BASELINES

  A slue of topics can get me upset, angry, despairing or even happy. Unfortunately, the happy is often drowned out by the not such good news, but one takes what one can find - or create. 

So, what can we find today - but full disclosure, there will be not such amusing details contained within the rest of this posting. Gary Gnu would have a blast reading these news nuggets to his faithful followers. To begin.

Remember our old phones, the ones that hung on the wall of the kitchen with the 25-foot-long wire allowing one to seek some privacy during the conversation? And here we go again. One of the supposedly biggest stuffers for Christmas stockings this year is a device allowing one to hang the cellphone in a holder - on the wall. Uh huh. Yet another back to the future we go. Wonder when the equivalent to the wire will be 'reinvented'. Can't wait! Such anticipation.

Here is yet another retread. In January 2021, Whoopi Goldberg, actually deemed a friend of Israel and the Jewish people, made a ridiculous statement that the Holocaust was "white on white" rather than racial. Sorry, wrong on that. For so many reasons. 

The most obvious one glares blinding you, is the fact that no other community or people was targeted with as much venom as the Jewish people by the Nazis. Yes, the Romany were targeted. As were homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, mentally defective or physically afflicted, political opponents and plain criminals used to staff the ranks of prisoner bigshots. However, the 'Jewish" part of this was not skin, but rather blood, blood which 'tainted' you and yours forever - and a day. One grandmother, one great grandfather could ruin you and your plans - even if that plan was simply to live. Blood, not skin. Noses, hair and eye color, skull measurements, any measurement that pleased the Nazis. Skin was not even in the equation. Black Jews, dark Middle Eastern Jews, Christian and Catholic Jews, Jews who did not know they were Jewish - all food for the maw of hatred. Skin was not the definer; blood was.

Whatever the sick reasoning was, whatever profit was to be re the slave labor, sold to famous firms, the result was the same- death, intentionally so. I truly believe that Whoopi is not a bigot, simply ignorant of the truth here, caught up in a search to find a way perhaps to equate Black and Jewish disasters. While both are and were awful, sorry, no comparison here. Blacks were not targeted all over the world. Dark skinned Arabs were allies in the hatred of Jewish people along with nefarious plans to eliminate all Jewry to be found in conquered territories. Or had their names and populations on lists throughout the world - including Britain and the United States - where there were many eager to go along with those plans. Yup - blood, not skin. Not white on white but blood. Always and forever.

"It doesn't change the fact that you could not tell a Jew on a street," she noted. "You could find me. You couldn't find them. That was the point I was making. 

That was what she said but she again missed the point. Whether one could tell a Jew on the street or not, their name was there on lists. Besides, there were and continue to be Jewish people who adhere to modes of dress clearly indicating they are Jews. In addition, Jews were distinguished from the rest of the population by having to wear arm and chest stars and indications, as well as have their names changed on their official paperwork. Skin? NO. Blood? YES. "Purity of blood" was their insane tenet and for it, millions died.

For those who say that the situation is different today, we actually just had an openly proud and observant Jewish man win for governor in Pennsylvania, a state that had gone the Trump way. So, take it easy? Be assured? Read this and see if that is so sure a thing to say.

"Back in January of 1933 … Billy Wilder, the great film director, a Jewish man who lived in Berlin got on a train to Paris the day after Hitler was inaugurated. Hitler was democratically elected. And he did that and his family is going, ‘why are you leaving? Hitler’s an idiot. Nothing’s going to happen. This is Germany. Yes, we’re Jews, but we’re Jews in Germany. The editor of the morning Berlin paper is Jewish, the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic is Jewish. We’re okay.’ And he’s like, ‘no,we’re not okay.’ [Wilder] knew in ’33. There was no holocaust then. There was nothing. But he knew immediately. Hitler and the Nazies started creating chaos."

Blood and hatred. A terrible meme that runs through the millennia, with all the pathetic excuses given to justify the unjustifiable. 

Blood - that which we all have in common. That which we refuse to admit. 

A baseline so manifestly failing.