One of the things making expat life such a phenomenon is the internet. No matter where you go, you can bring parts of your life with you: television shows, sports, even family connections. This access greatly mitigates the home-sickness any expat might feel living far away in a different culture. Of course the internet is (in the famous quote from the late-Senator Ted Stevens) “a series of tubes” through space. Tubes, cables, whatever. The ridiculous metaphor works on many levels, since a small series of cables is the lifeline which provides the whole world to your home. Yes, your telephone does it without cables and delivers it to the palm of your hand, but only a digital native wants to stare at a palm-sized screen all day.
When we arrived in Mexico, our first house had internet supplied by TelMex, the onetime Mexican government utility now owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. It was old-school copper, bundled with your landline, and you could get upwards of 20 Megabytes per second (mbs), enough to stream live television. Reliability was always an issue, with frequent outages and significant speed lags when more users logged in. Years behind the developed world, but good enough.
Eventually fiber optics came to Mexico. TelMex by law had to provide it to all customers, installed free of charge, but their roll-out plan was several years long. Our neighborhood paid to jump the queue, getting fiber optic cable installed early. Of course it was a classic negotiation: we had to pay to have it done, while those immediately around us declined to join in, getting the installation for free. Our neighborhood voted to go ahead, since we wanted the improved speeds (>50 mbs) and reliability. As for our other neighbors, it was just their good fortune to get access, too.
You might be wondering at the fiber optic speed, as in the States it would be in the hundreds of megabytes per second. Here, the fiber optic cable runs to a box in your neighborhood, but the last hundred feet or so are still copper cable into your house and modem, resulting in less performance. Fiber optic cable is expensive and delicate, so TelMex decided to take the performance reduction and avoid the problem of all that cable maintenance. I can’t say that I blame them. If you step on it, kink it, or otherwise molest it, fiber optic cable dies. Copper is far more resilient. You’ll see just how much more later.
Years later we moved into another house closer to the Ajijic centro, and the TelMex fiber optic was already in place there. We were all set for about a year, until the quality and the performance became unstable. It went out for days at a time, and when it worked, speeds dropped below one mbs (barely able to read e-mail) in the evening. Needless to say, television and streaming were out of the question.
We flagged down a TelMex vehicle in our neighborhood (that’s what you do here), and the technico (repairman) agreed to take a look. His instruments told him there was a signal getting through to our modem, but it was very weak, and there was something wrong down the line leading into the house. He showed me where our connection ran along our property line, then into a retaining wall and down to a junction box. The copper cable was stuck inside a broken, corroded plastic tube as protection: for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been lying on the ground. And in the junction box was a mass of extra cable, left there by the installers probably because they didn’t want to bring it back. It was a mess, and the technico couldn’t tell where the problem was, as he was primarily an “indoor” repairman, and this was clearly an “outdoor” problem. He worked for several hours identifying where the cables were, but could not help us any further. He even refused a propina (tip), as he said it was just his job. We weren’t excited about contacting TelMex for help, as we had heard plenty of stories of bad customer service.
Look closely, …I don’t think this is up to codeNope, certainly not right!
We had upcoming travel, so we delayed contacting TelMex. We adapted and endured for a few months. I started using the internet early in the morning, when there was sufficient bandwidth. Judy & I shared time, to make sure we both weren’t trying to use the same few mbs. We sometimes used our phones, even for hotpots, but our T-mobile unlimited international plan throttles you down to 2- or 3-G speed when you are outside the States. We made do. Finally, the internet connection went out completely, and we had to contact TelMex for help.
Judy used the app (en español) to alert them to the problem and what their technico previously had told us. She lost the chat before she completed it, and thought she may have to start over. When she did the next day, they informed her that we already had a trouble ticket and would see a repairman shortly. At least they didn’t say, “mañana.” The next day, he alerted us he was coming and arrived late in the afternoon. He confirmed we had no connection, and I showed him the cable and the junction box. He inspected the cables, and while he agreed they weren’t protected properly, he said the problem must be further up the line.
He walked along until he found the appropriate utility culvert and opened it up. Inside there was another mass of cables, and another junction box for the incoming fiber optic cable. The tunnel was full of dirt, water and an ant colony, the latter quite upset their secure complex was disturbed! The technico brushed all this off (he had seen worse, obviously) and picked up the fiber optic cable, half of which was sticking loose out of the junction box. You could see the cut open ends of the cable and the light shining through! How it got that way he didn’t know; he seemed amazed anybody in our neighborhood had internet with that connection. He told us he needed to return the next day with more equipment and a partner to help test the re-installation.
Late the next afternoon, they started in on the junction box, cleaning the leads and reconnecting the cable. After about two hours, he came up to the house to say they were done, and our internet connection should be restored. It was: a bounteous 50+ mbs! Yes, we still see pretty substantial changes in speed, and brief outages. And we’ve purchased a Starlink dish as satellite backup. And no, the TelMex workers still refused a propina.
Lessons learned? Internet access is a key component to expat life. We bank, connect to family, plan travel, and socialize using it. TelMex customer service was very good. They were willing to speak slowly in Spanish, and happy we could understand and respond. Things like internet speeds are relative, and you can live with much less than sizzling. Global internet access continues to increase. It is amazing to me we’re using the same satellite system (Starlink) as a back-up that the Ukrainian army is using to fight the Russians, but that’s the nature of technology today. Sometimes old tech like copper wires has its uses, especially if the new tech like fiber optics is fragile.
Nothing momentous, just another aspect of life as an expat.
Most of my friends will immediately recognize this title, that of Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 nonfiction book about what comes after the Cold War. When published, it was a sensation, although the number of people who actually read the magazine article summarizing it greatly exceeded those who waded through his 339 pages of dense politics and philosophy. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Fukuyama for a private lunch one day (benefit of working in the Pentagon), so I was obliged to be in the latter group. With the benefit of that experience, I can strongly recommend the article, as the gist of his argument is there.
No, I wasn’t kidding!
Frank’s work was widely ridiculed–again, by those who never read all of it–after the 9/11 attacks. He didn’t predict an end to conflict, just the fact that the Cold War proved two things: freedom is better than authoritarianism as a governmental system, and capitalism is best at economic production. Those truths have stood the test of time since he wrote them. But those who stopped at the bumper sticker (history is over, end of story) just didn’t get it. They didn’t know history, and they were wrong because of it.
I used to think not knowing history was practically criminal. For example, I would hear people say, “why do I need to know who went to war with whom?” (they never got the who/whom part right, but that’s a different argument for a different day). I often quipped back with a quote from Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Otherwise peaceable Palestinians who lived in Gaza are suddenly realizing what happens when someone starts a ruinous war on your behalf. You don’t get to opt out, you just get to suffer. But lately I’ve decided there is something worse than not knowing history; it’s learning bad history.
See, if you don’t know something about history, you can honestly learn about it and fill in the gaps. But if you have been taught something about history that is either factually incorrect or seriously biased, you’ll continue to insist you’re correct. You will resist the correction. Several current examples suffice:
Kissinger’s War Crimes.
Henry Kissinger recently passed. To say he was controversial is an understatement, as much as it would be to say he was important. Yet most of the press coverage focused on the allegation he promoted or encouraged various war crimes. The most prominent of these charges was that he extended the Vietnam war by “carpet bombing” neutral Cambodia, killing tens of thousands and undermining the Cambodian government so that it fell to the vicious Khmer Rouge. These are three factual statements, although seriously shaded to hide the truth. Kissinger did promote the extension of the war by bombing Cambodia. Many people did die in those attacks, although the number is suspect for reasons I will explain. The Cambodian government did collapse under attack by the Khmer Rouge. What is the bias?
The main supply line between North Vietnam and the Viet Cong guerrillas in the south was the famous Ho Chi Minh trail, a network of roads and jungle paths in Cambodia which paralleled the border. Note the bolding in Cambodia. The US bombing didn’t extend the war into Cambodia; the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) extended the war into Cambodia. The US Air Force simply followed. As to casualty figures, the Air Force was largely bombing jungle trails, so it used carpet-bombing tactics. The idea that tens of thousands of innocent Cambodians were wandering these trails night after night, when they knew bombs were falling, strains credulity. While most of the people killed were just doing a job, moving things from here-to-there, they were involved in the war effort. Finally, the US went on to support a coup d’etat which replaced Cambodian King Sihanouk with General Lon Nol, but neither leader was able to resist the Khmer Rouge, who overran Phnom Penh just as the NVA overran Saigon. Cambodia’s fall was as inevitable as South Vietnam’s.
Bombing an area militarized by an opponent is not a war crime (a lesson being recalled currently in Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, and schools). Neither is killing civilians engaged in combat support efforts. And the postwar history of the Khmer Rouge demonstrates there are things worse than US meddling. Kissinger’s legacy deserves a critical assessment, but war crimes? Sorry, no.
The Nakba.
Many press reports covering the “bigger picture” of the current war in Gaza mention the Nakba. The term means catastrophe in Arabic, and it is used as a descriptive nickname for what happened to the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. As the media “contextualized” the story, the nascent Jewish state forced a little less than a million Palestinians from their homes and turned them into stateless refugees. Again, it’s a factual statement, but leaves the full truth wanting. These stories remind me of my visit to Hiroshima two decades ago. As I walked into the Peace Museum, I was struck by the story it told: on a bright, sunny day, people were going peacefully about their lives when suddenly a thousand suns exploded above them. Seriously, no mention of the war going on, the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanjing, the brutality of the Bataan death march or the various atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Just rainbows and unicorns and BOOM. Missing something?
