Where We Are This Week
Taylor Swift conspiracies, busy week in Congress, and part-time teachers, full-time terrorists.
The past is truly the gift that keeps on giving. It’s easy to get carried away with whatever is contemporary because of how literally applicable it is to the time in which we are living. But there’s a whole wealth of wisdom out there, recorded by artists and thinkers who were experiencing the same fundamental realities that we are today.
I’m routinely impressed not just by the sentiment, but by the relatability of the thoughts and musings of the best humanity has had to offer.
It’s nice to have both, though. I’m fortunate to have grown up with great artists like Alex Turner and Brandon Flowers and writers like J.K. Rowling whose works matured as I did. But a special thing about exploring older works is that new layers seem to open up to you as you delve further. You know, they were always there, just waiting for you to discover them when you were ready.
One of my favorite mines in which to dig is Bob Dylan - who is admittedly, rather recent as far as things go. I think I was 10 or 11 when I first heard Highway 61 Revisited. That record, as much as any, changed my artistic life. ‘The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken’ is a line so drenched with attitude and wit that it’s earned my adoration ever since.
Since I don’t listen to records I don’t own, I’ve slowly been building my Dylan catalog over the years. The latest addition my wife gave me for my birthday in December was 1970’s New Morning. On the record is ‘The Man in Me’ which can’t be listened to without invoking The Dude, and ‘If Not For You’ - a song George Harrison covered on his masterpiece All Things Must Pass.
There, in the fourth or fifth listen, I found the first secret tucked away into the record that was waiting for me to discover. It’s a line that if I had heard it a decade ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it and you might not find it special in the slightest. But now, it rings as if it’s calling out to me. Almost as if I was looking for it.
Build me a cabin Utah Marry a wife, catch rainbow trout Have a bunch of kids who call me 'pa' That must be what it's all about That must be what it's all about
The Swift Identity
The political script writers for 2024 have really jumped the shark this time - thank goodness the strike is over! Apparently, to some on the right side of the aisle, there is an ongoing conspiracy that involves Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce, a Chiefs Super Bowl victory, and presidential endorsement from the singer. Yes, my friends, how brave this new world is.
One of the distinct problems of the post-cable age is that consumers are no longer tethered to a small handful of political commentators. The internet and subscription-based platforms have produced a wellspring of talking heads from left to right in varying degrees of extremity and popularity. Each one after the next is increasingly niche, developing their own esoteric views of the cultural landscape.
This might sound a little like the pot calling the kettle obtuse, and so be it, I accept the charges.
It’s not altogether a negative thing, but when you couple it with the way in which people silo themselves inside their political bubble whether it be that of the Young Turks on the left or the Post Millennial on the right. Generally, neither side is particularly worse than the other but the growing isolation between each subsequent coalition only exacerbates the political divide in this country.
Take, for instance, the right. You’ve got the establishment types who will vote for any GOP left of Trump, conservatives who don’t believe the 2020 election was stolen, MAGA Country, Trump pragmatists, Texas, Florida, and a few Christian Nationalists who have chosen X (formerly Twitter) as their preferred battlefield.
Then, you’ve got the ones who think the federal government - or whoever is pulling its strings - has contrived a romantic relationship between the biggest pop star on the planet and the star tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs. To what end, you ask? To promote vaccines, to boost ratings of the NFL (I remember when the NFL was thought to be the entertainment of right-wingers), and to, of course, re-elect Joseph R. Biden.
George Carlin once said something to the effect of: you don’t need conspiracies where interests align. There is no unnatural pairing between the lot of them. The NFL will do anything for viewers, Taylor Swift has never met a public relationship she didn’t love, and celebrities almost invariably endorse whichever Democrat stooge is running for office.
