It's Not Dark Yet

Others have voiced their concerns, including me. But Tom Friedman is the first with sufficient clout to be heard, loud and clear. And his column of yesterday is still #1 on the Most Popular list at the NY Times.

Friedman writes of the time in Israel just before Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. "I remember the ugly mood in Israel then — a mood in which extreme right-wing settlers and politicians were doing all they could to delegitimize Rabin, who was committed to trading land for peace as part of the Oslo accords. They questioned his authority. They accused him of treason. They created pictures depicting him as a Nazi SS officer, and they shouted death threats at rallies. His political opponents winked at it all.

And in so doing they created a poisonous political environment that was interpreted by one right-wing Jewish nationalist as a license to kill Rabin — he must have heard, “God will be on your side” — and so he did."

Friedman is reminded of this because of what's happening in America now. Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination."

One implication is clear, and it's the one that got bantered about on TV yesterday: that the Rabid Right and White Supremacist Party virulence is dangerously inciting an assassination attempt on President Obama. But Friedman is making two further points:

Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work.

That is, the virulence is so extreme that it makes dealing with our common problems impossible, as well as fracturing any national identity as presented to the rest of the world, which is not a position of strength. The second further point is of even greater concern around here:

I would argue that together these changes add up to a difference of degree that is a difference in kind — a different kind of American political scene that makes me wonder whether we can seriously discuss serious issues any longer and make decisions on the basis of the national interest."

I would add to "national interest," the interest of humanity and the planet. If we can't seriously address the obvious problems with health care in America, how can we seriously address the even more complex issues and factors involved in the even higher stakes Climate Crisis?

When we as a species should be rising to the occasion, fulfilling our potential at last, we are falling, and failing---at least here in the U.S., and given our power and position in the world, that could be more widely fatal. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.