Category: Uncategorized

As Melissa Swine was exiting the Mall Cosmetics Store, she was greeted with a celebratory, “Happy Birthday” by her neighbor and close friend, Sara Epicac, who was shopping in the nearby shoe emporium. Melissa smiled in gratitude and responded: ” Oh, I don’t bother with birthdays; not since I reached 48.” The suggestion, implicit in the social response, was that growing older is a negative enterprise, to be disregarded and bravely endured. Analogous responses, ubiquitously articulated in age-similar social interactions, reveal an erroneous and jejune appraisal of the natural phenomenon of aging. The latter, in our perception, while a boon to the cosmetics industry, nevertheless, cogently and appropriately calls for appropriate and thoughtful reappraisal. It might be useful to discuss the subject of age in the ubiquitous context of “Birthdays.”

Birthday celebrations for the young are happy and loving events; family and friends, birthday cake, and presents are the traditional phenomena designed to make the child happy and personally assured of love and ratified personal identity. In our view, such events, in reality, are fundamental expressions of parental gratitude for the child, despite the overt appearance of child-oriented observances.

The perennial observance of Birthday parties, aside from the traditional cake and presents, is, in essence and metaphysical reality, a celebration of the continued existence of the relevant individual and an overt reaffirmation of the secure recognition of place in the family. As the child matures, the succeeding birthday celebrations reaffirm the continued existence of the celebrated individual in the loving familial entity and, notably, his personally evolving maturity. As to the latter, each succeeding birthday assures the maturing individual of his continuing aspirational progress to maturity and independence.

The introductory, fictional conversation between “Melissa” and “Sara” at the outset of this writing is intended to portray what we eternally perceive as a ubiquitous lack of understanding of life and the absence of maturity of perception of empirical reality.

Admittedly, growing old is ineluctably inclusive of the loss of physical prowess and observable changes from youthful to older appearance; nevertheless, growing older is not a toxic disease. The loss of natural prowess is valuably compensated, for contemplative individuals, by a singular increase in mature perspective and understanding of life and the world. Wisdom and experience bring empirical understanding to past dilemmas and insecurities

Age, for those who have led contemplative lives, is understood and revered analogously to the valued maturity of fine wine. With increasing age and experience comes the positive understanding of others and, notably, of oneself. Gray hair and changes in skin texture may be accompanying traits to an inner sense of mature perspective and wisdom, the invaluable concomitant of a “fulfilled life.”

In a few quick months, we will attain the age of 89, for which we are celebratively happy and grateful.

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Our venerable 18th-century Founders, while prescient, could not have anticipated the current infestation of termite-like damage to the underpinnings of the edifice of their creatively constructed radical Democratic Republic. The tripartite design of its political architecture, each branch having requisite authority over the others, to assure the Nation’s proper governance, to achieve the intended “government, “By and for the People.” Empirical assurance of such constitutional democracy was afforded by the invested authority of the Judiciary branch, the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) was granted the ultimate authority to review and determine all issues arising, relevant to the proper stewardship of our constitutional Republic. Such assurance of constitutional propriety, dynamically supplemental to a mutual “Checks and Balances” authority of the three branches of the polity (“Separation of Powers”), was construed as a dynamically empirical guarantee of the stability of an intended “government,” by and for the People.”

The advent of a constitutional debacle, the proximate consequence of influential, wealthy, self-interested citizens in their excessive desire for power and further material riches, was not then temporally considered nor conceivable.

Until the unfortunate precedent-altering case of Gore v Bush (2000), the Supreme Court was the empirical cause for the consummate assurance, through its assigned responsibility of “Judicial Review,” of compliance with the provisions of the Constitution. Consistent with the basic concept of “Separation of Powers, any litigant aspiring to have his case accepted for determination by SCOTUS was mandated to present an application, known as a “Writ of Certiorari,” successfully demonstrating that the issues of the relevant case are not political nor have any indirect political resonance. The mandated proscription of politically impactful matters proved to be successful in the traditional maintenance of judicial objectivity, confining the determinations and findings of the ultimate Court of last (final) resort to its laudable duty of the objective determination of material legal issues.