This conspiracy of sorts has caught the imagination of several different factions of the Trumpian right. Former presidential candidate (and Trump’s personal hype-man) Vivek Ramaswamy, Fox News’ Jesse ‘Can’t Fill the Shoes of Tucker Carlson’ Watters, and Benny ‘2.1 Million Followers on X’ Johnson have all endorsed the idea that the Kelce/Swift relationship is a construct and that Swift, herself, is psyop intended to drag young Americans to the left. Can we go back to talking about Jeffrey Epstein, now?
Of course, she’s not! What if she was though? She’s just popular! How’d she get so popular? She’s just a singer. Yeah, but you’ve never seen her in Nashville.
The problem with all of these bespoke news outlets is that one might be convinced there is no outside world where things happen for their own reasons. Last time I checked, the NFL is thriving, every teenage and twenty-to-forty-something woman lies awake at night wishing they were Taylor Swift. A plot that suggests her Eras Tour reached the status of global phenomenon in order to deliver the presidency to Joe Biden does not pass Occam’s Razor.
It’s the same as Russiagate on the left, both sides are preemptively blaming the other side for nonsense just in case they lose the next election. The political solipsism that prevails amongst Americans suggests that it could never be your side’s inadequacies or unpopularity that leads to failure but that powerful, clandestine alliances preferred their designs. Maybe the culture just isn’t with you.
But what do I know? I don’t watch the NFL or listen to Taylor Swift. I’m still trying to solve the puzzles of the intra-team politics that led to Sepp Kuss’s narrow Vuelta a España victory in 2023, and the coincidence of Paul Simon and Nick Cave both releasing albums entitled Seven Psalms just one year apart. My guess is that George Soros is to be blamed for the both of them.
Hamas for Teacher
If you came here looking for another reason to detest the United Nations, then you’ve come to the right place. Of course, it should come as no surprise that the organization that appoints Iran as the chair of the Human Rights Committee isn’t all that interested in human prosperity but even this piece of news is galling.
First of all, the idea of the UN was great in its infancy. Originally called the League of Nations - Justice League was already taken by Batman and Co. - it was a necessary implementation after World War II to keep the reigns on Germany and any future wise guys who considered getting uppity. Since then, however, it’s become a theater of platitudes and placation of some of the worst regimes in the world. After all, Krypton is a member of the Security Council. I meant, China - what’d I say?
In a recent exposé from the Wall Street Journal, it was discovered that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Palestine (colloquially known as Unrwa) is rife with - you guessed it - Hamas members and sympathizers. Rest assured, however, this bureaucratic nightmare of nations was totally aware of who they were employing and what they were up to.
According to the WSJ, at least six Unrwa workers were actually involved in the October 7th massacre in Israel while six others helped facilitate the attack by coordinating logistics for those who would be doing the heavy lifting. For years, Israeli critics of the organization have pointed out that the schools under its banner are breeding grounds for extremism and violence. Educational material encourages paths to martyrdom for Palestinian children and indoctrinates them into despising the Israeli neighbors. In fairness, my public school education preached a similarly militant attitude towards Canadians - lucky for them, our public schools are awful.
All twelve of the Unrwa workers that have been identified were school teachers. If that were the extent of the rot inside of the UN-funded organization, it’s enough to warrant its dissolution. Naturally, though, it doesn’t stop there. Why should it?
The information that was disclosed by Israeli officials to the American government earlier this week was obtained from interrogations of captured Hamas operatives, documents recovered from the battlefield, and cellphone data. As many as 1,200 of Unrwa’s 12,000 employees in Gaza “have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” Around half of the 12,000 have family members that belong to one of the myriad extremist groups. Rightfully so, the US government has decided to end all of its funding of the program.
The commentary surrounding this news from the ‘pro-ceasefire’ crowds of the alt-left and new right is astonishingly glib. “So what?” they say, “Fire the murderers! Keep the schools!” Never has a more coherent wishlist been comprised. You can’t be an isolationist while endorsing a multi-million-dollar apparatus that has been coopted to mold young children into terrorists.
