Season 6, Episode 12 October 22, 2023

Not the Headlines looks at children and war, as well as hydrogen cars.  Let's Go Back takes us to 1776 Ben Franklin, westward expansion and Mormons.  The Epilogue examines Hamas and Gaza.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley, and I’m not Speaker of the House despite the fact that it’s hard to shut me up!  On this episode, we’ll hear about Ben Franklin, the Extermination order, and the gunfight at the O.K. Corall,  but first (Not the Headlines)!

A terrible massacre happened in Israel last week, and I spoke a little bit about it, after all it was the big news story, and this segment is called Not the Headlines.  I’m aware of the Israeli retaliation and the dynamics playing out in the region.  And for a brief time, we heard about the initial attacks on civilians in Israel, specifically the barbaric ways Hamas slaughtered their victims.  Ground troops going house to house, killing everyone inside, including the children.  
There’s a difference between starting a war, and starting a genocide.  When you kill the children, you do more than end the life of a child.  You deny that child a history.  Not only that, you may very well put an end to a specific custom, or a family tradition, or a family name, or blood line.  You put an end to the stories they would have heard from their elders, words of wisdom that will now be forgotten.  Wisdom that will have to be learned again.  Perhaps in a way that will be painful, catastrophic, or even historic.  
Children dyeing in war isn’t new.  Sometimes they become soldiers themselves, too young to know what awaits them.  Sometimes they’re collateral damage.  Most civilized societies try to minimize child mortality in modern warfare.  But the indiscriminate killing of entire families of innocent people isn’t war.  It’s an attempt to eliminate a race of people, their customs and traditions, and in this case, their religion.  Let’s face it.  This is just as much a religious war as it is a geopolitical one.  From the Hamas point of view, the children needed to be killed simply because they were Jewish.  If the cause of the Hamas attack on innocent Israelis was political, maybe the children would still be alive.  But this is not a political war.  This is not about colonialism, as some Hamas sympathizers claim.  There are no salves to make this long-festering wound less inflamed and soothed. The name Hamas is derived from an acronym for a phrase, HMS, that when translated into English, means “Islamic Resistance Movement.”  Hamas has policy of armed struggle against Israel.  They just don’t want it there.  That means the children have to go, too.  Anything between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is fair game.  
I don’t know how many children were killed in Israel last week, or since then.  I don’t know how many children were killed in Gaza, either.
What I do know is that children are also being killed in Ukraine.  Their numbers have accumulated over time.  The difference was that the invading Russian soldiers didn’t purposely attack children.  At least in most cases.  There weren’t stories about scores of children being slaughtered during the early hours and days of the Russian invasion into Ukraine.  No, the Russians had a different game plan.  They didn’t murder innocent children, they shipped them back to Russia.  And we know about how many.  Twenty-thousand.  They weren’t killed, but the same result is the Russian goal when it comes to the same things that end when a child’s family dies.  For some of the kids, it’s too late.  They’re too old to be re-educated.  They’re old enough to know what just happened to their families, their friends, their schools and towns.  Those are the kids who are in the most danger.  It’s almost two years since those kids were taken into Russian custody, the fate of their parents unknown, but assumed.  Some of them have turned from kids into adults.  What use does Russia have for them, other than forced labor or abandonment, potentially thousands of miles away from their homes?  The toddlers and pre-schoolers who survived will never know who their families were.  They may never find out they were born Ukrainian and kidnapped.  Given to a Russian family to raise as their own, learning Russian history and traditions, ignorant of the truth.  Given different names and official papers by the Russian government, they, too, will have no true history.  Their customs and family memories, the stories of their elders and ancestors will be lost forever.  I know those things are lost naturally every day around the world.  Families fade away through societal factors or natural selection.  I, myself was the last male responsible for carrying on a surname which I no longer have.  So, it ended with my dad.  But I wasn’t killed or re-educated.  I knew my history.  I knew why my name was changed.  