It's Not Easy Seeing Green

Okay, bear with me for a moment.

Red, yellow, blue -- those are the primary colors.

Red and yellow makes orange. And when I look at orange, it totally looks like a mixture of red and yellow.

Red and blue makes purple. And when I look at purple, it absolutely looks like a mixture of red and blue.

Blue and yellow makes green. And when I look at green -- I don't see blue or yellow at all. Green might as well be another primary color.

The thing is, I've thought this my whole life, to the point where it didn't occur to me that maybe not everyone thinks this. It was just obviously the case that green was distinct in being "independent" of its two bases. And it was literally last night that I had the epiphany that this might not be a universal perception.

So I asked my wife, and sure enough -- she didn't see it that way at all. Green to her looks like a mixture of blue and yellow, just as much as orange and purple look like mixtures of their two primaries.

Apparently, I've been nuts for my entire life. Unless the internet can now come to save me.

Israel is How Europe Can Stick It To Trump

Over the past few days, we've seen a spate of hitherto solid Israel allies in Europe announce they'll be recognizing the state of Palestine. France kicked things off, and it was swiftly followed by the UK and Canada. (There also has been an interesting wave of Arab states calling on Hamas to demilitarize and relinquish power).

I'm not going to comment here on the substance of the decision. Briefly, it is obvious that Palestinians deserve self-determination in a recognized state, and I'm unpersuaded by those who are arguing the move will backfire against the Palestinians. As for those who claim that recognition "rewards Hamas", I say that, if we are to think of this decision in those terms, it's better to see this as not as rewarding Hamas for 10/7, but as punishing Israel for its conduct after 10/7.

But that's not what I want to focus on here. Rather, I want to explore a different question: Why now? What made these countries take this step now?

Obviously, there is not one single answer to that. But in addition to some of the obvious factors -- increased sympathy for the Palestinian cause and increased frustration with Israeli intransigence chief among them -- I suggest an additional cause is that stepping out on Israel is a comparatively cheap and insulated way to symbolically repudiate Trump and Trumpism.

The Trump administration's pivot away from our traditional allies and alliances has been met with a justified mixture of alarm of fury from those we've abandoned. From escalating trade wars to threats of annexation, Trump has done unprecedented damage to America's global standing. People want to see their leaders punch back. But many of the most obvious avenues for retaliation come with substantial risks of their own. As idiotic and self-destructive as tariffs are for the United States, it remains the case that European countries must be careful and adroit in their own trade negotiations. Symbolism has its place there, but it can't be the whole story; missteps can exact real and serious tangible damage on one's own people.

But sticking it to Israel offers much of that same symbolic flouting of Trump, at a much lower risk. Most of the "damage" there, if there is any, will be externalized, not internalized. To the extent some countries might have been reluctant to step out against Israel for fear of alienating the United States, that ship has sailed; today these countries are looking for opportunities to signal they're standing up to the American madman. And while the Trump administration might make noises about retaliation, I think they're fighting on too many fronts for protecting Israel diplomatically to be a serious priority -- and that's even if one believes that Trump's Israel policy is based on sincere ideological commitment, which I don't. If one thinks Trump is just using "Israel" as an excuse to enact various forms of domestic repression, the ultimate disinterest can be doubled. In essence, Europe recognizing Palestine (a) looks increasingly justified and sensible given recent Israeli conduct and (b) offers an opportunity to be seen as standing up to Trump, in a context where tangible blowback is likely to be minimal. No wonder it's looking more attractive!

None of this should be seen as warranting any sympathy for Israel of course. They've chosen their course -- lashing themselves to the most extreme and vicious iteration of global rightwing ultranationalism -- and they have to live with the consequences. That's the risk of hitching your wagon entirely to a single powerful but widely loathed patron -- if daddy gets distracted, you're on your own and you've made yourself an awfully tempting target. Once again, when the right is done finding Israel useful, it will leave it in the wreckage.

A Cracking Good Word, Part II

A few years ago, I wrote about how much I liked crack (the word). The basic reason why was that it has a wide range of definitions that cover a lot of seemingly unrelated territory, without many clear indicators of how the different definitions might be connected to one another.

In that post, I listed off many such definitions, from "crack" as in "fissure" to "crack" as in "a joke". But one slangier usage I didn't talk about is "cracked" in gamer-speak, where it means something like "awesome" or "unbeatable" ("That strategy is totally cracked!").

