Day after day. Alone on a hill. The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still. But nobody wants to know him. They can see that he's just a fool. But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down. And the eyes in his head see the world spinning 'round… And nobody seems to like him…
Donald Trump may no longer be occupying that proverbial hill of power called the Oval Office. But he sure aspires to return to it. The above lyrics to a song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney seem to describe this man quite nicely even though it was written way back in the 1960s.
The song was describing someone that was clearly not a fool but was see that way. He saw the world going up in flames. Nobody wanted to hear that. No one saw the sky falling in the era of ‘make love not war’, the ‘summer of love’ and Woodstock. People making predictions like that were considered fools.
But Donald Trump makes foolish comments on an almost daily basis. There seems to be an endless barrage of them - day after day. The latest of which was about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio stealing and eating the pet dogs of their indigenous neighbors.
Just about everyone connected with that town including Ohio Governor Mike DeWine - a Trump supporter - has called that accusation pure trash. And yet the man who wishes to return to the hill keeps doubling down on it. As does his VP pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.
And the media is eating it all up. (Pun intended). For almost a week now, they have been having a field day focusing on it as though it was the must important issue facing the American people.
There are more important things for the media to focus upon than pet dogs in Springfield. They ought to focus on what’s important in this election and let sleeping dogs lie.
But still, Trump doubling down on a foolish statement like this is yet another reason to vote for Harris who laughed right along with the rest of the world when Trump made that accusation at the debate last week. The last thing America needs right now is a fool on the hill again.
But then again, (as I have mentioned before) there is that niggling little detail about the welfare of Israel being at stake, should Harris win the Oval Office. The following JTA excerpt from Harris during the debate tells the story:
“Let’s understand how we got here. On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, many of them young people who were simply attending a concert, women were horribly raped, and so absolutely I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would,” she said.
She continued, “How it does so matters, because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed — children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must end immediately.”
Obviously the first part of her comment is very welcome for those of us who support the Jewish state. The second part is what’s troubling. Because it imputes blame on the wrong people and undermines the very right Harris claims Israel has.
Yes. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. But Israel did not deliberately kill a single one of them. The only way they can conduct a war against Hamas is to kill them where they find them. Which is always in the middle of a civilian population. Usually a highly sensitive one like a hospital or a school. If the only way you can kill a Hamas terrorist (whose mission in life is to destroy you in the most horrible way imaginable) and who hides behind innocent women and children - is by killing those they place in front of them as shields, what choice does Israel have? Are they to just walk away and let Hamas thrive? That would make a mockery of Harris’s fist comment. Which to repeat - said the following:
Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, many of them young people who were simply attending a concert, women were horribly raped, and so absolutely I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself.
If there is another way to kill terrorists that deliberately use innocent women and children as shields, why doesn’t she tell us what that is? Israel has no interest in all the negative PR it is getting via Hamas’s cynical and diabolical use of civilian shields as a tactic to make Israel look bad. And that tactic is working.
This is not to say that Israel should or should not end the war. I don’t know the answer to that question. It is only to say that her reasons for stopping it are grossly misguided. If not outright political - for purposes of gaining the anti war support.
Back to Trump. One thing he said at the debate is extremely outrageous on its face:
Trump predicted that if Harris wins, Israel would disappear “within two years.
God forbid! That will not happen if Harris is elected. But it is not as far fetched as one might think. It is just a gross exaggeration of the consequences if Harris pursues her stated goal of creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza. That one of her her first hires was a J-Street sympathizer telegraphs her intentions post election.
It is not far fetched to believe that a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza would be a mortal danger to Israel. I think it is a pretty valid fear. Hamas has broad support among Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Who just about all applauded October 7th. Palestinians in Gaza were recorded jeering at the hostages as they were being dragged through the streets of Gaza by their captors on that day. Does anyone believe that a Palestinian State in a West Bank state called Palestine will be anything less than Gaza on steroids?!
No, Israel will not disappear. But Trump’s penchant for hyperbolic exaggerations like this should not take away from the message of existential danger to Israel it sends about Harris’s goal of creating a Palestinian state on the West Bank.
The ‘fool on the hill’ sees the sun going down. But nobody wants to know him. The eyes in his head see the world spinning round. And nobody seems to like him.
Yes. Trump is a fool. But that does not make everything he says wrong.