I spent an absolutely wonderful two days in New York recently. It doesn’t hurt my best friend lives on the Upper East Side near Central Park, the weather was exquisite, I had the best pasta of the last 10 years of my life, and I managed to avoid most of the Knicks celebrations.
But I was unfortunately exposed to political ads in advance of the congressional primary. It seemed as if 100 people were running for about five seats, and they were all colors of the rainbow, if the rainbow were uniquely Democrat.
I didn’t see one ad for a Republican, but this was New York, so I wasn’t exactly shocked that there was gambling in the casino.
What I did notice, to my dismay, was a subversive level of antisemitism, cloaked in “anti-Zionist” terminology. They think it’s OK to criticize Israel for what has been called “genocide” by people who have absolutely no idea what that word really means under international law, while at the same time turning a blind eye to every other country out there — Sudan, anyone? — that is crushing its population under the weight of tyranny.
It’s not the criticism that’s the problem. It’s the hypocrisy.
Anyway, while I wasn’t exactly shocked to see the primary results from my safe perch in Philadelphia this week, it was a gut punch to realize the antisemitic messaging worked, the “Zoranization” of New York.
The New York primary is the result of several things which, like a perfect storm, combined to create this terrible result. First of course is Trump hatred. Some will vote against anyone who does not want the man dead. These are the sort of people who we can discount as irrelevant because they are not serious voters, simply reactive children with no capacity for nuance.
Then we have the people who want things, free things: health care, apartments, and they want a very high minimum wage for unskilled labor. This is not unusual. People want what they can get. Some are lazy. Some feel entitled. Some believe this is a human right. In some ways, they are quite sincere, if misguided, in their belief that society owes them a comfortable life.
All they are owed is opportunity, not results. But they aren’t ready to accept that concept, unlike our parents and grandparents.
Then we have those who are the most dangerous because they are the most passionate and least invested in the welfare of the country. People who hate the structures of this society that promote order, structure, merit-based justice and respect for Western civilization.
As we approach the 250th birthday of our founding, I think the thing that upsets me most isn’t the people who hate Donald Trump with blind fury, because that’s their problem with anger management.
I also don’t particularly have a problem with the “gimme gimme” crowd who think that putting pickles on a hamburger should be considered skilled labor, and who made the mistake of majoring in the history of Amazonian Midwives and then wonder why they can’t get a job. We all have one of those at the Thanksgiving table.
The thing that troubles me is the proliferation of Americans who were born after the terror attacks of 9/11 and have no true understanding of what it means to hate the United States to such a point they want to burn it down and rebuild it in an unrecognizable image.
They don’t want to burn the flag. They want to erase it from our memory.
They don’t want to teach history, flawed and fabulous in all of its forms. They want to erase it from our memory too, and then rewrite it according to their own values and perceptions.
These are the people who won the New York primary, and these are the sort of people who, like the pod folk in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” are slowly infiltrating society with their toxic principles and their hostile vision of the future.
I have always been able to have conversations with people who disagree with me politically, but who have a shared love of this nation.
I attended a conference called Braver Angels last week, where we did just that: discuss our differences, with mutual respect, humility and interest.
But the people who won in New York, and the people who voted for them, are not like that.
And they are not like us.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times in Pennsylvania.Her column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
