Jews Tuesday night concluded Tish b’Av – which refers to the Hebrew month the “9th of Av.” It’s not as much a holiday, but a dirge. It’s the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar because it was on that date both temples were destroyed — the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the 2nd Temple by the Romans in 66 CE –and a number of other tragedies that impacted the Jewish people in subsequent years
We learn that the cause of the First Temple destruction was Jewish worship of idols, in secret, whereas it was “baseless hatred” among Jews (i.e. conflicts between the Sadducees and pharisees) that led to the 2nd Temple destruction and the ensuing diaspora; (Jews leaving the land of Israel for other nations in Europe and the Middle East).
Just recently, I learned of a friend who was the target of “baseless hatred” while babysitting with his girlfriend at a Capitol Hill home. The 30ish couple wound up throwing them out of their house when learning one voted for Trump. And, the husband was being physically abusive. Another example of leftist intolerance.
And then this morning, I read about a study from Harvard indicating that celebrities have a huge bearing. on how their followers vote
According to research by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, there is “rigorous evidence that [celebrity] voices are incredibly powerful” in promoting civic engagement and altering polling numbers.
Ashley Spillane, the study’s author and a civic engagement and political expert, told ABC News that in 2018 when singer Taylor Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote by posting a simple Instagram story, it resulted in 250,000 new Vote.org registrants in 72 hours. There is now a Swifties for Kamala group with more than 57,000 followers.
In my view, celebrities and many “influencers” on social media are akin to idols. Idol worship is defined in an online dictionary as “the worship of an “idol“, also known as a cult image, in the form of a physical image, such as a statue or icon.” But people are drawn to human idols, too — actors, sports figures, and of course, political leaders.
King David wrote in Psalm 135:15-18
The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the handiwork of man.
They have a mouth but do not speak; they have eyes but do not see.
Like them, will be those who make them, all who trust in them.
Younger voters probably don’t bow down to figurines like King David described above, but they certainly put a lot of stock in what celebrities and influencers have to say about current events and candidates – although few of these influentials have no training or substantive background in the issues they spout off on.
But they’re great at using their celebrity status to trigger emotion to achieve their political goals – it’s the one area Republicans are lacking in campaigns; appealing to emotion.
But emotionalism and irrational behavior and thought afflicts the Conservative camp, too. I also can’t have any discussion of issues with hardened Trump fanatics. There’s no nuance or gray areas. To criticize Trump on anything means you don’t like him and you’re a RINO. Nikki Haley, despite endorsing Trump at the GOP convention, was booed before she got to the stage.
The anti-religious types accuse those of us of faith of having doctrinaire views, but at least among Orthodox Jews who I hav been hanging with for the last decade, and conservative Christians, I find less hostility to hearing alternative views.
Absolutist black or white thinking and tribalism are a serious threat to democracy, but you’ll never hear about it in the mainstream corporate media because they benefit financially from the division and peppering their broadcasts and news pagers with news to divide and demoralize one side over the other. Those riots that broke out in the UK where whites went around beating up immigrants or the pro Hamas protesters inflicting violence on Jews at random are examples of what happens when false information fans the fires, and same goes with the media glorification of the George Floyd protesters-turned-rioters, or conservative media portraying violent 1/6/21 Trumpsters as “lawfare” victims.
And now we have another divisive national election before us and the millions of people who regularly follow the campaign in the media are being hyped up. – not just to support either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but bash folks on the other side who don]’t support their candidates. People with little involvement in political campaigns think bullying or doxing opponents is somehow going to help your cause. It doesn’t.
We also seem to not accept the results of elections – when OUR candidate loses. This also becomes a feeding frenzy in the media and on social media.
I can predict that if Trump wins again, the Left will go nuts and riot and start lunging and attacking anyone with a MAGA hat or Trump sticker on their car (I was such a victim in 2021). If she wins, the Right will glom on to conspiracies and say the election was a stolen again, or at least gamed – and it doesn’t help when we see bona fide reports the Iranians are trying to stop trump.
I sincerely hope I am proven wrong about how the country will come out of this election. I can only do so much myself to just help GOP candidates in the old fashioned way – knocking doors, making calls, giving money, not debating with hard line liberals on social media in an effort to “convince them.
At the end of the day, the lesson of Tish b’ Av is more about baseless hatred than idolatry – although political idols seek power and glory through division these days.
This Orthodox Jewish writer had a good thought about tolerance writing: “Tolerance is not that you can stomach people like you. Tolerance is that we appreciate people different from us; that we see we all have more in common than what separates us.” https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/mourn-
baseless-hatred-more-than-loss-of-the-temples/
