender at the United Nations, blocking humanitarian aid and ceasefires. Both Christianity and Judaism — assumed to influence US and Israeli policy — are discredited when basic moral intuitions are disregarded.

Virtually no one excuses atrocities by some Hamas fighters in the October 7 “jailbreak,” nor endorses the intolerance in Hamas’ survival under Israel’s blockade since its legitimate electoral victory in 2006.

But the “Islamic fundamentalist” label, part of demonizing Hamas, is cheap, as US policy empowers Israeli Settler fundamentalism. Settlements put over 500,000 Israelis on West Bank and East Jerusalem land, preempting any “two-state” solution. Biden’s seeking help from the Saudi government — effectively a Taliban with oil money — reinforces religious fundamentalism. It contributes to a disastrous US Middle East policy, and also suggests that much religious belief is pitiless tribalism.

The prophetic core of Judaism, carried into Christianity, confronts unjust uses of power by whoever wields it. Biden’s reflexive condemnation of the university protesters as “antisemitic” revealed his inability to adjust to Israel’s far right turn.

By contrast, look at the brave Jewish Voice for Peace members who fear that Zionism is becoming idolatrous, distorting Jewish ideals. Similarly, the Israeli veterans’ organization, Breaking the Silence, persuades me that the long military occupation of Palestine numbs Israelis to Palestinian human rights.

For Christians, fear of being called antisemitic is the dominant filter for information on Israel, Arabs, and Islam.

This weakens Christianity’s universal approach, the understanding that God “has made from one ancestor all the nations” (Acts 17:26 NRSV) and, from St. Paul, that before God, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, … slave or free, …male and female…” (Galatians 3:28).

Both fundamentalist and mainstream Christians allow the dehumanization of Arabs to poison our perceptions of Muslims, whose hopes for freedom we saw in the Arab Spring and the women’s rights protests in Iran. Islamophobia numbs us to the collective punishment of Palestinians, ironically including the abandonment of the Palestinian Christians.

The lack of honest interfaith dialogue also hurts Christianity and Judaism. Already in 1971, Christian and Jewish scholars published, The Death of Dialogue and Beyond, to avert tensions over Israel/Palestine. Lessons of the Holocaust were invoked, such as how unaccountable power does inevitable evil, and are reconfirmed in Gaza.

Peace — anywhere, anytime — requires justice.

Will Kamala Harris continue to enable genocide? If so, my faith will require me to say “never again” with my vote.

The Rev. Christian Iosso, PhD, is interim minister of the Connecticut Farms Presbyterian Church in Union. A New Providence native, he served as an ethicist for the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Reprinted from the New Jersey Star-Ledger with the author’s permission.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

AP Video: “US VP Kamala Harris speaks about Israeli strike on Gaza school”

On March 5, Super Tuesday, Abby Phillip at CNN asked Walz about the Gaza protest vote: “We’re seeing a fairly sizable, about 40,000 votes right now, 20 percent of the vote going to uncommitted. And we’ve seen that already in this primary in Michigan. What message are voters in your state trying to send to President Biden? And what do you want to see President Biden do in response?”

Walz replied, “Yeah, look, they’re engaged. We’re really proud of Minnesota civic responsibility. We have some of the highest voter turnouts. These are voters that are deeply concerned as we all are. The situation in Gaza is intolerable. And I think trying to find a solution, a lasting two-state solution, certainly the President’s move towards humanitarian aid and asking us to get to a ceasefire, that’s what they’re asking to be heard. And that’s what they should be doing. We’ve gone through this before. And we know that now we make sure we’ve got eight months. We start bringing these folks back in. We listen to what they’re saying.”

The important thing here is that Walz did not simply dismiss the Uncommitted movement or condemn it. He heard their concern and said it mirrored his own. “The situation in Gaza is intolerable.” He approved of getting “to a ceasefire” and humanitarian aid.

Asked by Jen Psaki at MSNBC on March 10, 2024, if a third-party candidate could spell trouble for Joe Biden’s reelection, Walz replied, “I think they should be worried, even in my state, where we had folks that were expressing a deep desire and a dissatisfaction with the situation in Gaza.”

Note the positive diction for the protest vote. They had “a deep desire.” Note too that he perceived the Uncommitted movement to boycott Biden in the Democratic primaries as a real danger signal for the president’s prospects.

