The Witness Chronicles, December 20, 2023

Republicans head towards WWIII, Netanyahu is not Israel, and the value of immigrants that no one acknowledges these days

Photo by Rose Erkul on Unsplash

It’s been an interesting past month. After quitting drinking for three months, I started up again around Thanksgiving and then stopped again. The experience has been an intense learning experience and, being a writer, you can read the ongoing tale in The Remarkable, a recovery letter.

Shameless plug, but this stuff is important to me and might be to someone you know. Share it.

The House of Representatives went home last week having accomplished nothing as usual, thanks to the genius of the Freedom Caucus. One of the things they did not do, among many, is pass aid for Ukraine. I examine the domino effect that choice may have and the potential is dire.

I returned to the extremely touchy subject of the Israeli/Hamas/Gaza/West Bank conflict, in part because I sincerely believe Bibi Netanyahu may be the most dangerously egotistic politician on the planet, and that is saying a lot.

Joe Biden needs to distance himself, and quickly. Netanyahu is poison.

Finally, my annual reminder that immigrants are not rapists, mentally ill welfare blobs, or drug dealers. Not any more than any other population in the US and likely less so. They run everything behind the scenes that makes our lives easier. Not an exaggeration, more like an understatement.

I keep writing this stuff despite Medium becoming an operation apparently dedicated to bad writing about stupid crap like side hustles. My side hustle return from there is a fraction of what it used to be.

Good news doesn’t sell and bad news has made us numb. I write the aforementioned newsletter The Remarkable in part because I needed to write about personal transformation in a realistic but positive voice, my voice.

It helps me balance the quiet outrage so many of us are feeling these days.

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The Republicans Will Risk WWIII to Beat Biden

They’re handing Putin his first conquest. It won’t be his last

It’s the most shameful political act I’ve seen in years, a major American political party siding with a murderous dictator over a democratic ally. Unless a miracle happens, the congressional Republicans will leave DC until mid-January, having hung Ukraine out to wave in the cold wind of Russian winter.

Let’s get right to this World War thing. Putin defeats Ukraine, creates a statewide concentration camp, then turns his eye to another sovereign country, likely Poland, which just threw out a would-be autocrat. Russia has always seen Poland as theirs.

Poland is a NATO member which means all of NATO’s members must defend it, including the US. China is frantically preparing for global conflict by building the largest navy in the world, constantly instigating fights across the China sea and western Pacific, and building satellites that could disable communications around the world.

Israel and Palestinian Hamas terrorists are at war. Iran-funded militias are skirmishing with US troops and allies across the Middle East. Houthi rebels in Yemen are firing missiles at shipping every day, including American naval vessels. Here in the US, the presumed Republican candidate for President is planning to become a dictator and ally of Putin.

A so-called perfect storm occurs when seemingly unrelated weather events combine to create a super storm. The events described above represent the elements of a perfect storm that could kill millions. It would seem an alarmist exaggeration except that we have done this twice in the last decade and politics was the route used to ignite those wars.

Far right Republicans have made it clear they don’t care about any of this. They’re obsessed with culture wars and creating scandals around Joe Biden, scandals for which they have no evidence. But they have learned a media lesson well during the Trump years.

Repeat a baseless lie over and over again, knowing the press will feel they must give it media time, until susceptible voters start to believe it. Instead of dealing with realities they are grandstanding with investigations, impeachment threats, and fear mongering about immigrants.

Somehow the ridiculous tale of building border walls has returned as Trump falls back on his greatest hits from the 2016 election. No one who can read a map thinks a border wall would stop anything.

A lot of this is basically an effort to distract and stall the impending Trump legal trials, which these politicians, many of whom have law degrees, know are real crimes with real evidence that could lead to very real convictions.

The overarching plan here is to get Trump in office at any cost, so he can claim immunity and exact brutal revenge on critics while creating a royal presidency not subject to law or elections.

A dictatorship in other words.

