"Folk," meaning people in general, goes back to Old English.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces it back as far as 999: "Þa elkede man fram dæge to dæge, & swencte þæt earme folc þe on ðam scipon lagon." Chaucer used it, in Middle English, c1405, that's surprisingly readable: "Vp on thise steedes, grete and whyte Ther seten folk."
And here's Alexander Hamilton, with American terseness: "There were Folks killed in 1723." That made me think of Ilhan Omar's "Some people did something."
IN THE COMMENTS: James K said:
Incidentally, the Alexander Hamilton who said "There were Folks killed in 1723" is not the Alexander Hamilton who co-wrote the Federalist Papers. It was some other guy with the same name.
And I see at the link that the other Alexander Hamilton was not an American, but a Scot. So that must be Scottish terseness. And I am retrospectively less reminded of Ilhan Omar.
I wasn't expecting to get such a laugh when I clicked on the headline "Anti-Israel Congressman You Never Heard Of Whines About Why No One Is Attacking Him On Social Media" at Instapundit and landed at Legal Insurrection, where the subheadline is "After Rep. Mark Pocan noted that he condemned Israel but no one criticized him, people responded that they never heard of him."
The tweet that post is about is: "I'm seeing a lot of right-wing extremists criticize my wonderful colleague, @IlhanMN, because she rightly condemned the murder of Palestinian children & Israel's violence against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrar & at Al-Aqsa. I did the same, wonder why they're not criticizing me?"
You see what's going on there: He's insinuating that the criticism of Ilhan Omar is anti-Muslim. Otherwise the critics would go after him too. The taunting response to his insinuation is that he's not famous. Legal Insurrection embeds many tweets with the same you're-not-famous answer to Pocan's "wonder why they're not criticizing me."
"... and the Minnesota congresswoman faces the stiffest challenge of any member of the Squad.... Bankrolled by pro-Israel donors, Antone Melton-Meaux has spent more than twice as much as Omar on television ads, and outside groups have kicked in to increase his advantage.... Omar drew the ire of pro-Israel leaders this year when she made comments that many of them have deemed anti-Semitic. She tweeted once that Israel had 'hypnotized the world' and said that U.S. lawmakers supportive of Israel had a dual allegiance to that country and their own. Progressive groups, who spent big to help Tlaib in her primary last week, have not done much to back up Omar. The congresswoman’s internal polling from early July showed her with a big lead — but some operatives in the party fear this primary will be much closer than Tlaib’s...."
Miftah, a not-for-profit run by longtime Palestinian peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi, was forced to apologize in 2013 after publishing an article on its website criticizing then-President Barack Obama for hosting a Passover Seder at the White House, JTA reported at the time.
“Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between ‘Passover’ and ‘Christian blood’..?! Or ‘Passover’ and ‘Jewish blood rituals?!’” read the post. “Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.”
Accusations that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to bake matzah was used for centuries to justify pogroms and other anti-Semitic acts....
"... when he railed against a Somali-born congresswoman, as Republicans in Congress rushed to distance themselves and their party from the ugly refrain. Mr. Trump said he was 'not happy' with the chant [and] claimed that he had tried to cut off the chant, an assertion contradicted by video of the event. Asked why he did not stop it, Mr. Trump said, 'I think I did — I started speaking very quickly.' In fact, as the crowd roared 'send her back,' Mr. Trump looked around silently and paused as the scene unfolded in front of him, doing nothing to halt the chorus. 'I was not happy with it,' Mr. Trump said on Thursday at the White House. 'I disagree with it.'"
Are we supposed to have a big debate about what was in his head at the time and whether he — the only one with access to the place — is lying when he purports to tell us what was going on inside? Do we have nothing better to do?! The important thing is that he's distancing himself from the chant and letting his fans know they shouldn't chant it.
We talked about the chant earlier this morning, and I took a poll. Here are the results (with almost a thousand voters):
I'm surprised anyone voted for the disgusting option, "Yes. It's thrilling to see one individual singled out and scared." I'm going to assume those were trolls. That was the last of the "yes" options, and it led to "no" options, the first 3 of which signaled why that last "yes" ooption was off-the-charts bad. Perhaps some voters were influenced by the Alinsky answer: "Yes. Alinsky said it best: 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.'" I think that nudges some people to think: The left would do it to the right, so the right should do it to the left.
