Where We Are This Week 07/27/2023
Israel, America, labor victory, and the longest silence you've ever seen.
The introduction I had planned for this week proved to be too long for its inclusion. I wouldn’t ask you to read a full essay of my personal musings before subjecting you to my political ramblings. No, we’ll make separate articles for that! You can expect it in your inbox later this weekend.
Do me a favor, though, don’t let the delay increase your expectation of my product. Getting your hopes up doesn’t help either of us.
In the mean time, let’s take a look at the matters at hand, and we’ll talk in a couple of days.
A couple of updates from previous Where We Are posts are necessary. So, let’s get into it - another installment of Where Are They Now? Politics edition!
Israel Again
If Israel isn’t in the news for secretly controlling the world or killing innocent - definitely not terrorists - Palestinians, it’s in the news for its dismantling of democracy. How clearly does my sarcasm come through on these things?
As we’ve previously discussed, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was attempting to pass much-needed (but overreaching) judicial reform. If you don’t recall, though I’m sure you do, dear reader, the Israeli government isn’t quite set up like ours here in the States.
They have a Prime Minister, a President - whose duties are largely ceremonial - the Knesset - their only legislative body, and the Supreme Court. The way their government is currently comprised, there are no checks and balances between the lawmaking bodies.
In America, our federal judges are appointed by elected politicians, but in Israel, the Supreme Court, through the Judicial Selection Commission, are essentially able to appoint their successors. Additionally, the Supreme Court (of Israel) could reject any law proposed by the government on the subjective concept of ‘reasonability’.
Part of the problem here is that Israel doesn’t have a written constitution. Upon the country’s founding in 1948, it was immediately at war with five neighboring Arab states in the aptly-named 1948 Arab-Israeli War. A constitution was promised to the public and the newly-formed UN, but as there were more pressing issues at hand, it fell to the wayside. What was eventually established was a type of common law democracy, a la the United Kingdom, that was upheld by handshakes and a common vision.
As the demographics have evolved in the country over the last several decades - Israel was founded with a secular Jewish majority but the religious community has continued its rapid growth in recent years - Netanyahu sought judicial reform that would ensure the judges be representative of the people of the nation. The only problem with the proposed legislation was that it handed far too much power to the Prime Minister - hence the problem with no checks and balances, there isn’t any additional elected body of which to hand the power.
The suggested reform, in its original formulation, was met with massive protests in the streets of major metropolises across Israel. Netanyahu, by virtue of the volume and fervor of the dissenting public, was forced to the bargaining table. What eventually passed this week, was a much fairer distribution of the powers of government.
Under the new reform, the ‘reasonability’ claim is no longer limitless and veto power now rests with the majority of Knesset. From the outside looking in, it appears to be pretty good law, but time will bare the truth.
Regardless, plenty of people have taken to publicly criticizing the newly passed legislation - notably, the President of the United States, Joe Biden. To what other countries in the world, or more specifically, our allies, is our President equally as eager to criticize their domestic policies?
Sure, the case could be made that with the billions of dollars the United States routinely gives Israel in foreign aid that our leaders have a vested interest in the way the country governs its people. But if that principle were distributed equally amongst our largest recipients of aid, then the almost $5 billion we’ve doled out to the Taliban in 2023 would surely warrant a critique or two of their treatment of women. But alas, principles and politics go together like oil and water, don’t they? Famously well.
Yeah, but what about US?
For now, it looks as if Israel will have passed the reform they need while avoiding nationwide civil unrest. But, as the religious right of the tiny Middle Eastern nation eventually becomes the outright majority, what will happen to the harmony the secular and nonsecular communities have been able to foster? It’s difficult to predict but I would suspect - and hope - that the Zionist vision of the country will trump whatever internal strife arises in the future.
But will us Americans fare so well? If you haven’t noticed, the demographics in our country are changing drastically. If millennials didn’t have enough problems of their own, Zoomers are basically unrecognizable by the American standards of a few generations ago - they’re either catatonic with rage, TikTok obsessed, or withdrawn altogether. And those are just the good things! As a good friend of mine quipped recently, “Gen Z’ers are the worst thing to ever happen.”
Okay, all kidding aside, I hate my generation, too. If the ol’ zoomer generation wasn’t the downfall of society, the millennials would take us out a good fifteen years earlier.
To be clear, I’m not talking about racial demographics - racial differences aren’t all that interesting and despite what you might hear, an increase in racial diversity doesn’t necessarily lead to massive progressive voting blocs. See Cubans and Muslims as an example.
