What If They Held A Day of Hate...and no one showed up?

I am suffering through a wretched case of sniffleous. COVID negative, possible minor sinus infection that quickly resolved itself with lots of green tea with jasmine, and not enough of a sore throat to bother with, but that frickin' sniffleous took me down with a dull thud. 

I guess not breathing may have played a part, but I felt so lousy that on blizzard morning, I asked Ziggy for tea and toast. Wasn't 'til I actually opened my eyes that I figured out two major things: 1) he wasn't in the bed, and B) as the senior sympathetically pointed out, his dad, like Generalissimo Franco, is still dead. Y'know, I know this, but I was still annoyed that I had to get up to make my own tea and toast when I felt like my head was closer to the Titanic than to the surface.  

I was alert enough on Shabbat morning to flick on CNN to see what was happening with National Day of Hate. I admit, I was somewhat curious about who was gonna do what to whom, despite a couple of nagging ideas in the back of my head. As I was lying in state, much as Franco had once done, I watched CNN, then MSNBC for a while, before I checked in at (shudder) FOX before I fell asleep from boredom. When I awoke, still nothing was going on. Not exactly a surprise. 

Let's unpack this red herring a bit. 

To the best of my research, there was no evidence anyone applied for parade or gathering permits in preparation for Day of Hate rallies across the countr. That should've been a bit of a red herring flag right there. 

Okay, you're not gonna rally, but maybe you wanna blow something up.

Let's pretend you want to blow up the local synagogue. Do you announce it to the media prior to setting the explosives, or after setting them in place, but before detonation? Either way, bomb squads and sniffer dogs are gonna show up. After detonation, it's a sure bet they're gonna show.

Okay, no building. Maybe what you had in mind was a mass shooting. Again, are you gonna send out flyers to the media so they can catch you in action?  Nah, I don't think so. 

But the NYPD did. They sent out a secret memo that was leaked, of course, detailing what they thought, based on various social media posts, was being planned for this Day of Hate: graffiti, flyers, banners, stickers.

Yup. Stickers. 

Groups in Iowa, California, and New York, according to their social media, were on board to scare us all with stickers. I bet they even had bumper stickers made up. Someone should check hardware stores and assorted Walmarts for sharp increases in spray paint sales. 

But that didn't stop every cop house in the country from prepping battle gear just in case something went down. 

Sure, forewarned is forearmed. Granted, based on NYPD intelligence, nail polish remover and GooGone instead of assault weapons were more in order...but then again, maybe there were code words for guns (graffiti,) fireworks (flyers,) bazookas (banners,) or semi automatic rifles (stickers.) 

On the other hand....

What a great way to float a trial balloon...Chinese or otherwise... to see what precautions are being taken and how they are laid out. It's a reconnaissance mission. A dry run. A rehearsal. Call it what you will, but nothing happened on Shabbat because it wasn't supposed to.

Do not think for one New York minute that we are outta the woods on this. I think all the speechifying, pot banging, and sabre-rattling does not scare these guys. Quite the opposite. I think they gathered more than enough intelligence to actually do something on another date set aside to hate Jews, only this time, they are not gonna announce it to the media. 

The hate is being fanned on two sides, tragically enough. From the white supremacist side on the extreme right, and by the "anti Zionist" side of the extreme left. BOTH sides, people. "The left?" you ask. If you haven't figured it out yet, let me clarify the extreme left "anti Zionist" position. This is the new shadow phrase for antisemitism. "Anti-Zionists" conflate all Jews with an extreme form of Zionism that does not represent the majority of Jews either in the Diaspora or in Israel. You know as well as I do there are radical sides to every. group,  but do you damn an entire population for a wing-nut side? Usually, not, unless there are Jews involved; then it's okay.

photo: CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS

Jews have been expelled from almost every country in which we have settled as a small minority, where we were content to keep our laws and customs within our own communities, usually discouraging conversion, often shunning intermarriage, thriving in the businesses which we are permitted to operate. But that never stopped anyone from passing laws about how we were to dress, walk down the street, build our houses. It wasn't enough we gave the rest of you our Bible? Did we ever mention how we feel about cultural appropriation of our beliefs as you morphed them into something alien to us? How many times have you seen Jews rushing into a church or mosque to deface the building, or worse, shoot down worshippers in cold blood? Nah. I didn't think so.

Yet there is a segment of these here United States' population that thinks it's a great idea to sponsor a Day of Hate in our honor. Not that anything happened. No one seemed to show up. 

I don't know about any of you, but that's the part that worries me more. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Day

Never underestimate the grit and determination of

a newly minted 5-year old.

Lego directions today...tomorrow, Ikea...the day after that?

Maybe NASA.

Happy 5th Birthday, Young Sir