I like to develop and express my opinion through poll options, and I try to write each one fully committing to the state of mind one would need to make that choice. Sometimes I do polls when I don't really have a right answer in mind. But in this case, my answer was most certainly "no," and I really felt like an actor playing a villain when I was composing 2 or 3 of those "yes" options.
ADDED: Assess "I started speaking very quickly" for yourself:
President Trump said he tried to stop his supporters' chants of "send her back" after he railed against the congresswoman Ilhan Omar. But video from last night's rally contradicts him. Read more: https://t.co/sBEQr2Sa5Opic.twitter.com/pDGpfd75P5
Here's the full text of "Still I Rise," which is not to be confused with "On the Pulse of the Morning," the poem — often mocked by Rush Limbaugh — that Angelou performed at Bill Clinton's inauguration, the one that begins with "A Rock, A River, A Tree" and the "dry tokens" (petrified droppings?) of dinosaurs:
The popular press praised Clinton's choice of Angelou as inaugural poet, and her "representiveness" of the American people and its president. Critic Mary Jane Lupton said that "Angelou's ultimate greatness will be attributed" to the poem, and that Angelou's "theatrical" performance of it, using skills she learned as an actor and speaker, marked a return to the African-American oral tradition of speakers such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Poetry critics, despite praising Angelou's recitation and performance, gave mostly negative reviews of the poem....
I think the move to poetry is good! Trump does poetry too. Famously, "The Snake"!
CORRECTION: The original headline for this post was "Ihan Omar takes to the high ground — the Maya-Angelou-at-the-Clinton-inauguration high ground." That lets you see that I myself confused "Still I Rise" with "On the Pulse of the Morning." I'd discovered my mistake as I put the post together, but I forgot to change the post title until after publication. Fixed!
Trump fans eventually break out in "send her back!" chants directed toward Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who serves in Congress who Trump viciously smeared. pic.twitter.com/LX3eAEkfci
The crudeness: Trump, in his original tweet and later statements, was asking about the failure to leave and noting their option to leave. They are free. "Send her back" is not a question. It's an imperative. And it's not about the individual's option to leave. Someone — the group as a whole, Trump as President? — is told to do the sending, which sounds like an overriding of the individual's freedom — a deportation. Trump hasn't ever talked about kicking a Congresswoman out of the country. So the crowd has gone beyond Trump's idea and re-understood it as a harsh exercise of power against the will of the individual and in retribution for exercising the most basic American freedom, the freedom to speak in criticism of governmental power.
The precision: They said "her," limiting themselves to Ilhan Omar as Trump was talking about her. Trump's tweets were addressed at "'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all)." He didn't name anybody individually, but he used the plural, and it's been assumed that he was talking about the set of 4 Congresswomen who have grouped themselves together, the so-called "Squad" of Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Tlaib. Once you make that assumption, Trump looks like he's made an assumption — that nonwhite people came from another country. From there, Trump was open to accusations of racism (which, of course, he got, like mad). But only Omar is an immigrant. By chanting "Send her back" (and not "Send them back"), the crowd arrived at a greater accuracy than Trump's original tweet.
ADDED: After listing his accomplishments in office: "But could you imagine what it could have been if we didn't have that witch hunt?" He hears a voice in the crowd. He points to the person. "You said it. He said it. I won't say it, 'cause it's a terrible word, so I will not say that this guy said if we didn't have the bullshit. That's right." Big cheers.
AND: He goes after Congresswoman Omar, and the crowd chants, "Send her back/Send her back."
I keep seeing the term without an explanation of its origin. It wasn't easy to Google — especially with all the clutter having to do with Trump's recent tweets, which we're already discussing here. This post is just about the term "The Squad."
While the House’s liberal superstars are adept at promoting their progressive positions and routinely generate headlines for breaking with the party line, they have not made a habit of lobbying their colleagues to defy Ms. Pelosi en masse. Last week, the foursome known as The Squad...
I asked Pelosi whether...it was jarring to get a bad headline like the one in HuffPost that day — “What The Hell Is Nancy Pelosi Doing?” The article described the outrage of the Squad, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts are known.
The term is not explained in the Dowd column (and isn't used in the HuffPo piece).
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said they have no following in Congress. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York shot back that she and three of her fellow liberal freshmen, darlings of the left known collectively as “the squad,” are wielding the real power in the party.... The contretemps began when Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, asked Ms. Pelosi about the squad’s fury over the border aid package... The squad and its allies argue that they are tapping into the real energy in the Democratic base with their uncompromising and unapologetic stances....
Again, the term is used with no explanation. Further down, we see:
“AOC and The Squad have changed the entire national debate,” said an email rehashing the spat from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which offered a colorful “I STAND WITH AOC” sticker to anyone who donated to their work “electing more AOC’s to Congress.”
That suggests that the women came up with that name for themselves. Why would they do that? Maybe they're taking an epithet and wearing it with pride. I don't know.
There's also this other usage of "squad" in that article:
“This is an inevitable tension between a few progressives with one priority, which is their ideology, and a speaker with many priorities, including preserving the majority in the House, electing a Democratic president against Trump, and responding to the consensus of her caucus,” said Steve Israel, a Democrat and former representative of New York. “To the extent that it distracts from Donald Trump and becomes a circular firing squad among Democrats, it can be lethal.”
I am going to guess that talk of a circular firing squad — there's been a lot of that — led to calling the 4 Congresswomen "The Squad." That would explain why the explanation of the origin is suppressed. Too violent. Too much like a death threat.
Consulting Urban Dictionary, I can see that the use of the term could be experienced as racist: "Crew, posse, gang: an informal group of individuals with a common identity and a sense of solidarity. The term is a bit flashy and is more likely to be heard in hip-hop lyrics than in spoken conversation"/"A word overused by teenagers that think they're ghetto to describe their clique of friends"/"A dumb word only used by white middle schoolers in suburban areas to describe their group of friends and try to sound ghetto. It doesnt make them sound ghetto, but actually increases their whiteness."
How embarrassing! Embarrassingness increases the likelihood that this is the real origin of the term, since the source of the term isn't talked about.
I get the feeling Maureen Dowd heard the term and thought it was hip/cute/clever and she went public with it without understanding the problem with it. Now, they're stuck with it and vulnerable if anyone is ever curious enough to ask about the origin.
It is a question, isn't it? There's no question mark. That makes it feel more like an imperative. It reminds me of the saying I remember from the Vietnam Era, "America, love it or leave it."
Here's the entire statement — a tripartite tweet (1, 2, 3):
So interesting to see 'Progressive' Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly........and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how.... ....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
That's from 22 hours ago. He got a lot of pushback — including Power Line's "A Blunder of Epic Proportions" — but he didn't walk it back. He's Donald Trump; he doubled down. From 11 hours ago — a 2-part tweet (1, 2):
So sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our Country and who, in addition, hate Israel with a true and unbridled passion. Whenever confronted, they call their adversaries, including Nancy Pelosi, “RACIST.” Their disgusting language..... ....and the many terrible things they say about the United States must not be allowed to go unchallenged. If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior, then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!
1. Who is he talking about? He doesn't name names, so it's an invitation for others to do the defining. I see many people talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and expressing outrage that Trump would speak of her as an immigrant when she was born in the United States. But he didn't name her. His words exclude her. She's really got a hold on people's mind!
2. What, exactly, is supposed to be racist here? Clearly, these tweets cause some readers to feel that racism is being expressed, but it's hard to find it in these words. I see "RACIST" but that's in the context of ostensibly sticking up for Nancy Pelosi. Some Democrats are calling her racist, and that shows how unfairly quick they are to see racism. Defending Pelosi, he implicitly defends himself.
3. Is it xenophobia? He's not saying get out and stay out. He's saying don't criticize the United States if you immigrated from a worse country. Go back to that place, fix it, and "The come back and show us... how it is done." He's welcoming the immigrant back, after these steps are taken. Of course, it's unrealistic to expect someone to return to a place they left and become involved in changing that place, but it's a figure of speech. He seems to be saying that those who were not born here, who chose to move here, have a special obligation to express love for America, that they should tone down their criticism of America.
4. If telling these Congresswomen to tone it down is wrong, Nancy Pelosi was wrong too. (See "Tensions Between Pelosi and Progressive Democrats of ‘the Squad’ Burst Into Flame" (NYT).) So, again, Trump lines himself up with Pelosi. How do you defend Pelosi without defending Trump? In this view, it's a clever (and cruel) rhetorical move by Trump.
5. Here's Ernest Tubb in 1965:
Well, I'm gettin' mighty tired of seein' hippies runnin' wild... It's kinda hard to understand when you read about a man/That's talkin' 'bout love and knockin' the place he was born/If things don't go their way, they could always move away/That's what democracy means anyway....
What "state violence" is Cheney-Rice talking about? His next paragraph is about whether harassing former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is acceptable because the government has been "locking children in cages." He weasels a semi-generalization:
Where one falls on this spectrum in any given instance is often, but not always, a partisan calculation.
My point is that it's always bullshit. "Civility" is not your value. It's a fake value, presented as real when it serves your partisan interests and subordinated whenever it doesn't.
Cheney-Rice has something to say about the Ilhan Omar business, and it's too complicated to attempt to excerpt here. Somehow "civility" is supposed to be in play when people are simply harshly criticizing Omar for sounding insufficiently somber about 9/11. There's a very strained effort to equate vigorous criticism with the incitement of violence, so that saying Omar sounded almost as though she were laughing at 9/11 is the same as saying that Omar ought to suffer physical attacks. We're told that she gets death threats, and that seems to be offered as a reason why she should be spared verbal attacks responding to the public statements that she chooses to make. Her antagonists would be fools to stand down either because of the phony "civility" argument or because her proponents display a willingness to connect public verbal opposition to her to these unsourced death threats.
Congressman Dan Crenshaw criticized Omar, and then Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Crenshaw. Somebody else pushed Ocasio-Cortez back for incivility to Crenshaw, and Cheney-Rice says, "Bad-faith outcries about civility aimed at deflecting from Republican misdeeds are the order of the day." Yes, and what else is new? Bad-faith outcries about civility are the only kind of outcries about civility we ever get in American politics — this day or any other day, from Republicans or Democrats or anybody.
Cheney-Rice has not explained "Why ‘Civility’ Protects Dan Crenshaw But Not Ilhan Omar." Civility doesn't "protect" anyone. Civility is just a transitory condition that might make some people feel better when it's blowing in their direction, but it's nothing you can rely on, and you ought to assume it's there only because those who are blowing it think it's good for them. The prevailing winds of civility may favor Crenshaw over Omar at the moment, but civility bullshit is subject to constant change. I see that Cheney-Rice would like to force the change, and of course, he's free to bullshit about bullshit.
"... from attacks by President Trump and other Republicans and has undermined their policies and leaders, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Omar’s allies over the weekend were upset by what they viewed as Pelosi’s delayed response.... [L]iberals seethed that Pelosi (Calif.) and Democratic leaders did too little, too late. They were equally baffled by Pelosi’s quip seeming to dismiss Ocasio-Cortez during a CBS '60 Minutes' interview Sunday, suggesting her 'wing' of the party included 'like five people.'... The tensions underscore Democrats’ struggle to discern the best way to respond to Trump and the GOP’s attacks on their far-left flank, criticism frequently centered on women of color.... On Sunday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the other Muslim congresswoman, went so far as to accuse the Democratic leadership of using people of color to highlight diversity but ignoring them when it mattered — though she did not name Pelosi in the missive. 'They put us in photos when they want to show our party is diverse,' Tlaib wrote, retweeting messages claiming Democrats used women of color as 'props.' 'However, when we ask to be at the table, or speak up about issues that impact who we are, what we fight for & why we ran in the first place, we are ignored. To truly honor our diversity is to never silence us.'"
“I think this time around he wanted to make sure that people understood that he wasn’t just going to be a punching bag,” said Sanders’s campaign manager, Faiz Shakir.... “He’s comfortable having the fight within the party or outside the party, in general. That’s Bernie Sanders.”...
“I think his tone in general is too Trumplike. It’s based on anger,” said Greg Hale, a longtime Democratic presidential campaign adviser who worked for Clinton in 2016. “We all need to be together and we need to have a positive message, not a negative message.”...
“Establishment Democrats have to stop holding him back,” said Linn Anderson, a graphic designer from Youngstown, Ohio, who attended a town hall Sanders participated in Sunday. Asked whether she felt there was still animosity coming from Clinton’s allies, Anderson responded, “Hell yeah.”
Against Omar’s propensity to provoke, the Democratic Party seems institutionally almost defenseless. Pelosi was thwarted when she attempted to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitic expressions by House members....
After Trump’s tweeted attack, Omar will become even more internally uncriticizable and unmanageable, without becoming any more careful or responsible. Indeed, the speech by Omar that provided Trump with the sound bite he exploited—“some people did something”—itself exemplifies her carelessness and irresponsibility....
ADDED: The video Trump passed along was extremely effective because of the repeated the line "some people did something," abruptly cut off at "something." I had not been troubled by the original clip, because I understood it in context. But with the focus on "something," I heard an upward lilt that felt like laughing. And then the look on her face seemed like a smile. That semblance of laughing, in sequence with 9/11 images, had a very powerful effect. It is what ads do. There's no lying, just an effect created by editing. And the more people complain about it and say it's not fair, the more viral the ad becomes.
"This is something no President has ever done before.... Name another President who's so good, he made the news go away."
I listened to that yesterday, and I'm remembering it this morning and choosing to post it because I'm looking for news to blog and I can't find anything.
ADDED: I am still looking. I was picking over stories and the closest I got were: 1. Somewhere they're teaching cursive writing again, 2. Some people don't watch "Game of Thrones" (and can be called "Never Throners"), 3. Bibi Andersson died, 4. Some people aren't good at riding electric bikes, and 5. Criticizing Ilhan Omar might endanger her.
"Last month, the former first daughter joined throngs of Democrats and Republicans in condemning language used by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the two first Muslim women elected to Congress last year, to critique U.S. policy in Israel as perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes. At the vigil, the New York University students said reactions like Clinton’s 'stoked' hatred of Muslims. 'This, right here, is a result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,' one student told Clinton, according to a video of the confrontation. 'And I want you to know that and I want you to feel that deep down inside. Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.' 'I’m so sorry that you feel that way,' Clinton said. 'Certainly, it was never my intention. I do believe words matter. I believe we have to show solidarity.'"
Here's the video that @Esor__Fasa put up where her friend is attacking Chelsea Clinton at a memorial service and linking her to the New Zealand massacre because Chelsea dared to call out Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism.
I know Steve Cohen is wielding the old cliché, It's like herding cats, but I thought it was completely unacceptable these days to equate persons of color with animals. (Ask Roseanne.) And look how bad this is:
“Being a speaker — especially on the Democratic side — is like herding cats,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). “. . . The cats have to understand who provides the water and kibble and cleans the litter. Once the cats understand that, it’ll get better.”
He's emphasizing the physical functions — including excretion — and he's subtly threatening Omar and others. It would be crude to just come out and say, She needs to know her place and not speak so loudly and forcibly, but Cohen goes beyond that. He visualizes her as a cat, and, within that visualization, verbal expression becomes eating and defecating. Omar is brusquely informed that she'll be treated like an animal, disciplined by depriving her of her bodily needs, until she "understands" who's in charge here. That's demeaning. And it's revealing. Is that how you think about power?
"Like herding cats" was once a fresh enough notion to be funny, but it's a corny cliché these days. Its triteness is probably why Cohen felt comfortable calling Omar an animal. But he didn't glide past it. He stopped for the full visualization, complete with water and food bowls and a litter box. He meant to demean and diminish — in an offhanded, folksy-cutesy way.
When was this expression new, I wonder? The (unlinkable) OED traces it to the mid-80s:
transitive. colloquial (orig. and chiefly U.S.). to herd cats: used in similative expressions to suggest the unwieldiness or unfeasibility of an undertaking, esp. a managerial or organizational task, as like herding cats ( as hard as herding cats, etc.): extremely difficult to accomplish; unmanageable, futile.
1986 National Jrnl. 3 May 1062 Yerxa will have to continue to juggle the divergent views of the subcommittee members, a task he said ‘can be like trying to herd cats’.
1988 MIS Q. 12 65 At a recent academic meeting, an academic administrator stated that managing an academic department was akin to herding cats.
I was also curious about how Muslims regard cats. This felt important as I tried to assess the severity of the insult to Omar. Here: Wikipedia has an article, "Islam and cats":
The domestic cat is a revered animal in Islam. Admired for its cleanliness as well as for being loved by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the cat is considered "the quintessential pet" by Muslims...
One of Muhammad's companions was known as Abu Hurairah (literally: "Father of the Kitten") for his attachment to cats. Abu Hurairah claimed that he had heard Muhammad declare that a woman went to Hell for starving a female kitten and not providing her with any water.... According to legend, Abu Hurairah's cat saved Muhammad from a snake. In gratitude, Muhammad stroked the cat's back and forehead, thus blessing all cats with the righting reflex. The stripes some cats have on their foreheads are believed to mark the touch of Muhammad's fingers.
The American poet and travel author Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) was astonished when he discovered a Syrian hospital where cats roamed freely.... Edward William Lane (1801–1876), a British Orientalist who resided in Cairo, described a cat garden originally endowed by the 13th-century Egyptian sultan Baibars, whose European contemporaries held a very different attitude towards cats, eating them or killing them under papal decrees.... [C]ats were valued by the paper-based Arab-Islamic cultures for preying on mice that destroyed books. For that reason, cats are often depicted in paintings alongside Islamic scholars and bibliophiles. The medieval Egyptian zoologist Al-Damiri (1344–1405) wrote that the first cat was created when God caused a lion to sneeze, after animals on Noah's Ark complained of mice.
"Recalling the 'caging of kids' at the U.S.-Mexico border and the 'droning of countries around the world' on Obama’s watch, she argues that the Democratic president operated within the same fundamentally broken framework as his Republican successor. 'We can’t be only upset with Trump. … His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,' Omar says. 'And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.'"
She took a shot at President Trump and his equivocal statements after the deadly white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017: “The president may think there are good people on both sides, we don’t share that view.”
Democrats are confident that they can unite the caucus, and they want to get the fight over [Ilhan] Omar out of the way.... Ms. Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, has been fending off accusations of anti-Semitism for weeks...
“It’s not about her, it’s about these forms of hatred,” Ms. Pelosi said about the resolution. Tensions boiled over in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats on Wednesday that pitted older Jewish Democrats who want a forthright statement condemning anti-Semitism against younger liberals....
REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing you dismissed as communist propaganda reports about the massacre in El Mozote in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as two years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those [American] troops bragged about raping 12-year-old girls before they killed them … You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a fabulous achievement. Yes or no do you still think so?
ABRAMS: From the day that President Duarte was elected in a free election to this day, El Salvador has been a democracy. That’s a fabulous achievement.
OMAR: Yes or no, do you think that massacre was a fabulous achievement that happened under our watch?
ABRAMS: That is a ridiculous question.
OMAR: Yes or no?
ABRAMS: No.
OMAR: I will take that as a yes.
ABRAMS: I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack, which is not a question.
The questioning continues. Omar has something she wants to establish — that the U.S. had responsibility for human rights violations in the past in Latin American, Abrams was involved and dishonest about it, so we need to worry that whatever we do in Venezuela will lead to human rights violations and Abrams will be dishonest again. She's completely confrontational, and Abrams responds combatively.
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