The\ turning point represented by the Supreme Court’s acceptance and determination of the “political” case of Gore v. Bush proved to represent the morphing of a SCOTUS, unprecedentedly, to a judicial body, regrettably open to political influence, and shockingly, to instances of individual judicial corruption.

The politically infamous Taxpayer United case, erroneously accepted and determined by SCOTUS, in our view, opened the floodgates to a sustained mortal attack on democracy. The Court promulgated the anti-democratic proposition that a corporation may not be legally limited as to its political contributions. Money in politics has historically been the arch-enemy of democratic equality in its toxic impact on the significance of the individual citizen’s vote. The ensuing, profound distress at its profoundly negative impact on the democratic standard of the equal vote is only surpassed by its telling, sophomoric rationalization.

The High Court, in that unfortunate case, ruled that a corporation is a legal “person” and, accordingly, statutory limitations on corporate political contributions were an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech. Such evident stretch of reason and the plain inanity of the Court’s reasoning are demonstrative of the corrupt insincerity of the presiding Court. First-year law school freshman and every entrepreneur is aware that the statutorily created ability for a fictional status of”person” is solely related to a business entityvehicle of (having its origin in the time of Queen Elizabeth) that merely confers the requested status of a legally fictional “personhood” to corporate business entities, for the limited purpose of thereby limiting the individual liability of the entrepreneur ( N.B. debtors went to prison in Elizabethan England) and thereby encouraging new enterprise. The cocept is universally understood not to represent humanity.

Since every law school freshman and business entrepreneur is aware of the routine and statutorily permissible use of the vehicle of a fictional “person” in the context of corporate business, it is manifestly ineluctable that the eminent justices of SCOTUS, indeed, know it as well. This flagrant gift to the well-healed and influential corporate world constituted a mortal blow to the existential one-man, one-vote dynamic of our traditionally vaunted definitional democracy, and is sadly demonstrative of the decline of our Highest Court.

Rather than the designated existence and availability of an ultimate Court constituted for the rendition of just constitutional guidance, SCOTUS has thus tragically descended to the level of an unpredictable (and worse, corrupted) overseer of legal rectitude. The unpredictable acceptance of the influence of individuals, characterized by the collaboration of riches and influence, empirically led to the institutional decline of the High Court, and opportunistically availed the donors of the novel opportunity remunerative and otherwise, to manage Justices open to political and religious influence.

[ N.B. excluded from this reluctant critique are Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. The latter three Justices are demonstrably and admirably unwavering in their moral and principled dedication to constitutional rectitude, but unfortunately, are numerically outvoted by the other principally vulnerable SOCUS Justices.]

A traditional Supreme Court, evincing Justices emulating the venerable record of their traditionally venerable predecessors, would be a determinative buffer against the errant and outrageously un-American, autocratic policies of the extant shameful and dystopian Chief Executive and his menagerie of sycophantic followers.

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As can be deduced from the above title, this writing is a continuation of and supplemental to, a previous one (“THE ETHICS OF CAPABILITY, Blogpost #303). In the eaerlier writing, we chose to declare that there is a compelling humanistic need to distinguish between what we “can” do and what we “should” do. The adverse effect of the substitution of personal interaction by the “smartphone,” was cited as a negative development, due to its resultant, harnful impact on mental and emotional health. At the sme time, we lauded the positive aspects of digital advancement, where appropriate, citing the utilitarian benefits in scientific research and medicine; the cogent consideration being its humanistic effect.

There may be no illustrative example of ethical and humanistic advancement comparable to that of human organ replacement; the latter procedure is an inarguably beneficial advancement to the health and well-being of the global community. We would, however, humbly, choose to suggest the possible development of an additional relevantly utilitarian benefit, following a brief definition of this advance in the improvement of the health and well-being of the global community.

Our present reference to “human organ replacement” simply refers to the surgical substitution of a healthy human organ, provided by a generous donor, for the damaged or ineffective organ of the recipient.

The long-awaited availability of organ donors. and the medically relevant issue of the compatibility of systemic acceptance by the recipient are compelling and determinative considerations implicit in the universal surgical process of human organ transplantation. The additional complicating issue of the compatibility of the transplanted organ with the systemic nuance of the recipient reportedly mandates the use of chemical immunosuppressants, which have the anecdotal possibility for the creation of other health problems.

