I'm your huckleberry

Yo, you over there in the keffiyeh asking about Zionists on this bus. I'm actually a hillbilly from Appalachia, but for the moment, I self-identify as a Jew. Come on over and let's have a chat.

Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash

This is a rant. R-rated: language, depictions of potential violence, graphic insults that may prove discomforting only to “sensitive” people who don’t read Howlin’ anyway. But NSFW if you are using the transcript reader. Thanks for allowing me to vent my spleen.

Yo, you keffiyeh-wearing, anti-Semitic protesters holding hostages in college buildings, defacing monuments and private homes, and threatening people on public buses. Eighty-five years ago, your philosophical forebears got away with facilitating genocide because not enough people saw through their bullshit until it was too late. Unfortunately for you, that was then, and this is now. In the here and now, you mistakenly put way too much stock in how the media and academia think about and handle you with kid gloves, and not enough in what ordinary Americans think about and would handle you if you pulled your shit outside of safe progressive enclaves.

I triple-dog dare you to test this thesis. I'm your huckleberry, and I'm nowhere near the front of the line. Please, please, step onto the bus I'm riding and ask if there are any Zionists onboard. I'll convert to Judaism on the spot. I’ve had about as much as I’m going to take from you clueless, morally-bereft, historically-challenged dipshits. It’s time for a reality check.

Anyone making threats on behalf of a terrorist organization, Hamas, whose military tactics include targeting women and children and having over a million men identify as women and children to hide among them from the ass-whipping they’ve got coming, isn’t to be feared. Hamas should be mocked for the cowards that they are. That’s what I’m doing right now. You have a problem with that? I’m easy to find. Bring help.

Your fool’s confidence is based on your notion that most of the people in this country are like the woke, compliant media who parrot Hamas’s verifiably false claims about the conflict in Gaza, officials in blue cities, or the intellectually lazy and morally timid academic cowards you are able to steamroll on college campuses. You may be able to get administrators like Cal State Los Angeles president Berenecea Johnson Eanes to cower in their offices when you turn over a few tables to barricade and occupy a building, but try pulling that most anywhere else in America and see how it works for you.

Let me give you a hint: It would be very similar to what would happen if you were stupid enough to pose as a journalist and hold hostages that terrorists kidnapped at a music festival in your home when retribution arrived. Along that line, I'm reasonably sure that if you are either a terrorist, a representative of, or an apologist for a terrorist organization dedicated to the erasure of my kind and you kidnap my kids to strike a blow for your cause, that I give zero fucks about what my special forces do to you while rescuing hostages.

The thing about you Hamas-loving anti-Semites that galls me in particular is that you encapsulate everything about wokeness that I and many others have come to despise. Ignorance of history? Check. Ignorance of facts? Check. Ignorance of reality? Check. Exceptional suspension of disbelief? Check. Bigotry not incredibly well disguised as anti-bigotry? Check. Reeking of totalitarianism? Check. Cowards masquerading as freedom fighters? Check. Can only sell your poisonous sophistry to the very young, very woke, and very stupid? Check, check, and check.

Yeah, there’s a lot there to work with. Unfortunately for you, as you are on the verge of finding out, most of this country sees you for who you are. And as much as I and many others aren’t fond of tussles that we can avoid, we aren’t scared when trouble makes its way to our door. If self-preservation is an instinct that you possess, it’d benefit you to figure all of that out. We’re not going to have a Holocaust 2.0. Not on our watch.

Eighty years ago this past week, young people in this country were stepping off landing ships on the Normandy coast, under murderous fire, to fight the last group of anti-Semites who tried eradicating Jews.

Young people engaged in civic involvement 80 years ago and today. These cohorts are not the same.

Look at that kid in the middle of the first photograph. He looks to me like he’s 16 years old. There’s a good chance that young man never made it off that beach on that awful day. It's possible that he never had the chance to attend college (much less occupy a campus office in a dumbshit protest), to see his children and grandchildren grow up, and to pass away in old age with them by his side. All of that because our nation sent this young man and many others off to a faraway land to fight evil. These kids sacrificed a lot because we allowed the last group of anti-Semitic assholes to take over half of Europe before we responded. Right now, it’s college campuses, city buses, a few homes, and some monuments. I’m saying that’s as far as we let this bullshit go.

So, in memory of that young man and his friends who went to Normandy all of those years ago, I’m with them. They say that God doesn’t close one door without opening another. Please, God, open that door.

Nobody (2021)

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.