"In the department of small violins, consider the moral embarrassment, after Charlottesville, Va., of right-of-center Jews who voted for Donald Trump in the election and remained — at least until last week — broadly supportive of his presidency.
I don’t mean Jared Kushner, who is beyond embarrassment. I also don’t mean the economics czar Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Standing by the president’s side during Tuesday’s catastrophic news conference in Trump Tower, the pair had that look of pre-emptive mortification reminiscent of crotch-covering soccer players bracing for a penalty kick.
At least they can console themselves with the notion — it might even be true — that they’re all that’s standing between the president and another financial crisis. But then there’s the rest of the Jewish right, this columnist among them. Last year we were given a choice between moral judgment and political opportunity.
Would we vote for a man we knew to be a casual bigot because his bigotries aligned, in some sense, with our political views? Or did we know enough about bigotry to understand that, just as the hatred that starts with Jews never ends with them, the hatred that starts with others lands all too frequently on us?
President Jabberwock and the Jewish Right https://nyti.ms/2v9MUnk
I don’t mean Jared Kushner, who is beyond embarrassment. I also don’t mean the economics czar Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Standing by the president’s side during Tuesday’s catastrophic news conference in Trump Tower, the pair had that look of pre-emptive mortification reminiscent of crotch-covering soccer players bracing for a penalty kick.
At least they can console themselves with the notion — it might even be true — that they’re all that’s standing between the president and another financial crisis. But then there’s the rest of the Jewish right, this columnist among them. Last year we were given a choice between moral judgment and political opportunity.
Would we vote for a man we knew to be a casual bigot because his bigotries aligned, in some sense, with our political views? Or did we know enough about bigotry to understand that, just as the hatred that starts with Jews never ends with them, the hatred that starts with others lands all too frequently on us?
President Jabberwock and the Jewish Right https://nyti.ms/2v9MUnk
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