On the death of #SheldonAdelson - a brief thread.

Sheldon Adelson - the megadonor to the GOP who received the genuflection of virtually all hopefuls on the Republican national stage - is dead. 1/

Adelson pumped money into the very GOP machinery that has enabled Trumpism, facilitated policies that have torn children from their parents, cultivated racism, antisemitism, and white supremacy, and that has now led to the deaths of 350,000+ Americans from COVID. 2/
Some people who appreciated the money he threw at Israeli groups and initiatives are going to be angry if I celebrate the demise of this merchant of corruption and death. "Jews don't celebrate death", right? Wrong. 3/
The "Song of the Sea" (Exodus 15:1-18) is the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible, the foundation of Israelite religious belief, and it is nothing but a celebration of a mass death of Egyptians at the Red Sea during the Exodus. 4/
1 Samuel 18 preserves an old song that tells us that both David and Saul were celebrated for slaughtering "thousands" and "myriads". 5/
The Passover Seder ritual has a song that literally contains a line saying that Jews would have been satisfied if God only killed Egypt's firstborn. 6/
And every (non-Pandemic) year, Jewish parents take their kids to synagogue to hear the Scroll of Esther read on the holiday of Purim, and celebrate as the passages describing the slaughter of Haman, his sons, and other adversaries are read aloud. 7/
"But these were enemies!" the argument will go. Sure. And so was Adelson. An enemy to this country, an enemy to democracy, an enemy to intellectual honesty and facts, and ultimately, an enemy to his fellow American Jews who did not share GOP values. 8/
I'm a Jew, living through an antisemitic, white supremacist, Trumpist insurrection that is the closest thing to the Nazi threat in early 1930s Germany that we've seen SINCE that threat. And Adelson helped empower these people 9/:
Adelson was a fiend, a source of danger, a traitor to this country's principles and an enabler of violent destruction. Now he's dead. His memory will not be a blessing. 10/10

More from Government

The Government is making the same mistakes as it did in the first wave. Except with knowledge.

A thread.


The Government's strategy at the beginning of the pandemic was to 'cocoon' the vulnerable (e.g. those in care homes). This was a 'herd immunity' strategy. This interview is from


This strategy failed. It is impossible to 'cocoon' the vulnerable, as Covid is passed from younger people to older, more vulnerable people.

We can see this playing out through heatmaps. e.g. these heatmaps from the second


The Government then decided to change its strategy to 'preventing a second wave that overwhelms the NHS'. This was announced on 8 June in Parliament.

This is not the same as 'preventing a second wave'.

https://t.co/DPWiJbCKRm


The Academy of Medical Scientists published a report on 14 July 'Preparing for a Challenging Winter' commissioned by the Chief Scientific Adviser that set out what needed to be done in order to prevent a catastrophe over the winter
This is a good piece on fissures within the GOP but I think it mischaracterizes the Trump presidency as “populist” & repeats a story about how conservatives & the GOP expelled the far-right in the mid-1960s that is actually far more complicated. /1

I don’t think the sharp opposition between “hard-edge populism” & “conservative orthodoxy” holds. Many of the Trump administration’s achievements were boilerplate conservatism. Its own website trumpets things like “massive deregulation,” tax cuts, etc. /2

https://t.co/N97v85Bb79


The claim that Buckley and “key GOP politicians banded together to marginalize anti-Communist extremism and conspiracy-mongering” of the JBS has been widely repeated lately but the history is more complicated. /3


This tweet by @ThePlumLineGS citing a paper by @sam_rosenfeld and @daschloz on the "porous" boundary between conservatives, the GOP and the far-right is relevant in this context.


This is a separate point but I find it interesting that Gaetz, like Roy Moore did In his failed Senate campaign, disses McConnell. What are their actual policy differences? MM supported taking health care away from millions, a tax cut for the rich, conservative judges, etc. /5

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