In a World of Darkness, Try to Be the Light

Reflections on Personal Dignity and Integrity in Politically Ugly Times

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” 

That’s a joke my father used to tell me about anonymity on the internet. 

Before the era of Russian bots and foreign disinformation campaigns, that joke was a lot funnier.  

“In a land where there are no men, try to be a man.” 

That’s a teaching from the Ethics of the Fathers that I repeat to myself every morning after wrapping Tefillin. 

Before the era of complete gender blindness, this teaching was a lot clearer. 

These two quotes, brought together from disparate sides of the intellectual universe, are sitting right in the center of tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we will once again select a new president.

But tomorrow feels more important than other elections. It feels like the fate of the very world is at stake. It certainly feels like the fate of our country is at stake. 

Of course, the “overhyping” of the intensity of the current election is a perennial problem because, in truth, every election is the most important in our history because every other election went smoothly, which we know because this year we are having an election. 

The stakes of the election are high – no one will deny that, and I am certainly not interested in trying to convince anyone to vote one way or the other.

I know that there is a finite amount of things which people can be convinced of, and, if I could convince you to do anything, I would try to convince you to call your parents more, or to light Shabbos candles one more time every year, or to try to smile when you speak to people – you know, things that really matter. 

My great concern about this election is not about who will win or lose – it is about how we will speak to and treat each other after the fact. 

“On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” 

An old mentor of mine once said, “never read the comments on anything you read on the internet – everyone in the comments section is a barbarian.” 

And he was exactly right. 

And I took so much pride in being above the barbarians. 

Until, of course, I remembered when I too had hidden behind the anonymity of the internet to scream things at people I never would have in person. 

I think we all have. 

If you feel that you haven’t, let me ask you this. 

If I had a recording of everything you had ever said to another person on the internet, would you want to hear it? 

Or would you blush with shame? 

I would more than blush – I would blanche. (Apologies, I know that joke was weak, but it was right there, and, besides, what are you going to do about it?) 

I can admit to having behaved like a dog on the internet. 

And, what’s worse, now that I am a G-d fearing man, I also know that G-d saw me behaving like a dog on the internet. 

And that’s a bad feeling. 

It’s a bad feeling to think about what G-d would say to you about how nasty you have been to strangers on the internet, and even maybe people in your own life. 

Is that the image of yourself that you want to be presenting to G-d? Or, if you struggle with believing in G-d, is that the image of yourself you want to present at all? 

You are a human being, a being of great dignity, a being capable of choosing between right and wrong – something even the angels cannot do. 

And, what’s more, you are not just a dignified human being – you are a reader of The Zionist Voice, and there is no greater sign of human dignity and excellence than being an avid reader of The Zionist Voice. 

G-d knows what you do in the shadows. G-d knows how excellent your taste in literature is. Do not damage that image of yourself for this election.

Is either candidate worth it? 

By this time tomorrow, the election will be all but decided, and the media and everyone around us will act like it is the end of some great human saga. 

But it’s not the end – it’s only the beginning. 

And, really, it is only the beginning of the beginning. 

After eight years of political agony, this election will bring us no closer to the one thing that I believe most Americans want – a return to peace. 

A return to the peace of democratic nonchalance, where elections were intense and bitter, not life and death. 

I remember living in the Bush years and thinking that things could not possibly be worse in  American politics. 

Looking back, in my lifetime, nothing has ever been better. 

The point of all of this is to say that, for all of the hullabaloo, this election is not worth your wellbeing.

It’s not. 

Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris deserve even one iota of your personal happiness and well-being. 

The next four years of American politics will be bad. 

Everyone who graduated from Columbia University’s School for Outdoor Activities and Public Policy will be 25 by 2028… that means that they will be ready to enter congress. 

The anti-abortion culture warriors have made huge strides as a result of the ill-advised marriage between wokeism and abortion. 

The last members of the moderate baby-boomer political class are aging out of office.

I fear that the election of 2028 will make the election of 2024 look like the poster-boy for good political virtues. 

And I know that you are feeling anxious – I am too. 

But I am trying to be a little more blase about the whole thing.

“In a land where there are no men, try to be a man.” 

Imagine, for a moment, that you were going to replace Anderson Cooper on CNN. And, actually, you are so good at political commentary, they decide to fire everyone else from every other news channel. 

It is just you and the American people – you are their only source of information about politics. 

How would you want to handle that job? How would you want to speak to the people? 

Would you want to dominate the airwaves with your own bias, or would you try your best to give both sides of every argument fair play? 

