Tag: Politics Page 1 of 2

My views on Politics, if I feel the need to rant.

Passover 2022

On May 3, 2022

Photo by Danielle Shevin

Finally after almost 3 years of isolation and pandemic, my group of American/Jewish/Swedish friends could meet in person and celebrate Passover together again. We gathered at the Party House on Reimersholmen as we usually have done for many years now and sat down to an organized dinner. It was so great to see all who could make it. This year our Seder plate had two additions on it. I am generally a traditionalist and don’t like changing the contents of the Seder plate to suit current politically correct modernity but I made an exception this year. This year we added an orange and a beautiful sunflower blossom – the orange to symbolize women leading services once usually reserved only to men and the flower to remind us what is going on in Ukraine at this moment.

Here is what I had to say before we started our service.

It’s so nice to see all of you today. It’s been 3 years since we met to celebrate Passover in person. Technically it’s not really Passover any longer. Yesterday was the last day so I guess Passover has passed over us. Passover is over but here we are…

Here we are. Think about those words: here we are. We almost weren’t. I waited too long before trying to book the Party House and when I went to book our usual day, Good Friday, I discovered someone else had booked it before me. Saturday, påskafton was also booked, as well as Easter Sunday. Today was the only available day this weekend, so here we are.

This holiday which we celebrate every year, is especially apt this year, given what has been going on in the world right now. Passover reminds us how we had to pack up what we could carry with us and leave a land that we had been living in for many generations, at almost a moment’s notice. We didn’t even have time to let our bread rise.

A similar exodus is happening over in Ukraine right now. I can’t stop watching CNN show me how Ukrainians are being forced to flee from their homes and escape to other countries. While they aren’t being chased out by horse-drawn chariots and their bread comes in plastic bags from grocery stores, their hasty and dangerous exodus reminds me of the Passover story. It tells the tale of a people who want to be able to live in freedom and self-determination just like the Ukrainians do today.

The Passover story of the exodus from Egypt, 13 centuries before Jesus, was the founding myth of the Jewish people. But, it was just the first of many such expulsions. 7 centuries before Jesus, the Assyrian empire sacked the northern Kingdom of Israel and deported the Jews to Assyria. Then a little over a hundred years later Babylonia, besieged Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s Temple and carted us off to Babylonia. It took fifty years before the Jews were allowed to return to their homeland and could build a new temple. That Temple got destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and once again Jews were scattered across the ancient world far away from their home. This time the expulsion would last for 2000 years.

During those centuries Jews were given the choice to either leave or die, by cities or countries throughout Europe and north Africa. During the early middle ages, Spain became a haven of prosperity for Jews only to be ended with the devastating expulsion by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. I’m not going to list all the places that first welcomed us only to later expel us. You can look it up on Wikipedia.

But in spite of all that moving around, the Jewish People survived. We learned how to carry with us our culture, our religion, our history – to not tie it down to the place we were living in. In today’s world, forced migration is getting more and more common. Sometimes because of war like in Ukraine, or because of environmental catastrophes like forest fires in the American west or rising sea levels for island nations or desertification in sub-Saharan Africa. With each new place the Jewish people were forced to move to, we learned to live there within the new rules of the place and also as Jews and when we had to leave we took with us the influences from that place and incorporated them into ourselves without losing ourselves in the process. This ability to adapt and change and still remain true to our heart is something we can teach the rest of the world in these days of involuntary migration.

So, here we are, sitting here, today, as Jews still do, in a small building on Reimersholmen, remembering that very first move. Granted we are not all here – some of us, from my group of J.A.P.S., couldn’t make it today. Hopefully next year we can all be here together once again.

So, let’s start the seder.

First the bell bottoms came back

By Hilarie

On May 30, 2020

In Uncategorized

The crowd on Day 1 of the Woodstock Festival on August 15, 1969. Clayton Call/Redferns

Woodstock Music Festival – 1969

Back in the 60s, my baby boomer generation rode the interstate buses into the south to protest segregation in the southern states. My generation protested at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and were met with the use of extreme violence by the Chicago police force. My generation stood up and called out shady backroom politics. We demonstrated for clean water and clean air. We toppled a dishonest president. We ended an unjust war. We hailed the passing of Roe/Wade giving women the right to decide over their own bodies. We wore our bell bottoms and we changed the world. We thought we had fixed things.

The word Boomer seems to have become a bad word lately, connoting all kinds of unpleasant things about my generation. By now we have gotten old, and people have forgotten what we did.