Unrwa spokespersons have declined to comment on the matter.
This is the problem I wrote about in my initial reaction to the October 7th atrocity. Many cannot comprehend the to which Hamas has weaved themselves into the ideology and culture of Gaza and Greater Palestine and, as a consequence, will not tolerate the war necessary to defeat such an opposition. You cannot defeat an enemy that you do not understand.
Though I’ve found most of Joe Biden’s foreign policy abysmal, I’ll commend him for the following. We’re not yet in a hot war with Russia, and his administration’s support for Israel has been rather resolute - although his rhetoric sometimes fails to corroborate his position.
The war in Gaza has significantly de-escalated since the early days as Israel attempts to pry the rest of its hostages away from an obstinate Hamas. However, tensions across the rest of the Middle East may only be increasing.
Rather than do what seems to be my weekly World War III watch, we’ll do something a little different. There were so many notable pieces of news this week that I wanted to touch on a few of them.
The Attack on US Soldiers in Jordan
Jordan is an ally of the United States; the United States’ presence, rightfully or wrongfully, was requested by the Jordanian government. On Sunday, an unmanned drone attacked a US army base in Jordan, close to the Syrian border.
The attack killed three servicemen and women and severely injured dozens more. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed coalition of terrorists, claimed responsibility for the attack; this comes just a week after two US Navy Seals were lost at sea in attempts to board an Iranian shipping vessel that was smuggling weapons to Yemen.
Does anyone recall a moment in the second GOP primary debate where Nikki Haley and Tim Scott were speaking about going to war with China, Russia, and Iran all at once? They said it so casually that it was almost as if it were a foregone conclusion. Allow me to play Scooby-Doo while warhawk Scrappy-Doo demands, “Lemme at ‘em!”
Lindsey Graham immediately called for attacks in Iran. Easy, pal. How about retaliating against the forces that are directly responsible for the attack? If the United States hadn’t been playing ‘I’m not touching you’ with the Houthis in Yemen and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, then maybe these groups wouldn’t be emboldened by their support from Iran.
A strategy of deterrence must be re-established, but that’s not achieved by lashing out at a relatively uninvolved third party or provoking regional war. Hopefully, President Biden will respond with strength and tact as he promised earlier this week.
DUIs Are Totally Fine
Is that what they call double jeopardy? Being an illegal immigrant and driving drunk must cancel each other out because the majority of the Democratic party in Congress just voted against a bill that would allow for the deportation of illegal immigrants who do just that.
Who exactly does this benefit?
I can normally deduce the rationale, however abstruse, of varying political decisions but this one is dumbfounding. 150 Democrats voted against the measure on Thursday while only 59 voted in favor. Fortunately, for whatever is remaining of the sanity of the nation, 215 Republican ‘yeas’ propelled the bill to the Senate.
Before it’s ratified into law, though, I’m denouncing my citizenship, picking up a few road sodas and going for a drive. Come on in, the water’s fine.
Coming to America
On Wednesday, in an overwhelming 422-2 vote, US Congress passed the “No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act.” This seems like a no-brainer and one wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be necessary, but, given the situation at the southern border, maybe some extra legislation isn’t a terrible idea.
The bill states that no individual who took part in the October 7th attacks on Israel will be allowed to immigrate to the United States. Is the bill redundant? Yeah. But what’s the problem in just voting ‘yes’?
Squad members Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib thought that expressly forbidding those terrorists from entering the country was too cute by half. Not only are these people reprehensible personally, they are just awful politicians. Vote ‘yes’, fight your antisemitic, pro-terror fight another day.
One more note on the Squad, during a conference for Somali-Americans this week, Ilhan Omar conveyed her fealty and devotion, first and foremost, to Somalia and its president; which is a weird thing to do if you’re a US congresswoman.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA
What a great Bob Dylan line to pick out. It is a mix of John Prine and Trout Fishing in America. The dream life!