Just Wondering

I woke up this morning to information from a reliable source who told me that The New York Times was reporting on a Trumpian Executive Order that would, this very morning, define Jews as a nationality.

This did not resonate with TBG.  He didn't feel the shiver up his back, though he certainly noticed mine.  He's as sensitive as a Protestant-raised-educated-white-guy can be; half a century with me has tuned his radar.  But he was surprised at the depth of my reaction.

I was terrified.

Sure, I was mortified for our country and I was disgusted that such a thing could come from the Office of the President.  The lack of intellectual rigor that underpins every word the man speaks was, once again, appalling.  But mostly, I was scared.

I'd have a lot more cousins is my standard response to Holocaust questions.  I was a child when G'ma insisted I watch the black and white films of the liberation of the death camps on our Motorola tv.  We put the cat in a bedroom when my survivor cousin visited; no need to remind her of how hungry she once had been.

That's ingrained in me.  It's part of who I am.  Not-Kathy was surprised that I laughed when she said of course, Jews are white.  Neither were the Irish or the Italians. 

It never bothered me.  It was just a fact. 

Anyway, that's why I was afraid this morning.  By lunchtime, Big Cuter had sussed out the facts and there is no mention of Jews being a nation in the Executive Order.

And then I began to wonder.  My reaction was so strong, so visceral, so publicly shared..... were my strings being pulled by a Russian dis-information campaign?  It's not the facts so much as the reaction that the Russians are seeking. That The New York Times (which couldn't even get my age right) printed something quick and wrong might just show how deep the tentacles are reaching.

If Putin's goal is to divide America against itself, this was a sure-fire way to do it.