Many of these Republicans are conveniently forgetting a basic truth about Trump: his revenge applies equally to opponents and supporters who have not been sufficiently loyal to his every whim. If he gets into power again he will turn on his own Party without a qualm.

Remember, absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

The evidence for this outcome lies in those indictments he faces and those who will testify against him. They will include many fanatical supporters and members of his inner circle who are belatedly realizing he scammed them into criminal acts on his behalf.

And they are turning into witnesses against him to save their own asses (sorry, but this is the reality). There was once a political world where loyalty was rewarded with loyalty, even honor among thieves. No more, not in Trump world.

Meanwhile, across the rest of the world…these squabbles and inactions here in the US will mean lives lost, sovereign nations destroyed, and freedoms lost by billions. All because small-minded elected Republicans need to win small battles about small things to retain power.

This does not have to happen. There are many Republicans who would support Ukraine if they were not frozen in fear of Trump and the vicious reprisal of their Freedom Caucus children.

We all know how vicious and petty an overgrown child can be. Now we have a roomful of them and their actions can change history for the worse, the far worse.

They don’t care. We should. A world war is no joke, never was, but now there can be no winner, only total annihilation. This is the possible price these people are willing to risk for petty political power.

History has seen this before, many times.

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Netanyahu is Not Israel, I Question His Humanity

Three dead hostages waving white flags and thousands of dead children

I have struggled with writing about this and I know I am not alone. But things have reached a head and our President and the people of Israel have a reckoning. Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal and war is his means to hold power.

This is, in no way, a defense of Hamas, a terrorist organization masquerading as an elected government. They are murderous thugs who have terrorized their own neighbors, not driven by religious conviction but by hatred, hatred focused on Jews.

They should be exterminated, but this is not the way.

Indiscriminate bombing, street fighting, targeting of hospitals and schools, and the mass killing of civilians is no more acceptable in Gaza than it has been in Israel. When 50% of Gazan casualties are children, we are in new territory. 

As a militaristic leader, Netanyahu was directly responsible for the failure of Israeli intelligence that allowed the brutal murder of 1200 Israelis and the capture of over 200 hostages from there on October 7th by Hamas beserkers. That alone should have brought him down, but collective hunger for revenge kept him in power.

This week we are seeing his true colors as he declared the war to have no end, a two state solution to never happen, and we saw the deaths of three Israeli hostages, shirtless and waving improvised white flags, shot dead by panicking IDF soldiers.

Those are the actions of a military operating in the fog of war with no end game and a leader keeping them there for his own survival, buttressed by two fanatical war cabinet members who would simply kill all the Palestinians, given total power.

They do not represent the Jews or Israel. And Netanyahu is not a fanatic, he is a politician who has lost his humanity in his need for power. This unthinking pursuit of power is a disease infecting humanity across the globe.

It’s very much here in America with Trump quoting Putin and Orban, students in the streets supporting groups like Hamas out of pure ignorance, and a Republican Congress that has checked out of governing.

But right now, in Israel, this disease is driving a man who ignores the will of his own people, shows no remorse, even for the deaths of his own hostages, and declares unilaterally that there can never be a state for the Palestinians.

Is this the collective wish of a majority of Israelis, to never have peace so one man can hold onto power? Polling shows it is not, yet the country has not reckoned with a military and a leader who have no end game.

Whatever game Netanyahu, Hamas, Iran, and all those indiscriminately targeting innocents across the Middle East are playing must stop. Americans must stop pretending one side is right or wrong and take a moment to learn the history.

And Joe Biden must categorically cut off all support for Netanyahu, the fanatical far right in the Israeli government, and cease funding until Bibi is gone forever.

And the Israelis must do what the majority of their voters want and remove this government from power.

As for Hamas and your like, you are revoking your right to call yourselves human and once lost it can never be regained.