We, admittedly, have limited knowledge of the subject, but, nevertheless, would bravely elect to proffer our thematic suggestion, which, if feasible, would empirically ameliorate the dual problems of the long and agonizing period of waiting for an available and willing donor and the vital clinical concern regarding the organ’s systemic acceptance.

We would dare to propose an appropriate shift in zeal in the exponential development of (insalubrious) mechanical communication and convenient robotization ( ex., “Alexa,” robotic carpet cleaning, remote ordering of Chinese food) to the more existentially important goal and ethically responsive development of artificial. suitable human organs for needed replacement; analogous to the admittedly much simpler replacement of auto parts by catalogue. Case histories, considered and systemic nuances provided for, this advancement should be thoroughly explored and, if feasible, implemented.

Such an endeavor, contextually, would inarguably exemplify an ethically appropriate, aspirational goal for Man’s ingenious capacity for technical advancement.

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Any reasonable effort to briefly describe the encyclopedic extent of the human practice of wearing facemasks would be extensive and challenging. Nevertheless, our search for a possible contextual significance and intrinsic meaning of the Trump administration’s dissonant and visually dystopian use of a masked, private army provided the irresistible catalyst that prompted this writing.

The ubiquitous array of contexts for the wearing of face masks encompasses a multitude of disparate purposes, including cultural, theatrical, criminal, recreational, and prophylactic. Ancient cultures used religiously oriented masks in their tribal observances to the gods, and were used in Japanese and Greek theater to depict the character of the protagonist; they were also employed at” stylish European “masked balls as epitomized in the German opera, “Die Fledermaus” and prophylactically used by operating surgeons, the public during pandemics, and recreationally, on Halloween and in children’s comic books (i,e., “The Lone Ranger” and “Batman”). Masks are, as well, ubiquitously employed in nefarious enterprises, such as the Spanish Inquisition, the Ku Klux Klan, criminality, and, notably, Trump’s thematic, un-American, and visually dystopian masked militia, known as. “ICE.”

The media has reported daily, Gestapo-style arrests, torture, incarceration, and banishment to foreign torture prisons of peaceable, productive, tax-paying, and military-serving Hispanic residents of the Nation, perversely based upon the tan color of their skin, their language and cultural observances, notably, without due process. We, in accord with the multitude of mainstream American citizens, are shocked and greatly disturbed by this daily, fascistic and constitutionally, and cognitively dissonant, xenophobic program.

The same is shamefully and dangerously consistent with the Administration’s repugnant, principled rejection of the Nation’s Constitution, and its precedential rule of law, and traditional history. The autocratic-leaning, reductively ignorant, and prejudicial Trump Administration has faint recognotion of the “Bill of Rights,” legal precedent, the “Separation of Powers,” or fundamental moral decency, but singularly recognizes and worships Trump’s psychoneurotic, reductive thirst for perceived power; viz., to be universally perceived as a “winner” at the cost of American democratic principle, historic ethos fundamental conception of humanistic decency,

There is little factual or principled distinction between the historic American blemish on America’s history of the masked, infamous groups that egregiously constituted the nefarious hate groups of the Ku Klux Klan (the”KKK’,) and the extant, presidentially authorized and amply financed, masked militia of ICE agents. This new and frightening blemish on our Nation is a bitter, but cogent reminder of the vulnerability of our unique democratic republic to with, neglectful populist decline,

Trump’s egregiously unprincipled catering to the Nation’s substantial horde of populist bigots is principally inconsistent and inarguably denigrating of the basic and fundamental precepts of democratic governance, underlying the moral context and history of our Republican Democracy. Trump’s most despicable and outrageous policy, among his plethora of undemocratic and inhumane travesties of rectitude, is this heartless display of xenophobic fascism.

Donald J. Trump and his circus menagerie of Cabinet advisors, appropriately, should be the parties’ dystopically masked to hide from the American public their shameful, undemocratically cruel policies, most notable among which is their fascistic program of intimidation and abject misery tragically and unjustly meted out to America’s Hispanic population.

