Imagine waking up from a dream with nagging questions. This happened to me a few days ago, when I dreamt that a full headshot of me was plastered across the front side of the New York Post (!) with the caption, “Retired professor admits: I should have said freedom, not …”
Not what? What did I say instead? What was I talking about? Why did I make my way into a conservative tabloid? Then an immediate association to a German idiom, “nicht jedes Wort auf die Goldwaage legen,” “Don’t put every word onto a gold scale,” best captured as “Don’t take everything so literally or with a specific meaning.”
I guess the dream pointed to a deeper issue for me right now, the fact that I am hesitant to write about politics and the unfolding catastrophes caused by political and military decision making in Israel, Gaza and their proxies. The overriding reason for my silence is that I cannot face the horrors on a daily basis and so don’t gather the information necessary to write something sufficiently informed. I have also gotten a lot of feedback that readers could use some cheer in these dark times and so are perfectly excited to see yet another photograph of nature.
But another reason has to do with the choice of words and how much they weigh – a certain amount of censorship in my own head. If I’d commit to a particular vocabulary – genocide, apartheid, anti-zionism, zionism, etc. I would need to write at length how these terms are defined, and how the various, differing definitions are (un)acceptable. It’s too much for me, during times of emotional upheaval. What I have done instead, just so I don’t drift into apathy, is to establish a file where I am collecting many different voices that have thoughtfully and passionately argued about the issues around the student protests and the perspectives of both Israelis and Palestinians on what is unfurling in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks and the now 7 months of war. Maybe there comes a time when we can dig into these sources together. Not now.
That said, I do have one political beef I need to get off my chest. It concerns our upcoming local elections. Specifically, I am aghast at how information that might very well influence our vote, can be hidden until it is too late, if you, like I, vote when your ballots arrive at home, long before the actual election date, 5/21. Portland has a few hotly contested races this year, among them a competition for the 3rd Congressional District in the Democratic primary (not my district, btw.) Former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, a progressive, runs against Maxine Dexter, a state representative and medical doctor, who all of a sudden received financial support to the tune of $1.7 million, from a 314 Action Fund.
The fund, claiming to want to support science backgrounds for office, conveniently waited to donate until April. Why? That makes it legal to delay the disclosure of its donor until May 20th, a day before the election. Now, if you are like me, wouldn’t you want to know WHO funds certain candidates? What if we learned that those organizations to whom the candidate is obliged pursue politics incongruent to our own goals? Or that we realize someone we agree with stands firmly behind one of the candidates? (As it turns out Dexter’s campaign is financed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which funneling money into the race through 314 Action Fund.) (Ref.)
For some strange reason, in another critically close race, for Multnomah County District attorney, we have heard a lot about the funding for the progressive incumbent, Mike Schmidt, who I – could you guess? – support. Headline in The Oregonian 2 days ago: Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt campaign gets boost from progressive philanthropist George Soros. If you take the effort to dig into the article, you learn a bit more: it’s $213.000 in in-kind contributions, by the working families party of Oregon. They, in turn, received money from the Working Families Party National PAC, who in turn was given money by the Democrat PAC, which was given funds for its first quarter by Soros’ Fund for Policy Reform, Voila, Soros supports Schmidt!
Schmidt’s challenger, a DA who is campaigning against his own boss, and who used to be a Republican until he became an Independent in 2017 and has registered as Unaffiliated since 2023, endorsed no less by Portland’s police union, has raised much more money than Schmidt. Do we hear much about his sources? Rhetorical question. A hunk of his funding comes from Portland’s business elite, including Nike co-founder Phil Knight, Columbia Sportswear’s Tim Boyle, and Schnitzer Properties. His largest contributions come from Leadership PACs, as opaque to me as the 314 Action Fund mentioned above.
Maybe it was all about freedom of information in my dream.
Better back to pigeons …. who were courting with abandon yesterday at the park,
the river slow and steady,
Public art glowing with light,
and the young sunbathers, blooming like flowers on the grass, oblivious to the damage done to their aging skins. Then again, maybe they were all covered in SPF 70 sunscreen and just eager to escape the ravages of the real world. Let’s end on that positive thought!
Music for the mood….