In a similar fashion, the Nakba was preceded by the Palestinian Arabs rejecting the UN two-state solution and joining with five Arab armies in an attempt to kill all the Jews and destroy the Israeli state. They failed and were forced to flee. At the same time, several hundred thousand Jews were expelled from Arab countries where they had lived for centuries, and they primarily went to Israel for protection. A catastrophe? Yes. Traumatic? Of course. But this is what happens when you attempt to eradicate a people and fail; they simply won’t return to the peace table until their security is ensured. But the many pro-Palestinian protests you see at American universities stem from teaching only the Nakba, not the rest. Which is why many students draw the wrong conclusions.
The 1619 project.
Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project is an attempt at re-evaluating all American history by tracing our roots not to 1776, but to 1619, the beginning of English chattel slavery in Virginia. The New York Times News division (not Opinion) promotes the project, suggesting they see it as historical fact, not simply an alternative view. There is an associated educational curriculum being used by primary and secondary schools across the nation. The crux of the project is that race, and specifically race-based slavery, is the appropriate prism to view the development of the United States. In the end, everything is about race. The American Revolution? Designed to protect southern slavery against the British abolitionist movement. The Second Amendment? Arms citizen-slave owners against possible slave revolts. America’s police system? Drawn from the fugitive slave patrols. America’s justice system? Incarceration of black men to prevent their development, just as in the old South. American capitalism? From the Plantations. I could go on, but you get the point.
Many professional historians have pointed out the serious fallacies in these arguments. Some proponents of the 1619 Project have backed off, suggesting they only wanted more–and more serious–consideration of race. Who can argue with that? But that’s not what they put forward. These factually wrong ideas are now out there, circulating in the young minds of America. We’ll see more incoherent and violent results in years to come.
Think not? As I wrote this post, the Economist covered a new poll of Americans 18-29. Not youths, young adults. Twenty percent thought the Holocaust was a myth. Another thirty percent couldn’t say whether the Holocaust was a myth (or not). And the results didn’t adjust by education: that is, having an American college degree didn’t make you more knowledgeable about the truth. How could that be? Secondary school history curriculum is perfunctory, and if you cover the Nakba, are you going to cover the Holocaust? It gets worse in college, where educators increasingly teach critical theory focused on oppressers-and-oppressed, leaving Israel in the former group. Which begets the ill-informed pro-Hamas rallies on today’s campuses.
Want to argue whether Henry Kissinger’s narrow focus on the Cold War was brilliant or myopic? Worthwhile. Does the Israeli war against Hamas end up radicalizing more Palestinians than there are now? Good question. What is the lasting effect of slavery on modern America? Start the debate! The examples I cite aren’t designed to illuminate, but to confuse. They stake out extreme positions, lacking context or just being plain wrong.
As I write this, Israel is pounding the Gaza strip with munitions, and starting its ground offensive into the tiny, heavily-urbanized area. Several Arab states, news networks, and pro-Palestinian groups have already called these actions “war crimes.” Others have stated the current conflict must take account of the decades of Israeli “occupation” of formerly Palestinian territory, as well as the degraded treatment of the Palestinian people therein. The UN Secretary General opined people need to understand “the context” of the current war. A US State Department employee resigned in protest over the US provision of weapons to Israel, citing the fact such weapons “could be used for war crimes.” And even the President of the United States, while maintaining total support for Israel’s right to self-defense, has voiced “concerns” over the conduct of ground operations in the Gaza strip.
The Catholic theologians (and Saints) Augustine and Thomas Aquinas put forward the basic principles of Just War theory, Augustine in the 5th century later embellished by Aquinas in the 12th. Those principles have stood the test of time, being codified in various international treaties and conventions. There are two fundamental questions: whether the war itself is “just” and whether the war is being conducted “justly.” The points are independent: you can fight a just war unjustly, and you can fight an unjust war justly. Let’s examine whether Israel is engaged in a just war, and whether it is conducting it “justly.”
The principles of a just war (jus ad bellum, for those who had Latin inflicted upon them) are thus:
Just Cause. The damage inflicted by the aggressor must be lasting, grave and certain. Here there is little doubt that the terror attack of October 7th qualifies.
Proper Authority. War may only be declared by a legitimate government on behalf of its people. The Israeli administration at the moment of the attacks was quite divisive, but in a true show of support, all sides formed a national unity government to declare and conduct the war.
Right Intention. The purpose of the war must be the stated intention, not masking another motivation. This is always tricky. The stated purpose of Israel’s war is to eliminate Hamas, and that would qualify as just. Some claim Israel really wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza, or kill Palestinians, citing remarks by some Israeli officials. The final answer here must wait, but the stated intent suffices in the meantime.
Last resort. All peaceful alternatives must be exhausted, ineffective, or impractical. Given that Israel has left Hamas to run Gaza for more than a decade of missile barrages and terror attacks, resulting in only more of the same, this point is met.
Proportionality. The good achieved must not be outweighed by the harm done. Another tricky one. Ending Hamas’ reign of terror for Israel AND for the Palestinians in Gaza is a pretty big deal, but it can’t come at the cost of destroying all of Gaza, either. Israel has not suggested the latter, so they again meet the standard. But it must also be understood that this criterion is not some absolute check on military force: there is no such thing as a hostage-veto or an innocent victim-veto on war.
Probability of success. There must be a reasonable chance of achieving the war’s stated purpose. Few doubt the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) abilities here; many question the relative costs.
By these standards, Israel is engaging in a just war. This determination can be reviewed, for example, if a secret Israeli memo came to light calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people rather than simply Hamas. But claiming this is their intent is insufficient.
But is Israel conducting this war justly? Here are the criteria for fighting a war justly (jus in bello):
From the New York Times: Dark orange represents new strikes by IDF
Discrimination. Armies should fight armies, and strive not to intentionally inflict harm on non-combatants. The IDF directed Palestinians to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza strip. While many humanitarian organizations decried the 48 hour deadline Israel announced, in fact the IDF waited weeks before ground operations commenced. Notifying civilians where they should not be also tells Hamas where the attack will come, so the IDF has gone above and beyond initially. Compare that to Hamas, which ordered Palestinians to stay in place. What about the thousands of IDF strikes in Gaza since the October 7th terrorist attack? Hamas (and other groups) have continued to launch rockets and missiles in response, so they retain some offensive capability. Video footage shows the results, but also attests to the fact that the Israelis are using precision-strike munitions to take down individual buildings. Even the pattern of destruction demonstrates the bombings are part of a coordinated effort to assist the ground operation, establish a new buffer zone, and isolate Hamas fighters, all legitimate targets. So the IDF is currently meeting this standard for fighting justly.
Due proportion. Combatants must use only the means necessary to achieve their objectives. This principle is best explained at the extreme. For example, the IDF almost certainly has tactical nuclear weapons. They could blast Hamas and the entire Gaza strip into nothingness with a round or two, accomplishing their stated objective of eliminating Hamas but at an inhumane cost in innocent life. In the real world, this principle is much more debatable. What about the 8,000+ (and growing) list of Palestinians who have already been killed since October 7th? First off, this total is supplied by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Many aid agencies claim that past data provided by Hamas has been accurate. There are two problems with this claim. First, the data does not indicate if the deceased were members of Hamas: so it mixes innocent civilians with legitimate military targets. Second, this same ministry immediately blamed the IDF for the explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, claiming 500 people died. The ministry provided no evidence of the casualties, nor of the bomb. Subsequent analysis by several news organizations and the US Intelligence Community concluded the explosion was not an IDF strike, was most likely caused by a malfunctioning Palestinian rocket, and the casualty counts were inflated.
During the initial attack on October 7th, over 1,200 Jews were killed and over 4,200 were injured. Even accepting the Hamas data, the IDF has thus far met the standard of proportionality. The debate about proportionality will be an ongoing one as the war continues.
Even if Israel has met the technical standards for starting a just war and is currently fighting it justly, what about the larger claims of Israeli occupation and mistreatment of the Palestinians? Much is made of the Israeli total blockade of Gaza. However, international law permits Israel to ensure no military resources enter Gaza, and Hamas admits it has food and fuel stockpiles which it is not sharing with the Palestinians. Hamas has also rejected US and Israeli offers of humanitarian aid. Likewise, Israel does not control the flow of refugees out of Gaza; Egypt does, as does Hamas. No Arab nation has (as of yet) agreed to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza. One further point which merits consideration: Hamas has denied that its attackers committed any atrocities on October 7th, despite video evidence to the contrary. Hamas further claims that “average Palestinians” rose up on October 7th and took revenge on the Jews, committing the atrocities shown in the videos. So those who claim Hamas is trustworthy must admit that “average Palestinians” perhaps are not as peace-loving as depicted by some. Finally, Hamas admits it holds hundreds of innocent hostages in violation of international law.
From the New York Times: Blue arrows show initial IDF advances. The red line at the bottom is the wadi el Gaza, a marshy area which divides the Gaza strip
How will the IDF ground attack play out? As this map shows, the IDF will most likely occupy the area around the wadi al Gaza, which splits the Gaza strip in two. They will then reduce (military term) the area north of the wadi by destroying any remaining Hamas fighters, who will be cut-off from Hamas supplies and leadership south of the wadi. Once Hamas in this area is destroyed, Israel will declare this northern half of Gaza as a demilitarized zone under international authority (probably inviting the UN to administer it). Palestinians would be invited to return to this area, after being checked for Hamas affiliation. Israel will establish a new border zone, probably about two kilometers into the Gaza strip, which the IDF will treat as a free-fire zone complete with mines, obstacles, and walls (several layers). Any person or thing moving into this zone will be targeted and eliminated. All this could take months.