Walz is said to have called for a “working ceasefire” in Gaza to allow humanitarian aid this spring. He appears to have been trying to support President Joe Biden’s (tepid) attempts to do something about the Israeli total war on Palestinian civilians. He was enthusiastic about the now-defunct US Navy floating pier built off the Gaza coast, which broke up in heavy waves and appears to have been wholly impractical.

Walz is being contrasted to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, the nation’s most prominent Jewish politician. Most U.S. commentary on Shapiro seems skittish about using the term “Zionism,” but that is ridiculous. Shapiro is a Zionist. In his youth he was such a hard line Zionist, i.e. Jewish nationalist with a belief that Jews have a right to make their state in Palestine, that he opposed Bill Clinton’s Oslo Peace Accords and dismissed Palestinians as savages too wedded to conflict ever to responsibly direct their own state.

It is Shapiro’s brand of Zionism that made him controversial, not his Judaism. The Democratic left, myself included, supported Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden and we were crushed when the South Carolina primary gave the nomination to Biden. Nobody came out against Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker for veep. It has nothing to do with Judaism.

Shapiro now says he is in favor of a two-state solution and has spoken out against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (This criticism of Netanyahu came only in the past couple of years, however; Shapiro had waxed eloquent about Netanyahu a decade ago). We all know, in any case, that a “two-state solution” is a chimera and this phrase is a mantra used by American politicians to avoid having to deal with the far right Israeli government’s determined colonization and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. There is no longer a place to put a Palestinian state, with Gaza in rubble and hundreds of thousands of Israelis squatting on the West Bank. Nor does Shapiro really mean a state with sovereignty. Walz uses the diction, as well.

The hard line of Shapiro’s Zionism comes out when he declines to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, or to condemn the massive and deliberate civilian toll — in the tens of thousands — of the Israeli total war.

It comes out when he complains about students wearing kuffiyehs to show support for Palestinians, which Shapiro inaccurately took for a necessarily anti-Israel article of clothing, telling Jake Tapper, “We have to query whether or not we would tolerate this, if this were people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia, making comments about people who are African American in our communities, certainly not condoning that, Jake, by any stretch.”

I wrote in April, “Supporters of the Israeli genocide against tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian women, children, and noncombatant men in Gaza have fixed upon an unlikely villain in their denunciation of the slightest protest against this century’s worst act of barbarity. They are denouncing the patterned black-and-white scarf of cotton called a kuffiyeh or keffiyeh, which is worn by many Palestinians but also by Iraqis, Saudis and others in the Arabian Peninsula (where it is called a ghutrah). The scarf is useful in dusty climates. It can be drawn up over the face when dust is heavy. It can be worn on the head against the sun or the cool desert night, fixed by an agal, a thick, doubled, black cord. The latter can also be used as a horse or camel whip. This ordinary item of apparel has become associated with Palestinian culture in North America, though it isn’t only Palestinians who wear it, and in the nineteenth century it appears to have been mainly worn by Bedouins.”

Shapiro is the one who is ignorant of history or culture here. And what he said is outrageous, as though a white nationalist should say African Americans wearing a dashiki is a sign of hating white people.

There is nothing wrong with supporting the Israeli people living in peace and security. I do myself. Some brands of Zionism, however, are more than that. Many Zionists have a militant commitment to Israel keeping everything it has won by war and remaining on a war footing to ensure its rogue actions are unchallenged. It is a commitment to shutting people up when they point to Israeli atrocities. Some Zionisms are a form of militant nationalism.

Shapiro may not be as militant now as he was in his 20s, but that is where he came from, and he still has some of the militancy on occasion.

Walz does not. He is a typical American Democrat of his generation, very pro-Israel. But he supported the UNSC Iran nuclear deal and objected when Trump torpedoed it. He calls the situation in Gaza “intolerable.” He spoke for a working ceasefire.

We don’t hear those things from Shapiro, because his form of Zionist nationalism gives him a set of blind spots. My guess is that while he regrets the destruction in Gaza, he thinks it is legitimate as a way to destroy Hamas, which he in turn thinks is an existential threat to Israel. This is Biden’s “people die in war.” It is naive about what Netanyahu and his far right buddies are up to in Gaza. It is a blind spot.

Whereas the University of Minnesota came to a peaceful resolution with students who set up protest encampments on campus, Shapiro called for police intervention against the encamapment at the University of Pennsylvania, and under Shapiro’s pressure, the university fired its president for declining to crack down on student protesters chanting “from the river to the sea,” which Zionists brand “anti-Semitic.” The phrase, by the way, appears in the charter of the Israeli Likud Party that is led by Netanyahu.

