Global
Who he is
(https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/11/opinion/editorials/donald-trump-2024-unfit.html).
“He lies blatantly and maliciously, embraces racists, abuses women and has a
schoolyard bully’s instinct to target society’s most vulnerable. He has delighted in
coarsening and polarizing the town square with ever more divisive and incendiary
language. Mr. Trump is a man who craves validation and vindication, so much that
he would prefer a hostile leader’s lies to his own intelligence agencies’ truths and
would shake down a vulnerable ally for short-term political advantage. His
handling of everything from routine affairs to major crises was undermined by his
blundering combination of impulsiveness, insecurity and unstudied certainty.
This record shows what can happen to a country led by such a person: America’s
image, credibility and cohesion were relentlessly undermined by Mr. Trump during
his term.
Can politics be equal to the deepest of who we are? Can humanity evolve beyond war?
Such questions — I know, I know — are never officially asked during a presidential campaign. That’s not the point of the election: to plunge philosophically and spiritually into who we are. And thus, as the Trump-Harris race proceeds, not too many people (besides me) will be bringing up Pierre Teilhard de Chardin — Jesuit priest, theologian, scientist, best known as the author of The Phenomenon of Man — who died seventy years ago.
But I can’t tolerate the clichés of state! So let me sneak a dozen or so of Teilhard’s words into the present moment: “Love is the only force that can make things one without destroying them.”
Departing Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan clearly had an unpleasant experience at the world’s largest international institution.
In an interview published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on August 20, the disgruntled envoy said that “the UN building should be closed and wiped off from the face of the earth.”
Whether Erdan has made this realization or not, his aggressive statement indicates that his four-year career as Israel’s top UN diplomat was a failure.
Hours after Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, the president of the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization J Street took a victory lap in an effusive e-mail to supporters. “Wow,” Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote. “What a week! As J Streeters leave the Democratic National Convention fired up and ready to go, it’s clear we’re having a greater impact than ever.” He added that “the vice president’s remarks on Israel-Palestine were perhaps the clearest articulation of J Street’s values from a presidential nominee.”
But what are those “values” and how do they apply to what’s happening in Gaza?