What happens after that depends on how the first phase goes. Does Israel then reduce the southern portion of Gaza, up to the Egyptian border? If the first phase went well, with fewer casualties and destruction, perhaps so. Does Israel invite non-Hamas Palestinians from the southern portion of Gaza to return? Does it give Hamas safe passage out, as it did with Yassir Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization when Israel besieged them in Beirut in 1982? If there is widespread destruction and international outrage, perhaps the Israeli government chooses this option. And once Hamas is gone and the threat Gaza posed neutralized, the Israeli government has a lot of soul-searching to do about its failure to anticipate the attack, to respond quickly and to come to grips with how Jewish or secular a nation it chooses to be. Certainly the Netanyahu government faces an accounting.
What of the Palestinians in Gaza? It is true that peace cannot be achieved by the Israeli eradication of Hamas. Peace can only happen when Palestinian leaders are honest with their own people and accept the following, which are all facts on the ground:
Israel is a Jewish state, and it has a right to exist.
Because of its long history of violent resistance, a future Palestinian state must be demilitarized, and may not be a base for attacks against Israel.
Jerusalem will remain a part of (and the capital city of) Israel, while peaceful Muslims will be free to worship at the al-Aqsa mosque complex.
Eventually, the strong, militarized border between Israel and Palestine may become more like a normal border between normal countries.
That’s it. If the Palestinians had accepted the initial UN offer, they would have had much more, including part of Jerusalem. If they had accepted the Oslo accords in 1993, they might have avoided the walls which now enclose them. If Gazans had not turned to Hamas, they would have avoided the destruction which now engulfs them. At every inflection point, the Palestinian people have made the wrong choice. Here’s a prayer they finally make the right choice now.
We’re rapidly approaching November, and with it, the Catholic feasts of All Saints and All Souls, which are better known locally as Dia de Muertos. No doubt you’ve seen the iconic imagery of Mexican culture: catrinas, calaveras, ofrendas, family picnics in the cemetery featuring foods the dearly departed enjoyed while in this earthly life, and of course cempasuchil petals everywhere.
A catrina, from a Diego Rivera mural
To the outsider, all this can appear a little, well, ghoulish. But it reflects a deep-seated Mexican (and Catholic) view of the world that I would suggest is something of a corrective to the one most Americans hold. Permit me to explain.
Colorful calaveras
First off, let’s do away with the growing, anhistorical proposition that the practices of Dia de Muertos reflects ancient Mexica (you know them as Aztec) beliefs. This was first posited during the 1930s as part of the indigenismo movement, accentuating Mexica themes in local culture. The socialist government of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas promoted these efforts as a counterweight to the Catholic Church’s power. It’s true the “Aztecs” performed ancestor-worship and believed human remains, especially bones, had magic powers. They often built racks of skulls of those sacrificed to demonstrate their power. And they had not one, but eight solemn days of remembrance, including two full months. None of which coincided with Dia de Muertos. I hesitate to consider what an AztecaDia de Muertos celebration might include, but all other such celebrations involved live human sacrifice!
An ofrenda (altar) with pan de muerto
What did coincide with the dates, as well as the parties, dances, costumes, altars, etc. were the Catholic feasts of All Saints and All Souls. You don’t need to be an anthropologist to understand this; just travel to any Catholic country in the Mediterranean (not the least, España!) and you’ll see many festivals directly mirroring what goes on in Mexico. I’ve witnessed this false history phenomenon many times: with respect to Easter, Christmas and its trees, even the Camino de Santiago. Yes, some pagans in antiquity walked to Finisterre, as it was known as land’s end (or the end of the world). That hardly makes the Camino Frances a pagan tradition. Anyway . . .
What does Dia de Muertos tell us about Mexican culture, and why do I think it’s a lesson worth learning? Dia de Muertos rejects the notion that the dead are gone. They may not be here, among us in ways we can see, but they are somewhere; they still exist. They enjoy watching us, they appreciate it when we remember them, they take comfort in our successes and feel sad in our sorrows. This is a deeply comforting notion, not the least of which when joined with the notion that someday we will be reunited.
You can never have too many Marigolds (cempasuchil)
None of this whitewashes the truth of the deceased’s lives. They are remembered, warts and all, in the hope they have made it to heaven and eternal joy. It is incumbent on Christian believers to hope in the resurrection of the just, even for the worst of all sinners, as that portends well for our own souls!
This emphasis on a hereafter could lead to a certain fatalism, and I have heard gringos opine as much about Mexican culture. It’s true that Mexicans can get less upset about things that would enrage most folks from NOB. If you believe this life is all there is, you will both fear death and try to seize every moment of the life you have. This might lead one to fight every injustice, be more charitable, and seek to be a positive change. It might also lead to constant competition, thrill-seeking, and a winner-take-all mentality. I’ll let my good friends decide which they think is more prevalent today in America.
Mexican culture clearly feels differently. They don’t fear death, as the candy skulls and skeletal face-painting clearly attest. No tragedy in the world is off-limits to Mexican jokes, as a simple search on the internet will show. I won’t give an example, just to avoid upsetting any of my friends, but it’s very Mexican to laugh at misfortune, even deadly misfortune. Mexicans didn’t invent the slogan “stuff happens” (safe-for-family version), but they certainly live by it. The catrinas you see today began as a nineteenth century literary tradition, where living famous people were given a short, rhymed poem announcing the clever or ironic way they died. Think of a corrupt politician whose safe full of ill-gotten gains falls on him, or a glutton who chokes on a large bite of sausage.
The concept of life and its aftermath pervades all aspects of Mexican culture. See the legions of roadside shrines, carefully maintained by families and road crews alike, attesting to the death of a pedestrian. Stroll among the families sharing time together at the cemetery, remembering past generations. Watch the faithful crawl on bloodied knees across the pavement outside the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, praying for the repose of a loved one’s soul. It’s very real and very important to them.
Gringos ask things like, “Why don’t they do something to improve the safety of the pedestrian crossings?” “Why don’t they spend that money on educating their children instead of flowers for an ofrenda?” “Why do they still believe in such superstitions?” Hearing such things, most Mexicans would simply nod and smile, because by asking the questions, you show you don’t get it. There can be no answer, if you think this is all there is.
Mexicans, even those who no longer practice Catholicism, believe differently. And they live according to those beliefs. They are less acquisitive, less competitive (except with respect to futbol!), more likely to accept bad outcomes rather than rage at them. It’s not fatalism, because it doesn’t signify giving up, just accepting reality. What’s funny is, much of western therapeutic practice tells those who undergo trauma the first thing you have to do is learn to accept it. Mexican culture has that built-in: cheaper, quicker, happier.
While Disney has lately made a hash of its great tradition, I strongly recommend the animated movie “Coco” which even my Mexican friends cite as a fantastically good and true depiction of this aspect of Mexican culture. Warning: I’ve seen it about six times, and I have yet to get through the movie without tearing up. Just sayin’!
So before you go out and buy that Barbie & Ken-themed Halloween outfit, take a moment to remember those you might have forgotten. And for Dia de Muertos this year, pull Coco up and enjoy!
Back in the second century BCE (Before Christian Era), Carthage was a city state on what is now the Tunisian coast. It was the predominant maritime power in the Mediterranean Sea, a commercial and culture powerhouse. Rome was a local upstart at the time, but after the First and Second Punic Wars, it became clear that only one of them could remain. Cato the Elder, a famous Roman politician in the Republic, saw this more clearly than anyone else. He started using the catch phrase, “Carthago delenda est,” as an all-purpose sign-off in his speeches in the Senate, regardless of topic. In the phrase’s several variations, it translates as “Carthage must be destroyed.” Rome finally did that in 146 BCE.
You can still visit today!
After the Second World War, the United Nations (UN) recognized the enormity (note the correct use of the term) of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jewish people, and decided to establish a Jewish homeland where Jews everywhere could be safe. The UN did not give Israel to the Jews. There were Jews there since the Romans last tried to eradicate them in 135 CE (Christian Era). After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Romans razed Jerusalem and sold the Jewish people off to slavery, dispersing them across the empire. The Romans did a lot of that. They so wanted to eliminate all traces of Jewish culture, they made up a new name for the area; Syria Palestina. The name used by the Arab peoples living in the region today is a vestige of that almost-successful Jewish eradication.
When the UN partitioned then-Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states in 1947, the Jews celebrated a new homeland. Within days, six Arab national armies invaded, leading to a war of military units versus ad hoc groups of armed Jews. There were battles, terrorism, and reprisals. Somehow Israel survived. Twenty years of antagonism, terrorism, and bloodshed ensued. Israel realized there would be no peace with these Arab states until they gave up their publicly-stated goal to eradicate the Jewish nation. In 1967, Israel learned another war was being planned, and they struck first routing the Arab forces and capturing Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. Jews were once again free to pray at the Western Wall, a right they had been denied by the Arab leaders since 1947. But the existential threat remained, called to the world’s attention by the terrorist murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
In 1973, the Arab nations once again tried a surprise attack, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. This war went well for the Arabs for days, but the tide turned and Israel so decisively destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian forces that only threats by the Soviet Union to the United States (and subsequent US pressure on Israel) ended the conflict. By 1978, Egypt had had enough, and it aligned itself with the US (vice the USSR) and signed the Camp David accords with Israel. Egypt and Israel both complied with the terms of the agreement. The Palestinians, who were welcome but not a party to it, refused to participate.