Shapiro sees citizens’ choice to boycott Israel as “antisemitic” and used the full force of the state’s unconstitutional anti-BDS law against Ben and Jerry’s ice cream for not wanting to sell its goods to squatters in the occupied West Bank. Shapiro also attempted to implement a speech code for Pennsylvania state government workers that outlawed “scandalous” speech and “hate speech,” which seemed aimed at preventing people from protesting the Gaza genocide in that state, and which is clearly unconstitutional. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis even applied such standards to university professors, attempting to outlaw the teaching of slavery as a historic wrong.

When some of your initiatives look more like those of a DeSantis than like those of a Tim Walz, you really shouldn’t be on the Democratic Party ticket.

—–

Bonus Video:

PBS NewsHour video: “‘We need a two-state solution,’ says Harris VP pick Walz”

As the pundits weighed in on Joe Biden’s abysmal performance at that June 27th debate with Donald Trump and cast doubt on his prospects for reelection, “learned helplessness“ was used over and over again in the days leading up to his withdrawal from the presidential race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. Two days after the debate, for instance, The Economist, focusing on Biden’s refusal to declare himself a non-candidate for the presidency, concluded that “many [Democrats] have fallen into learned helplessness,” as evidenced by the gap between their private doubts and their public assertions.

Writing for the San Francisco-based progressive daily, 48hills, Bruce Mirkin chastised the Democrats for choosing hopelessness over hope. “Instead of ‘yes, we can,’” he wrote, “the instinctive response from a good portion of the folks who should be helping to defend democracy seems to be ‘no, we can’t.’” He then labeled the party’s inaction “learned helplessness.” Jordan Zakarin, writing for the Center for American Progress Action’s Progress Report, extended that diagnosis from “the worst debate performance in modern history” to the larger moment in Washington. He pointed, for instance, to Attorney General Merrick Garland having “slow-walked prosecuting Donald Trump.” “It is,” he concluded, “a learned helplessness,” a “preemptive surrender.”

The question is: What should we make of the concept of “learned helplessness”? Where did it come from and what are the remedies writ large? In this distinctly disturbing moment in our history, is it possible that an all-American version of despair and hopelessness has changed in light of Joe Biden’s backing out of the presidential race?

The Psychological Concept

To better understand the sudden shower of references to “learned helplessness,” a little history is in order. In the late 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman coined the term while conducting experiments with dogs. He had accidentally stumbled on the fact that dogs that experienced electrical shocks without having any control over starting or stopping them were ultimately rendered strangely passive. They proved unwilling to move, even to escape further mistreatment.

After more experiments demonstrated that being subjected to severe pain or stress did indeed induce a state of inaction in dogs, Seligman then turned to humans and discovered that individuals who had suffered an act or acts of trauma and abuse continued, well after the painful incident, to show signs of depression and anxiety that rendered them completely unable to act. They continued to exist, he discovered, in a state of profound resignation and inaction, long after the traumatic moment in which they found themselves powerless. Afterward, they were convinced that nothing was under their control, that any action they might take would be futile, and that failure was inevitable, should they even try to act. (Later studies suggested that some elderly individuals might also experience such a state of profound resignation and inaction in response to “stressful life events,” at times in association with dementia.)

But here’s the truly strange thing: more than three decades later in the years after the 9/11 attacks, Seligman’s concept of “learned helplessness” would be quite purposely baked into the interrogation and torture program created and implemented for war on terror detainees by American officials during the administration of President George W. Bush. As the executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s torture report explained, one of the two psychologists contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the purpose of devising its interrogation program “had reviewed research on ‘learned helplessness,’ in which individuals might become passive and depressed in response to adverse or uncontrollable events. He theorized,” the report added, “that inducing such a state could encourage a detainee to cooperate and provide information.”

That psychologist, Bruce Mitchell, even met with Seligman while designing techniques to use on war-on-terror detainees suspected of ties to the 9/11 terror group al-Qaeda and its leadership at the secret “black sites” the CIA set up globally. (Seligman, it seems, had no idea of the horrors Mitchell and his associates were planning.) Ironically enough, Seligman’s findings and his concept of “learned helplessness” would indeed become a basic part of the development of the CIA’s torture program. (Seligman would come to condemn the use of the concept for interrogations at those black sites. As The Washington Post reported, “When [Seligman] later learned through media accounts how it was employed — for enhanced interrogation — he issued a statement: ‘I am grieved and horrified that good science, which has helped so many people overcome depression, may have been used for such bad purposes.’”)