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The rate of technological advances since the era of “The Industrial Revolution,” notably featuring mechanized looms for the weaving of fabrics, was exponential and ubiquitous. The temporal sociology of Mankind gratefully accepted and adjusted to the advent of new achievements, such as the automobile, the airplane, and new and ubiquitous facilities of mechanization. Most notable, in our view, was the ongoing exponential development of facilitated communication, which, for better or worse, has resulted in a society of remote digital communicants.

Capabilities in the areas of science and medicine, the latter, including vaccination, antibiotics. and notably, the surgical replacement of vital organs constituted a boon to society, affording better quality and increasing the length of human life. The positive experience of such advancements, technological and scientific, empirically ripened to the shared view that the capability of human intelligence should be exploited to pursue technological advances without reservation or distinction. The latter principled motivation led, in addition to many beneficial outcomes, to some unforeseen results which were despicable, even Frankensteinian.

Certain historically illustrative events provide the principal theme of this writing, viz., that the ethical consideration of human capability for advancements, relative to the choice of what we “can” do, in contrast with the ethically and responsibly humanitarian consideration of what we “should” do.

To be clear, we unreservedly award kudos to those uniquely brilliantly creative individuals capable and sufficiently talented to conceive of new and innovative technology, but have observed that some “advancements” have ultimately unintended, regressive, and ultimately harmful results on mankind and society.

The zealous pursuit of the scientist’s “aha” moment of epiphanic realization can unexpectedly, perhaps, tragically, result in empathic remorse and feelings of guilt upon its exploitation; the reaction reportedly experienced by Robert Oppenheimer and the many other brilliant scientists who split the atom and created the instrument that eviscerated the population and geography of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Considerations of far more than “scientific advancement” must responsibly be considered in the exercise of the human capability, dedicated to the pursuit of technological goals. The potential humanitarian impact of an “advancement” must mandatorily be exhaustively and thoroughly considered.

Followers of this blogspace are presumably aware of our singular disdain for the societal harm and psychological impact (especially on the young) of the hapless. substitution of the impersonal, facile, “smartphone” for salubrious personal conversation.

The humanistic consideration of “should” must responsibly be given metaphysical prominence over the consideration of “can.”

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Like the sudden advent,

Of a hot summer’s cooling breeze

The panacea for the toxic ambience of Midsummer,

It’s physical angst and sweaty brow–

The salutory maintenance of positive hope,

For the imminent restoration of our venerable Nation

Is the reliable template for temporal serenity.

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[Leonard N. Shapiro, Kingston, NY, 7/25]

The “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” ( DSM) is a publication of the American Psychiatric Association and serves as the official standard for the diagnosis of mental disorders. Among the classic mental disorders catalogued is the “Neurotic Personality Disorder” (NPD), characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a diminished morality and empathy with the feelings of others. It is additionally characterized by enduring and inflexible maladaptive patterns of behavior and cognition.[ Sound familiar?]

The clinical definition of “Neurotic Personality Disorder,” in the official DSM, to our perception, amounts to a veritable portrait of the current President, notwithstanding which, he has been enabled to continue to occupy the most august and powerful office on the planet. The damage consequent to his infirmity has been the cause of observably dangerous results. We offer the following as a representative list:

(1) During the COVID-19 pandemic, advising the public to ingest laundry detergent and a veterinary substance for the prevention of worms in horses as cures, while publicly and energetically denigrating the efforts of the nation’s experts and Health Agencies. Such toxic behaviour was also inclusive of the derogation of expert life-saving prophylactic recommendations. Such singularly irrational behavior tragically resulted in tens of thousands of preventable deaths.

(2) Arbitrarily and insanely removing top-secret government files and refusing, despite a subpoena, to return them; instead, storing them in cardboard boxes located in the toilet (!) of his highly accessible Mar-A-Largo resort. The resultant damage to the Nation may indeed remain unknown, but resulted in a material leak in intelligence and conceivably the deadly revelation of American government agents.

(3) Egoistic and irrational refusal to accept the multi-certified result of his electoral defeat by Joseph Biden, the insanely reactive promotion of a violent and bloody insurrection against the Nation’s Capitol Building, and thereafter, when elected, public pardon of the incited criminal insurrectionists, as a perverse reward for their seditious insurrection in his name. This phenomenon is an irrefutable expression of traditionally diagnosable conduct.