Resentment among the Palestinian people over their lack of control led to the First Intifada, a popular violent uprising, in 1987. More brutality, repression, and terrorism ensued. The conflict hit a turning point in 1993 when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords, laying out a path toward a negotiated two-state solution. But neither side was willing to negotiate on critical issues: Israel would not give up Jerusalem, the PLO would not accept the right of the Jewish nation to exist. Hard to compromise with those positions. A Second Intifada in 2000 yielded only more misery.
By 2006, the corruption and decadence of the PLO administration in the West Bank prompted those Palestinians (two million strong) in the Gaza strip to elect Hamas, a terrorist militia group, as its government. On a related note, there have been no further elections in Gaza. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and the killing of all Jews in the Middle East. They seek only the compromise of the grave.
Why relate all this? Some people want to believe there is a misunderstanding between the Arabs and the Jews in the region, and if they could just compromise, all this bloodshed would end. But like Rome and Carthage, this will never end that way. Israel has tried time and again to find responsible partners for peace. When they have, they cooperated. Israel is at peace with Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco. The Palestinian Authority (the once-PLO government in the West Bank) has never been such a partner, and Hamas never will be (same goes for Hezbollah in Lebanon).
As I blogged a month ago, the Biden administration was semi-secretly working a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel would get peace with the prestigious keeper of Islam’s holiest sites and the primary Arab benefactor. The House of Saud would get an explicit American defense promise, support for eventual nuclearization in the event Iran creates an atomic bomb, and both Jerusalem and Riyadh could focus their antagonism on Iran. The US gets greater stability in the Middle East, isolates Iran, and freezes China out just as they try to move into the region. If all this sounds too good to be true, it certainly was to Iran and Hamas. They had to do something to scuttle the momentum toward this agreement.
What was this attack? It was a terrorist attack in the form of a cross border raid. It was not meant to occupy territory or to overrun Israel. It was meant to humiliate the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), kill as many unarmed Jews as quickly as possible, grab as many hostages as possible, and cause Israel to overreact in the hopes it scuttles the deal. If you think that sounds like a Pyrrhic victory (one where the result isn’t worth the cost), you would be correct. But the Arabs attacked in 1973 on the same premise: we’ll lose in the end, but we’ll make them look bad for a time.
Was this an intelligence failure? Too soon to tell, but here is what I can say. There are Israeli press reports from the past few weeks about suspicious activities in Gaza. The Egyptians claim they warned the Israelis. It is not hard to hide evidence of a raid, and it looks like the IDF looked at the indications and thought, “this attack would make no sense” so they thought it was a feint.
Whose fault is it? There are some trying to place blame on the Netanyahu government for causing division in Israel, but those voices are mostly being (rightly) drowned out. Those IDF reservists who refused to report last month in protest are all under arms and headed to war today, as they should be. Israel is amidst a divisive debate about what kind of country it wants to be, but that is not the reason Hamas attacked. Hamas attacked because it wants to kill Jews. Period.
What happens now? Israel has announced a total blockade of Gaza, a tiny slip of urban blight between Egypt, Israel, and the sea (excellent background from the Washington Post here). No food, no fuel, no water. Things will get ugly fast. In the meantime, the Israeli air and ground forces are systematically eliminating any Hamas infrastructure in the strip, with attendant civilian casualties. Ground attack will follow.
What should happen? True to form, Hamas is threatening to start streaming the execution of the hostages it has unless the IDF stops. The Israeli government can’t save those poor souls, some of whom are Americans. Israel should announce it is disarming and demilitarizing the Gaza strip. Demand that Hamas surrender all hostages immediately, or else all Hamas personnel will be tried for war crimes. All military age men in Gaza (16-65 years old) must lay down their weapons and surrender, to be repatriated to whatever nation will accept them. Their families are free to leave with them. Any women and children remaining are welcome to stay under UN auspices. If there is resistance, the IDF will first eliminate it, building by building, then turn the area back over to the UN. It will never be a city, an enclave, or a terrorist base again. It can become the world’s largest, peaceful refugee camp. Or it can become a ruin, a warning to those who always choose violence. Maybe it would even become a tourist attraction in a thousand years.
Watching the Biden Administration re-enact a scene from the Marx Brothers Duck Soup movie the other day prompted me to pen this overly long post. My apologies. I hope to keep it informative and entertaining despite its length.
Why Duck Soup you ask? Because of the absurdity of the claims made. On a single day, DHS Secretary Mayorkas said he had to act to waive several federal environmental regulations which prohibited construction of additional border wall along the US-Mexican border. OK, why? Because under American appropriations law, the money had to be spent for that, as that it is what it was designated for back in 2019 under the Trump administration. And now the money would expire if it wasn’t spent. So far, so good. All this is true. Then he went on to explain that there is a migrant crisis at the border, which justifies waiving the environmental regulations. Over 100,000 parents traveling with children crossed the border last month, an all-time record. Ummmm, but, well, that new border wall is only a few tens of miles long, and it’s not popping up overnight, but hey, ok, we’re still good.
Except the Secretary could have just refused to waive the environmental regulations, and what would have happened? The money would not have been lost: it just would not have been spent. Money we didn’t have (remember, all this is deficit spending, as we have been running a deficit annually for decades now) would not have been spent. So there must be a real migrant crisis, and the wall must help, right?
Except President Biden repeated Mayorkas’ claims about “havng to build the wall,” then added ‘No, a wall does not work.’ Then Mayorkas had to backtrack and agree with the President, but continue to claim he “had to spend the money.” Which was false. Which means the administration realizes it is under political pressure from all sides about the border and immigration, and it would rather lie and look like it’s doing something, even if that something doesn’t do anything in the President’s opinion.
“Just wait till I get through with it”
Hence Duck Soup.
To figure all this out, you need to know politics, appropriations law, immigration trends, and some international economics/trade. Hence the administration thought they could get away with it. Even mainstream media uncritically reported the claim “the money had to be spent.” If there is appropriated money which expires, but it is prohibited by other federal law from being spent, it does not have to be spent. Period.
La frontera, the border in Español, is a fraught topic. Unlike the Canadian-American border, which is far longer and still practically unregulated, the Mexican-American border is freighted with much history. It’s still the most permeable international membrane in history, with good reason. What crosses it is what makes it so important, so difficult to address, and so likely to make fools of idealists, politicians, and demagogues. And what crosses it in order of importance are money, drugs, people, and guns.
MONEY
For two centuries, la frontera was much like any other border: a sleepy land of lines where laws changed and nothing much else. There were national rivalries, some crime, an occasional invasion or raid, and that’s it. America grew into a world power and Mexico remained in the immortal words of Porfirio Diaz “so far from God, and so close to the United States.” Mexico advanced economically, too, but remained deeply entrenched in what was then-called the Third World. Then NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, happened. NAFTA integrated the American, Canadian, and Mexican economies to an unprecedented degree.
H. Ross Perot was right about one thing: the giant sucking sound you heard was jobs moving to Mexico. What he got wrong was the notion that there are a finite number of jobs and when Mexico gained one, America lost one. The effect on Mexico was profound, and its economy grew immensely, now the 14th largest in the world. Yes, some American business sectors suffered mightily, and individual Americans lost jobs in those sectors, but that was inevitable. All NAFTA did was decide who the winners were: China, Korea, Vietnam or Mexico. NAFTA picked Mexico. And all that did was make Mexico into a stable economy, give it a middle-class, and reduce the flow of Mexican migration into America. Pretty good deal, no?
Another effect was to make Mexico and America inevitably into each other’s largest trading partners, with thousands of business sectors where parts of the final product or service are seamlessly produced and assembled without legal friction. Our economies are integrated, and like Siamese twins, they can’t be easily disentangled. China tried to do it, and almost did, but the political and economic fall-out of the pandemic made American officials realize that friend-shoring (i.e., trading with close, friendly countries you can rely on) is essential. You don’t want to find out that all your medical gear and drugs are made by the angry country that might have just caused the pandemic, do you?
One last thing about money at the border. Because of historic migration trends and the continuing need for migrant labor, there are many ethnic Mexicans living in the United States. How many? Thirty-seven million approximately, making them one of the largest ethnic contingents in the American melting pot. And since la familia is everything in Mexican culture, they send money home to la familia. Called remittances, Mexicans in America used digital wire services to send a record sixty billionUSdollars home to Mexico last year, amounting to four percent of Mexico’s GDP.
In summary, more money transits la frontera than any border in world history. It is uniquely permeable, and both countries have spent a lot of time and effort to make business work effortlessly across it. No one can stop that for long, or change it significantly, without changing the basic structure of both nations’economies. And since it works so well, no one really wants to. The European Union has spent five decades trying to build something similar with mixed results. The United States and Mexico did it without really trying.
DRUGS
Believe it or not, the second most important thing crossing la frontera is drugs, and that is actually a subset of the money/trade aspect. Illegal narcotics are essentially just another product/service, wanted by some, provided by others. When something is legal or permitted in one place, but illegal or prohibited in another, clever people find a way to move it from one to the other to make money.
I am going to say something that will make my conservative American friends a little angry. The problem with drugs is not Mexico. It is America. Now for my liberal friends? The solution to drugs is not their decriminalization or legalization. The solution to drugs is ending American demand.
Mexico is only the focus of drug trafficking because of the fact of la frontera. Anybody who watched the original Netflix Narcos series knows the original cartels were Colombian, and the Mexicans were only middlemen who figured out how to muscle in on the business. Now the Mexican cartels are the biggest players, and that has caused untold death and mayhem in Mexico. Believe me when I say the vast majority of Mexicans would gladly accept the end of the reign of narcotraficantes, and in fact pray for it every day. No one is winning here.