I no longer live in New York, the city of my heart. I haven’t lived there for over 30 years. I view America from afar. When I meet someone new and we spend a bit of time exchanging the Cliff Notes of our lives, I usually summarize myself by saying “I’m an old hippy”. Perhaps this isn’t completely honest. Though I went around braless, I never lived in a commune. I didn’t practice free love and have sex with anyone who seemed interested. I attended a few peace marches but that was mainly because a boy I liked wanted to go. While I smoked pot on occasion I didn’t spend my days in a daze. I didn’t attend Woodstock. But I still feel I can nevertheless call myself an old hippy. That’s how I identified back then when I was young, wearing long flowered skirts and sandals (in the summer) and my hair a wild curly mass…for a short period of time. Life is usually lived in short periods of time. We are something for a while and then we evolve. Inside we stay who we are. It’s just our outside trappings that change. I gave up my patched bell bottomed jeans for mid-calf length flowy dresses that were replaced by broad-shouldered suits that became baggy-waist pants that turned into tunics over leggings. But I’m still me underneath.

I still love New York though I no longer belong there. I still love a good argument. I still believe people are fools, all of us, but we should at least be friendly and show consideration and respect. I still love science fiction and hate oysters. And while I believe in the equality of all human beings and their right to be able to live a decent life within a just system regardless of race or gender or social status or hairstyle or clothing choices, I still reserve the right to choose who I like and wish to be friends with. Though everybody is equal I have no desire to love everyone equally.

I read my electronic New York Times subscription from here in Stockholm. I read articles from CNN or the few stories I am allowed from the Washington Post without a paid subscription. I look at the things people share on Facebook and Twitter. And I get very scared. Black men get killed while jogging and a white woman threatens a black man with a bold-faced lie to the police about him endangering her. The only thing new about this is that they are being filmed, live as it is happening, like the reportage from the Vietnam war in the 60s and 70s. Synagogues are attacked. And churches. Men with military grade weaponry feel they have the right to threaten State capital buildings and the police just look on. Right wing fascists are rioting, burning buildings, reminding me of Kristallnacht in the 1930s, though this time it isn’t specifically aimed at only Jewish citizens. But the purpose is the same – to create havoc, to tumble society. Demonstrators are marching again, protesting injustice. And like at Kent State, the police are firing on them.

I read all this and it worries me, a lot. There is a vacuum in the place where the head of state of the USA should be. Instead there is a man totally unfit to be there, filled with anti everything that is good and decent and humane and sane. There is so much wrong with America now and once again it is all coming to the surface, into plain sight. My generation thought we fixed things. We had that hope at least. We obviously didn’t. Hans Rosling, the Swedish academic, believed that statistically the world was improving for the majority of people. But the things that are still wrong in the world can’t be fixed all in one fell swoop. Perhaps it is up to each generation to stand up and say “This is wrong” and demand change. Time to protest, time to demonstrate, time to march, time to stand up and be heard. Change for the better won’t be able to happen until the current administration is voted out and its enablers in the Republican Party are also voted out.

But right now, it’s the 60s all over again, baby. The struggle is here once more. Put your bell bottoms on and start getting on with it.

And just for a bit of memory and inspiration…My Generation by the Who.
Photo credit: The crowd on Day 1 of the Woodstock Festival on August 15, 1969.
Clayton Call/Redferns

Me Too two

By Hilarie

On December 7, 2017

In Uncategorized

Okay! That’s it! I’ve had enough. This Me Too thing has just gone too far.

Al Franken resigns.
A man who has admitted, all on his own, that he feels free to grab a woman’s pussy simply because he is famous sits in the White House and another man who chases after young, underage teenage girls when he himself is in his 30s has a good chance to become elected to the Senate and Al Franken is the one who resigns and leaves politics. A man who during his two terms in office has fought “for the people who needed his help. Kids facing bullying, seniors worried about the price of prescription drugs, Native Americans who have been overlooked for far too long. Working people who have been taking it on the chin for a generation. Everyone in the middle class and everyone aspiring to join it.”

That is who is resigning and I am so angry!