For now, the American left occupies the largest seat at the table though I could see that teetering back and forth for the next decade or so. The problem is, virtually the only swathe of the population that are having children in large numbers are the religious and the conservative.
So, what will happen to the nation in a few decades from now when the anti-natalist version of the left hasn’t replicated themselves and the conservative right has literal and figurative armies of offspring ruling the roost?
Even if that prediction is off and the conservative right become increasingly the minority in America, how well will either side tolerate constant loss in the federal government?
Provided we’re still a representative democracy by then - that’s a big bet in itself - will American identity be sufficient to keep the peace between the marginalized and majority? That’s the real question at hand. We have handshake deal, no shared vision in common in our vastly polarized polity that can sustain us into the future. See current political discourse.
As both parties are increasingly influenced by the more extreme factions of their political ideology, I worry the pendulum might be swinging too far in either direction in the coming years, and I don’t think, as Americans, we share the type of mutual respect or common obligation needed to endure such an imbalance.
Never Go Full Biden
In a bid to become the next President of the United States, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is no longer mentally fit enough to competently serve in his current position.
The Democrats proudly lay claim to President Biden who incessantly mumbles incoherently and routinely has to be shepherded off stage, and Dianne Feinstein whom we’ve learned has effectively been Weekend at Bernied by her aids for the last several years.
But not to be outdone, the GOP have entered 81-year-old Mitch McConnell for your consideration.
Have we talked about any of this before in Where We Are? I don’t know, but you can file this one under a regular checkup of the health of our democracy.
It’s galling that right off the bat, I have two other members of the federal government that I can point to that are equally unfit for their offices and I’m sure with a little digging I could find you a few more - we have 16 octogenarians in Congress alone.
But sure, our legislative body is the image of youth and virility - if you consider prune juice and hip replacements to the be the epitome of agility, that is. As a general rule, the moment we’re concerned that any elected official has ‘had a fall’ is probably the moment they should be removing themselves from their post.
UPS Strikes a Deal
Solidarity works, my friends. The top brass at UPS and its Teamsters Union have struck a deal that should suffice to avoid the planned strike in August.
The new, 5-year-deal secures higher pay, and better benefits for all UPS workers, part and full-time. Representatives of the union claim that there are no workers’ concessions included in the new contract. It’s quite the victory.
The last time UPS workers struck was in 1997, and then, USPS wasn’t in the parcel delivery service and neither were Amazon. Additionally, online shopping wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous to American life then as it is now. The UPS workforce has effectively doubled since the late ‘90s, and they currently ship over 20 million packages a day. The Fortune 500 company was able to recoup the majority of their business contracts after the last strike, but the prospects of them being able to repeat that feat in 2023 were much more uncertain.
Not only that, but the unemployment rate today is considerably lower than it was in ‘97. Unemployment in America as of this July is at 3.7% - back to Trump, pre-pandemic era numbers - which would indicate that if UPS workers left the company altogether, management would be hard-pressed to supplement them given the availability of a replacement workforce - scab or otherwise.
All this is to say, the union had a very strong hand to play and did so very well. Now, it’s up to the union members to ratify the new deal into action, so, barring a shock of shocks, there will be no strike in August, and UPS workers will continue to literally move the American economy - but with higher wages and air conditioning.
The only disappointment in this result is that most Americans will never know how close they were to a group of 340,000 workers crippling the already-shaky US economy. Maybe, if it’s not too late, they can add a provision to the agreement that would allow all UPS delivery trucks to be emblazoned with the slogan What Can (the threat of) a Strike Do For You? That ought to help public awareness and sentiment.
Now, the only labor protest in public view is the much-less sympathetic Hollywood writers and actors strike. Their strike against the production companies is well-warranted but I guarantee you their gripes aren’t winning the hearts and minds of the American public like a band of delivery drivers would.
Maybe when the twentieth spinoff of Yellowstone is significantly delayed, the strike will reach a critical mass. Gotta hit them wear it hurts!
But a word of advise to the Screen Actors Guild, you can let Ron Perlman continue to do the UFC intros or whatever, those are fine, but otherwise, keep that dude muzzled. I hate Disney as much as the next person, but thinly-veiled threats of violence laden with obscene language are not helping your cause.
But back to the point at hand, congrats to the employees of UPS. My wife said it best when I told her the news, “Power to the people.”
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA