Progressives (Liberals)

What I hope happens is more information and education into the Palestine/Israel issue and a more balanced look into the solutions with everybody wanting a common solution good for all sides.

But, dreams are dreams, not reality.
We can at least be more supportive of the UN and go back to objecting to more Jewish settlements being built.

As a result, Dionne pleads with moderates and progressives to see one another as allies who have far more in common than they might think.

I want to say this right, because I haven’t said this to anybody: Among all the candidates, the person who I believe could stand toe-to-toe, strongest and longest with Donald Trump is Mike Bloomberg. (...) I know Mike Bloomberg socially. Every summer I go to a dinner on Martha’s Vineyard with Mike Bloomberg. I’ve argued with him about policies that I didn’t like. He is enormously intelligent and capable. When he was mayor, I watched him. He could wear it lightly. It’s not like Jimmy Carter with the weight of the world on him. I think that he’s tough, and I think he could take on the bully Donald Trump. Very few people can stand up to a bully. Mike’s got some bully in him. I think he’s good.

Henry Louis Gates

That's so simplistic. How would you feel if you were arrested trying to enter your own home?

If the cop thought I was breaking in I would be fine with it and would have the patience to straighten it out, not discredit someone for doing their job.

Was conciliatory thinking along the lines of “racists aren’t ready for that” in your head in 2009 when you were dealing with the incident with the Cambridge police? Oh, yeah. President Obama made an innocent comment that the arrest was stupid, which it was. Then all of a sudden all these racists are beating up on him. My whole attitude was channeled through the desire to protect our first black president. But there was another motivation. I thought that it would be hubristic and dishonest if I compared what happened to me to what happens to black people in the inner city. I thought, If I didn’t have the protections of class and status —

The outcome would’ve been very different. Right. When the policeman, Sgt. Crowley, and I met, I said, “Why did you arrest me?” He said, “I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to go home to my wife, because I was convinced that your partner was upstairs and he was going to come down and blow me away.” He told me he had gotten a call: “Two black guys are breaking into this house.” One of them answers the door — me — when he rang the bell, and I’m stepping over suitcases, because I’d just come back from a trip. Unbeknown to me, one pattern of thievery is bringing empty suitcases to a house. So the officer saw a black face, he saw the suitcases: That’s part of a profile. I was what Barbara Johnson calls “an already-read text.” He couldn’t hear me, couldn’t see me. Well, that might be related to police excesses and abuses, but it’s a far end of the scale, and I was able to reverse what happened to me, unlike an Eric Garner. So my whole reaction to my arrest was determined by two things: The attacks on President Obama and my own determination not to claim too much for my own victimization.

Then when you actually had the “beer summit,” did President Obama say anything helpful, or was that whole thing pro forma? Oh, that’s interesting. (...) Anyway, we got to the White House, and we and Sgt. Crowley’s family all got to the library at the same time. I walked over to Sgt. Crowley. He had his kids there, and I said to them: “Hi, I’m Professor Gates. Hope you come to Harvard one day. Maybe you’ll take one of my classes.” Then I said to him, “Can I have a word with you?” He and I went off and did the beer summit ourselves. I said, “Look, I don’t know about you, man, but I just want this to go away.” He goes, “This is a nightmare.” I said to him: “The president has come under attack. Racism’s coming out of the floor. I’m sure you’re a decent person. I forgive you. Let’s move on.” He goes, “That would be the best thing that could happen.” I said, “Maybe we could find a way to lecture about it.” He laughed and said, “Anything I can do to get off the beat.” I realized he was funny. I think that gay people have a sense of who’s homophobic. I think that Jewish people have a sense of who’s anti-Semitic. I definitely think black people — I could walk out there and tell you, “That [expletive] is a racist.”

And you’re saying you didn’t get that vibe from Sgt. Crowley? I didn’t get that vibe from him. When we were called into the Oval Office, I said to the president, “Mr. President, we had a great conversation in the library.” He said, “Oh, it sounds like it’s all settled.” The actual beer summit was us doing small talk.

especially when the racial dimension is added to the mix.

You and I are usually on the same page

a minor mix-up into a toxic racial issue for political purposes.

Guess I need to read more carefully.