In fairness, I did talk about "crack" is in "elite" -- "crack troops guarded the valley" -- which is pretty close to the slang usage.

But I would bet significant money that, despite their similarity, "cracked" in gamer lingo doesn't derive from this adjacent "crack" dictionary definition.

Rather, my guess is that the gamer meaning comes from "cracked" as in "unlocked", possibly as in saying that the awesome player "solved the puzzle of the game", but more likely from an older hacker usage: a game is "cracked" when a pirate successfully removes the DRM and distributes it. Doing this successfully was considered quite a praiseworthy achievement in some gaming circles, and it seems likely that it migrated from there to the slang usage today.

But isn't that interesting? A contemporary slang usage of a word, that is at least adjacent if not identical to a "regular" dictionary definition of that same word, but whose entrance into the lexicon probably has nothing to do with this parallel definition.

That's cracked!

How Do You Watch Sad Kids' Movies With Your Kid?

When I was a kid, I didn't watch violent movies (violent defined broadly -- I'm not talking about gore, I mean even a PG-13 action movie). It wasn't really a "rule" -- I just wasn't interested. I remember being reticent to watch Renaissance Man because it had army men on the box cover and I thought it'd be a war movie (turns out, it was a silly comedy, which was exactly my speed).

Once I became a teenager, I was a little shocked when I saw young kids being allowed to watch violent movies -- again not gory ones, but just your standard PG-13 action flick. Is that okay? Are they going to be okay, seeing all that?

But now that I have a kid, and I think about kids' movies ... yeesh. They're so sad! They're all about watching your parents brutally die (Bambi, The Lion King), or desperately trying to find your missing child (Finding Nemo--after said child watches the other parent brutally die), or being abandoned by the one who you thought was your forever friend (Toy Story). Honestly, I'd rather see some baddies get popped in Mission Impossible.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying these movies are inappropriate for children. I read research saying that these sorts of movies teach important lessons to young kids (about empathy, for instance), Nor am I saying I don't want or won't let me kid watch them (said lessons are important to learn, and in any event one of my parenting rules is that I don't want to pass on my neurosis to my child).

But boy howdy, I don't want to watch them myself, because I will be inconsolable and I can't imagine that's going to do Nathaniel any favors. We might have to create a household rule that mom is the one who takes Nathaniel to movies like that. She's made of sterner stuff than me.

Pictured: A movie I never have and never will see, no matter what

The Impossibility of Bibi Agreeing To Peace

A hypothetical question for Israel supporters.

Suppose Israel was asked to craft the contours of a peace deal in Gaza. And suppose they were allowed to put any conditions they wanted into that deal, subject to just two limitations:

1. Palestinians cannot be compelled, directly or indirectly, to leave the Gaza Strip;
2. Palestinians must be given full citizenship and democratic rights in whatever sovereign nation agrees to control Gaza.

The first is essentially a rule against ethnic cleansing, the second a rule against apartheid.

Beyond those stipulations, Israel is allowed to put any conditions it likes into the deal.

I do not claim, to be clear, that so long as these conditions are met any agreement between Israel and Palestine would necessarily be just. Rather, I present these as the absolute, barest-of-the-bare minimum redlines that must be respected no matter how one-sided the remaining conditions are in Israel's favor. And the point of the exercise is that, so long as these minimums are acceded to, Israel can load up the "deal" as favorably as it wants.

Given that, my question is simple: could this Israeli government come up with a deal that meets these parameters?

And my suspicion is no, it couldn't. The "unthinkable thought" of 2019 is now a reality. And the impossibility of Israel agreeing to a peace deal that abides by even this extraordinary minimums is a large part of why Israel drags this war on and on and on.

Start with the second proviso. The framing is a requirement of equal citizenship in "whatever sovereign nation controls Gaza", and that ambiguity is intentional: it could encompass an independent Palestinian state, or it encompass Israeli annexation. But of course, this makes the dilemma apparent: Bibi and his coalition are dead-set against allowing an independent Palestinian state to exist, but they are also implacably opposed to incorporating Gaza Palestinians into the Israeli state (at least, on equal citizenship).

