A Letter to Rabbi Dov Fischer on the Nature of Being “Smart”

I just emailed this to Rabbi Dov Fischer. The email had the heading “Well Done.”

Accidentally I left out this great quote from Kurt Vonnegut.

“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.”

 

I am Jewish. I was raised and educated in a reform temple, which to you probably disqualifies anything that I may say after this.

Upon being confirmed, I had to write an essay about why I wanted to be confirmed.

My essay said that I was merely doing it for my mother, and that I had learned very little about my religion, did not believe in god, and the only thing that they had taught me was about the Holocaust and supporting Israel. This caused a stir.

The Rabbi who did confirm me, I had never met him previously, but I had heard he was cool. He was. I don’t know whether he said anything but a blessing to anyone else, but to me he said “I am honored to confirm you because I have read your essay and I wrote one very much like it when I was your age.” He then did bless me.

There was a lot wrong in that essay. Not all of it, but some of it.

Robert Clary, I was a huge fan of his television show (some completely misunderstood it; thought it was set in a concentration camp; did not realize that nearly all of the Germans played in it were Jewish), did come to my temple and tell me his horror story about really being in a concentration camp, a story so nightmarish that he could not tell it until he realized it was his duty to tell it as much as possible. At that time there were 12 of us there, and Clary has been willing to tell his story to large groups of people, but seemingly equally willing to share it too with groups as small as mine at that time.

So yes, I know nearly nothing about what is written in the Talmud, but while they perhaps should have taught me a lot about what was in it, what they did teach me instead was how to identify fascism.

I just read this piece by you and I want to thank you honestly for it.

Everyone Is Smart Except Trump

My Jewish Grandmother bought me “The Art of the Deal” in 1987 and I read it, as I did everything she gave me. She likely gave it to me because she had been impressed by Trump’s constant appearances on “The Phil Donahue Show” and other staples of daytime television bragging about how rich he was and how amazing he was because of it.

But he really wasn’t that rich at the time. He wasn’t close to being among the richest people alive.

Because of those television appearances, bankers who should have known better loaned Trump a lot of money, which they lost, as they should have, because they had been conned by one of the best confidence artists of all time.

Of course like many memoirs, Donald Trump did not write “The Art of the Deal,” and like most memoirs its existence was merely to put a spin on things that happened with mostly lies, and no one has lied more than Trump.

My grandmother probably thought I would come away liking Trump after that book. I did not, but I was fascinated by him and from that point on read everything about him.

He has in fact achieved nothing in life, except conning people into electing him president. At all times he has cared about nothing, but himself and his ego.

Trump’s father was not a good man. A good man, Woody Guthrie, wrote a song that was not discovered until years later that called his father a racist slumlord and predicted the name Trump Tower.

His father did “earn” a lot of money, he “earned” it through the graft of his political connections, and his own racist execution of his worst impulses.

The son is worse than the father. How much money he does have? You don’t know. He does not know. Perhaps no one knows.

What is known is that Trump’s mentor was Roy Cohn, a Jew, who was perhaps the biggest street thug lawyer of all time and definitely as evil as they come.

What is known is that if Trump had never done a thing but put his inheritance into an index fund he would be worth 17 billion dollars more than he is now.

He has at all times been a petty, impulsive brat, and he’s cost many good people money for no reason other than his ego and greed.

Check out the story of the piano supplier who he ordered a lot of pianos from for his failed casino venture in Atlantic City, a venture that cost many innocent people a lot of money, but didn’t cost Trump a dime.

That common man was not wealthy, but he delivered on what was ordered, and in response Trump because truly only Trump is so petty, used his army of lawyers that you seem to worship for their street fights to pay the man a fraction of what that man was promised, in fact a fraction of what he paid to supply Trump with those pianos. That man wanted to fight Trump, but could not. He did not have the wealth or means to do so. To attack that morass of well paid, soulless lawyers, would have cost that decent common man every penny he had even though he was 100% in the right.

So thank you again for writing that essay, which made its way to me, for it is indeed either the best “Onion” article ever written or maybe perhaps the most ignorant thing I have ever read.

But most of all thanks, because you still have the freedom to publish it, although given your rich idol’s worship of greed and himself, and his views on journalists of any creed, you soon may not have that freedom. Or perhaps, you will be one of the few that do retain that freedom.

Joseph Goebbels would have loved your article, and he would have paid you to write many more like it.

Hermann Göring was a man we probably agree was not a good man, but like a lot of Nazis he was very smart.

Göring was tried at Nuremberg. At some point during this time that very smart man said this very smart and true thing.

“Of course the people don’t want war. After all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Now sincerely, you perhaps more than anyone should know that the lesson of the Nuremberg Trials was that we will all be judged for what we did do consciously or what we didn’t do because we were afraid to do it.

So it is perhaps my greatest hope for the world that you too will someday be judged, and your response will be that you were smart.

Maybe when you are judged and not given the verdict you expected, you will become a bit wiser and realize that your glorification of greed, ignorance, nationalism, and irrationality that you now justify because the one who led it is was supposedly a worthy billionaire, who supposedly earned it. Maybe you will someday understand that it was actually accomplished by paying the greedy street thug lawyers you worship for their cut throat tactics, which were motivated sheerly by greed and the willingness to follow the orders of those equally willing to pay them.

The world has an abundance of resources and we do not share them well.

You likely do not believe in sharing. You definitely do not accept Jesus as our savior and neither do I.

I know very little about Christianity, but what I do know is that Jesus was all about the common man and was absolutely appalled by the rich and powerful and their corresponding actions.

That does not mean he was God’s son, but it is still of value and worth recognizing.

So yes we will all be judged, and I do not fear that day, whether it be here or someplace after we die.

I do indeed hope we are both judged here, because I am secure in my innocence. I wish you luck with yours.

Shalom aleikhem,

Brad Laidman, citizen of the world.