Redirecting

In anticipation of my monthly meeting of my Representative District's monthly Committee Meeting, I sent the chairman a message of withdrawal.  The activity wasn't me, it never achieved what I hoped it would.

My involvement began with a different district whose activities I greatly enjoyed being a part of.  I got to meet my legislative representatives, finding each thoughtful and personable.  When I commented to them, they commented back.  Scheduled meetings were electronic, as the pandemic was still in its active stage, but with precautions, we were able to meet in person on occasion in a reception type setting.  And the officials were always there.  They were invariably gregarious in their own ways, interactive with me.  I got to chat with other members of the group, finding out a little about them.  Nobody gathered to pitch their personal agendas.

Our Constitution requires a formal census every ten years, which has become the Zero Year of each decade.  So in 2020, the inhabitants of America were counted with reasonable accuracy given the enormity of the project.  People were assigned to their categories, primarily by principal residence.  From that, our state legislators created new districts for US Congress and state legislators.  My district's boundaries were shifted in the process.  That delightful man who displaced my own personal friend in the last primary would no longer be my state representative but the state senator would continue.  Party Committees were by representative district.  The path of least resistance would be to shift my neighborhood's committee representatives to the district of their new representative.  Nobody contested my seat, making me a presence on Zoom the first Monday night of each month when the Committee met.  A year or so later, I had occasion to meet a few at a backyard reception that one of the other people also displaced from my committee hosted, but it wasn't the same as the gatherings of our prior district.  No elected officials.  No restriction of guests to Committee members and their households.  There were some interesting people, most notable to me, a teenager doing her Mormon missionary assignment.  She told me a bit about what they do and how they do it.

The Zoom sessions, however, lacked anything creative and next to nothing interactive, until the end.  Our state rep, around whom the committee was created, appeared on Zoom one time to defend votes he had taken that his district's voters would likely disapprove.  This district spans two senatorial districts.  The Senator from the other district attended a few times.  I found her capable and likable.  My Senator, who I already knew was even more capable, came only one time, and that at my suggestion to the Chair that she be invited, as the majority of our Representative District is in her Senatorial District.  We had some statewide elected officials take their turn.  The State Treasurer made the best impression.  The Attorney General I'd wonder about.  And the County Rep came regularly to update us on things that, if they matter at all, never really change from one monthly Zoom screen to the next.  And I got placed on a phone squad, where I lasted ten minutes of my two hour assignment.

Eventually, as we begin a year with real primaries, two guys on Zoom basically tanked any interest I had on staying on.  A newcomer, a progressive, the kind that made the other party have a real chance at taking over as an enduring national majority, submitted a resolution asking our Representative Committee to endorse his resolution sponsored by a Rep. I politically abhor, one sponsored by scripted anti-Semites know as The Squad, that we as a Committee call for a cease fire in Gaza whose militants thought it would bring them cheer and kavod to massacre whoever they could bring into their path. Despite the large number of Israelis killed, I did not personally know any of them, but I do personally know citizens called up abruptly by the Israeli Defense Forces to show that raids of this type will have some very negative consequences.  And I did know personally the Doctor killed in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.  Expressions of any type that we can intimidate Jews with anticipation of violence against them is not at all OK.  It is transformative.  Irving Kristol, a convert from New Deal and 1950s Democrat to the forefront of neo-conservatism, once quipped that a neocon was a liberal who had been mugged by reality.  I became an October 8 Democrat, fully in conformity with all of my statewide officials and the President, who I met many times as Senator.  Policy is run by our elected officials and the experts they appoint.  Our own Washington contingent did not sign on with this.  It is just not a Committee agenda item.  Moreover, Tel Aviv and my Representative District are pretty nice places for people to live.  North St. Louis, the district of this guy's legislative hero, a district adjacent to one where I, and a generation later my son, once lived, and Gaza are not.  Neither has the kind of diligent, tolerant, productive community that our Committee should identify with and preserve. Too many casualties in Gaza, agreed, but a predictable consequence of the leadership.  And North St. Louis could use its own cease-fire, the gun violence center that has decimated the city where I once lived.  And as I discuss my views and my experience on this, it is clear that he and his supporter have zippo knowledge of history, zippo appreciation of who his preferred legislator actually is, and zippo appreciation of what our Committee's purpose is.

