Must I say something positive?

I finished the book Everything I learned, I learned in a Chinese Restaurant, a Memoir, by Curtis Chin. The author is American with Chinese ancestry and his parents owned a Chinese restaurant in Detroit’s Chinatown. This is his story from birth in 1968 to graduation from college in 1990. I’ve lived in the Detroit area since 1979. I did not know Detroit had a Chinatown. The original Chinatown was west of Downtown and was demolished in the 1950s to make way for a freeway, in the same way Black Bottom, on the east side of Downtown was demolished for a freeway. The new Chinatown was created in the Cass Corridor, the area between Downtown and New Center, which soon had the reputation as the worst of Detroit. Much of the Corridor has been revitalized and renamed Midtown, though Google Street View still shows the area around the restaurant as rather empty. There is a red roofed building at the corner of Cass and Peterboro that might be the restaurant building, though it has been renovated and looks like a showroom. The first school Chin attended on the other side of Cass is still there, but it isn’t a school anymore. After looking around the school through Street View a bit more I realized I had been inside – it was the first home of Cinema Detroit (which now appears to hold events in other movie theaters or in Planet Ant). And I now see in Street View a kiosk with Chinese characters marking Chinatown. Chin was at that school only a year or so when the declining conditions prompted the family to move their home out to Troy, one of the whiter suburbs. The restaurant stayed where it was. To fit in, he became an ardent adherent of the Republican Party, though he was barely a teenager. Also about that time he figured out he is gay, and was terrified of being outed. I wondered what, if anything, would prompt him to leave Republicanism behind. Surely, now a proud gay man in his 50s would he stick with them? He was in the restaurant pretty much all the time he wasn’t in school. There was a room in the back where he studied with his siblings, and when he wasn’t studying he was working either in the kitchen or in the dining room. He learned about what it meant to be a family, what it meant to be part of a team, and how to meet and get along with people from across the economic and racial spectrum. His early encounters with being gay were at the restaurant, from asking the super cute cook to teach him (an excuse just to be close) to the gay couple, one in drag, who used a racial slur but still showed a gay adulthood was possible. So, yeah, he also learned about racism. Chin is a fine writer with a compelling story to tell. I enjoyed the book and recommend it. My Sunday movie was Ennio, a documentary about film composer Ennio Morricone, released in 2021 after his death, though that is not mentioned. I streamed this through Kanopy and was surprised it didn’t come with subtitles. I had to explicitly turn subtitles on. Yes, Morricone is Italian, so his words and most of the commentary was in that language. His father demanded he learn to play the trumpet as Dad did. When the boy was a teen in WWII he played in clubs to get enough to eat, sometimes substituting for his father. But he felt humiliated to play for food and tired of it. His playing was good enough to get into music school. While there he studied composition with a well known composer. A lot of that music was experimental. To pay the bills he arranged songs for singers. He wanted to do more than provide the chords, so every arrangement had something different about it. That led him to arrange, then compose, for films. He thought it was degrading, a thought a lot of film composers have, a thought pushed by composers able to write exclusively for the concert hall. His name got around and soon film director Sergio Leone wanted his talents. They realized they had been classmates. Leone is known for his spaghetti Westerns – Italian films set in the American West, such as A Fistful of Dollars. The quite unusual scores Morricone wrote for those movies set his reputation. Morricone could write fast and appears to have been able to do it at a desk, not at a piano. When a director wanted a change he could come up with something quickly. In 1969 he wrote for 23 films. Sometimes he could start developing his musical ideas as the script was being written. The actors could get a sense of what the director wanted by listening to music already written. Morricone’s fame grew with the score for The Mission in 1986 and The Untouchables in 1987. He was nominated for an Oscar for both and won neither. Several people thought his score was much better and his loss an injustice. After being nominated for and losing a few more Oscars the Academy gave him a lifetime achievement Oscar – and then he won outright the following year for The Hateful Eight. Morricone also wrote concert music, though those pieces aren’t well known, party because many of them are avant-garde. But starting about 2000 concerts of his film music became cultural events, filling arenas. He also saw that many of his tunes were so good they were pulled into the music of other composers. He pretty much redefined what film music could be. I found it all quite enjoyable and fascinating, but then I compose and I very much enjoy listening to film music. I have a CD of The Mission, which I listen to every so often. I once streamed one of his arena concerts (likely at his death). While I recommend this film I know it isn’t for everyone. While I spent evenings watching an orchestra concert, a movie (above), was a part of two rehearsals, and went to supper with my friend and debate partner (emphasis definitely on friend this time), there was a peace deal between Israel and Gaza. Hostages were released! Prisoners returned! After two years and significant destruction and death is the war over? Will I have to say something positive about the nasty guy? Last Friday morning Leila Fadel of NPR spoke to Gershon Baskin, described as a “veteran hostage negotiator,” an Israeli peace activist, and “was involved in back-channel discussions over this deal.” Baskin said:

I've been in regular communication with Steve Witkoff, the presidential envoy to the Middle East and his No. 1 confidant. And from that point, I was communicating with him. Mostly a one-way communication on the importance of the U.S. understanding that the only way that the war in Gaza would end is if President Trump decides that it has to end because Prime Minister Netanyahu had no interest in ending the war whatsoever. He was willing to continue it forever because it keeps him in power.

