Love to Learn, Learn to Love.

The Juice Awakens … After a Period of Hibernation Visions of Israel and Trump Have Been Permeating My Psyche Lately

This JuicyLesson began as a response to a text message from a good friend of mine. In it, he/she suggested that we leave Trump alone and give him a chance, adding that he/she would be happy if Trump moved the American embassy from its present situation in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the latter city’s possession having been in dispute since at least 1967, and even much longer ago than that according to biblical scholars and others. At the moment, Jerusalem is a divided city, half under Palestinian rule and half within the purview of the Israeli administration.** Moving the American embassy there would be telling the world that the Excited States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a slap in the face to the Palestinian Authority as well as to Arabs throughout the world.

** From a friend of mine — “For the record, East Jerusalem is not under Palestinian rule at all. The status of the city under the 1947 UN Partition Plan was that it should be an internationally-ruled city, which Israel (Ben Gurion at the time) agreed to. Jordan ignored the decision and occupied East Jerusalem from 1949-1967 (I don’t remember anyone ever objecting to that, just as they didn’t object to Jordan occupying the West Bank.) The 1949 ceasefire line runs through the middle of the city; in 1967 the status quo would have held had Jordan not opened hostilities. West (Israeli) Jerusalem is not contested territory, except for those for whom the whole of Israel is contested territory.”

So I don’t like the idea of moving the embassy. That’s all some Jews seem to care about, Israel or bust – exactly like in the most recent Canadian federal election when Robert Libman, a Conservative, ran and almost won in Darcy McGee because of Harper’s undying support of Israel, support, if more successful, would have helped end around fifty successive years or more of Liberal wins in this constituency, the constituency which elected as federal MP’s people like Sir Alan Macnaughton, Pierre Trudeau, Irwin Cotler and the longest standing, while an MP, female MP in parliamentary history, Sheila Finestone.

The only hope, tiny, infinitesimal though it might be, for peace in the ME is the so-called two-state solution. If Israel continues building settlements on occupied land and insisting that moving the embassy is a positive step, then there’s absolutely zero hope for a peaceful settlement.

I know your side’s argument : that Palestinians, some of them, believe that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist and as long as that type of thinking continues, the hope for a lasting peace is non-existent. An impasse, but knee-jerk pro-Israel ideology like the kind spouted by a surprising number of Jews, is not, in my view, positive. Fuck Trump and the train he and his kids and his wife and those cabinet picks of his, idiots mostly with not a trace of understanding of what the majority of people have to go through to survive while they grow rich on the former’s backs, yup, screw all of them and the horses that they road in on. Assholes one and all.. Wealthy assholes but assholes nonetheless.
Did you see that person Trump selected to be his Secretary of Education? If I could have reached through my television screen and choked her, I would have done so, and happily too.

Like I was saying, it’s gonna be tough.

To expect Trump to unite the country, is a pipe dream but you are perfectly free to dream away, basking in your short-sightedness and/or in your support of one of Trump’s platform planks like his unyielding support of Israel. Just wait.

How can anyone believe that Trump will not divide the country even more than it is already divided. Look at the racial, and male/female break down of his cabinet proposals. Thirteen white men, one white woman, one Afro-American male, zero Latinos. I’m fairly certain, hopeful anyway, that some of his picks have altruistic goals in mind, as well as maintaining a sincere desire to move the country forward without considering the effects of their legislative or executive actions on either their own personal portfolios or on their own individual and family wealth.

For the sake of argument, let’a just say that Trump and his entire cabinet are motivated by and work for the popular good. Let’s just say that that’s the case, as highly doubtful as this is as a realistic scenario. Even in this context, I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that very little good can emanate from the Trump administration.

That’s because, as I’ve already posited, these people just don’t have a clue. That’s it. They just aren’t aware regardless of what Trump has said about them, that his cabinet is the smartest, in terms of IQ, in history.

Let’s start with IQ? What does it measure? What does it mean? IQ tests are proven to be culturally biased, depending on who composes them and how these tests are composed. For example, Mother’s Day means different things to different cultural groups. In the case of white society, it is an annual event in which we celebrate motherhood and all that it stands for while in the Afro-American community, in some of it anyway, Mother’s Day refers to something completely different.

I remember a question on an IQ test I wrote in grade 3, when I was around nine or ten years old. There was s straight line on the paper along with four multiple choice answers dealing with how long we thought the line was : an inch, two inches, three inches, like that. How would that be relevant to the life of someone who was NOT part of a white, middle class (bourgeois) community? There are in fact different forms of intelligence. I wonder if Trump or his cabinet are even aware of that.

There is artistic intelligence, music-related intelligence (composing, playing, and/or conducting music), athletic intelligence (calling superstars like Wayne, Sid the Kid, Guy Lafleur (Go Habs) and Connor McDavid genii (geniuses) is in fact not off the mark at all. They are genii in the sense that they see things happening on the hockey ice that others don’t or if they do, not as quickly, allowing the genii among them to anticipate where the puck or a certain team mate will be at a given time and for them to be there at the correct split second or to flip a no look pass, takes a form of intelligence that many pros don’t have). There are intellectual and emotional intelligences too.

All we can actually say about intelligence is that it measures our perceptual abilities, regardless of our respective fields of endeavour/expertise.

Trump’s cabinet picks have business intelligence, or perhaps a form of the more general type of intelligence associated with mathematics. Many of them didn’t sound that smart to me but then again they were just saying what they thought the Senators grilling them with a view towards their confirmation wanted to hear. As an aside, let me say that I came close to throwing up when certain suck hole Senators had the floor and opened with flagrant sucking up hoping, I guess, to be able to secure political favours from these people in future, once they have been confirmed.

Then there was the honest, down-to-earth voice of intelligence and reason, Bernie Sanders, castigating the proposed head of the E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency) and letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that he wouldn’t be getting Bernie’s vote. Too bad, asshole.

That’s it.

Peace.

No time to say hello goodbye
I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.

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