Santayana's Children

    History lesson, kids! For those of you who have forgotten, the above mentioned George Santayana (1863-1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. He was a disciple of the philosopher Benedict Spinoza. I guess if you're gonna be a disciple, it doesn't get much better than Spinoza! Santayana's own resume is full and Hall-of-Fame worthy, but he is probably most famous for the line, "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." And here begins the lesson.

    About a week or so ago, there was a not so small demonstration in Washington, DC supporting Palestinian rights, etc. Of course, this was a direct result of Israel defending itself from terror attacks that were both lethal and grotesque. Lethal in the sense that the surprise attacks killed more Jews since the gas chambers brought to you by Hamas' intellectual and philosophical forebears...the Nazis. Grotesque in the sense that they not only targeted civilians but tortured and raped men and women, beheaded infants in front of their parents, and generally acted like the sub-human species I believe them to be. But back to the demonstration.

    The demonstration was like most demonstrations. It was filled with chanting people, raised fists, and signs with different slogans and symbols. As I read various news reports and saw photographs of the protest and the immediate surroundings in DC, I kept coming back to Santayana's quote. You see, many of the signs had, along with the symbol of the Palestinian people, the quote that has become synonymous with the Palestinian people, "From the river to the sea." Now, as I have written before, and I'm sure most of my astute readers already know, this slogan is, to be perfectly blunt, an homage to the eradication of a state and its people. So there's that. Also, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the New York Post ran a number of articles about the demonstration, and included photographs of SWASTIKAS spray painted on signs and posters at the demonstration as well as government buildings and other non-governmental structures throughout the city. Which, again, brought me back to Santayana.

    With that said, I came to the conclusion that calls for mass murder and swastikas were par for the course at a pro-Palestinian rally. I mean, we are not talking about people who embrace, or can even wrap their neanderthal-like minds around Western political philosophy (all apologies to the neanderthals). What has caused more than a couple of nights of thinking, writing, and occasional worry is the repeating of history, as it were, by first- second- and third-generation Americans and their children, grand-children, and great-grand-children at our so-called institutions of higher learning. C'mon, you had to know at some point I was going to verbally whack these kids!

    Let's be honest, most middle-aged and older, Americans, who pine for the days of the Third Reich are beyond redemption. They are doomed, along with their muddled and corrupted minds to live out their lives as sub-humans. But I find myself embarrassingly surprised at these younger generations. I mean, young Jewish students at places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, etc., are basically being told by university staff..."You're on your own." From what, Peter? you may ask. From campus totalitarians exercising their freedom of speech rights by chanting "Death to Israel," from one end of the country to the other. Look, I am a "Free Speech" guy. I've written about it, and I've talked about it until I am blue in the face. And this is what somebody like me has to live with. I'm a little torn here. But at the very least, can't the administrations of these institutions come out and say something like, "We denounce terrorism and the intentional slaughtering of innocents in all its forms. We unequivocally support the state of Israel and its right to exist." That seems pretty simple, right? Even a dope like me understands that! Hell, if an idiot like me can write those words and understand them, just think what a university president could do!! I mean, Ukraine got pages of support from the Harvard's of the world. I mean, can you imagine the absolute shit-storm if a large number of KKK neanderthals butchered a neighborhood of black families! Go ahead, take a deep breath. I'll wait while you stop shaking...

    Instead, administrations around the country talk like they just came back from a State Department symposia. "Well, we're not here to opine on national or international affairs." Really? I'll say it again. UKRAINE! How about climate change? Or Roe v. Wade? Black Lives Matter? University presidents can't find enough words to opine about these things...AND RIGHTLY SO! But slaughtering Jews? Can't be bothered. Un-fucking-believable! I mean, the most heart-wrenching quote I read was a young Jewish girl at Harvard, pleading with a university official as her classmates were chanting "Death to Israel." etc. "Please help us," she cried. "They want to kill us!" I swear on my father's grave it sometimes feels as if I've woken up in the Third Reich and it's Kristallnacht. These kids have lost their minds. 

    I could go on and on, but I'm tired, as I'm sure you are. Trust me when I say I'd rather write about adopting parents who save a young child from a life in "the system." Or how my saintly step-father dodged another bullet on the procedure/operating table. I mean, I know I'll want to return to the Middle East because it's not gonna get better any time soon and this stuff really does interest me, and it's important. But it is difficult. 

    Let me close with a couple of questions/comments: Where are the feminists who go bat-shit about women being raped and blaming the victim? I don't hear you. Where are the anti-racists who take to the streets when a person is being beaten, tortured, and killed just because of his/her ethnicity? You seem strangely mute. All of you out there who proclaim that it's all for the children/infants? Well, children and infants were being decapitated during this onslaught. Your silence speaks volumes. And I'm not letting my Protestant and Catholic friends off the hook either. Your religious ancestors who spent the last 2,000 years treating the Jews like shit because they didn't buy into the theology that Jesus of Nazareth was the son of Yahweh, is no small reason for the upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

    The great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote a novel called Demons that deals with a lot of this. It's about fanaticism run amok. And in the end, there are few characters left unmarred by the effects of all this. Reflecting on the American college campus of today, I fear that, given the truism that the children literally are our future, we too are in a world where, quoting the epigraph of the novel: 

    ...the tracks have vanished,

    We've lost our way, what shall we do?

    It must be a demon's leading us

    This way and that around the field.

Maybe Santayana was right. We are repeating because we cannot remember. Or could it be that some never learned in the first place? Here endeth the lesson.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com