None of the kids who were killed in Israel even had a chance.  Those that were taken hostage aren’t going to be assimilated, they’ll be eliminated when they’re no longer useful.  The kids taken from Ukraine have a better chance at survival in Russia, depending upon their age.  In any case, their identities will be erased, along with their customs, traditions, and especially their connection to Ukraine.  This is on purpose.  We wonder why schools are so important. When done properly, you can make a child believe anything you want.  They may eventually find out the truth, but by the it’s often too late.  By the time a child’s old enough to seek the truth, if they ever do, they may already be too indoctrinated to change their mind, or feel ashamed to have been fooled all this time.
The children of Israel experienced a swift and terrible fate.  The children of Ukraine received a lengthy and terrible fate.  Both tactics are meant to achieve the same goal.
While the fate of the Israeli children is finite, there is a glimmer of hope for the Ukrainian children. A story from the BBC confirms that four of the 20,000 children abducted from Ukraine have been returned to their families.  The youngest was two and the oldest 17.  The story didn’t say the ages of the other two.  I can understand why they would return a 17-year-old, as, like I said before, they’re too old to re-educate.  They’ll just be hostile trouble makers for the rest of their lives.  Might as well give ‘em back.  But not all at once.  We can’t have them starting an army or anything.  As for the two-year-old, I get that, too.  It’s too tough to reason with ‘em at that age.  No matter how many times you try to get them to say Putin, all they say is poopin.  Yes, definitely send that one back!  
The children were returned because of a deal brokered by Qatar.  And, yes, that’s how I’m gonna say it.  I always hear the talking heads on the news pronounce it cutter.  They put the accent on the wrong syllable, if you ask me.  Anyway,  none of the children were allowed to go directly from Russia back to Ukraine.  Another way Russia will try to cover its tracks.  Literally.  
Overall, about 400 of the 20,000 Ukrainian children have been returned to their families.  The last four with the help of Qatar.  
For his part, Russian President and tyrant Putin has said he has no problem with Ukrainian children being returned to their families.  Russian claims it only took the children into Russia to protect them from the ravages of the war that was about to follow.  A Qatari minister said the mediation is continuing, and that the four children just release is only a first step.  A Ukraine advisor says mediation is hoping to make Russia responsible for DNA testing, transportation and other costs of repatriating the children taken into Russia.  
It may take a long time, and nobody yet knows what the long-term effects of these uprootings will be.  How many family traditions will be lost?  How much cultural heritage will be forgotten?  How many of those children have become adults since the Russian invasion, and what happened to them?  These are all things that need to be taken into consideration.  
What doesn’t need to be taken into consideration is what will happen to the children who were killed in Israel.  Their history was cut short, their family’s, too, in an attempt to extinguish the culture and religion.  The attempt won’t succeed.
In tenth grade, my teacher, Mr. Bartol, told the class that the only kind of war you can’t win is a religious war.  Israel will now attempt to wipe out Hamas.  This is a religious war.  Israel has an ace up its sleeve that it’s been forced to play.  Hamas is a small faction of a much larger religion.  Does Hamas have enough support from other Muslims to come to it’s aid?  Will it get support from other Musilim countries?  So far, the answer is no.  Egypt is resisting opening the only land route from Gaza to another Islamic country.  No other Islamic countries are stepping up to take in the million palestinians who were warned by Israel to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza strip for their own safety.
The Abraham Accords, a late-term accomplishment of the Trump administration changed the dynamic of relations in the middle east, resulting in fewer Muslim countries willing to jump into a battle with Israel.  At the same time, Hamas has less regional support.  
Perhaps it is because of the barbaric methods employed by Hamas in the attack on innocent Israeli men, women and children; on grandparents and passers-by; concert-goers and peaceniks.  
I’m not saying Russia set a good example by only abducting the children in the opening act of an invasion.  Maybe some of those children can grow up in an otherwise normal way at some point, but the children slain in Israel will never even have the chance.  All is not fair in love and war.

