Small talk: Black Lives Matter and some other matters arising from the first historic Trump-Biden debate

Donald Trump will be great in the Foreign Policy debate. 

Over the years, one thing that I have learned is the difference between being there and being here  -  the difference between being in Israel and actually smelling the gunpowder there, between having participated in the Yom Kippur War and taking cover somewhere in the Diaspora and still feeling you know what’s going on in Israel to the point of being besserwisser confident enough about telling  people there what they should do. It’s ditto about the United States. He who feels it knows. Up till yesterday I had not heard of any guys known as “ the Proud Boys” – in fact when I first heard about them, I thought it must be the name of some James Brown group, Soul Brother Number One who sang, "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud .” I would like to remind everybody that the Wisest King Solomon who was born three thousand years ago beat James Brown to it when he penned this famous verse in his Song of Songs:

“I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem! Like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.” ( So there's a lot of hope yet for Israel in Africa) 

From Richard Wright, through James Baldwin to Ta-Nehisi Coates, the background to what follows is from the American Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”

Names. So, what’s in a name? Well, wake up and smell the coffee: It’s a people’s planet, Xi Jinping is the president of China, and today’s headline reads, Joe Biden asked Xi to 'help him become President' as China seeks US election 'influence’. Mister Biden will probably dismiss the matter, saying, “Now, that’s just a little piece of nothing”

I previously mentioned that “Last night Biden was looking like Robert Frost but obviously feeling like Jesse James and Chairman Wallace feeling like Wallace Stevens did nothing about it. I loved it when President Trump fired back, fired back shooting from the hip and hit Sleepy Joe with this one: “Joe, you’re the liar. You graduated last in your class not first in your class.”

 Biden

Bear with me. Perhaps, more properly speaking, facing Donald Trump on trumpet, even if  - because Nancy Pelosi had told him not to do it as a result of which Sleepy Joe could have been a little nervous about actually daring to do it, and even if Sleepy Joe the underdog thought that he would be trembling when facing the awesome, wrathful Law & Order President, the Chief Sherriff and Law Marshall of the United States of America,  at the beginning of  the debate Sleepy Joe could have nevertheless actually been feeling less like Robert Ford in the original Outlaw Blues,  and more like Robert Frost the poet. A vile contrast. What we know for sure is that Joe Biden wasn’t feeling like Barack Obama. The moderator of the duel of course was feeling like none less than Mary-Ellen’s favourite, Wallace Stevens, but at the next debate he might be dealing like Saddam himself (no-nonsense)

Shlomo B the elder told me, everything is ethics, it’s always an ethical question – and this was on the 30^th of October, 1999, the Sabbath after, surprise, surprise, Mauritania had announced that they were all for having peaceful and friendly relations with Israel. Mauritania, the last country in the world to abolish slavery, Mauritania where Saddam Hussein had sent his family to safety before the start of the mother of battles. Shlomo B’s words weighed heavily; for political context, it was at Kiddush at Adat Jeshurun ( the synagogue that Henry Kissinger’s father attended a long time ago) and behind my question lurked the thought, no doubt a dark thought, should it not be unethical to make an alliance with the unholy – but answers have to be weighed, meditated upon, it’s called contemplation, and I have been chewing on the sage’s  “ it’s all ethical” up to this day, the day after the Trump – versus Biden, some say, fireworks, fiasco, disaster, disgrace, debate, raging fire, like the raging fires and arson in California, rage, like that of Bob Woodward, not to mention the sort fuelled by Disloyal

In Sweden in the area of social etiquette, one of the unwritten holy laws is that “man måste kunna prata till punkt!”// “kan jag få prata till punkt? “– to be allowed to speak to the point - i.e. without interruption.  

( One of the qualities that I most admire about the Prophet of Islam ( sallallahu alaihi wa Salaam)  - as narrated to me by Radwan of Eritrea, is that Islam’s Prophet never interrupted someone who was talking to him – no matter what and no matter who, in a discussion or argument he would wait until the person speaking to him had finished what he had to say and then would even ask, politely, “have you finished?” before replying. As to his reaction to insults, there is this extreme example when the very inebriated Hamza asked him, “Are you not one of my father’s slaves?”  -as reported here, in Sahih Muslim, did he stop and start exchanging insults with Hamza ? Of course not ...

There is also the matter of coitus interruptus – Once upon a time, someone questioned the Prophet of Islam (sallallahu alaihi wa salaam) on that subject and his pragmatic answer was that coitus interruptus or no coitus interruptus, those destined to be born, will be born.  Somehow, the ultra-orthodox documentary “Sacred Sperm” did not see it fit to take up the matter of coitus interruptus…)  

The fact-checkers are still checking how many interruptions were committed by Biden during the historic first Trump-Biden debate. I should like to do an inventory of how many times Biden committed Lashon Hara

 Anyway, here are a few points arising

1)    With regard to the next debate those concerned could take a look at the advice/ guidelines under netiquette and also at the late Bishop Krister Stendahl’s three rules with an emphasis on rules 2 and 3

 th  Who and what to believe? According to The Truth Provider: Trump has clearly and consistently condemned white supremacists.  But the Democrats talking heads, the people of colour and some of the newspaper headlines are all screaming TRUMP REFUSES TO CONDEMN WHITE SUPREMACY!!!!! I assume that he does not do so because just as Marxism, so too White Supremacy - and the supremacy of abortion – the antithesis of Pikuach Nefesh and the Commandment “ Thou shalt not Murder” as  a core part of Joe Biden’s Abortion ideology represented on his Democrat party platform and ostensibly  protected by the First Amendment, in so far as the adherents of such ideologies do not commit any crimes, as defined by US law.

This has several implications, especially if he (Trump) does not hesitate to condemn e.g. Hon. Minister Louis Farrakhan, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, the New Black Panther Party, Black Lives Matter, and the pervasive myth that he (Trump) is helping to promote and perpetuate from his White House, that Black Lives Matter is being “spawned” by Marxists of ” the Radical Left”. 

The flip side of such a perception is someone asking such a sacrilegious question: “...how Toussaint L ' Ouverture developed the ideas of the French Revolution to become a concern for the whole world and not just French citizens,” if he was allegedly “crazy and illiterate”? 

To be continued ….