It started with Leeann Tweeden. She claimed that it happened at a USO show. It was a USO show! And, following in the fine tradition of USO shows since the time of Bob Hope and Marilyn Monroe, it was going to be raunchy. It was supposed to be raunchy! What other kind of jokes or skits do you do in front of a bunch of young military guys but off-color, bad taste and sexy ones? Just so you know, that was a rhetorical question. Franken wrote a bunch of the skits – they included kissing and probably touching. But Tweeden claims that Franken kissed her without her consent and that he groped her tits while she was asleep. I’ve seen that picture. He’s not even touching her – his hands have shadows under them, and I doubt she is actually asleep. It looks like the kind of posed, goofy fooling around that one does when you’re supposed to be tasteless. And I’ve seen a video of Tweeden on stage next to a country western singer trying to do his part of the show – make music. She sidled up to him, rubbed her body against his and grabbed his ass. Maybe he should complain Me Too too. Because that is also “sexual harassment” isn’t it? In any case, Ms Tweeden knew what she was getting into when she signed up to do a USO show. I don’t believe her one bit.

But the floodgate opened and a number of other accusers raised their voices to claim he grabbed their asses while taking pictures with him. Al Franken is a shrimpy guy, he’s pretty short. Yeah, I know, every guy is short to me. But he is only 5 foot 6 inches tall. When asked to take a picture with someone, you might put your arm around their waist. And if you don’t bother to raise your arm, there’s a good chance it goes below someones waist and ends up near the ass. Especially if you’re a short guy like Al. When you’re asked to take hundreds of pictures in a day – real quick like – you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about where to put your hand. It just lands where it lands and then you’re on to the next photo-op.

Another accuser says he put his hand around her waist and that she felt that was inappropriate “groping”. Another claimed he tried to give her a kiss. She described it as a “wet” kiss. We have only her allegations to go by as to how “wet” she thought it was. Still another claims he tried to get her to go into a bathroom with him. This he denies categorically and says, “I did not proposition anyone to join me in any bathroom.” Another accuser claims he demanded he get a kiss from her as his right as an entertainer. This accusation he also absolutely says is completely untrue and he could never even imagine saying something like that. I think maybe this woman is getting him confused with the man who does believe that, Donald Trump. Four of these accusers are anomalous. And I think that stinks too. Especially in America where you have the right to meet your accuser face to face.

I read somewhere that someone said that these accusations against Franken must be true because they have a lot in common. Well, there is another reason that they might sound the same – someone coached them to say what they said. There wasn’t anything to accuse him of that was really bad – no outright rape or threats to end their careers if they didn’t let him have his way with them, no actual pussy grabbing or physical threats – just a few misplaced arms and hands, actions not even serious enough to remember doing. And if you can’t remember doing them, how can you prove you didn’t?

But then Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein, Tammy Baldwin, and Heidi Heitkamp and other Democratic senators came out demanding he resign. Shame on you, ladies, and men too! I’m sure they are trying to show they are taking the high road, to prove their finely tuned sense of morality. But the Republicans, who have no sense of morality at all, as proven by their support of Trump and Moore and the despicable tax bill they are trying to ram down America’s throat, are just sitting there laughing at them. The Republicans don’t even have to win an election to get rid of one of the most aggressively anti-Trump Democratic senators. The Democrats are doing their work for them. The R’s are laughing all the way back home to their big money donors.

Probably since we humans were still living in our caves, men have been able to be the ones who decided everything; first, because of their greater physical strength, then their greater economic power and greater political power. After all, we shouldn’t forget that it’s probably not much more than 100 years since women were still considered the legal property of men and in many places in the world still are. So we women have been getting used to being raped, beat up, killed and harassed in zillions of ways, for a pretty long time. But things are changing. In some parts of the world, mainly the industrialized west, women are no-one’s property any longer. They own themselves. They can decide for themselves what they want to do, how they want to live and how they want to use their brains. And just now they are willing to stand up and tell how they have been abused and harassed and they are being listened to for like probably the first time! And I think that is fantastic. But there is something to remember. Even women can lie – for lots of different reasons. And not all men are guilty. Even if a woman says so.

Now, even more so due to the influence of Donald Trump, the US is undergoing a period of isolationism (Trump’s America only), religious extremism (in the Republican Party), false accusations (fake news), and lapses in due process (Lock her up). The last thing we need is a kind of mass hysteria like what happened in the 17th century, during the time of the Salem Witch Trials. I applaud women who are willing to speak up about rape, abuse of power and true sexual harassment. But, please, equating a mis-placed hand, a kiss, a hug, or a bad joke with these things makes the rapes, the abuse and the truly awful harassment seem trivial. Standing out in the public square screaming Me Too and pointing a finger at someone is not the way to make true changes. You have to judge a person, Man or Woman by what they stand for. What the lives of Trump, Moore or Harvey stand for is not the same thing as what Al Franken has worked for his entire political life.

