Found in echo opinion stacks- Antisemitism has evil tentacles

This opinion echo by Karen Gardner was found while searching for blogs to feature on Maine Writer. If I had the ability to give "blogger echo awards", this would be one of the finalists.

By the way, this Maine Writer blog has achieved over 401,000 views. I'm blogging and proud to echo!

My Turn: Lessons from history by Karen Gardner published in the Greenfield Recorder newspaper, in Massachusetts.

Ms. Gardner wrote: In case you don’t know, I’m Jewish. 

And I don’t classify myself that way because I attend synagogue or participate in religious ritual, since I do not.

I’m Jewish because my parents were Jewish and so it’s in my blood. I was born right after World War II, during which 6 million Jewish people were murdered for no other reason than that they were Jewish. Over 1 million of them were shot to death, while the rest were systematically rounded up, sent to camps, gassed, and burned in ovens by the Nazi regime in Germany and the countries it had invaded.

And when I say systematically, just imagine the huge mechanism that must have been devised to accomplish such a heinous act of hatred and inhumanity. 

And then try to imagine the enormous participation — in one way or another — of thousands, maybe millions of people in that endeavor, for it couldn’t have happened without them.

How could so many people be so convinced that the mass killing of Jews was the right and necessary thing to do? With lies, of course, through the endless cycle of lies, conspiracy theories, and misinformation repeated over and over again until the lies became “facts.” A political party used those lies to win elections to govern the country, bringing Adolf Hitler, an insane, anti-Semitic, but terribly shrewd man, to power. The result? A previously democratic nation, though a relatively new one, became an authoritarian one, bringing another world war and the murder of millions of innocents.

This hatred of Jews has been around for centuries. We have been accused of everything from kidnapping and eating children, to being the shadowy financial support behind every bad thing that happens anywhere in the world. And these beliefs continue today, of course. The fear and hatred of Jews is just one of many conspiracy theories that when repeated often enough end up converting once rational people into believers, no matter how crazy the theory may be.

So, I was not surprised to read the story in this newspaper (Greenfield Recorder) about a recent virtual Board of Health meeting to discuss a proposed vaccination mandate in Northampton, Mass. 

(Unbelievably!) Some online participants made anti-Semitic comments, one of which referred to the five-member all-volunteer health board members as “unelected, rich Jewish doctors.” One participant had that very popular neo-Nazi epithet “Jews Will Not Replace Us” as his Zoom name. And, of course, there were swastikas displayed as well.

I may not have been surprised to read about this horrible incident, but I was frightened. How could I not be? And I’m not just frightened for the Jews in this country; I’m frightened for all minority and marginalized people as well. I have often been told that what happened in the past could not possibly happen here, but I’m sorry to say that I no longer believe that.

There is a fairly large segment of our population who believe the constant and continuing lies that the 2020, election was stolen, despite formidable evidence proving its legitimacy. The lies that we cannot trust our leaders to provide for free and fair elections just keep coming and the people keep believing.

We have passed a one-year anniversary of the January 6th  insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; and since that horrifying event we have witnessed the disintegration of the Republican Party.

Republican elected officials have descended into a spineless group of sycophants who will do whatever it takes, lawful or not, to stay in power and in the good graces of the former president, a wannabe autocrat, and of his base of true believers.

Sabbath Peace 

This leaves us with only one real political party, the Democratic Party, that continues to be engaged in the difficult task of governing this country for the benefit of its people. The Republicans have ceased any efforts to make the lives of their supporters, or anyone else, better during this very difficult time of COVID and economic hardship. They are now interested only in winning elections, no matter the method involved. And if they do win in the November midterm elections and take control of either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or both, we will be looking at the end of our democracy. This is how it happens, just like it did so many years ago in Germany.

It can happen here.
Karen Gardner, of Haydenville, can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.

P.S. In Maine Writer's opinion, in the tentacles of history, evil antisemitism has endured the cruelty of eons of oppression, and persecution and pogroms against a group of humans who, truth be told, are the source of all Christendom. This cannot be tolerated.

