Ruminations

You want to know the difference between Libertarians and Conservatives? The Democrats now have control of congress. After assailing the Republican "culture of corruption" the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (notorious for using "undocumented" Mexican labor on the vineyard she and her husband own) nominated John Murtha, unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM sting operation, as House majority leader (voted down), and former Federal judge Alcee Hastings, who was removed from office (by Democrats to their credit) after being compromised in a solicitation of bribery case, as chair of the Intelligence Committee. Hey, if he could squeeze money out of defendants in criminal cases, imagine how much he'll be able to get from terrorists for intel!

Conservatives find this appalling, Libertarians find it side-splittingly funny.

Republicans responded by bringing Trent Lott, famous for making a racist gaff, back from exile as minority leader.

For anyone with a sense of humor, it just doesn't get any better than this.

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My wife drew my attention to an article from the Polish press. The European Jewish Council has declared Poland to be the most pro-Israel country in Europe.

Polish-Jewish relations have always been more than a bit on the thorny side, very much so since the end of WWII. On the one hand, Poles are the most represented nationality on the roles of the Righteous Among Gentiles at Yad Vashem. On the other hand, since the rise of a democratic Germany made beating them up for the holocaust a matter of bad taste, some Jews responded by choosing to beat up their fellow victims - the Poles, who were a little further down on the list of peoples to be exterminated. Just below Gypsies. (By the way, Polish Jews I know object strenuously to this.)

Poles have been a bit ambiguous about Israel. On the one hand, they don't like being blamed for the Holocaust one bit, while Germany - and France, get away scot-free. On the other hand, during the Soviet occupation they got a big kick out of the Middle East wars when "our" Jews beat "their" Arabs. And I remember Poles proudly telling me that Israeli Air Force pilots used Polish in combat, because the Egyptian intelligence had Hebrew translators but not a whole lot of Polish speakers.

Now that anti-Semitism is again fashionable in Western Europe, it seems that the ancient Polish-Jewish connection is being revived.

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You want to know what the neighborhood around our apartment in Warsaw looks like? Rent the DVD of The Pianist. The area in the first scenes, CGI'd to look like it did during the Nazi occupation, is about four blocks east. About the same distance north of our place was the edge of the ghetto and the site of the great Tlomatski Synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis at the end of the ghetto uprising as a symbol of the extinction of European Jewry.

Under our apartment window is a plaque where people still leave flowers and devotional candles. It marks the spot where 44 hostages were murdered by the Nazis. The plaque is a common form, fill-in-the-blank for date and number of the dead, common all around the city. Around the city center they average about one every three blocks.

So why am I bringing this up? It seems to me that part of the cultural blindness of Americans, and after 60 years of peace the West Europeans too, is that we have forgotten that bad times always return.

We don't have the education or monuments to remind us and teach our youth about this immutable truth. That's OK though, history has a way of calling this to our attention.

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At my age I'm a grad student again - and we have a new baby. It's been hard to describe for anyone who doesn't have kids how tiring this is, but I think I've found a way. One new baby equals an extra grad-level class and a part-time job.

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It's a lovely day outside, and the leaves on the trees finally look like autumn. My wife remarks, "Yes, and it's ONLY mid-November." That's Oklahoma.