I'm still a Democrat, though an October 8 Jewish democrat whose synagogue now has a police officer in a marked city police van situated in the parking lot to chase these guys away when they come by.  The prominent neocons of public stature are no longer Democrats, but still decent people who keep their distance from the MAGA rot that we see on TV.  But the Democrats have their own rot, and I saw some of it at my committee, though not by men of the neocon's intellect.  

George Packer of The Atlantic divided the American electorate into quadrants.  Voting Republican:  Free America, those libertarians who want less regulation, and Real America, those working people who should be democrats, and maybe once were, flipped to the GOP as their livelihoods were made less secure by people who wore ties to work who gave too much of the rewards of their labor to people of entitlement who didn't work.  And on my side, the Democrats.  Smart America, which is me and the statewide officials in my state, indeed my part of America.  We live in places like I live, or in a nice place in Paris, Vancouver, or Jerusalem if we ever decided we wanted to live someplace else.  We spent our time with our homework, took our lumps with equanimity, went to college, got experiences living with people we didn't like, so as doctors and lawyers we understood that we had a certain amount of obligation to people who annoyed us.  We are probably the last of those four quadrants not intent on squashing our enemies, let alone being the slave to our enemy who forces a response.  We have it good, and would like people who don't have it as well to have their chance to elevate their own position.  In that sense, we may be the last descendants of FDR, or maybe even Henry Ford, who made his fortune by also wanting everyone to have their chance at a consumer upgrade.  That's a long way from Gaza or North St. Louis.  The final quadrant also votes Democratic, is and should be represented on our Committee and in our legislators.  Packer labels them Just America.  No question, there are people who struggle as much as because of who they are as because of their own choices when their opportunities come and go.  But resentment dominates over correction.  That is where the two Democratic quadrants separate.  Their enemy is anyone to be blamed for their circumstances and the response is a Gazan response, get even with all those people who made Tel Aviv or Beverly Hills sparkle because they left me out.  

The Jewish lens on this, and at one time the Democratic Party lens was very different.  At the end of our Sabbath morning prayers, there is a short section that does a play on words of the Hebrew Text.  Al tikrah banaich ela bonaich.  Don't read it as your Sons but as your Builders.  It is the builders who create peace.  Smart America and Free America, though we vote differently, are your builders.  Between these groups we generate philanthropy for all to benefit, create commerce, advance science, derive benefit from the educational options available to us, enable communication and travel.  It is the world we aspire to.  While war is destructive, it is probably subordinate to aggression as the uppermost evil.  And impeding a response to aggression, to say nothing of celebrating it, diminishes the world.

And groups really do flip.  When I lived in St. Louis, the Speaker of the State House, a Democrat, lived across the street from me.  Their legislature will never be Democratic again in my actuarial lifetime.  My Congressman was a Democrat as was one Senator and not long after my departure a Governor.  That entire state has flipped.  So has my current one, though in the other direction.  We had one or more statewide elected Republican officials just a few years ago.  I do not anticipate that happening again.  Working people, that Real America, changed parties.  Might we Jews, over-represented as elected officials of the Democratic Party across America, also migrate to a different part of the ballot.  A couple of state would certainly notice if that were to become a reality.  And as I address these Progressive ideologues of my own Committee, I can see some very honorable Jewish people concluding that they need to escape them.

So my role on my Committee.  I live in a good place that elects good people.  Not MAGAs.  Not anti-Semites.  Not people who use their elected office to intimidate but to address challenges.  Some of them seek a new office with more responsibility this year.  They are the people who share my fondness for advancing people.  It makes much more sense to me to pick one or two of the several who have convinced me of their worthiness and join their team to reinforce the decency that the majority of our voters value.  It will take more effort than showing up on Zoom the first Monday evening of each month, but I anticipate the effort a good deal more satisfying than trying to sidestep or placate, or maybe even respect, alliances of convenience whose views reverse decency in some way.