Like any market, the drug trade has changed over time, responding to the changing consumer tastes in America. What started as mules (human and equine) carrying marijuana bales over mountain passes led to bricks of cocaine loaded in submarines and to packages of meta-amphetamine hidden in truck engines. Now the narcos have moved their dope-growing into America as individual states relax possession laws and the cartels focus on fentanyl. Why fentanyl? It’s an advanced, synthetic (nothing to grow), pain-reducing, euphoria-producing opioid, a miracle of modern medicine. Except it’s also highly addictive, cheap and easy to produce, and incredibly lethal in even tiny doses. A gram of fentanyl is fifty times more powerful than pure heroin, and there are versions one-hundred times more powerful than that. Added to other drugs, it increases the effects at zero-additional cost. Except those adding it along the supply chain don’t know who has added how much, so you get a record of over 100,000 America accidental overdose deaths in 2022.
Now you might think the cartels would NOT want to kill off their customers, but being the good businessmen they are, they realized long ago that American demand for drugs is what economists call “inelastic.” That is, no matter how much it costs in money, violence, death, or misery, there is unlimited continuing demand. So throw another fentanyl brick on the Bar-B! And how easy is it to produce? You need the raw materials, which are basically powders, and a pill or brick-making machine which is about the size of a home coffee pot. So when politicians start talking about taking out the fentanyl labs, stop listening, because they are speaking gibberish.
Why can’t America stop the drugs from entering? Too much legitimate trade crosses the border every day. We would have to stop the economy to stop the drugs. The drugs are too easy to hide, too easy to change transit methods (mules, slingshots, submarines, drones, trucks, tchotchkes, tourists, day-trippers, etc.), too easy to write off if they’re discovered, and it’s even too easy to bribe US Customs and Border Protection personnel. If Mexico disappeared tomorrow, we’d have the Canadian cartels to deal with the day after tomorrow. As the decriminalization and legalization experiment in the various states plays out, we will only change where and how America experiences its drug-induced misery and death. Until Americans stop craving drugs.
There is a final, cautionary note. Late in the 18th and early 19th century, The British Empire brought the Chinese Middle Kingdom to its knees, literally. It did so with the strength of the Royal Navy, the economic power of industrialization, and the subversive provision of opium, of which the Chinese simply couldn’t get enough. The leaders and the led in China gave up territory (e.g., Hong Kong, Macao), sovereignty , and their dignity, leading to what the Chinese called the Century of Humiliation. Current Chinese President Xi has called his efforts to lead China the fitting rejoinder to the lost hundred years. Is it any wonder the Chinese see the delicious irony in providing fentanyl precursors (and other drugs) to the cartels for sale to America?
PEOPLE
While desperate videos of asylum-seekers picking their way through razor-wire capture our current attention, the flow of people is only the third most important thing crossing the border. Why does the humanitarian aspect pale in comparison? Because of its size. No, really. That portion of it is so small!
Over three hundred million people, ninety million cars, and 4 million trucks cross la frontera every year. The border zone is incredibly integrated, even more so than the national economies. Mexicans shop at the big malls in Laredo, send their kids to private schools in El Paso, even drive to see the Buc-ee’s north of San Antonio. Americans cross to get dental crowns, prescription drugs, cosmetic surgery, even cheap daycare. Sometimes the crossing takes a long time, sometimes it’s fast, but it keeps happening every day. And the thing is, all these people go home every night. If they wanted to, they could stay, Americans in Mexico or Mexicans in America. But they don’t. They like their homes, their communities, their culture. They like visiting el otro lado (the other side), and that’s it. This is the daily fact of life along the border, and no politician or party or policy is going to change it.
Depending on the relative economic conditions in both countries, many young Mexican men (mostly) and women (some) head north for better paying jobs. Most do so temporarily, sending those remittances home, saving up money to move back home to Mexico and buy a casa or start a tienda, which earlier they could never hope to do in Mexico. Some stayed in America, like most ethnic arrivals there do. But consider this: is there any other ethnic migration to America that has had as many returnees as Mexico has? Like those living on la frontera, most Mexicans really like being Mexican, living in Mexico, eating Mexican comida and living la cultura de la famila mexicana. Believe me, they respect the United States, they wonder at the United States, they compete in futbol with the United States, and man do they like potato chips and Coca Cola! If all of Mexico really wanted to be in America, they could get here in about a week. Just sayin’.
What about some of the most common fake news themes regarding migrants?
Taking American jobs? At times, America had worker visas for Mexican migrants to work in the harvest period for various crops, jobs which even 1960s-era American teenagers and twenty-somethings wouldn’t take. It helped to regulate the movement of migrants, and there is still a need for such workers today, even though few Mexicans need those jobs now (it’s mostly other Latinos, now).
Are migrants a means of drug-trafficking? They were once upon a time, much like bootleg stills were a thing during 1920s Prohibition. But the drug trade is a major multinational business now, and handing fentanyl bricks to desperate, illiterate peasants is not an effective distribution system. So yes, you may find some enterprising coyote ad-libbing with some drugs and migrants on the side, but this is not the drug problem, any more than your batch of home-brew beer is the alcohol problem. A bigger issue is that the narcos realized that due to America’s dysfunctional immigration system, the cartels could use their old cross-border routes to smuggle illegal migrants. Here’s the real genius: the cartels only need to get the migrants across the border–it doesn’t matter if the migrants get caught! The Americans either let the migrants stay, or they return them to Mexico. Either way, the cartels get paid once, or twice, with no downside.
Are most migrants criminals? Well, by definition, almost all are since they violate some law in crossing the border, a technicality but one worth remembering. You’ll find no group more irritated by illegal immigration than legal immigrants for that very reason, even when talking about their own ethnic relations! But such immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes in America, when considering their economic status. Poor people get desperate. Given that being convicted of a crime is a sure-fire way to get deported, most illegal immigrants are fearful of the American justice system (they also have no experience in a “just” justice system) and are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.
What is absolutely true about the number of people migrating into the United States is this: the absolute number America can accept is huge, almost immeasurable. The absolute number your community can accept is small, almost unnoticeable. America is so vast, with so many towns and cities and space, it could easily absorb huge numbers of migrants. But of course, not all at once. Homes and businesses and schools don’t spring up overnight. You can’t integrate people into a country when you can’t even speak their language, let alone know anything about their culture. Mexicans and Americans have been practicing this dance for centuries, and we’re pretty good at it. But now we’re dealing with Venezuelans, Nigerians, Afghans, Russians, Chinese, Cubans, Haitians, et cetera. There is unlimited demand for migration to the United States, because all those peoples realize something many Americans have forgotten: maybe it’s not a bad place after all. There has to be limits, rules, and a line. It is only fair to those who are here, those who already came her, and those who want to come here.
If America can accept many more migrants, it can only do so willingly in the mind of the polis, the public. Migrants are statistics, people happen in real places. When it happens to you, it becomes real. See how quickly those sanctuary cities lost their lofty ideals when the migrants actually took them up on the offer of sanctuary? It is not racist or nationalist to want your neighborhood to be the way it was when you moved there; it’s human.
The sensitivity among some Americans to immigration always appears shortly after an especially large influx. America has five percent of the world’s population and twenty percent of its migrants. Our current forty-five million migrants are more than the next four countries combined. That total represents almost fourteen percent of America’s population, just short of the all-time record of fifteen percent set back in 1890. That’s the period of the Know-Nothings, the anti-Catholic Blaine laws, the Chinese Exclusion Acts, the “Irish need not apply” signs.
People can accept change, but not too much, and not too fast. I live in an area which is sometimes called Gringolandia by locals, as so many American and Canadian expats live here the culture is different than the rest of Mexico. Can it cause some resentment? Yes. Does it create new opportunities? Yes. Is it manageable, if it happens slowly as opposed to in a rush? Yes. If you go into the southside of Chicago (be careful when you do!), you can probably find a ethnic Nigerian-community Catholic Church, with huge murals left of La Guadalupana (from the previous Mexicano worshipers) on the walls in the once-Polish neighborhood parish of St. Stanislaus. Change happens. America is actually good at it. And we need more Americans, wherever they come from!
GUNS
Weapons are the least important thing crossing the border, but they merit consideration, as some (especially in Mexico) contend they are an issue. Let’s see why. In case you haven’t heard, Mexico has a drug-cartel-violence-murder problem. How big a problem? Almost 43,000 homicides last year, putting them in the category of places like South Africa or Syria. Thousands of people go missing, usually the result of cartel attempts at intimidation, recruiting, or vengeance. The cultura of the extended Mexican family means most everybody has a relative involved in the drug trade. Which puts most everybody at some risk. This is also why targeting the cartels hasn’t worked so well for either the American or Mexican governments: you inevitably kill someone’s cousin, which means six new primos are aggrieved.
So are guns fueling the violence in Mexico? Well, if the cartels only had machetes, things might slow down a little, of course. The issue is what type of guns, from where? Mexico’s constitution contains the right to bear arms, just like that in the United States. However, legal weapons here are strictly regulated by type and number and use, and there is only one store, run by the Mexican Army, which retails weapons. Yet guns are everywhere, and so are gun homicides. The fact is, back in the 1970s, the Soviets flooded Central America with hundreds of thousands of cheap, reliable AK47s and other semi-automatic weapons, hoping to spark revolutions and keep the Gringos busy in their backyard. The AK47 is like a diamond: it is forever. Dig it up from a cache, oil it, clean it, and it fires like the day it was made. The AK47 is user- (but not target-) friendly, simple, effective, and plentiful. It is the narcos weapon of choice.
