Like Wildfire

The first I heard of wildfires in Israel, it was in the context of an allegation that the fires were the result of Israeli settlers committing arson while attacking Palestinian farmers.

As best I can tell, that allegation traces back to a stray Haaretz tweet that reads "As wildfire rages in Israel, security source tells Haaretz settlers set Palestinian agricultural land on fire in the West Bank." There doesn't seem to be any further corroboration, and the link in the post doesn't go to any article or news item elaborating (as best I can tell, it was either taken down or never existed in the first place).

Meanwhile, the right-wing coalition running the show in Israel was also quick to blame the fires on arson -- specifically, that caused by Palestinian militants. This, too, seems thinly supported and already has the hallmarks of a smear campaign. Netanyahu, for instance, claimed that 18 individuals had already been arrested for suspected arson; the true figure is three. And one of those three is a sixty-three-year old man with no criminal record who was found with the smoking-gun evidence of a tobacco pipe and some cotton to clean it.

Finally, there are the experts, who posit that the wildfires raging across an arid region of the eastern mediterranean that just had its driest winter on record are probably attributable to ... the climate crisis. Fancy that.

In recent years, right-wing politicians have frequently blamed Palestinians for arson in the wake of wildfire outbreaks, but no one has ever been indicted for nationalist-motivated arson leading to large-scale fires. Most major fires investigated were ultimately attributed to negligence.

The Carmel disaster in 2010 was sparked by a discarded hookah coal. Two of the major fires that scorched parts of the Jerusalem hills in 2016 were caused by a flare gun and welding work. Other large fires were found to have been started by farmers burning waste or hikers making coffee.

The phenomenon of blaming minorities for starting wildfires is not unique to Israel: in Turkey, Erdoğan blamed the Kurds; in Europe, migrants were accused of arson; and in California, claims emerged that LGBTQ individuals in the fire services were responsible for the failure to contain the fires.

It does all hang together, doesn't it. 

Fine Art is Ridiculously Cheap/Expensive

Over the past year or so, I've developed a new passion and hobby in collecting art. I deeply resent this, since it flies in the face of one my cardinal life rules I've abided by for as long as I can remember: do not develop expensive tastes. And fine art is an expensive hobby.

Or is it? Well, yes, in many ways. But in other ways, it's ludicrously cheap. Let me explain.

First of all, I'm not talking about the headline-making auction prices of masterworks that involve more money than some countries' GDP. Robert Rauschenberg's "Buffalo II" silkscreen painting, for instance, auctioned for $88.1 million dollars in 2019. That is expensive under any definition. It's also functionally irrelevant to my life.

Go down to the other end of the spectrum. If I want to buy a decent-sized painting from an "emerging" artist -- a term that generally encompasses artists who have gallery representation but are at an early career stage, aren't in any museums or public collections, and haven't otherwise made any major "mark" in the art world -- it generally will cost in the low four-figures. That is expensive. It is a price I have paid for things, but it immediately becomes one of if not the most expensive thing in my house that I can physically lift with my own hands. At that price, there's not a lot of room for dabbling or experimenting or dilettantism. If I buy it, it better be something that I want on my wall for at least a decade.

And again, that's entry-level. What happens if you want to move up in the world?

Well, here's where the "ludicrously cheap" comes into play. Because you can absolutely get a Robert Rauschenberg print -- not a reproduction, a genuine, vetted, real-deal limited editioned Rauschenberg -- in that same price range. Earlier this year, Christie's auctioned a numbered Rauschenberg lithograph (edition of 31) from 1969 titled "Gulf" for $2,142. That is not cheap. But that is a price a normal human could imagine paying for something. My wife and I are financially doing reasonably well, but we are by no means 1-percenters. We couldn't toss out two grand on a lark. But could we do it periodically, for something we really loved? Yes, absolutely.

And Rauschenberg is an indisputable A-tier artist. What happens if you go the next step down?

This is a woodcut by Werner Drewes, titled "Goddess of the Night":

It was executed in 1961 as an edition of 10; one of those editions is in the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. Drewes himself is no small figure: he is credited with bringing the Bauhaus movement to America, and he coined the phrase "It Can't Happen Here" as the title of a 1934 portfolio of works critiquing the rise of fascist repression in his native Germany (Sinclair Lewis would use it a year later for the title of his famous book).

"Goddess of the Night" recently auctioned for $924. Two other Drewes woodcuts sold together as a lot at that same auction for $826.

There's just something about that particular price range that I can't wrap my head around. It is simultaneously so expensive, and so accessible. It's so expensive in the sense that it is a figure that I would need to think about, and I'm far more financially secure than the vast majority of Americans. It's so cheap in the sense that it's a figure I can feasibly pay, which feels absurd to me when we're talking about historically significant artists whose works are in major museums.

The Anti-Anti-Racism Conspiracy in Oregon

This is an infuriating story on many levels:

The principal at The Madeleine School, a private Catholic school in Northeast Portland, summoned Portland police to the campus in late March when the parents of a Black student demanded to know her plan of action after their fourth grade son reported being called a racist slur on the playground.