In other not the headlines, Ford plans to close a plant where electric trucks are built, but not because of the United Auto Worker’s strike.  It’s because they’re not selling.  The push for electric vehicles may once again be waning, as it has several times throughout the history of automobiles.  But unlike the previous incarnations, today’s electric vehicles don’t have to be replaced by gasoline-powered ones.  Busses and cars operate on natural gas, which still pisses off some environmentalists.  We can still push the car, but then you also need someone to steer it.  Another option is hydrogen.  It’s the most common element in the universe.  That doesn’t mean it’s just floating around for us to squirt into our cars.  But it certainly is plentiful.  Who knows, maybe some day we’ll be able to import it from other worlds.  You know, we could send NASA to get another tank of hydrogen in case anybody wants to go anywhere.  By then we might live our entire lives remotely.  But until then, it’s a good idea to find alternative sources of propulsion.  As a means to that end, the Biden administration just announced a 7-billion dollar investment into hydrogen development.  It seems the electric car craze has already fizzled out.  Most people don’t want them.  While they are quick to accelerate, they don’t get you very far, and if you need a new battery, you might as well just buy another car.  In the meantime, auto manufacturers are losing billions of dollars on development with no pathway to profitability prior to the mandates set in place by states like California who think they’re doing everyone a favor.  What the mandates are really doing is destroying our auto manufacturing industry, our fossil fuels industry and artificially inflating costs of everything because it costs more to create products and get them to market.  Not to mention, even electric cars rely on fossil fuels to generate the electricity to power them.  For those who want to live their lives in a more cost efficient way, I guess an electric car is one way to try.  But for those who want to live their lives in a more environmentally efficient way, there may not be any actual benefit right now.  Driving an electric vehicle is a statement; posturing.  The whole electric car push is a dead end until we can create enough electricity to power the without fossil fuels.  That’s not even in the plan right now.  When it’s hot in California, there isn’t enough electricity to power the air conditioners, let alone the cars.  Same for Texas.  Electricity has to be produced, and it takes energy to do that.  Energy that pollutes through the burning of coal for power plants, or natural gas.  There’s only so much hydro-electric opportunities.  Nuclear energy, while clean to start, has the problem of waste with extended half-lifes.  All things considered, hydrogen might be our best bet moving forward.
However, even being the most common element in the universe doesn’t mean it has to be harvested, just like any other fuel source.  Two-thirds of all the water on the planet is hydrogen.  H2O.  Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.  All we have to do is separate them, and put the hydrogen in one bucket and the oxygen in the other bucket.  The hydrogen bucket will have to be twice as big as the oxygen bucket.  Oh, and both buckets will need a lid.  Otherwise the hydrogen and oxygen will recombine and get us all wet.  That wherein lies the problem.  It takes energy to separate them.  Most often, natural gas.  An ABC News story about the 7-billion dollar investment points out that some environmentalists, I’m guessing the extreme ones with zero tolerance for anything other than consuming raw food, find the natural gas solution as a false hope because it does require an external fuel source to produce.  That’s what the 7-billion dollar investment is hoping to solve.  Energy companies say it can be done if we can capture the carbon emissions.  That, too, is a technology somewhere down the road.
When we look back, nostalgically, at the electric vehicle, one of the things we’ll remember is how few and far between the charging stations were.  How long it took to recharge an electric car, if you got there before your battery ran dry.  I’ll bet a lot of articles about alternative fuel sources were read while people were sitting at electric charging stations.
The Biden administration plan for hydrogen cars took a leap in that direction with regional networks built in.  Companies responsible for not only creating the hyrdogen, but also the infrastructure and customer base to support the product.
That means a way to create hydrogen in an environmentally-friendly way.  Building a delivery system that covers the entire area assigned, and creating the marketing strategy to make it profitable.
The President, while in Philadelphia last week, said, “It’s all part of my plan to make things in America.” 
But what exactly is our 7-billion dollars going to make?  Building electric cars without the infrastructure to keep them running hasn’t worked, and as the popularity of electric cars declines, fewer fueling stations will feel compelled to install more electric charging stations.  So, is building the infrastructure first the right highway to success?  That seems to be the strategy here.  Build it, and they will come.  Only problem is how will they get there?  Auto industries have had to retool to build electric cars already.  Although some were dabbling in it for decades, none of them considered it a serious endeavor until the state mandates, solidified by the Biden administrations backing.  The whole auto industry is in upheaval because the most pro-union president in the history of the United States has forced the executives of car companies to change everything about what they’ve done for the past hundred years.  Not only do they have to change how to build cars from gas-powered to electric-powered, they have to do it without changing their workforce.  The states that mandated electric cars only be sold after 2035 have forced upon the rest of us an auto industry that isn’t meeting the needs of the largest customer base because they’re being force to meet the needs of a select few.  Now, right in the middle of that transformation, the Biden administration earmarks 7-billion dollars to create regional hydrogen fuel producers, deliverers, and consumers for a vehicle not yet widely available.  And that’s a conservative estimate.  Do you know anybody who has a hydrogen car?  Do you know where to fill it up?  Well, even if you did, the car companies aren’t making hydrogen cars yet.  They’re still trying to figure out how to make electric cars and trucks profitable.  And now you expect them to readjust and retool to make hydrogen cars?  It seems the Biden administration has put forth a plan to eventually create the environment for new car companies to emerge, abandoning the legacy manufacturers like GM and Ford.  It might be easier for a start-up to gain market share more quickly than for old-fashioned factories and administrators to adapt.  So, while the old companies die off, so do the unions.  At least for as long as it takes for new unions to form at the new plants.  We’ll see how that goes.  Either way, the 7-billion dollar investment into hydrogen infrastructure and consumerism without the consent of the car companies will determine if we put the cart before the horse with electric cars, or with hydrogen cars.