(4) Sadistically and shamelessly mimicking, on public television, the painful and embarrassing symptoms of a news reporter, visibly undergoing the shaky symptoms of cerebral palsy. Trump’s publicly performed burlesque is not an acceptable concomitant of human normalcy.

(5) Publicly associating with the notorious underage sex merchant Jeffry Epstein and frequenting his disreputable performance studio. This conduct is grossly inappropriate for a (married) President of the United States,

(6) Maintaining a personal life, exemplified by gold bathrooms, lavish gifts, and bribes from unsavory donors, accumulating untold wealth through the perverse abuse of the American presidency (including a 43 million dollar jumbo jetliner, as an obvious bribe from a Middle East autocracy), inappropriate misuse of the Oval Office as a shopping mart for Trump’s unabshed retail sale of items such as sneakers, baseball hats, vodka, inscribed Bibles, bourbon, steaks, and other mercantile goods; can the reader conceivably picture Abraham Lincoln hawking sneakers from the Nation’s Capitol? This is irrefutable, “cuckoo nest” behavior!

(7) While running for the Presidency of our Democratic Republic, he publicly announced his intention to be “Dictator. (???)

(8) Ignorantly proclaiming his authority by the imposition of enormous tariffs, thus destroying the Nation’s traditional trading relationships, with the metastisized consequence of raising consumer prices; despite his elective victory based upon his snake-oil representation that, if elected, he would immediately lower them (as well as to end the Gaza and Ukraine Wars in his first week as President, Are these the manifest statements cand actions of a rational individual?

(8) The insanely hubristic statement of intention to unilaterally make the sovereign Nation of Canada, the 51St State, take over Denmark’s Greenland and change the geographically historic name of The Panama Canal to the “American Canal.”

Do these delusional statements of hubristic intention signify any acceptable degree of sanity? We think not.

(9) Donald Trump’s shameless and pathological reprise of stereotypical Gestapo tactics, by causing the rounding up of peaceful foreign residents, by his well-funded, dystopically masked private army (ICE), cruelly manhandling and deporting them to foreign torture prisons, without a glimmer of due process, as well as heartlessly separating families. Such programmatic behavior is far from acceptable American standards and empirically symptomatic of an inhumane personality disorder.

(10) There is a notable plethora of diagnosable symptoms of diagnosable Neurotic Personality Disorder in Trump’s bizarre befriending and reverent admiration of the Nation’s autocratic enemies, his boast that he can “shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it,” his flourishing use of a wide, black, velvet-tip, emphatic marker to hubristicly promulgate, “Presidential Orders,” regarding matters, constitutionally relegated to Congress, his public declarations and acts of totalitarian “retribution” against political adversaries, his declared war on education, including the perverse extortion of institutions of higher education, his irrational reduction of Federal Civil Service, without Congressional action, and his derogation of the media.

(11) It is clinically relevant that Donald J. Trump is a determinative, singular tenant of an irrationally conceived, reductivist bubble from which he evaluates the entire inventory of interactive human experience in the exclusive terms of a “winner” or “loser.” It is a disgnosably toxic illustration that, in his disoriented perception that each participant in an empirical experience results in a winner and ” loser, “as rationally contrasted with parties dealing for their mutual benefit. It is additionally and consistently telling that Donald Trump disgracefully refers to all soldiers and sailors, particularly those who have lost their lives in battle, are “losers” or “suckers.” At Arlington, he amusingly inquired, viewing the enormity of military gravesites, “What was in it for them?”

(12`) Perhaps the most egregious and spectacular of his toxic symptoms of clinical abnormality is his serial mendacity and his schizophrenic promotion of “alternate facts” and delusional conspiratorial ideations.

America is responsibly and appropriately required to discern and act upon the evident mental disarray of Trump’s cognitive facilities and to lo conclude that Article 25 of the Constitution, authorizing the removal of a President on grounds of (mental) disability, is relevantly appropriate.

