The Misfortune Teller ("The Mausoleum of Tolerance")

"And if someone’s feelings are hurt, too bad. We don’t need a war with Iran because Israel wants one and some rich and powerful American Jews are happy to deliver. Seriously, we don’t need it."

I have given some thought to writing an essay entitled “The Mausoleum of Tolerance,” addressing the subject of some self-identified Jews trying -- quite successfully -- to lay a massive guilt trip on Americans for something that Americans did not do to European Jews during World War II.

Many years ago, my two sons came home from high school visibly upset. When I asked them to explain, they told me that their school had taken them on a field trip to this place called “The Museum of Tolerance” in Los Angeles. I had heard of the place, knew its purpose, and would not have granted permission to take my sons there had anyone asked me, which no one did. My boys told me that some people had taken them through a series of “choices” about going through one or the other of several doors, resulting in them getting the feeling that they had murdered — or “tolerated” the murders — of innocent Jewish children somewhere, at some time. I asked them if they had seen any exhibits of Zionist Jews burning down ancient olive orchards and bulldozing Palestinian Arabs out of their homes and villages, herding them into open-air-toilet ghetto-prisons like the Gaza Strip and then bombing the shit out of them there. My sons told me, no, that they had seen no exhibits like that. "Exactly," I told them. "Some Jews -- and some insane Christians, too -- don’t want you to 'tolerate' persecution of Jews in some other country not your own, but they very much insist that you 'tolerate' Jewish persecution of semitic Arabs, Muslims generally, and even some semitic Christians who happen to reside on some desirable property near the Eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea."

Then, too, the last I heard, the United States has rather emphatically refused to admit as refugees Arab and Muslim victims of Jewish Zionist persecution in Occupied Palestine and adjacent Muslim countries, but I hear no clarion calls for Americans to feel all-bad-and-stuff about refusing to admit these refugees to America. Anyway, I told my sons to beware of people who selectively insist that you not tolerate some forms of persecution but tolerate — and even help finance — other forms of persecution of which they heartily approve. I told my sons of a word we have in the English language for such “selective tolerance.” We call it rank hypocrisy. I told my sons that they had done nothing for which they needed to feel ashamed or guilty and if anyone at their school or anywhere else tried to lay a guilt trip on them for something past generations of German Christians had done, then tell them to come see their father about it. I consider “tolerance” a good and necessary thing — especially in light of our Constitution’s many amendments guaranteeing basic freedoms — and I do not hold Americans responsible for every wrong that occurs everywhere on Planet Earth. Americans need to clean up their own act in their own country and leave other countries to sort out their disagreements among themselves. And I actively resent anyone — Jews, Christians, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Scientologists, or anyone else — trying to tell me what I can think, say, hear, or read about any subject that interests me. I don’t believe in Master Races or Chosen People, especially when I see who considers themselves Master and who wants to do the choosing.

If you want to get into the bible with Vice President Pence, especially the Book of Genesis (the first "Jewish" part) and the Book of Revelations (the last “Christian” part) you will read (1) about a really old guy named Abram who “fell on his face” (twice) before agreeing (about ten times) with an invisible Spook to shave the foreskin off the end of his dick in return for which he would receive a third syllable added to his name (making him A-bra-ham) along with fee-simple title to all the surrounding real-estate wherein he was a "stranger;" and (2) that “Jesus” will come back in a really foul mood once all the Jews "who pierced him" have re-assembled in Palestine (so that he won’t have to bother looking for them) and if they don’t convert to "Christianity" on demand then Jesus will cause all sorts of wailing and moaning among them. Something like that. I didn't get that Master's Degree in Religious Studies without learning something about what the Single-Spook animists believe.

At any rate, I perceive a problem with this alliance of convenience between the Jewish and Christian Zionists. Each group thinks that they can use the other group to further their own goals, both temporal and spiritual. But when all the world's Jews refuse to relocate to Occupied Palestine, the Christian Zionists will lose patience and start blaming the Jews not just for stabbing Jesus the first time, but for preventing his return in the (hopefully for them) near future. In his famous essay, "Notes on Nationalism," George Orwell explained the operative phenomenon: "Transferred Nationalism," and especially its defining attribute: instability, about which he wrote:

"The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable. To begin with, as I have pointed out already, they can be and often are fastened up on some foreign country. One quite commonly finds that great national leaders, or the founders of nationalist movements, do not even belong to the country they have glorified. Sometimes they are outright foreigners, or more often they come from peripheral areas where nationality is doubtful. … But the peculiarly interesting fact is that re-transference is also possible. A country or other unit which has been worshipped for years may suddenly become detestable, and some other object of affection may take its place with almost no interval. … What remains constant in the nationalist is his state of mind: the object of his feelings is changeable, and may be imaginary.

"But for an intellectual, transference has an important function which I have already mentioned shortly in connection with Chesterton. It makes it possible for him to be much more nationalistic — more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest — than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge. … In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion — that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware — will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack — all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognised for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct. [emphasis added]

In short, the Christian Zionists that Vice President Pence represents, have fastened upon the idea of "Israel" and Jews as a means of attaining "salvation" when Jesus "comes back" to blow everything up at Armageddon and "take them away" (to some unspecified location). Republican politicians like Mike Pence, of course, only pay lip service to the crazy evangelical Christians as a cheap means of gaining political office with ready access to the pubic treasury and the riches contained therein. The Jewish Zionists, for their part, have no illusions about any such "return" by someone in whom they don’t believe, but they cynically indulge the Christian Zionists -- when not flogging them unmercifully with "guilt" about German atrocities in World War II that Americans did not perpetrate (and to which Americans actually helped put an end) -- because encouraging the "goyim" costs relatively little and actually results in billions of dollars of military and economic tribute annually so that Jews in Occupied Palestine can enjoy single payer healthcare that Americans -- for some reason -- cannot afford for themselves, as Vice President Pence and America’s twin right-wing corporate political parties continually remind us impoverished proles.

So the only question that I have about this unholy alliance between America's Christian and Jewish Zionists involves its duration, not its ultimate outcome. When the big disappointment finally dawns on the duped Christian transferred nationalists, the imaginary object of their unstable attachment: namely, "Israel," will reveal itself as just Occupied Palestine with no "Jesus" anywhere in sight. Given the previous two-thousand years of Christian history, I would not envy the Jewish Zionists when the inevitable re-transference -- wherein the worshipped becomes the detested -- occurs, as it surely will. It has before.

Finally, as to whether President Donald Trump has any understanding of this history or any "policy" in place to deal with it, I rather doubt that he does. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner and Bibi Netanyahu will tell him what little they think he needs to know; the medieval Saudi Arabian monarchy will foot the bill; and the ticket-punching, fuck-up-and-move up generals who surround him will take care of running the corporate fast-food franchise nominally known as The United States of America.

The Mausoleum of Tolerance

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