Let’s Go Back liner

1776
Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.  Imagine being Ben Franklin, more than three months after the American colonies declared independence from England, getting on a boat headed for France.  With any luck, you’ll come back with an army and a navy ready to help you fight the most powerful force currently in existence.  You succeed, and the result is the United States of America.

1795
The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created.  Less than 20 years after helping the American colonies defeat the British, the French government is supplanted by the Directory.  The Directory never had much peace, as it was often at odds with other powers like Britain, Prussia, Russia and the Ottoman Empire.  The Directory did control parts of Italy, Switzerland and Holland, which were responsible for sending treasure to France.  Treasure could be cash or valuables.  The French Directory stayed in power for about four years, until Napoleon Bonaparte seized control. Many of the valuables turned over to the French Directory can still be seen on display at France’s most famous museum, the Louvre.


1838
Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated.  This was obviously in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  Wikipedia quotes the governor as saying the Mormons must leave the state because of what he called their “open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this State ... the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description.”
The extermination order was in response to a speech made by a Mormon leader the previous July, which said, “We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day, that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ, to come on us no more forever. For from this hour, we will bear it no more, our rights shall no more be trampled on with impunity. The man or the set of men, who attempts it, does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob that comes on us to disturb us; it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us: for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses, and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.—Remember it then all men.
    We will never be the aggressors, we will infringe on the rights of no people; but shall stand for our own until death. We claim our own rights, and are willing that all others shall enjoy theirs.
    No man shall be at liberty to come into our streets, to threaten us with mobs, for if he does, he shall atone for it before he leaves the place, neither shall he be at liberty, to vilify and slander any of us, for suffer it we will not in this place.”
The extermination order put in place by Governor Boggs was finally rescinded in 1976, 138 years later.
Less than a decade later, Governor Boggs decided to move to California.  It’s said that his fear of the Mormons led to his departure from Missouri.  He was part of a group led by a man named Bill Russel.  But when Russel relinquished his role as leader of the expedition, it was Governor Boggs who took command of the trek.  The members of the expedition to the west coast didn’t stay together under the leadership of Lilburn Boggs, though.  While Boggs and his family eventually made it to Sonoma, California, a large part of the group had split off to go in another direction.  Today, that group of expansionists who split from the original group is known as the Donner Party.

1851
William Lassell discovers the moons Umbriel and Ariel orbiting Uranus.  That’s because Uranus has it’s own gravitational field!

1867
72 Senators are summoned by Royal Proclamation to serve as the first members of the Canadian Senate.  That’s so typical of Canada of 150 years ago.  Not enough people wanted to serve in the government, so they went around making people participate.  Imagine waking up one morning at the crack of dawn, only to find out you are now the representative of the people in your Province.

1881
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.  I have a couple of questions here.   

Look that up liner

 If the corral was O.K., why was there a gunfight?  Believe it or not, the gunfight was the result of the attempted enforcement of a concealed or open carry law.  Tombstone, Arizona had a city ordinance against carrying weapons in town.  A group of outlaws called the Cowboys, no relation to the Dallas Cowboys, was defying the ordinance, and the Marshall, Virgil Earp, was attempting to enforce the ordinance with the help of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and others.  A shootout took place, with thirty shots fired in 30 seconds.  Two of the outlaws were killed, and two fled.  THRee of the lawmen were injured.  While the gunfight is well known in American West folklore, and came to be indicative of the lawlessness of the time, it wasn’t actually known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral until the release of the 1957 film, Gunfight at the O.K. Corall.   