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We have previously observed that the Askenezi language is rich in its content of expressive vocabulary and conceivably more descriptively utilitarian than our American English; the latter, adequate in its employment for bills and invoices, but, in comparison with Yiddish, lacking in emotive or singular expression. One such ethnic word (perhaps the most reverenced noun is “mench.”

Yiddish may permissibly be described as a Jewish, Eastern-European (“Ashkenazic”) tongue, in general, composed of 50% German, 30% Hebrew, and 20%, the language of the particular country from which one was obliged to escape. One useful illustration is the singular word “mench.”The personally descriptive term, derived from the noun “menschlichkite ( in German, translated simply as “Mankind”) in its nuanced Yiddish context, refers to a person of admirable character, rectitude, and responsibility, complemented by the humanistic quality of empathy. One, as with numerous Yiddish words (often used in English), is hard-pressed to discern a descriptive equivalent in the American-English lexicon.

By our demanding definition, the honorific appellation, applicable to many singular individuals (perhaps, an insufficient quantity) can, in our view, be empirically applied only to two modern American Presidents; Lyndon Johnson (36th Pres ) (Civil Rights Act, elimination of poverty and expansion of civil rights and racial equality, expanding needed welfare), and, Barack Obama (44th Pres,) (Affordable Care Act (ACA), Wall Street Reforms, Consumer Protection Act). Both Chief Executives were, as well, avatars of morality and family values. American history demonstrates many other admirable Chief Executives (as well as those less venerated); however, in our lifetime, the two cited Presidents± inarguably qualify as “menchen.” Notably, American history reveals the Presidential service of two unparalleled menchen, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The historical account and memory of these singular personalities stand in stark contrast to the current dystopian administration of Donald J. Trump, exemplifying the very antithesis of the word.

The singular criteria for the appropriate awarding of our thematic appellation results in the appropriate exaltation of those who are deservant of its empirical application; there is an uncountable number of responsible and moral individuals, but rare is the objective observation of the singularly demonstrable persona, characterologically deserving of that august designation.

The intrinsic character of the “mench,” we believe, is born of a salubrious combination of a moral and empathic perception of mankind, borne of a secure character open to enlightenment by observed empirical experience, possessing a stable, referable objective self-image, and a sense of mutually shared participation in the life of fellow humanity. Morality, empathy, and intelligence are existential concomitants of “menshlikiet.”

Functionally analogous to the beneficial potential of fertile, nutrient soil, the (unfortunately limited) presence in society of individuals, characterologically and empirically deservant of the thematic, esteemed (Ashkenazic) title, provides impetus for the empirical improvement of humanity and remains direction for the aspirational goal of an insecure and often errant humanity.

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For the enlightenment of those inclined to consider defamation merely as bad words or temporal insults, we would advise, as an empirical matter, that defamatory words can be dynamically considered as more injurious than a knife wound. In most cases, the wound will heal; however, by contrast, the damage to one’s character and reputation may harmfully endure. By illustration, the venal charge of sexual immorality, however false and unjustified, may, nevertheless, affect a woman’s reputation, albeit her chaste behavior.

Perhaps the most reprehensible accusative noun in the course of human history is the charge of “Genocide.” The very zenith of depravity and evil communicated by that charge conveys the most reprehensible of human motivations and one which, like the above example of sexual impropriety, is enduringly devastating.

The accepted (and legal) meaning of the word “genocide” relates to acts committed to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, or religious group. Historical examples can be seen in the Tutsi-Hutu, Serbian-Croatian, and, inarguably, the most devastating and efficient illustration, consisting of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were programmatically murdered, in Adolph Hitler’s genocide against Jews. Notably, it was the surviving remnants of such unprecedented genocidal victimization who were granted a safe homeland by the League of Nations in May 1948. Contextually, within a few days after such singular establishment of a needed Jewish homeland, Israel, it was attacked by surrounding Arab Nations to destroy it and genocidally eliminate its population. It is ironically tragic that that Nation, albeit imperfect, has itself recently been charged with that sordid and inhumane charge of “genocide.”

As a historic note, the Jewish people have eternally suffered from the virtually universal ‘threat of genocidal extinction since the 4th Century Holy Roman Empire of Constantine; the first Christians were Jews, and the venal prejudice had its advent (and endurance) based upon the refusal of the greater majority to convert to Christianity. (see: for example, “Constantine’s Sword,” by James Carroll.) The historic genocidal effort to eliminate Jews and Judaism has perniciously continued to the present.