To induce a profound state of helplessness, those post-9/11 captives were sent to the CIA’s black sites where they were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” designed to elicit information from them. Their torture included beatings, being smashed into walls, being hung by their limbs in excruciatingly painful positions, forced nudity, sodomy, and repeated sleep deprivation, among other things. The CIA also used waterboarding (subjecting detainees to the feeling of drowning), placed them in coffin-like boxes, and threatened to use a gun or a power drill on those who refused to give answers sought by their interrogators. Just last month, in a pre-trial hearing at the forever prison the Bush administration set up offshore — and away from the federal court system — at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, such techniques were once again described in detail, this time by John Bruce Jessen, the psychologist who, along with Mitchell, designed the nightmarish interrogation program. In addition to his testimony, he also demonstrated the technique of “walling,” which involved slamming a detainee’s head against a wall.

The goal was simple: to reduce that prisoner to a profound state of complete paralysis and disempowerment in which, having no hope of relief or escape, he would do whatever his captors wanted. Detainees would see that there was no way out but to answer their captors’ questions, which, it turned out, often led them, in desperation and a state of learned helplessness, to confess to things they hadn’t done, to confess to whatever their captors wanted to hear.

Buy the Book

Having studied and written about the nightmare of those prisoners and Guantánamo for so many years now, it’s been supremely jarring to see the term “learned helplessness” re-emerge in connection to the current unnerving state of American politics and the 2024 presidential election. Yet, in many ways, it seems a strangely appropriate lens through which to view the world of Donald Trump and the rest of us. It was true, as many commented, that a sense of learned helplessness indisputably crept into the mindset of so many of us in this country — at least prior to Joe Biden’s decision not to pursue a second term as president.

The American people have indeed suffered multiple stressful, even traumatic experiences in recent years. The shock of a government that didn’t protect them on September 11, 2001; the devastating experience of a president who refused to protect them from Covid, as bodies piled up on the streets of this country; the winnowing away of rights and liberties once protected by the Constitution and the Supreme Court — from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to a rash of recent decisions, including one that gave a president essential immunity in relation to more or less anything he did, no matter how devastating; the inability of the courts to proceed in their prosecutions of Donald Trump; the nearly paralyzed state of a riven Congress amid an economic reality that has led so many younger Americans to be unable to purchase their own homes or send their children to college — all have collectively cowed the population. Even before both the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision and the dismal debate performance of Biden, a sense of learned helplessness seemed well in place, and understandably so.

The Republican Party has also succumbed to a state of learned helplessness. One after another, former opponents of Trump and the MAGA ideology he stands for have succumbed to his agenda and given up on pursuing their own independent goals. Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance is certainly a case in point. Having formerly called out Trump for his lack of morality, his xenophobia, and his racism, as well as for being a “total fraud” and “America’s Hitler,” he is now on board with the ideas he once said he deplored, including, for example, an untethered anti-immigration stance that calls for massive deportations of illegal immigrants. Similarly, Trump’s Republican election opponent Nikki Haley has given up her “legacy of blunt assessments and brutal takedowns” of the former president, as The Nation’s John Nichols has aptly described her opposition to Trump, whom she once described as “a dangerous stooge of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”

The question is: What, if anything, does the research tell us about curing such a state?

Is There, in Fact, a Cure?

Psychologists do point to remedies for such a profound state of hopelessness. They suggest several healing paths forward, including therapy to examine the causes of one’s despair and to discover constructive paths beyond it; exercise to stimulate the body and the mind; and a commitment to “learned optimism,” a pattern of reaction geared to expecting the best rather than the worst out of any situation. As Psychology Today points out, “Seligman later developed the concept of learned optimism. By explaining events to ourselves in a constructive manner and developing a positive internal dialogue, people can break free from their cycle of helplessness.” Small wins and an energized commitment to positivity are basic tenets of finding a way to “learned optimism.”

If a turn towards optimism offers a way out of the helplessness of our times, perhaps we are seeing the beginning of just such an event. Recently, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick, again invoking the term “learned helplessness,” suggested that reports of the plans of the Biden administration to back Supreme Court reform were a sign of the kind of future “systemwide cognitive reboot for American voters that seems almost inconceivable in the generalized torpor and despair of July 2024.” The headline of her article read, appropriately enough, “Are We Finally Letting Go of Our Learned-Helplessness Syndrome Around the Supreme Court?”