Do cartels import weapons from the United States. Yes. As they have diversified and made more money, cartels have illegally imported more exotic or expensive weapons from America. Some of those weapons are so powerful they over-match the Mexican military, and that’s a real-if-limited problem. Here’s the rub: if the Americans could magically shut down the flow of guns into Mexico tomorrow, the cartels could keep on shooting for decades. Why do some Mexican officials make such a big deal about American guns in Mexico? It is a convenient rejoinder: if the all-powerful American government can’t control guns from its side of the border, how can you expect Mexico to control drugs on its side of the border?
And there’s a statistics problem, too. To respond to the Mexican government’s concerns, the United States funds efforts to track weapons from the United States confiscated during crimes in Mexico. The funding keeps stats on how many are found, but only of those which are likely to be from the USA. Guess what? That’s a numerator without a denominator! So the stats show the number of such guns in Mexico increasing, but not what the relative percentage is. Maybe the number of American guns used in violent crimes in Mexico increased 100% last year. But if the number of American guns in Mexico is only 1% of the total number of guns used in crimes in Mexico, it is irrelevant. NO one knows, although any cartel photo shoot tells a story.
Simple solutions like “build the wall” or “sanctuary cities” are nonsense, and anyone who spouts them should be ignored. The social and economic integration America and Mexico has is an amazing boon for both, and should be fostered, never threatened. There are mutual solutions to the challenges posed by la frontera, but they require both parties in America, and both national governments, to avoid posturing and to give up slogans.
Astute friends will note we’re several weeks into the college football season and I have yet to write my annual paean to my favorite obsession. Never fear, it’s here. But this year is different.
This year, my favorite team (Notre Dame), has Marcus Freeman returning as head coach. Last year was a roller-coaster ride of emotions ending well with a bowl game victory and a 9-4 record. That record included a pantsing (it’s a sports term, look it up) of Clemson and a comeback victory over South Carolina. Something bad happened at Southern Cal (often does), something inexplicable happened against Marshall, and something insufferable happened against Stanford. As I said, a mixed bag.
But the coach seems to be an upright dude, is growing into the role (4-0 this year as I write this), and says all the right things. He is a credit to the university, which is refreshing after he replaced the insufferable prick who preceded him. I railed on about the former coach for ten years, only to have him prove all my charges against his character with his later behavior. I’m sorry to the LSU Tigers and their fans, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
But why the sad title, if things are going so well for my team? The sport that is college football is dying before our eyes, and it–as we know it–will be gone in under five years. Money killed it, as is so often the case. To use a Clue metaphor, it was ESPN on the Gridiron with a roll of Benjamins.
Most people don’t know this, but once upon a time, there was no NFL. Oh, there was a professional football league, but it had all the glamour and cachet of women’s field hockey. Back in the 1920’s & 1930’s, American baseball reigned supreme, with boxing (!) and college football vying for number two. College football won out, and continued to gain in popularity. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world: universities, centers of education, field teams of student-athletes (properly pronounced ATH-UH-LEATS). Why? Back in those days, colleges were overwhelmingly- or all-male, and sports provided an outlet for all that testosterone. Obscure traditions developed, rivalries over imagined slights or for ridiculous trophies were born. It was local, silly, but intensely passionate.
Something about the “ideal” of an amateur going all out for his school on Saturday was seen by the masses as good and wholesome, while the men who played professionally on Sunday were seen as failures who didn’t have real jobs. In fact most did, as they made practically nothing from football. This dichotomy, that amateurism was good and professionalism bad, was key to the sport’s success. It used to be the same with the Olympics, too, once-upon-a-time.
I put those quotation marks around “ideal” because some cynic out there (I’m looking at you!) will point out the many exceptions: college players who got paid with “golden handshakes” after the game, boosters who gave mom & dad jobs if sonny went to Enormous State U, and the like. And there were cheating scandals, gambling scandals, gut-courses, and plenty of young male bad behavior, up to and including the criminal. But there were also thousands of players playing the game, so the vast majority never got paid, never acted the boor, usually attended class, and sometimes even graduated. The deal was free tuition, which amounted to something, even for an ATH-UH-LEAT.
But its popularity continued to grow, and with television, so did revenue. The NCAA, the governing body comprising all the schools, used to limit how often a team could play on television: in those more genteel days, it was considered to be an unfair advantage. But the rise of ESPN created an insatiable demand: every team is on TV every week, and the money rains down.
Being forward-thinking, the NCAA instituted a unique form of revenue sharing, putting money in accounts for players who could retrieve it upon graduation. It allowed schools to cover things like special diets, health insurance, and even pay the players a stipend since they spent so much time preparing for games that they couldn’t work jobs like other students. No, wait, that’s not what happened at all. The NCAA member schools kept all the money for themselves, and went on a spending spree that would have embarrassed Scrooge McDuck.
Behind the scenes at NCAA headquarters
Schools spent money on stadiums, coaches, luxury boxes, football dorms, coaches, football-only recreation centers, special training facilities, coaches, boondoggle trips, football administrative staffs, recruiting, and even coaches. Many schools spent more than they made, because winning football can be very expensive. But the orgy of spending went on. Players got some benefits, like those special dorm rooms and rec centers. But they got little or no direct money. Even when they wanted to market themselves, separate from the football team, they couldn’t do it. Regular students could make money using talents they had, but football players? Oh, no, they mustn’t. Coaches moved around, sometimes failing up. My favorite team hit a bad patch and “bought out” two coaches in a row, telling them to move along but agreeing to continue paying their contract salary as long as they went away. Three coaches on the payroll at once? Priceless.
Eventually the amounts of money got so large, and the imbalance so obvious, players began to take legal action. Cases have gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and it looks like the NCAA is a dead man walking in its ability to manage the sport. Nothing to mourn there, except for the problem that soon there will be no rules at all. Under the current interim situation, boosters can pay ATH-UH-LEATS using a fig-leaf called a Name, Image & Likeness (NIL for short) contract. There are verifiable cases of high school recruits offered millions of dollars in NIL money to attend Big Tech State. Rules on whether players could transfer–which deterred them from doing so–have been loosened. Now there is a “transfer portal” which includes over 8,000 players!
Explains so much
And of course with the imminent demise of the NCAA, the rules on whether the players need to actually be students have practically disappeared.
Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, the conferences and rivalries which were the heart of amateur athletics are also up for sale. You could cheer through losses all year for your pathetic alma mater, as long as you beat your in-state rival. Now, those rivalries are disappearing, as teams flee one conference for another with a bigger TV rights pay out. How crazy is it?
The Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives formed in the late 19th Century and its athletic league was called the Western Conference, as it represented the western edge of football civilization. It comprised mainly large State universities, with the exception of little private Northwestern and Chicago, which left when it became apparent sports (not academics) were king. You know it as the Big Ten. Or the B1G, where the G might be a 6, since it has grown to sixteen members and stretched all the way to the State University of New Jersey (SUNJ, which some call Rutgers). Oh, wait, it’s eighteen teams, and it goes coast-to-coast. Sure, the women’s volleyball team at Southern Cal will enjoy those red-eye flights to Piscataway. I call them the BIG-N, or The Integer for short, as it is less specific.
So you’re thinking, “Pat, stop yelling at the kids to get off your lawn and just sit back and enjoy the fifty or so games every weekend.” Well I will, only because the game still resembles its former self. But change is only beginning. The B1G and the $EC (the South East Conference, not to be confused with the smaller financial organization known as the Securities and Exchange Commission) will soon choose a third partner to negotiate with to replace the NCAA. That third partner will likely be some hybrid clone of one of the other conferences (the ACC, the BIG 12, the American, but of course not the PAC-12, which has only two members), which continue to change shape like John Carpenter’s version of The Thing:
Look!, Its the Big Atlantic American Conference!
What could go wrong? To get a glimpse of the future, join me on a quick trip to Boulder, Colorado, home of the University of Colorado Buffaloes. First off, let me note that Colorado has the best mascot in all college football, and the sight of that beast dragging its handlers around the field before a game is must-see TV. It’s a once very good football program which has fallen on very hard times (how hard, you ask? 1-11 last year). It left its historic perch in the Big-12 to chase TV revenue in the PAC-12, but like Rick in Casablanca, it was misinformed: no one cares enough about college football on the West Coast.
PAC-12 Championship? I thought this was a wine & brie tasting!
To resurrect the program as it returns to the Big-12 for more money (no really), Colorado hired away Deion Sanders, head coach of Jackson State University in Florida. You may know him as “Coach Prime” or before that, “Prime Time” as an NFL All-Pro with the Cowboys et al, while also playing Major League Baseball for the Atlanta Braves, or even “Neon Deion” as a star player with the Florida State Seminoles. He is at least the best athlete of his generation, the only man to have both Super Bowl and World Series rings. Beyond all that, he has proven to be a master motivator, an above-average coach, and a genius at self-promotion, perhaps only behind Steve Jobs in the modern era.
Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be the bad-news part? Sanders is succeeding beyond anyone’s expectations thus far, and his success will bring imitation. Yes, he’s great at recruiting ATH-UH-LEATS. Young men want to play for him, and he motivates them to play their best. His teams win, although not so much that anyone is calling him one of the best (maybe later this year, as most hype-meters have to go to 11 to even measure him). So what’s his secret? He treats the game as a professional would. He encourages wholesale transfers: He sent seventy-one players into the portal when he arrived, and picked up thirty-five. He appears to be genuinely concerned for his players as players, but as students, well, they come to win at football. He scoffs at the hypocrisy of the NCAA, which merits his disdain. But his approach, as entertaining as it is, is a hundred yard dash to the semi-professional model.