This (for Bibi) conundrum inspires increasingly desperate and fanciful efforts to escape the impossible bind -- for example, proposing that some other Arab state assume control of Gaza (for obvious reasons, nobody seems interested in stepping up). The increasingly open gestures towards full ethnic cleansing also can be understood through this "dilemma" -- the fewer Palestinians who remain in Gaza, the less daunting annexation looks.

And ultimately, the impossibility of resolving this problem makes all the other conditions we sometimes talk about moot. Questions about return of the hostages, demilitarization, right of return, reparations, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state -- I don't want to say they're unimportant, but while Bibi is in charge they're epiphenomenal. Even if Israel got what it says it wants along all these fronts (immediate return of the hostages, a demilitarized Palestinian state, rejection of right of return, compensation for 10/7, recognition), I genuinely don't think that this government could say "yes" to the deal if it meant either accepting an independent Palestinian state or incorporating Palestinians into Israel as full and equal citizens. Maybe if you loaded up some comically evil and implausible conditions ("reparations to the tune of $1 trillion/year") -- but that would just emphasize that the response of the Israeli government to this hypothetical would be to search frantically for a way to not make the deal.

For what it's worth, this toxic feature of Bibi and his cronies does I think mark out a tangible and meaningful difference between the current Israeli governing coalition and its realistic rivals. It's become popular to denigrate the belief (or "fantasy", as Ezra Klein said) among liberal Zionists that "Bibi is the problem" by observing that a core hostility to Palestinian rights and equality is shared among a much broader segment of Israeli society (including leading opposition figures) than many would care to admit. There is, regrettably, something to this critique -- but the hypothetical I'm pursuing here does I think suggest how it might be overstated, because I do think that the main opposition would be substantially different along these lines. They have no eagerness to create a Palestinian state, but it is not an immovable object for them; opposition to it does not lie at the center of their entire ideological being. It's not guaranteed or even easy, but given the right conditions, one can imagine them making a deal. With Bibi, one can't -- and that's a big difference.

But in the meantime, it is Bibi in control of Israel, and with Bibi in charge of Israel the impossibility of resolving this problem is a critical reason why the war continues. Agreeing on the contours of a peace deal only is relevant when peace is at hand. So long as Israel remains at war, it can delay having to decide an impossible choice. (The fact that once the war ends Bibi probably has to reckon with his criminal charges is also a factor, and a related one -- it goes to the point that Bibi wants the war to continue and is endangered by the prospect of it ending, no matter what the terms are).

In a different context almost 20 years ago, Ehud Olmert mocked those who obsessed over the exact acreage of a peace deal as having supposedly existential stakes for Israel's existence. 

“With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop,” he said. “All these things are worthless.”

He added, “Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the State of Israel’s basic security?”

The hills don't matter, but pretending like the hills do matter, and matter so much that we couldn't possibly make a deal unless we are absolutely guaranteed to control these hills is a way of forestalling having to make a decision on the deal. And the same thing feels true in Gaza. All the talk about needing to destroy one more Hamas battalion, root out one more tunnel network, take out one more "second-in-command" -- who seriously thinks that is what will make the difference? They're delaying mechanisms -- so long as Israel can say "we still must do these military things", they can avoid having to commit to a choice on peace they're fundamentally unwilling to make. Like "airstrikes while you wait", it's something to do while you can't think of what else to do.

All that said, I open to being persuaded otherwise. Tell me a set of provisions -- I wouldn't even demand that they be realistic, so long as they aren't utterly absurdist -- that comports with the above two limitations that you think Bibi would accept, and I'll consider it. But I'm skeptical they exist.

Thomas Massie Opposes All Foreign Aid. Also, He's Antisemitic

The JTA has an article about the backlash AOC is experiencing for voting against an amendment that would defund Israel's "Iron Dome" defense system. It's interesting reading, and I'm curious whether the backlash will have the desired effect (pushing AOC to a more uncompromisingly anti-Israel position) or the exact opposite (convincing her that there is no pleasing these people and she's better off ignoring them).

But that's not the part I want to talk about. Rather, there was a tiny aside in the article that I suspect most of you didn't notice but which jumped out at me.

While AOC voted against the amendment, the article lists off the six House Representatives who voted in favor. The two sponsors, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ilhan Omar, plus four others:

In addition to Omar and Greene, Democrats Al Green of Texas, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania also supported it, as well as Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who opposes all foreign aid.