So, too, the outpouring of energy and excitement following Biden’s decision to bow out of the presidential race and the enthusiasm for newer, younger Democratic Party leadership — and for Vice President Kamala Harris, in particular — already seems eons removed from the head-shaking resignation of Democratic voters confronting a “choice” between an aging Joe Biden and You Know Who on election day. In fact, in many ways, that new turn of affairs could be just what the doctor ordered, though, of course, a possible November election victory for Donald Trump could still put the phrase “learned helplessness” in a grimly new light.

For Democrats, the idea that there could be a brighter future, one in which a sense of control replaced one of powerlessness — an election in which their presidential candidate has a viable chance of winning — has taken hold. In place of anxiety and depression, there is optimism, or at least a “cautious hope.” Declaring her “immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future,” Nancy Pelosi echoed the importance of this newfound optimism when endorsing Kamala Harris as the party’s candidate for 2024. As Tim Alberta summed it up in The Atlantic, “As far back as springtime, the numbers told a straightforward story: Biden was not going to win. Democrats could only look on, powerless.” However, now, he concludes, it is the Republicans who are feeling hope and control fade away: “Sunday brought an unfamiliar feeling of powerlessness. For the first time in a long time, Trump does not control the narrative of 2024.”

Whether or not such optimism gains momentum in the potentially tumultuous days ahead remains to be seen, as does whether the Republicans can find a way out of their own potential sense of learned helplessness in the face of a changing scenario. Whatever happens, given what I know about the past use of that phrase and the nightmare of the war on terror’s use of torture, my own hope is that, with election 2024, the very concept of learned helplessness and the realities it represents, whether it applies to torture at the hands of the U.S. government or suffering at the hands of Trumpian politics, can finally be politically laid to rest.

Call it learned optimism, if you wish, but fingers crossed.

Copyright 2024 Karen Greenberg

Tomdispatch.com

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu certainly had the means and the opportunity. It has assassinated people in Tehran before, likely in coordination with the Iranian anti-regime terrorist group, the Islamic-Marxist Mojahedin-e Khalq (the MEK or MKO), the “People’s Jihadis.” These targets were nuclear scientists or regime officials, however, not foreign visiting dignitaries. Iranian reporter Saeed Azimi wrote that it was not clear whether the strike was carried out by a rocket or a quadcopter drone.

Geolocation of the building in northern Tehran where Ismail Haniyeh was reportedly assassinated: 35.81931, 51.41559. An Iranian official shared the image with @farnazfassihi, and it is circulating on Telegram. Green cloth and rubble is visible on the east side of the building. pic.twitter.com/gDi1vMfDbr

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) July 31, 2024

So then we come to motive. For motive we have to consider the position of Netanyahu. He is afraid of his corruption trials resuming if his government falls and he goes out of office. He is also afraid that once he is no longer prime minister and/or the war on Gaza ends, the Israeli public and its Establishment will begin looking more closely into his culpability for the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by the al-Qassam Brigades (the Hamas paramilitary wing) and its allies such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Netanyahu had after all for a decade been a conduit of Egyptian and Gulf money to Gaza, which was deposited in Israeli bank accounts and then transfered at the prime minister’s behest. Netanyahu thought he had a deal with Hamas that they could run Gaza as their fief and receive these outside monies, as long as they kept the Palestinians divided and posed only a minor annoyance to Israeli security. It was like making a pact with a Bengal tiger that he should henceforth be a vegetarian, and then poking him repeatedly with a stick.

So Netanyahu’s major motivation is to keep Gaza as a forever war. It is not, of course, actually a war. There are still some al-Qassam Brigades irregulars and occasional minor firefights. But most of the action is Netanyahu arbitrarily moving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza around, from one place to another, giving them no respite or opportunity to reconstitute a normal life. He has destroyed most of the places that could be used as homes. He has destroyed the schools, the universities, the hospitals, the refugee centers, the mosques, the churches. He has destroyed the water infrastructure, so that whole families have less than a gallon of water a day for drinking, washing, and cooking, whereas scientists say every individual needs at least 4 gallons of water a day for these purposes. He has destroyed waste treatment facilities, so that most of the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza are sick. Some even now have polio, and there is no Israeli plan to vaccinate them, though Israeli soldiers are being vaccinated.