As others adopt it, the ATH-UH-LEATS will become employees. Can’t fire an employee for performance unrelated to their job, so how are you going to make them go to class? And if football players aren’t student-athletes anymore, then they don’t create a Title IX compliance nightmare either: eliminate eighty-five male football scholarships and SHAZAM, every university is suddenly fully compliant evermore. Of course, when you eliminate college football revenue, which will go off university books, most all non-revenue sports will suffer. The resulting semi-pro “college football” league will house about fifty or so programs, shedding those (regardless of whatever conference they were originally in) who don’t bring in revenue. We’ll have free agency starting senior year of high school (that will go well with programs like Miami of Florida, where “hookers and blow” was a locker room tradition).
I await the day Coach Prime’s team is behind at half time and simply has the opposing team’s quarterback switch sides during the game for an NIL envelope full of cash at midfield. Can’t happen, you say?
“Show Me the Money!”
So while we wait for the inevitable, I’ll enjoy what little college football is left. Kind of like RJ MacReady at the end of The Thing:
Usually I feel comfortable talking about the politics and legality of the various Trump indictments, based on the many reliable pundits out there willing to comment thereupon. But now we’re talking about a state indictment, and not any state, but Georgia. With a Georgia prosecutor, judge, and jury, under a Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. Good luck! There is no way I am going to read ninety-eight pages comprising forty-one counts against nineteen co-conspirators, then start into what it all means in Georgia!
“How long can this go on?”
So in this seemingly unending series about the former President’s legal troubles, I will concentrate on a few of the externals to the charges and trial, and more on the ramifications.
First, despite what you may hear from the defense, Fani Willis has a long, solid history as a prosecutor. She may have political motivations (see Shapiro, Josh), but that doesn’t mean she isn’t competent. She is.
Second, you’ll hear reference to all kinds of silly comments in the charging documents, citing meetings and phone calls and the like. No, those things aren’t illegal, but if you use them to do something illegal, they can be cited as evidence, especially of conspiracy.
Third, state and federal governments can try a person for the same crime because they are separate sovereigns, thus it is not double-jeopardy. But the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has at times held that when such a case exists, it is proper for the federal case to proceed rather than the state one. Here we have them marching in parallel. No one short of the Supreme Court will decide on this point, so look to that outcome (an appeal all the way to SCOTUS, if Trump et al are convicted). I’m not saying SCOTUS will overturn, just that this is a rare case where a form of double-jeopardy could play a role.
Finally, many (but not all) the charges in Georgia also involve whether the President and his co-conspirators knew they were wrong. So once again, the court will dig deep into the psyche of Donald John Trump. Good luck with that!
Stepping back from the immediate indictment, what are the implications?
First, we now have a precedent for the indictment of a major candidate for office by partisans (officials, yes, but partisan ones, too) during the election season. Let that sink in. Does any rational human being not see that prosecutors in Florida and Texas will be looking at the next crop of Democratic hopefuls for excuses to bring charges during the run up to the 2028 campaign? Care to bet me no state will? Whatever the outcome of the trial, the precedent is set.
Second, I yield to the members of the Fulton County Grand Jury that they believe a real harm was done to the state by the Trump alleged conspiracy. They heard the evidence and so voted. I question the need to bring the case in the first place. Sure, if Trump skated free on the federal charges, a case could have been readied to file, much as corrupt police officers are sometimes charged with federal civil rights violations after being give a pass by a state jury for some violent act. But the prosecutors wait to see how the first case comes out. In this case, it appears to me to be piling on, especially so as it will affect the campaign. Another case of “when Trump is involved, anything goes.”
Third, there is case law that federal officials cannot be tried by states for actions performed in the line of their federal duties. This is the precedent Mark Meadows, the former White House Chief of Staff, is citing in asking the trial be moved to federal court. Now courts will have to parse out a new precedent whether all actions taken by a federal employee are “in the line” of duty. Mark Meadows is cited for arranging a meeting. If you are a federal employee, you should be very interested in how this part plays out. Imagine a future where any state can charge you and you have to prove your actions were “in the line” of duty? Imagine Assistant Deputy Secretaries in DHS charged by Texas for crimes committed by unauthorized border-crossers. What a world!
Fourth, I have already seen several gleeful reports that this case will include the booking and mugshot of the defendant, and a televised trial. I have mentioned the blood-lust Trump inspires before, and how undignified, even Trump-like, it is. Before anyone gets their hopes up, recall that a little thing called the Secret Service is involved. Things may not happen quite the way some people hope. And they shouldn’t hope for such things anyway. It’s base.
Fifth, whatever the outcome, it has no practical significance for the election. Trump can be tried, found guilty, and sentenced, and if he wins the electoral college, he will still be President. There is even reason to believe that under that scenario, the US Department of Justice would intervene in the case, calling for either the suspension or the overturning of the result as an infringement on the prerogatives of the Executive Branch. Which would be another bad precedent.
Sixth, while I have respect for the prosecutor and the judge in this case, I remind everyone that this is a state jurisdiction trial. Federal prosecution is most feared by all the accused, as federal prosecutors have an impressive record: last year, .4% of federal defendants went to trial and were acquitted. Almost 90% pled guilty. I am not reassured that the state office responsible for handling the posting of the indictment did so before the Grand Jury voted. That might be an omen for things to come.
So in summary, most of what the indictment alleges is factually provable, and some is obvious. Whether that constitutes a conspiracy under Georgia law I’ll leave to the good men and women of the jury. I would note that Stacey Abram has been walking around claiming the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial election (which she lost) was “flawed” and refusing (still) to concede, a fact I think will be mentioned at trial. Even a conviction has little relevance for the federal outcome, although the treatment of the accused, the effect on a campaign, and the legal precedents set will be with us for decades.
I can hardly generate the enthusiasm to cover this subject yet again. The Times and the Post had pages of news, analysis, and opinion. The main televised media interrupted coverage for breathless panels (are there any other kind these days?) which compared the event to 9/11, Watergate and the Moon Landing (not the last one, but almost). That says more about them than about the indictment, but it is important, so here goes.
Jack Smith, Special Counsel in the Department of Justice (DOJ), has indicted former-President Trump on four counts, namely
Conspiracy to defraud the US by denying the outcome of the 2020 election
Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, namely, that certification
Obstruction of that same official proceeding, and finally
Conspiracy to violate the people’s civil rights to vote and have their vote count.
First off, let’s dispense with the obvious partisan talking points.
Those on the right who suggest these indictments criminalize political speech are wrong. The former President and his MAGA supporters can stand on any corner and proclaim the 2020 election was stolen all day. They still can. What is in question are actions taken by then-President Trump and his co-conspirators. Those actions may (or may not) be deemed crimes. A simple analogy. You can claim that my car is yours. You can write about it, speechify about it, send me an e-mail, all protected by the First Amendment. But if you get in that car in question and drive away in it, I will charge you with theft and the matter will be resolved in court. Actions, not words.
Some on the left continue to insist that Mr. Smith should have charged Mr. Trump with insurrection and seditious conspiracy. The first was one of the charges referred to the DOJ by the January 6th committee. They over-reached there, as Jack Smith’s refusal to pursue it shows. The second charge is one that has been successfully used against groups like the Proud Boys, but those cases are moving up the appeals process, and higher courts are looking closely at them. The prosecutors got convictions at trial, but whether the charges themselves will hold up to higher court scrutiny remains to be seen. Smith smartly avoided the possibility.
Anybody who saw (even on tape) the January 6th riot, and heard Trump’s railing about the election, should have few doubts about the facts of the cases. There is only one real challenge within those facts. All the charges rest in some manner on conspiracy, and that charge requires the suspect’s knowledge that what he was doing was wrong. Not that he was in fact wrong, or even that others told him he was wrong, but that he knew he was wrong and proceeded anyway.
That is the main challenge facing Jack Smith in court. Now the indictments simply allege that Mr. Smith has the evidence to confirm this point, they don’t show the evidence, so we don’t know. Some of the forty-five pages allude to times when others told Trump he was wrong about the election, or when he made comments which suggest he knew he was wrong. That will be stacked up against the noise coming from the same man, loudly and continuously, for the past almost three years. We shall see. I don’t envy the court and the jury being invited into the squirrel’s nest that is Donald Trump’s mind.
There are some other, specific challenges hidden in the indictment. For example, fraud requires a tangible gain (monetary or otherwise), and so Mr. Smith must postulate what that was. The White House (which the President only “rents”)? Presidential pay (which Mr. Trump donated)? Denial of civil rights requires proving a specific intent to do so, as in the suspect saying, “I am going to cheat those Georgians of their right-to-vote,” so that’s a high bar. Finally, corruption, which gets several mentions in the indictment, must also be specific, and in related case, a unanimous Supreme Court threw out a “boundless” definition of corruption and the resulting conviction of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, calling it the criminalization of horse-trading of politics.
As you should now see, the basic case before the jury is strong. The appellate issues are huge. So we might see a short trial and conviction followed by a lengthy and contentious appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. So I ask the question: is it worth it?
Just as no president ever tried to reverse his defeat at the ballot box before, no prosecutor has brought charges for doing so, meaning there is no precedent for applying the statutes on the books to such a circumstance.
Peter Baker, NYT correspondent
Besides punishing the former President, what is at stake here? All those appeals will result in precedents. If a Trump conviction is overturned by the Supreme Court, Democrats will attack the legitimcy of the court, guaranteed. If it’s upheld, MAGAists will call the entire justice system corrupt.