It would be manifestly cruel and morally inappropriate to charge the State of Isreal, and by reductionist bias, “the Jews,” with the malignant and historically inhumane crime of “Genocide; ” we are unable to see an empirical basis for such defamatory designation; despite our adamant criticism of Isreal’s right-wing governmental policy of military overreaction to the babartic Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

The nature and historical anti-Semitic basis for the charge of genocide can, by rational extension, be deduced from the biased and reductionist conflation of America’s Jews with the news-making Israeli population, thus providing, where relevantly applicable, additional fodder for the World’s systemic haters of Jews.

Hamas’s psychopathic tactic of conducting military operations from pre-planned tunnels beneath Gaza hospitals and using the innocent Palestinian population as “Human Shields” is pathological and inhumanely reprehensible; so, in our view, is the Netanyahu government’s military overreaction, causing untold death, deprivation, and misery to the innocent Palestinian population. We, as American Jewish citizens, find it greatly disturbing and adamantly condemn it; yet, contextually, the horrendous charge of “Genocide” is undeserved and definitionally inappropriate, albeit useful for the aberrant perpetuation of reductionist bigotry.

It is contextually relevant that the brutal evisceration of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bomb and the carpet bombing of Dresden, Germany (See Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut) during the Second World War, notably, were never attributed to “Genocide.”

• Title: Romeo and Juliet, by Wm. Shakespeare

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As reported in “Smithsonian,” two graduate students in Medieval History, at Columbia University, on vacation in Prague, have reported the valuable find of a parchment, dating back to the medieval reign of King Donald Hegseth of Bohemia, known to scholars of the period as the “Orange Monarch,” The priceless document of great didactic interest to scholars of medieval Czechoslavia, was fortuitously discovered during a routine visit to the, still standing, golden privy house of the illustrious Monarch.

The enlightening content, transcribed by the ancient European historian, Plinius the Younger, and translated by the celebrated Moldovan scholar Igor Epicac, is an eye-opening,, arcane account of a political scandal in which the Orange-haired King Donald of Hegseth the First, was officially brought before the Bohemian Senate, charged with unbecoming, lewd, and lascivious conduct. The scandalous behavior, as charged, consisted of the reputed conduct of brisk commerce with the local pleasure house, of which the manager Salvatore (“Sal”) Hepatica was the King’s close friend. and confidant.

As specifically related in the arcane historic document, the ardent supporters of King Donald of Hegseth were initially dubious, but thereafter, by virtue of their systemic inclination to conspiratorial ideation, soon demanded a full inquisition on the alleged scandal.

The managing director of the scandalous enterprise, Mme. Tondelaya Ipecac, then serving time in the Bohemian lock-up for first-degree pornographic solicitation, was called upon at the trial (which took place at the Mozart Opera House, the Courroom being too small to accommodate the great number of attendees) to testify as to the operations of the targetted enterprise; whose testimony was vital in the determination of guilt or innocence of the smirking, confident Orange Monarch.

The crucial witness, with a subterranean wink at the Monarch, standing in the dock, testified to the following facts. The numerous visits to the business enterprise were in the context of the King’s charitable instincts and eleemosynary nature. The kind king, she related, emphatically mindful of the poor and hungry state of the citizens, of the nation, was engaged in the practice of his systemic empathic and charitable instincts by regularly delivering free McDonald’s hamburgers and golden fries to the needy employees of her establishment. She quickly and emphatically added, “Also sodas and French fries.”The panel of eminent Justices then retired to consider their decision.

After seven hours of heated, contentious debate, the Justices returned to the (Opera House) Courtroom, gavelled the tribunal to order and officially proclaimed the verdict of “Guilty!”

The Chief Justice. Hon. Jono Say explained the ultimate reasoning of the unanimous judicial panel consisting of the determination of guilt of the Orange Monarch, on the empirical grounds that McDonald’s Hamburgers would not be invented until a full three centuries in the future.

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• Title borrowed from Arthur Conan Doyle