Writer’s note: it is a sad and frightening statement that writing something like this is both scary and necessary, and personal. But here in the US we are entering an election year like no other, a year that could see the downfall of democracy and the triumph of a Fascist autocracy. What would follow is unimaginable.

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Ask Yourself This About Immigrants

Your life would suck without them. Here’s why.

Next time you are in the produce section of the grocery store, take a look around. Virtually everything you see was picked by immigrants, cleaned by immigrants, packaged by immigrants, and loaded by immigrants. It’s back breaking labor that, to be honest, anyone who doesn't have to do, won’t.

Don’t take my word for it. Georgia cracked down on seasonal immigrants working their farms several years ago and the pickers stopped coming. The farmers were so desperate they hired buses to bring day laborers in from nearby cities. Those laborers didn’t last one day.

The crops rotted in the fields, costing farmers a fortune and driving produce prices up for you and me.

That’s not the only food story. Ask any American chef if they speak any Spanish. They likely do because they have to communicate with their workers, the ones doing the dirty work- washing pots and pans, cleaning the floors, and prepping huge quantities of ingredients to high standards.

Vacations. Hotels cannot exist without immigrant laborers. My brother worked in a hotel while in college in the seventies, back when a college student would still do that work. His stories of what people do to hotel rooms were insane and he worked in a high end hotel.

It was truly disgusting and it still is. You know who cleans those rooms today. In the posh hotel next to me, the cleaners are all African Muslim women in burkas and the hotel is thrilled to have them.

Ok, what else? Golf course maintenance. Virtually all landscaping work. Meat packing plants. Canneries. Commercial laundries. 

If it is grinding, poorly paid dirty work, and so-called Americans won’t do it. That is the reality today. This country runs on immigrant labor.

And in case you believe that baloney about rapists, drug smugglers, and mentally ill folks who just want welfare, think again. Getting here with your family is extremely challenging and dangerous, and there is no guarantee you’ll even get in. 

It’s takes extreme motivation to risk yourself and your family to travel thousands of miles, deal with human traffickers, navigate the immigration system, and then find work and a place to live.

Lazy people and criminals are highly unlikely to take these risks. 

The leading Republican presidential candidate who has been endorsed by 100 congressional members, spreads endless fear about immigrants, especially any non-white immigrants, an obvious bid to racist sentiments.

That man, Donald Trump, has been married three times, twice to immigrants. No offense to Melania or Ivana, but they were the right ethnicity, white and European.

The immigration system in this country is a huge mess and a terrible problem for those living near borders. This is not a Democrat or Republican created problem, it is an American problem. We just don’t want to deal with it. It’s a political hot potato being thrown around with no one doing anything.

There’s a double standard here being used by politicians to sow fear and hatred, specifically Republican politicians, the same politicians who enjoy expensive restaurants, spend fortunes in hotels, and often employ immigrants in their private lives as cleaners, nannies, and domestic labor.

So, ask yourself, what would you do about it, but think about the facts above, and they are facts. And then try and see the people working behind the scenes doing the work you don’t want to do.

By the way, they’re humans too.

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Happy holidays, especially happy winter solstice, the rebirth of the light and longer, brighter days. We need them. I’ve spent a lot of time in recent weeks thinking about creativity and where it might take me in the next year or two.

I’ve initiated some pretty serious personal changes this year but it is time to leverage that to once again do some personal reinvention. Still working through what that might be. All good.

Despite writing about darkness, I remain an optimist. I hope two things this week: you’ll find some value here, and you’ll consider upgrading to paid. It makes a difference.

Thanks,

Martin Edic

2463 words, lotsa words this week. To put it in perspective I will use a sales cliche called ‘reduce to the ridiculous’. The Witness Chronicles alone add up to around 10,000 words monthly. A $5 monthly sub only costs you about .0005 cents a word and you get The Grasshopper too. What a deal! Lol

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~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a weekly digest of three of my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free with a paid option to share your support. Please check them out.

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Believe me, it makes my day. M