Since 1973, the DOJ of all Republican and Democratic Presidents has held that a sitting President cannot be charged with federal crimes, as that would interfere with his constitutional duties. Trump was President when he committed the actions Jack Smith has charged against him. So now we have a precedent that while sitting, the President is immune, but the day he leaves office, we can go back and charge him for action undertaken while in office. Furthermore, the courts have held that the proper legal way to hold a President to account is impeachment. Trump was impeached by the House (equivalent to an indictment), but was not found guilty by the Senate for the same activities. While this is not a literal case of double jeopardy, it does raise obvious questions of equity.
What are the most likely outcomes of this trial? It won’t be short. The outcomes must be arrayed against the outcomes of the simultaneous election. The charges will still be in play, perhaps under appeal, in January, 2025 when the winner of the Presidential race is sworn in.
Conviction will not result in disqualifying Trump from office, despite the ravings of some. A Trump victory would force the DOJ to drop the charges consistent with their longstanding policy, which would leave the matter unresolved in Democrats’ minds. If they didn’t, MAGAists would revolt, and returning President Trump could move to pardon himself, generating another terrible precedent (and probably more legal wrangling, or even impeachment, depending on who has control of the House and Senate). If Trump loses the election, there is the chance he wins in the courts in the end, remaining the wounded martyr to his legion of fans (Trump 2028, anyone?). Even from prison. Democrats would cheer these outcomes up until the next Republican administration appoints special counsels for any and all living, Democratic, former Presidents. Think they won’t?
Should Congress have impeached Trump on interference in the election certification, just that, and not on incitement to violence and insurrection? Yes. We’ll never know whether more limited charges, with the intent to prevent another Trump candidacy (an outcome allowed under the constitution) would have attracted a few more Republican Senators.
Should we enact new laws against the types of behavior Trump and his co-conspirators exhibited? I welcome the debate, but Congress and the President have avoided it up to now, because it is so fraught with peril to the political process. Should we stretch existing law to cover such cases? Probably not, as the Supreme Court will rule if they get the chance.
Finally, the ultimate lesson, one we have failed to learn. Should we continue to change everything we do (our customs, our manners, our precedents, even our laws) because of Donald J. Trump? No. He is the great white whale of many in the liberal establishment, and in pursuing him, we give him too much credit, and undermine the very system some claim to want to protect. Perhaps those who say we cannot allow Trump’s behavior to stand should recall the fate of Captain Ahab.
If you keep up with the news, you probably know that the current ultra-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Bibi) is trying to turn Israel into a fascist state by eliminating the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court. The opposition has delivered large crowds, huge protests, a threatened (rather promised) general strike, and even some resignations among the Israeli military’s famed reserve forces. Democracy hangs in the balance, as Bibi presses forward.
Of course, all that is a caricature of what’s really happening, which is far deeper and actually more profound. Democracy has nothing to do with it, as I will explain. This is a debate about the what Israel is and what it should be, one that has been simmering since it was born in conflict in 1948.
Israel has a fairly pure representative democracy. That is, it has only one legislature (the Knesset), designed to form governments by either a straight majority vote of the people or a coalition-building political process. No one is questioning that. Israel also has a Supreme Court which is independent of the elected government. Its members are chosen by a committee of nine: four representing the sitting government (two Knesset, two from the Prime Minister’s cabinet) and five lawyers (three sitting Supreme Court Justices and two members of the Israeli Bar Association) It takes seven votes to select a nominee, who then must be approved by Israel’s ceremonial President. In practice, Israel’s highest legal body selects itself.
The Israeli Supreme Court staked out its authority to review government actions and policies much like the US Supreme Court did in Marbury v. Madison. One interesting difference is the Israeli Supreme Court decided that one criterion it could use to overrule the government was “reasonableness.” While that sounds reasonable, try defining it in a consistent, coherent way. It didn’t prove to be an immediate problem until the last few years, when the court overturned policies and even prohibited the government from choosing a specific cabinet minister. In any event, the Israeli Supreme Court acted as a check on the government, and some would say the only check on it.
Remember now that the Israeli Knesset is a democratic body, both in how it is selected and how it acts. And the court is a check on it. Got it? Which is why this is not about democracy.
Lately, the Knesset has had an unstable series of short-term governments, as the Israeli electorate is evenly divided between liberal/progressive and conservative factions. As in most parliamentary systems, there are numerous small, often-extreme parties which can play the role of king-maker (or more appropriately, Prime Minister-maker). Such is the one right now which has Bibi back in the chair with extreme right-wing or religiously conservative partners.
So is this all about politics, not democracy? No. For years, politicians on both sides have indicated the Supreme Court needed to be reformed, as both feared it was becoming too powerful , too insulated (as it chooses itself) and more importantly, too arbitrary. Parliamentary governments are inherently unstable, and they become almost impossible when an outside body (i.e., the court) can rule who can be a cabinet minister. Liberals/Progressives switched to opposing any change now because of who is in the ruling government: if the court’s ability to restrain the government is limited right now, they fear the ultra-conservatives will run wild. They may not be wrong, and they are certainly correct to fear such an outcome. But all that points to the real issue, which is neither democracy nor politics: it is the Israeli polity.
The modern state of Israel has always represented an uneasy alliance between two competing visions: a larger group of secular/progressive Jews (Zionists) looking for a haven from a hostile outside world, one where they can enact their idea of a peaceful, communitarian paradise, and a small set of religious Jews (Haredim) who seek to return to being God’s Chosen People, and only that. In-between those two groups were pragmatic Jews (smaller than the left, larger than the ultra-orthodox) who might not want to chant Torah all day, but weren’t convinced by the promises of socialism. For decades, these groups set aside their differences to deal with the unrelenting hostility of Israel’s Arab neighbors. It doesn’t make sense to argue about whether busses can run on Shabbos when there’s an Arab army marching on the town!
Here’s where demographics plays a card. The ultra-orthodox, correctly called Haredim, were content to get special favors from the government for a long time. They were a small group, and as long as the government left them alone, they agreed to merely complain about the rest of Israel not abiding by Halakha (Jewish religious law). The government agreed to exempt them from military service, allowed them to run their own schools, and even granted them extra social benefits. The Haredim and their way of life were subsidized by the Israeli government, whether conservative or liberal.
A funny thing happened. Haredi families average six children and holding steady. Secular Jewish families (whether politically conservative of liberal) average two children and falling. Government data show 1/4 of first graders in Israel are Haredim. So the Haredim have risen to almost thirteen percent of Israel’s population, and parties representing them have gained an important number of seats in the Knesset. And since they are continuing to grow, they are on target to reach almost forty percent of the population by mid-century.
As they have grown, they have protected the benefits they previously secured from the government, but have begun to demand more implementation of their views on social issues: separate spaces in public for men and women, stricter Shabbos observance, restrictions on advertising, more funding for and support of their way of life. This has predictably led to conflict, as the liberal and progressive Israelis see the Haredim as people exempt from the military, learning nothing but Torah in their schools, and coddled by the government. The Haredim respond that their faith is what is protecting Israel. As one young Haredi man said, ‘if everyone was learning Torah and praying with us, God would protect us.’
Why is this playing out over the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi’s government is willing to grant the Haredim greater rights and privileges. Yet of the court can simply rule such things as “unreasonable,” it can stop that process. The battle is really over what Israel is: a secular democracy or a more religiously-inclined one.
Here’s the even more interesting part. The Biden administration is conducting some high-level negotiations (right now) with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration brokered the Abraham accords, which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. That was little noticed but important, because it represented the first major normalization among Arab states not directly in contact with Israel. The contact states like Egypt and Jordan came to the table long ago; Syria (and the Syrian puppet government in Lebanon) never will. Most other Arab states held back, waiting to see what the Saudi monarchy did.
The Saudis are looking for a NATO-style commitment from the US for protection (not the backroom handshake deal which has been in effect since FDR) and a US-provided civil nuclear program. Bibi wants Saudi normalization as a feather in his cap, and to establish the basis for an Israeli-Saudi anti-Iranian coalition. The Biden Administration wants to reassert US leadership in the Middle East, push out the Russians and Chinese, and draw a line in the sand with Iran.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the man President Biden called a pariah (maybe) and a murderer (certainly), is the power behind the throne (literally) in Saudi Arabia and is leading the Saudi side of the negotiations. The Times and Post have started briefly commenting on the talks, which were secret until now. Saudi King Salman (MBS’ father) has apparently insisted that Israel make some offer to the Palestinians as part of the process, and specifically that promising not to annex the West Bank is insufficient. The fact that such things have leaked suggests to me the talks are far along, and neither Bibi nor MBS is willing to let the issue of Palestine derail the agreement.
What’s this got to do with the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi is dependent upon the Haredi and ultra-conservative parties because he has a narrow majority in the Knesset. The Biden administration has reportedly told Netanyahu not to go forward with changes to the court’s rules and composition without first securing an agreement with which the majority of Israelis agree. How to square the circle? What if Netanyahu secures a grand deal with Saudi Arabia, gets increased American aid, throws the Palestinians a bone (it wouldn’t need to be much, since there is no reliable partner to negotiate with right now), and offers to bring some liberal/labor parties into the government to negotiate a better set of court reforms, while letting the Haredi and ultra-conservatives choose to stay or go?
It’s a high-impact, low probability scenario, I admit. The shoals of Middle Eastern politics are filled with the hopeful shipwrecks of American and European peace plans, and this may be one more. But the US Secretary of State isn’t shuttling around the Middle East (repeatedly) to sample falafel. Stay tuned!
