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Robert Lipsyte, America’s Existential Trials

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Despite the lack of televised coverage of Donald Trump in court, the trial of the century — or do I mean of the month, week, day, minute, or second? — has caught our attention. And yes, a crucial witness is indeed likely to be a porn star. But no matter, the real news is that, for the first time in memory, the former president has actually had to shut up. The man who can’t stop talking and hasn’t done so for years is now forbidden to say a word (unless he agrees to testify at the trial, in which case he could easily sink himself, word by word by word). All anyone could hear from him in court in these weeks was possibly (as TomDispatch regular Robert Lipsyte points out today) The Donald farting or, given that he’s dozed off more than once, perhaps snoring. (I’m not there, of course, so I can’t know or confirm anything.)

But isn’t it strange to have the old man who couldn’t stop yakking transformed into an overgrown child being disciplined? It’s hard to imagine that such a figure might once again, within the year, be — yes! — president of the United States and leave so many of the rest of us functionally all too silent and on trial in a courtroom presided over by Judge Trump and crew. Because, were he to return to the White House in 2025, for so many of us, not to speak of the planet itself where all he wants to do (other than talk at the top of his voice) is “drill, baby, drill,” he could prove to be the trial of the century. As he put it recently on the campaign trail, “When they start playing with your elections and trying to arrest their political opponent — I can do that, too! If I win — which I hope I do because we’re not going to have a country — but if I win, I could then say, I don’t know: ‘This guy, this Democrat is doing great. I don’t like the poll numbers. Attorney General come down, arrest that guy, will you, please? Give him a subpoena! Indict him! That’s the end of him.'”

With that in mind, let Lipsyte, a former sports correspondent and columnist for the New York Times and author of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, consider what strange parallels exist between O.J. Simpson (who died just weeks ago) and Donald J. Trump — both of whom he knew as a reporter years ago. Tom

Donald Trump and O.J. Simpson

Testing the Limits of Justice

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It was the jokes about Trump’s rumored flatulence in the courtroom that pushed me toward despair. And don't think it was disgust with the subject matter either. After all, I’ve lived with teenagers and I wasn’t all that surprised by yet another Trump-inspired trivialization of a critical civic institution. What appalled me was the possibility that -- let's be clear here -- such stories would somehow humanize the monster, that his alleged farting and possible use of adult diapers would win him sympathy. I even wondered whether such rumors could be part of a scheme to win him votes.

So, yes, Trump can make you that crazy.

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Noam Chomsky, Eyeless in Gaza

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Consider it strange — or perhaps not strange at all — that when, in April 2010, the remarkable Noam Chomsky wrote his first piece for TomDispatch (adapted from his book of that moment Hopes and Prospects), its subject was — yes! — the devastation Israel was already causing in — yes, again! — Gaza and the way it was expanding control over and settlements on the West Bank. Fourteen years ago, he focused, in part, on that country’s “criminal siege” of Gaza (including the fact that, even then, the Israelis were allowing in too few trucks with food and other aid). Oh, and guess who was prime minister at that moment? Yep, one Benjamin Netanyahu. Even then, Chomsky concluded all too sadly and aptly that U.S. policy (as now) was helping to ensure that the phrase “Palestinian state” would mean “fried chicken.”

Oh, and on this rare weekend I’ve taken off while posting a distinctly “best of TD” piece, let me thank those of you who, in recent weeks, have been so kind as to offer this site a distinct and deeply appreciated financial hand. Let me also urge any of you who are TomDispatch regulars and haven’t done so to consider visiting our donation page at this very moment to ensure that this site makes it through another year (its 23rd on this strange planet of ours). Your help truly does make all the difference! Tom]

A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)

In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”

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The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange.  For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement.  In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s. 

The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas).  A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states.  Israel refused to attend the session.  The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980.  The record at the General Assembly since is similar.

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Helen Benedict, Students on the Right Side of History

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I live reasonably close to Columbia University. Over the years, on my daily walks, I’ve often wandered through the gates of its striking campus on 116th Street, crossing from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue, passing students, admiring the enormous Low Library and the scene generally. About noon on a recent day (but before students there occupied Hamilton Hall and were violently cleared out of it by the police), with Columbia Professor Helen Benedict’s piece in mind, I decided to walk to that now embroiled, embattled campus.

Everything looked normal as I headed up Broadway until I hit 110th Street and noticed that there were police officers on every corner. As I went farther uptown, the sidewalk suddenly narrowed because part of each block now had metal police barricades with plastic white police tape on them, clearly meant to hold possible protesters outside the school later in the day. The smaller (but still huge) gate I often enter at 114th Street was bolted shut with a giant “kryptonite evolution” lock on it and a security guard standing behind it. I could at least peer in and see a few of the on-campus tents that Columbia students protesting the nightmare in Gaza were now living in. Another block up and it was just police, police, police, plus a few orthodox anti-Zionist Jews with strange protest signs and a man waving an Israeli flag and shouting at them. And then there were all the TV cameras waiting for something, anything, to happen.

As I stood there, with police everywhere and not a demonstrating student in sight, I thought: how strange that all of this had happened on the very campus where, in 1968, amid the Vietnam War and after the killing of Martin Luther King, the cops had similarly been called in on demonstrators in a way that would prove historically memorable. Live and learn? Not a chance. The present Columbia president, Minouche Shafik, despite (as Benedict told me) the advice of her faculty, did it again and, in the process, not surprisingly created a nationwide movement against the nightmare in Gaza that’s already spread to more than 40 campuses and is still growing.

Sometimes, it seems as if no one ever learns anything. A striking but solitary protest over Gaza and then throw in the modern version of McCarthyite Republicans, a cowed university president, and the decision to call in the police on a peaceful set of demonstrators. The next thing you know, you have a national movement embroiling campus after campus. But let Benedict, author most recently of the novel The Good Deed, in her second TomDispatch piece, explain the madness of it all in a distinctly up close and personal fashion. Tom

The Distortion of Campus Protests over Gaza

How the Right Has Weaponized Antisemitism to Distract from Israel’s War

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Helicopters have been throbbing overhead for days now. Nights, too. Police are swarming the streets of Broadway, many in riot gear. Police vans, some as big as a city bus, are lined up along side streets and Broadway. 

Outside the gates of the Columbia University campus, a penned-in group of pro-Israel demonstrators has faced off against a penned-in group of anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian protesters. These groups are usually small, often vastly outnumbered by the police around them, but they are loud and they are not Columbia students. They've been coming every day this April to shout, chant, and hold up signs, some of which are filled with hateful speech directed at the other side, equating protests against the slaughter in Gaza with being pro-Hamas, and calls to bring home the hostages with being pro-genocide.

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