Don’t let Me Too confuse you too.

A Little Bit Extreme

By Hilarie

On October 18, 2016

In Uncategorized

When I was growing up my mother used to tell me “Eat your vegetables!”

When I was growing up, we started every school day with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and the Lord’s Prayer.
When I was growing up, we would watch with awe as NASA scientists built rockets that could send human beings to the moon.
When I was growing up, I learned about the Christian Crusades rampaging across Europe on their way to the Holy Land, while most of Islamic Spain and Portugal flourished in a golden age of science, medicine, trade, poetry and culture.
When I was growing up, people were marching for civil rights, for women’s rights, for equality for all people.

My mother’s idea of a correct dinner plate was one composed of 3 parts: there was a protein item such as beef, chicken or pork, there was some sort of starchy item such as rice or potatoes or macaroni, and there was some sort of veggie such as broccoli or asparagus or corn. We never had that all-American staple of the 1960s, the peas and carrots mix (with little pea-sized cubes of carrots) because I was allergic to the peas. My mom often served slightly unusual veggies like artichokes to keep me and my brother interested in them. But regardless of what type of veggie there was on my plate there were always the 2 other items there too. But today it’s not enough to eat veggies with every meal. You are encouraged to be extreme and you have to eat nothing but the veggies. You have to be Vegan and nothing that ever breathed oxygen should pass your lips.

The Pledge of Allegiance had no mention of God when first written, but it did by the time I was in school. The Lord’s Prayer, a specifically Christian prayer was not a part of my Jewish experience. Nevertheless, to me, as I recited it every morning with my Christian classmates, the prayer was just words, without any strong significant meaning. The words certainly didn’t interfere with my identity as a Jew. I got my identity from my home and family. The Founding Fathers had as one of their very fundamental principles, the idea of the separation of Church and State. They were educated men, these inventors of our country. They knew about the horrors that State-sponsored religion had visited on Europe in the past (mainly by the Christian Church) and they wisely wanted to avoid this. So if we really wanted to do as the founders wanted, there would be no prayers at all in the public schools. But today the Pledge and the Prayer have become a battleground between those who don’t want them in the public schools and those who insist they should be there. Prayer in school, mainly Christian prayers, seem to have become a rallying point between those who fanatically believe that America is a Christian country and everyone should be a Christian or at least participate in Christian prayer and those who believe that a Christian prayer in a school is an infringement on their own personal non-Christian rights. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists and everyone else who have an alternative belief should be forced to endure it. Once again, a plate with a variety of flavors, is being rejected by the extremists.

In the days when we watched men travel to the moon, scientists were respected. Real science was taught in school. Darwin’s ideas about evolution had long been proven as fact. Exploring all areas of the world for more knowledge about life was considered important. We believed that life could be made better for everybody though science. But today Science is considered suspect. Scientists too. Scientific knowledge is rejected in favor of unfounded belief. Evolution? A bunch of hooey! Climate Change? Just bunk! Moon landings? A big conspiracy. Vaccines? Don’t do it because they cause autism. Rape? Not a big deal because you can’t get pregnant from it since the body rejects rape pregnancies. I am just waiting for the flat earth people to start demanding that to be taught in schools.

These days the Dark Ages are long over. The Pope no longer exhorts his followers on organized rampages across Europe in the name of God. But instead, a fundamentalist version of Islam is on a holy war against the non-believers, intent on wiping out all who believe otherwise. Extremism at its finest. It doesn’t really matter who’s God is in charge when the extremists insist on deciding who is right and who is wrong. Everyone is sure to suffer.

The days of standing up for inclusion; for fighting for equal rights for women, for people of color, for the handicapped, for all minorities seem to be long over. Instead we have a presidential candidate who makes fun of the disabled, is vulgar and rude about women, who threatens to jail his opponent if he is elected. His followers at his rallies shout things like “Kill her.” or “Trump that bitch!” or “Build a wall — kill them all.” They threaten violence towards anyone in their midst who voices a dissenting opinion.The hatred for The Other has replaced the idea of equality for all which once ruled this land.

The world is definitely not like it used to be when I was growing up. And I’m not really sure about the reason for why this is. But now we are living in an age of extremism and I have to say that I am getting extremely fed up with it.