He also had contacts within Hamas. He told Fadel:

Every time they said, Israel won't accept this, Israel won't accept that, I kept telling Hamas, Israel won't accept anything. You have to imagine that you're sitting in a room across the table from Donald Trump, not from Netanyahu. The person you need to convince is Trump. Trump will impose a deal on Israel when the time is right, when he believes that you are serious about ending this war, returning the hostages, no longer controlling Gaza.

Then about how much credit the nasty guy gets:

A hundred percent. There's no question about it. Without Trump, this would not have happened.

Why doesn’t Biden get any credit?

Biden's relationship with Israel was problematic from the Israeli side. Let's face it, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ron Dermer, his main ally in the Israeli government, are Republicans. They support the American Republican Party, not the Democratic Party. They were hostile to Barack Obama. They were hostile to Joe Biden, and they're very supportive of Donald Trump. So that was one thing. Biden never had the leverage over Netanyahu that Trump has. I couldn't get Biden's people to look at the deal that I negotiated with Hamas in September 2024.

I was pleased that Friday evening NPR broadcast a rebuttal to Baskin. Host Scott Detrow talked to Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to former President Biden. I’ll summarize his main points: When Biden left office there was a ceasefire in place with a plan for the end of the war (so Biden must have looked at something). Israel walked away. In the six months since then Hamas’ position has been very badly weakened and is a shadow of its former self. That allowed the nasty guy to apply some pressure.

So to me, the key thing here is that Israel had no more military objectives to achieve in Gaza, and Hamas had lost a huge amount of its capacity to continue to resist militarily. And when you put those two things together, this situation was ripe to be resolved.

Sullivan says there are still big issues: Will Israel withdraw out of Gaza? When? How willing are Hamas fighters to keep fighting? Who will govern Gaza? I’ve heard since there are still lots of ways the deal could fall apart. For example, the deal calls for other Arab countries providing a peace-keeping force. But why would they want to? Why would they want to put their own troops into a very dangerous situation? So because the nasty guy has done and continues to do so much harm, and because the peace in Gaza is far from a sure thing I won’t credit him for doing something good. Some examples, though mild, of the nasty guy continuing to be vile... Last week Alex Samuels of Daily Kos reported that as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary next year the nasty guy wants to hold an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout on the White House grounds. This will also be around his 80th birthday. I read that and thought he thinks the best way to celebrate our history is with violence. A reminder that the purpose of violence is to enforce the social hierarchy. Also last week Alix Breeden of Kos reported the nasty guy revealed plans for America’s own triumphal arch. I don’t know how it will compare to the Arch de Triomphe in Paris. The map on the nasty guy’s desk showed the arch would be placed across from the Lincoln Memorial where there is a traffic circle, currently just grass. Breeden noted it is another way the nasty guy insists on leaving his fingerprints on the capital. I note an arch of triumph implies destroying an opponent, not learning to live together. Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the nasty guy’s tendency to turn Fox News reporting into governmental policy. The nasty guy doesn’t read and he is an avid watcher of the network. That appears to be his major source of information. And he’s quite susceptible to suggestion. Couple that with Fox News’ reason to exist being the pumping out of conservative propaganda. The network showed one image of a migrant scaling the border. The nasty guy starts pushing a migrant invasion. The network shows old isolated images of violence in Portland and the nasty guy claims the city is “war ravaged.” His North Korea policy is based on what he watched on Fox News.

In his first term, the Trump-Fox feedback loop—as Media Matters for America senior fellow Matt Gertz has termed it—came to life. Trump watched the network religiously and built his presidency around its obsessions.

And the network’s influence has only gotten stronger during the second term. Alan Austin of the Kos community listed 40 ways the nasty guy and the MAGA movement are violating the Bible. He lists their actions with links to articles and the Bible verse that contradicts the actions. Here is a selection:

2. Greed for personal wealth. Proverbs 29:4 affirms that rulers intent on justice build strong nations but those obsessed with money ruin them. 3. Skewing the economy in favor of the rich. Jeremiah 22:16 refers to the righteous King Josiah who won God’s approval by defended the poor first and foremost. 6. MAGA leaders refuse foreigners equal rights as the native-born. Leviticus 19:33-34 demands equality: “Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” 7. Trump and other MAGA leaders routinely call for violence against perceived political enemies. Philippians 4:5-7 urges believers to be peaceful and gentle towards everyone. 18. Multiple court cases and bankruptcy hearings have confirmed Trump has defrauded thousands of employees of their wages. Jeremiah 22:13 vehemently condemns the employer “who makes his people work for nothing and does not pay their wages.” 29. Changes to tax and other laws have shifted wealth and income from the poor to the rich. Proverbs 22:16 warns that this eventually impoverishes a nation.