Just 72 hours later, the school expelled the boy, effective immediately, saying his parents — Moda Health executive Karis Stoudamire-Phillips and renowned jazz musician Mike Phillips, both prominent Black Portlanders with long histories of volunteering both citywide and in Portland’s tight-knit Catholic school community — had violated the school’s code of conduct for parents.

The students accused of hurling the slur denied it, but the boy's account was corroborated by at least one other witness.

There are a couple of different layers here. One is that the Archbishop of Portland has had a tense relationship with the Catholic school community here, stemming from his effort to enforce conservative gender orthodoxy over the objections of many students, parents, and lay leaders. This appears to be part of a broader intrusion of right-wing culture war shibboleths, which helps make more sense of this part of the story:

According to that child’s father, who did not want to be named to protect his child’s privacy, Principal Tresa Rast told him and his wife that she suspected that their son had made up the entire incident and recommended that the child see a therapist so he could be “deprogrammed” from the anti-racist training he’d received while previously attending public school in Portland.

From what I can tell in the article, the child had been attending the Madeleine school since Kindergarten, so it's unclear when he would have been "programmed" by Portland Public Schools at all.

But of course, searching for logic misses the point. Rast appears to have an understanding where "racism" is something entirely made up -- so made up that Black children need to be "programmed" into believing its existence so they can foist false charges upon innocent White children. It isn't hard to draw a line here to the MAGA demand to suppress any and all American history tellings that accurately recount our nation's racial past (and present) -- the entire theory is that all such stories simply are lies concocted to assert control. It is a classic conspiracy theory (which is why Rast could jump to the absurdist notion that the child needed "deprogramming" -- an outrageous claim even if the child had been a regular PPS attendee).

And we also shouldn't lose sight of the fundamental cruelty this politics inevitably inflicts. Here is how the school handled the expulsion of the child:

“It has become clear that the relationship of trust and confidence that is necessary for a collaborative partnership between parent and school officials for the good of your child no longer exists,” Rummell wrote. “Our partnership is hereby immediately terminated as of the end of the day, April 3. This decision is final and from our perspective this matter is now concluded.”

Their son was allowed to return to campus one more time, Stoudamire-Phillips said, to say goodbye to his teachers.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the classroom,” she said. “Teachers from all over the school were coming in to say bye to him. He knows that he is loved by that community. He just doesn’t understand why these two leaders keep making decisions that have hurt him.”

"He doesn't understand why these two leaders keep making decisions that have hurt him" Juxtapose that against the brusqueness of his dismissal, of the ripping of this child from a community he had been enmeshed in and valued. It's heart-wrenching. And it emerges from people who prioritize of national kulturkampf demands over the interests and humanity of the children in their care. This, above else, is what characterizes the current MAGA orientation towards so many children -- they pour out hatred and disdain and scorn, because hurting the kids matters less to them than cleaving to their own fantastical tales of resistance to "wokeness".

Thrilling Over Dead Children

In a generally interesting column about Israel's war aims in Gaza, Raviv Drucker writes:

Today, the lust for revenge, an easy willingness to make use of the madman theory and the widespread view that "they're all terrorists" have led to many actions that cannot be explained or justified. It is immoral, inhumane and taints us all.

This jumped out at me, because of a response to my "Tenth Plague" post I had read a few hours earlier. The response took great delight in trying to come up with myriad thought experiments justifying the killing of children: Would you kill baby Hitler? Would you kill members of the Hitler Youth? Would you kill a neo-Nazi kid who would have voted for Trump? (The last was presented as some sort of gotcha, as if it presented some more difficult quandary than the others).

These meditations, of course, are fun little games one plays in order to rationalize killing children -- a still grimmer (if that's possible) example of refusing to lay down one's toys. They are misappropriations of the famous quip about knowing what one is and just haggling over the price -- the idea being that we're all actually okay with killing children, some are just more clear-eyed about it than others.

The uselessness of the "baby Hitler" hypothetical is obviously that we cannot know in advance who will turn out to be Hitler. The purported way around that is pure racist fatalism -- we do know that these children will grow up to be Hitler, because that is what they do. It is not irony at all that this is exactly the rationale of those who cheered the murder of the Bibas children -- claiming that they will grow up to massacre Palestinians because that is what they do. It's the same sickness, in a slightly different color palette. Let nobody deceive you into thinking that these people are not one and the same.

And what stands out at me, again, about people such as this is the desire -- the thrill -- that some have in finding a way to justify killing children. It reminds me once again of Bernard Henri-Levy's contention about the rise of the "New Antisemitism", speaking of people who want above all else to "feel once again the desire and, above all, the right to burn all the synagogues they want, to attack boys wearing yarmulkes, to harass large numbers of rabbis, to kill not just one but many Ilan Halimis...." It's not just about attacking kids, it's about feeling right to do it. And so they are never more thrilled than when they can tell themselves a story whereby the killing is righteous, and justified, and necessary, and beautiful.

A key part of the story they tell themselves, I think, is that everyone thinks this way. Everyone revels in killing the children of the enemy, some just put on a show of pretending otherwise. It is cynicism posing a "realism" that's actually cowardice. It continues to be a lie, and lie whose only purpose is to give despicable people moral license to promote despicable things.