1940
Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.  So, it’s been more than 80 years since the first Black guy became a General in the Army.  Yet here we are, still counting the tiniest of accomplishments of what are now referred to as People of Color.  For General Davis to reach the rank of General is a phenominal accomplishment.  It certainly rises to the level of something that should be recognized, especially considering it happened prior to the civil rights movement.  Just imagine what Ben Davis had to endure to reach the rank of General in what was at the time not only a man’s army, but a white man’s army.  Anyone who reaches the rank of General deserves recognition.  He earned that post.  Today, too many so-called people of color are appointed to positions for the sake of being the first to get there, regardless of their credentials or ability.  The current Vice-President of the United States is a fine example of someone receiving a position based on the color of their skin or the ancestry they claim rather than how well they might serve the people.  Just a couple weeks ago, California Senator Dianne Feinstien passed away, and the governor promised to fill the seat with a woman of color.  He didn’t promise to fill the seat with the best candidate.  He didn’t promise to fill the seat with the most qualified person.  No.  He promised to fill the seat with a black woman.  With complete autonomy, the governor of California could have pulled a crack whore off the street and appointed her to the Senate of the United States.  I’m not saying he did, but by limiting the credentials of the appointee to female and black, it’s obvious he was more concerned with the optics of the selection than the results.  I find it odd that the very people who profess to be against racism are the same people who will appoint someone simply because of their skin color.  That’s racism!  By the way, in 1940, General Davis wouldn’t have referred to himself as African American.  He would have referred to himself as American General Davis.
Categorically, I’m done with hearing about the first black person to do such and such, or the first woman do accomplish whatever.  While the press may present it as an accomplishment, it’s really just another way to separate us.  Another way to point out that white men have had the most impact on history when it comes to setting the bar.  Saying you’re the first black person or the first Jewish person or the first woman to do something that has already been done doesn’t impress anyone if it’s only being pointed out to appease a select minority.  Especially if you didn’t earn it.  Especially if you were appointed just to be the first.  But being the first black General in the army is impressive, because General Davis had to earn it.  Not only did he earn it, but 14 years later, in

1954, his son, Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first black general in the United States Air Force.  

1998
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a “land for peace” agreement.  Twenty-five years later, Benjamin Netanyahu is once again Prime Minister of Israel.  But today, he’s at war with the people with whom he bartered peace a quarter century ago.

