On voting

Or, a newsletter edition for the end of the world

We’re back!

Housekeeping notes: This week, paid subscribers got this month’s ET Watch Home, a monthly movie essay on Czech New Wave films. This month’s movie was Juraj Herz’s The Cremator.

And next week (yes, back to back weeks of paid content because I was late with the aforementioned essay!), paid subscribers will get November’s ET Ask Home, a monthly questionnaire. November’s month features a very special guest.

Paid subscribers to this newsletter also get the premium version of The Political Cycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on politics in the US, UK, India—and the wider world.

With that! Onto news, views, and Jews. 

THE NEWS

• For the Forward, I wrote about Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally and why democracy is a Jewish issue — one that’s at stake in this election. 

• For Haaretz, I wrote about immigration discourse in American politics today and how it intersects with Jewish history, politics, identities, and antisemitism. 

• This week on the podcast, we did a little election pop culture roundup. 

• For VSquare, I wrote about what the 2024 presidential election could mean for Central and Eastern Europe.

• Here’s Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, denied a speaking spot at the DNC, on voting for Kamala Harris.

• And here is a comparison of Trump and Harris on LGBTQ issues.

MY VIEWS ON…

…the election!

No, don’t worry. I don’t have another essay on the election. The above links are what I have to say about it this week. But if you’d like to read a little more, here’s a poem by Czesław Miłosz that I think about a lot.

I hope you’ll read it and think about it and I hope you’ll vote.* 

*If you’re voting for Jill Stein, you are, in my opinion, voting for a grifter. If you’re voting for Donald Trump, I’m frankly shocked that you’re reading this newsletter. Why are you voting for Trump? That he’s a clown doesn’t make that a fun, funny choice. Make a better one. Like, say, for Kamala Harris. Especially if you live in a swing state. 

AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS

• If you’re a journalist or writer, the good people at Nexus and I put together a little guide for questions to ask yourself when citing data on antisemitism.

• Here’s a CNN piece on the new House committee on education report on antisemitism, also featuring a quote from Nexus on why this is “unhelpful and hyper-partisan.”

• Alana Zeitchik in the Forward: “Five of my family members were freed from captivity during the one and only ceasefire deal last November, but we still have loved ones who remain tortured in the tunnels under Gaza…our last shred of hope depends on the election of an American president who can successfully pressure both Israel and Hamas to make a deal that brings the hostages home and ends the enormous suffering caused by this war. I believe only one candidate has the chops to do that: Vice President Kamala Harris.”

• Abe Foxman, former head of the ADL, slammed the ADL for its response, such as it was, to Trump’s MSG rally.

• JTA has a report on 10 years of Polin, my favorite Jewish museum in the world.

• A Haaretz editorial argues that “if it looks like ethnic cleansing, it probably is.”

• This election is such that we have dueling Pennsylvania Jewish deli ads.

-ET

"Vote!" by kgroovy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.