But the problem with this military campaign against women and children is that it is hard to hide the lack of a credible enemy or that it is mostly blowing up minors and mothers. Hard to keep that going.

Netanyahu appears to want to go on behaving in this genocidal way in Gaza for months to come, until he feels his popularity in Israel has returned and he could survive an electoral challenge. He does not have to face elections until 2026, two years from now, by which time there will be hundreds of thousands of fewer Palestinians in Gaza if he continues his current tactics.

In order to stay out of jail and to continue to enjoy wealth and power, Netanyahu needs to keep his political coalition together. He has a 64-seat majority in a Knesset or parliament of 120, so even losing 5 parliamentarians could provoke new elections. Keeping the coalition together is not easy. He brought the fascist Kahanaists into the government, the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis. On Monday they rampaged through a military base attempting to protect suspected Israeli war criminals from the military police. The Netanyahu government, to the extent it assuages them, now stands for the legitimacy of torture and abuse of POWs as a matter of policy. This lawless position does not sit right with a lot of Israelis, many of whom fear the plans of the Kahanaists for an Iran-style Jewish theocracy in Israel. To make things worse, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jewish fundamentalists, some 14 percent of the population, who are the ultimate Israeli welfare queens and had been exempted from military service. These “Haredim” are furious at the prospect, and they are key to Netanyahu’s coalition. They are now a wild card.

Not only is Israeli society fissiparous, but the other need Netanyahu has in keeping the Gaza forever war going is knee-jerk support from the United States and complete impunity.

Joe Biden is willing to grant Netanyahu that impunity. The United States resupplies the Israeli military with weaponry and ammunition for leveling Gaza in real time– the Israelis ran out of their own supplies months ago. Netanyahu also needs to be sure that Washington will run interference for him with countries and institutions not willing to go along with the genocide, that it will slap down Spain and Ireland and Norway and the International Criminal Court — severe critics of Netanyahu’s government — and dissuade the UK and France from joining them.

But like Israeli society, Washington is also fissiparous. Biden has ended his presidential run. Kamala Harris has suddenly emerged as powerful in the administration. She publicly told Netanyahu off about his total war on Gaza civilians, which clearly startled and rattled him. She needs the youth vote, and she can’t afford to be yoked to Netanyahu, who evokes sheer disgust in most Americans under 35. Harris not only needs the youths, but she needs to bring along both the blue dog democrats and the Progressive Caucus, and the latter are not following her into any fond bear hug of Netanyahu, of the sort Biden has advocated.

What if Harris persuaded Biden that in order for her to defeat Trump, she needs him to end the policy of impunity? Biden himself had made a half-hearted effort to pressure Netanyahu into negotiations with Hamas for a release of Israeli hostages and a pause in the fighting that might turn into a ceasefire.

With whom did Biden insist Netanyahu negotiate? Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ civilian political bureau. What if Harris managed to turn the screws and threaten Netanyahu with a cut-off of ammunition or other aid if he didn’t make a deal? Netanyahu kept pretending to negotiate, but every time Haniyeh made a concession, Netanyahu would make a new demand and scupper the talks.

If Netanyahu rubbed out Haniyeh, and it is very likely he did, then it was a perfect strategy for him. Harris and her allies in the White House can’t make him negotiate with Haniyeh if Haniyeh is dead. Moreover, it is predictable that Hamas would pull out of the negotiations entirely after the murder of their leader.

Even better, by blowing away Haniyeh in Tehran, Netanyahu has pulled the beard of Iranian clerical Leader Ali Khamenei. If Iran retaliates, then Biden has to step up to protect Israel, and even Harris would have to be circumspect lest she look weak. Netanyahu also took out a high Hezbollah official in Beirut the same day, in hopes that Hezbollah will retaliate.

In other words, the nothing burger of the Gaza war is no longer a sufficient vehicle to keep Netanyahu in power and out of jail. He needs a wider, more credible and more intense set of conflicts than beheading children with quadcopters. These geopolitical counter-strikes have the potential for making Israelis rally around him and put away their internal squabbles, and for making Harris back off her criticism of him for his Gaza war crimes. Now it is all about whether you stand with Israel against Iran, and Americans and Israelis have widely hated Iran for over forty years.

It is perfect. For Benjamin Netanyahu.

Not for the rest of us.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “What is the fallout from the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran? | Inside Story” .