Do you see it? It's that explanatory qualifier for Massie. The other five are implied to be motivated by anti-Israel hostility, but Massie is presented as operating on a larger isolationist principle. We shouldn't group him in with the other five.

The thing is, it's true that Massie opposes all foreign aid. But it's also true that he's one of the most antisemitic members of Congress, and his votes against Iron Dome should absolutely be read in that light. He was the sole vote against a resolution condemning antisemitism. He introduced a "Dual Loyalty Disclosure" bill clearly inspired by neo-Nazis who think Jews are secret Israeli agents, for crying out loud.

So why isn't that the relevant explanatory context? Yes, Massie is an isolationist, but there's a long history of paleo-conservative isolationists guzzling antisemitic broth, and Massie seems clearly to be of that ilk. Yet for some reason, the instinct is to elide that history -- no, worse, to actively obscure it. One could defend doing with him what JTA did with his three colleagues -- simply noting their votes without elaboration. But if one is going to single Massie out and say "this guy needs more context", it is absurd to offer a framing that is predominantly exculpatory to the guy who once tweeted about pitting "Zionism" against "American patriotism".

It's often suggested that Republicans think they have a get-out-of-antisemitism-free card so long as they are "pro-Israel", and too many Jewish institutions accept that card as fair currency. But I really think the rot runs deeper than that -- there's just a deep, fundamental resistance to identifying Republican antisemitism at all. Massie is a clear case -- he's certainly not "pro-Israel" under any normal definition, but even he gets favorable framing of the sort that would never be extended to the Ilhan Omars of the world (even though I think Massie's "Zionism" vs "patriotism" tweet is far more egregiously antisemitic than, say, Omar's "Benjamins" remarks). I'm not going to say it's impossible to overcome -- Greene's "Jewish Space Lasers" bit seems to have penetrated -- but it seems that even anti-Israel Republicans still benefit from the halo that assumes, against all evidence and logic, that Republicans who might appear to be acting on hostility to Jews must have some nobler or more reasonable excuse behind their actions.

Timeless Pop

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the faltering art market. Of course, they're talking about the ultra-high end -- "sales of $10 million-plus paintings" -- which is completely irrelevant to the art I'm interested in. I caught myself trying to caveat that with some logic like "except that it nudges higher-end collectors downward to the sorts of pieces I could afford, pushing their prices up," but the truth is even that's delusional. There are many, many levels between me and the sort of collector who might even consider an $80 million sculpture.

But there was one line in the article that interested me:

Art is vulnerable to shifts in taste. Baby boomers who favor abstract expressionists and pop art may find it hard to offload their collections to younger buyers. Millennial and Gen Z collectors aren’t showing interest in the same artists. Cultural signals have moved on: Warhol’s screen prints of Jacqueline Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe may not carry the same potency for coming buyers.

I like pop art, and I'd certainly be delighted if the heavies came down. Of course, the last art auction I followed saw a Lichtenstein ("Blonde", from the surrealist series) go for double the pre-auction estimate, so, you know, maybe not quite falling to pieces yet (to be clear: "Blonde" is a print, and so it's worth nowhere near the mega-millions paintings talked about in the WSJ article).

But this passage did make me think that we're probably at a pivot point for 20th century art, including pop. Specifically, I think we're approaching the point of post-speculation. It's less and less of a question "who are the (very few) figures who are genuinely going to stand the test of time as THE artists of their generation?" The pecking order might shuffle a little bit, but not by all that much. And so there's less bubble pressure buying someone in the hopes that they'll be "the next big thing". Yes, there's always revisitations and attempts to pull up someone unappreciated in their time, but odds are if someone hasn't broken through by now, they're probably not going to.

For pop, if you ask me who the consensus "THE artists" are, I'd say the convergence is on Lichtenstein and Warhol. And from that vantage point, the above quoted passage suggests a potential vulnerability in the latter compared to the former. Warhol's cachet is tied to cultural icons whose potency, I suspect, is rapidly fading. This is the risk of pop -- its whole point is to comment on the ephemeral nature of popular culture, and little of popular culture, even that which seems immortal, is truly timeless (see also: Elvis).

Lichtenstein, by contrast, I think is much better positioned simply because he isn't as tied to such period-specific figures. His cachet is tied to comics, a medium rather than an icon, and that gives him more staying power, I think. The short version of this is that in 2065, I think society is much more likely to still be interested in comics than it is to be interested in Marilyn Monroe.