Phone and email liner

The current war between Israel and the Gaza Strip has certainly made visible a wide gap in how different groups of Americans view the conflict.  While the government is steadfast behind Israel, the freedom of speech that Americans enjoy has led to opinions that have revealed allegiances we didn’t expect.  Demonstrations sprang up in large cities and college campuses in support of the Palestinian people.  Counter-protests emerged in support of the Israeli people.  Certainly, both peoples should be able to live in peace.  I’m not going to re-hash the last century or more to try to determine who’s to blame.  Each side blames the other for what led up to the slaughter of Israeli citizens on a Saturday morning a couple weeks ago.  Regardless of where you place the blame, an attack is an attack, and the one perpetrated by Hamas against innocent civilians of all ages is the only catalyst for what’s happening in the area right now.  If not for that attack, we would have never known the names or faces of the people who lived there.  There would be no stories of survival, of how somebody hid for more than half the day with no food or water, or lay motionless under dead bodies in order to remain undetected by the invaders.  Where one might place the blame for the attack is irrelevant.  
It might be different if Hamas was a rogue entity within the Gaza Strip.  If there was a form of government there that could be held accountable for not controlling their citizens.  But Hamas is the government in the Gaza Strip.  Officially, the United States doesn’t recognize Hamas as a legitimate government, but it does hold Hamas fully and entirely responsible for the Gaza Strip.  Hamas was supposed to be a part of the Palestinian government in conjunction with the West Bank, but Hamas refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, nor would they renounce violence.  So around 2007, Hamas took responsibility for running the Gaza Strip.  Did the citizens of the Gaza Strip approve?  Probably not all of them.  Therein lies the difference.  In much the same way American people don’t have a problem with Iranian people, the American government and the Iranian Mullah’s don’t get along very well at all.  It’s okay to support the Palestinian people who don’t wish anyone else any harm.  The problem is, their government put them in a very tenuous position.  By attacking innocent civilians in Israel, knowing full well there might be hell to pay for it, Hamas has put the entire population of the Gaza Strip in the crosshairs of the Israeli Defense Force.  It is impossible for Israel to distinguish between Hamas and the general population.  Right now, the people of the Gaza Strip should feel lucky that the Israeli Defense Force is built to be defensive and not offensive.  Otherwise, we might already be talking about this conflict in the past tense.  As for now, Hamas has found itself in a “fuck around and find out” situation, and it looks like they’re about to find out.
In order to give the benefit of the doubt to the Palestinian people in Gaza who don’t support Hamas, who don’t want war, who don’t harbor any ill will against Israel or Jewish people, the Israeli government warned them to get out of the northern third of the strip to avoid the coming response to the terror attack.  Escape routes into Egypt and humanitarian supplies coming in through Egypt from western countries in support of fleeing Palestinians shows that the outside world cares about their safety.  Hamas is the only target, but Hamas has shouldered its way into so many facets of Gaza life that it may be impossible for Israel to completely eradicate Hamas without collateral damage.
So support for the Palestinian people is often translated into support for Hamas.
So, where do peace-loving people draw the line?  Right now, that can be a tough question to answer.  Surely, the atrocities already carries out by Hamas are inexcusable.  The attacks of two weeks ago can’t be glossed over.  What price shall be paid seems to be where there is a lot of division.  There are three basic camps of thought:  a cease-fire, equal retaliation, and a complete annihilation of Hamas.  Some argue that those who want a cease-fire feel that Israel has already responded enough; that further violence won’t solve anything.  Some see that as letting Hamas get away with what they’ve done.  A cease-fire now will only provide Hamas another opportunity to rearm and reattack.  Equal retaliation may work well in biblical terms, but how would that even happen?  Would Hamas turn over Palestinian people to be executed?  Would Israel have to wait until Hamas hosted a music festival for peace and then kill those who attended?  I don’t think and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is going to solve the problem here.  As long as Hamas is unwilling to recognize Israel’s right to exist and fail to renounce violence, it seems the only option for Israel now is to eradicate Hamas.  At whatever the cost.  The Israeli government obviously sees the short-term investment worth the price for long-term peace.  We’ll see how that works out.  In addition to Hama, Iran’s other proxy, Hezzbola, is now also attacking Israel, creating a second front of the war.
I’m not going to suggest any solutions to the conflict.  I am merely an observer.  I find it interesting, though, that some members of the United States House of Representatives seem to be supporting Hamas.  They aren’t condemning the actions of those who invaded Israel and killed more than a thousand innocent people.  They’re lumping Hamas into the group of all Palestinian people, helping them hide among the innocent, peace-loving occupants of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.  Several radical state representatives, including Rasheeda Tlaib, are accusing the American government of genocide because of its support of Israel.  She’s promoting a cease-fire that would prevent Israel from responding to the terror attack of two weeks ago.  I realize I’m speaking about a member of the United States House of Representatives when I say, “This chic is whack.”  If this whack-job Tlaib actually represents the people of her district in Minnesota, then maybe we need to redraw that district.  If I were a resident of Rasheeda Tlaib’s district in Minnesota, I would be ashamed of myself and my representative.  If I were the president of a college or university where my students were protesting in support of the Palestinian people, I would make sure they knew what they supporting, because I don’t believe many of those students know why they were even protesting.  Which is ironic, because they’re in college!  They should be learning about this stuff, but it’s clear they are not.  What they’re learning is nothing!  Nothing about the geopolitical world.  And it’s painfully obvious.  Our college students are being taught that anything right is wrong, and that Israel is on the right.  Therefore, it is wrong.  
I think the question we have to ask ourselves, as Americans, is when did we decide to support terrorists?  When did violence become accepted as means of making a point?  Why are American politicians and students promoting and supporting violence as a means to an end?

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