And, more importantly, how would you speak to your guests and colleagues? 

However you imagine yourself speaking in that scenario should be how you speak to everyone after tomorrow. 

Donald Trump may be evil and Kamala may be unqualified, but that does not mean that their supporters are. 

We have a terrible problem in the U.S. of boiling people down to their political beliefs when, in fact, those are probably the least telling aspects of their personalities. 

If I need to make a judgment call about another person, I just look at how they treat the people who are lower on the social ladder than they are. 

If you treat waiters and busboys like they’re nameless drones who are meant to serve you, you are a deplorable form of human garbage who belongs in a wastebasket. If you treat them with kindness and respect, I’ll bet that you treat everyone with kindness and respect, and that makes you a hero who is actively involved in making this country a better place. 

Your vote is perhaps the least consequential way that you contribute to our society. 

Your daily behaviors have a much greater impact on the trajectory of our nation than your vote. 

So if you have a friend who you respect, and who you care about, and who is voting for someone you think is crazy, ask yourself which of those three things matter and which ones do not.  

Many things will happen in the next four years that will come to shape the future of our country. 

A new generation of leaders is coming to the fore, and the old generation of leaders is fighting back against them, as has been the eternal case of human nature. 

The aging king is jealous of the rising prince.

Donald Trump and David Duke will be replaced by J.D. Vance and Jackson Hinkle. 

Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders will be replaced by A.O.C. and Ilhan Omar.

Meanwhile, I will be here, writing my little poems, and wondering if there is any way to bring back the Federalist Party, waiting for the world to be ready to hear truth again. 

Be kind to one another because this election is only the beginning of the strife. 

I will leave you with this historical message of hope, although it is certainly wrapped in a shroud of darkness. 

In late 1924: 

In Germany, a young Adolf Hitler was sitting in a Munich jail cell, gaining a tremendous amount of acclaim for his attempted overthrow of the weak Weimar government. It was that trial that would launch him into the national conversation and begin his career as Germany’s savior. 

He argued that Germany had become too woke and had failed to keep its citizens safe.

In Russia, an aging Marxist ideologue and thinker dies, leaving the world asking who will take yp the great mantel of Marxist progressivism. 

The obvious choice, everyone knows, is Leon Trotsky. 

But Trotsky, like some of our modern day politicians, had a skeleton in his closet too big to hide – he was a Jew. 

By the end of 1924, Lenin was dead, Trotsky was in exile, Stalin was in charge, and Marxism would never be the same.  

In Mandatory Palestine, a drunken Winston Churchill had agreed to give 4/5ths of the territory to the Hashemite royal family (the family that still rules Jordan) in 1922, and by 1924, the new Kingdom of Jordan was established. 

How complicated did that one decision make things? 

Well, the Hashemite Kings are direct descendants of the prophet Muhammed, and, according to Sunni tradition, were the rightful protectors of Mecca and Medina. 

However, in the Great Arab Revolt of 1916-1919, they were kicked out of the Arabian Peninsula by the House of Saud, who then became the protectors of Mecca and Medina. Adding insult to injury, all of this happened before the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia had been discovered. 

So, as part of the concessions to the Hashemite King, the King of Jordan was declared to be the protector of Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. 

While, historically, these two sites were not nearly as important as Mecca and Medina, they took on a new level of importance since the Hashemite Kings were now their protectors. 

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where these two mosques sit, is still governed by the Jordanians.

This spot is also where, in 1951, the King of Jordan was assassinated by members of the Mufti’s family and the Muslim Brotherhood, but that is a story for another time. 

In the United States, President Calvin Coolidge had just been elected, and he appointed Frank Kellogg as his Secretary of State. 

Frank Kellogg is most famous for his work on the “Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1926,” a bilateral treaty passed jointly by the U.S. and France banning war for all time. 

For his work, Kellogg received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930. 

In England, meanwhile, Winston Churchill was wasting away in the political wilderness, writing books about histories long-since forgotten. 

In Israel, a man named Ze’ev Jabotinksy had established an organization called “Betar” that was training Jews to defend themselves against attacks from Palestinian Arabs. 

A few thousand miles away, a young Jew in the Russian Empire read Jabotinsky’s work and became enamored with it – that man’s name was Menachem Begin. 

As dark as things may seem now, in 2024, remember that all of the darkness of the world cannot put out a single flame. 

In a world of darkness, try to be the light. 

Spread Love, Spread Light, 

Am Yisrael Chai 

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