Kevin McCarthy - the dummy that came alive- has no credibility and GOP is stuck with TFG

Echo opinion by Karen Gardner, published in the Greenville Recorder, a Massachusetts newspaper:

Trump is the failed leader of the failed seditious Trumpziism 

Maybe this is it, that moment when the Trump-adoration bubble has finally burst. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time, ever since 2015, when Trump came gliding down that escalator in New York to announce his run for the Republican presidential nomination. During that speech, he made a big splash about rapists and drug dealers flooding across our southern border. 

And, (unbelievable!) as you know, he used fear to win that nomination and the presidency. 

Then, Trump lost the next election, leaving chaos, lies, violence and conspiracy theories in his wake, while nearly taking our democracy with him on his way out the door.

Failure squared -  #TFG Trump stamped "flop" on the dummy that came alive in Kevin McCarthy. Now the Growing Old Party (GOP) is stuck with the dRumph!

Trumpzi already announced his intention to run for the job again in 2024. At the same time, there’s a lot of grumbling and blaming going on as Rep ublican Party leaders and strategists try to figure out what happened to their great big beautiful red (drip-drip!)

💧 wave, what they believed would sweep them into control of both houses of Congress, in the November, 2022, midterm elections.

Some are even blaming the death of the red wave on Donald for endorsing so many candidates whose only qualification for the office they ran for (and lost) was that they believed in and repeated every lie that came out of his mouth: that our elections cannot be trusted and that he really won the 2020 election despite the endless evidence to the contrary.

Isn’t it time that Republicans acknowledge that Donald Trump is a liability, not an asset to them? That’s been clear for years. In Donald’s world everything is about him. He was the star of every rally he attended for those poor losing candidates, giving them only a few minutes of attention. Then he’d spend another hour complaining about the election that was stolen from him two long years ago and how unfairly he’s been treated. Poor little Donald.

Let’s not forget that Republicans can’t take all the credit for their dismal showing in last week’s election. 

In fact, the Democratic activists across the country worked extremely hard for months to get people to register and to vote. They wrote millions of postcards to voters, worked on phone and text banks, and knocked on doors to make sure people had all the information they needed to participate in the election. And it paid off.

So, what will happen now? It seems pretty clear that enough of Trump’s supporters turned away from him last week, looking instead for stability and experience when marking their ballots. Maybe Republican leaders will decide to look forward rather than focusing on the past which is chock full of Donald.

I worry, though, that Republican leaders will do what they did after the January 6th insurrection in 2021. When Trump was putting their lives at risk by provoking his followers, some of them armed, to attack the U.S. Capitol that day, they were furious and begged him to please call off the mob. For a brief time afterward, they spoke out against him, but before long, almost all of them returned to their usual spineless Trump adoration.

Even when they had the chance to impeach the man, they chose him over our country. Had the Senate Republicans voted to impeach, they would have prevented him from ever holding federal office again, but now they’re stuck with him. And so are we.

But maybe the spell has been broken, maybe his supporters can see the man for what he is and has always been — a self-serving narcissist who cares nothing for those who adore him. He has no policies, no plans, no programs to improve the lives of his supporters. He seeks the presidency for no other purpose than to hold power, to be in charge of everyone. And to feel the love, of course.

Will Republicans be brave enough this time to throw Trump out? It seems to me that if they want to have any chance of winning elections (fairly, that is) in the future, they better do just that. I’m guessing that Republican voters, like most voters, want their leaders to pay attention to the things that are important to them, like fixing roads, improving health care and lowering its costs, preserving their right to make personal decisions about their lives, supporting their families, and keeping them safe.

During the four years of Trump’s presidency, he didn’t do much beyond adding $1.9 trillion to the budget deficit by cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, not for regular people. Yes, the government spent billions in response to the pandemic, but his constant ignorant and dangerous interventions made handling that health crisis so much worse.

So, isn’t it time his supporters turn their backs on Donald, quit sending him money in response to his endless requests, and start to look elsewhere for leadership? The election results show that this has begun, but there’s other evidence as well.

A friend recently told me that their neighbor, a seriously devoted Trump supporter, abruptly removed from her front yard last week every single piece of her Trump display of lawn signs and ornaments. That’s quite a change after seven years of Trump loving.

Maybe the spell has been broken. Maybe Republican leaders are taking down their Trump signs as well. I can only hope.

Karen Gardner lives in Haydenville, in Hampshire County, Massachusetts .