The Free Press has a new profile of John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania who bucked his party’s base by standing for the now controversial proposal that jihadist terrorism against the State of Israel is bad. It seems, interestingly, that he has bucked his own staffers as well.
“I don’t agree with him,” Carrie Adams, Fetterman’s communications director, told the Free Press. “I have a sense that his international views are a lot less nuanced than my generation, because when he was growing up, it was might makes right, and for my generation and younger who, of course, are the ones protesting this, they have a much more nuanced view of the region.”
Put aside the presumptuousness of trashing your own boss to the media. My question is, Has Adams ever spoken to a single pro-Israel human being? Speaking as someone who has been in Zionist Jewish circles my entire life, I can say with confidence that I have never heard those who support the Jewish state (or at least wish it not to be annihilated) do so on the basis of believing that “might makes right.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite: No matter how unpopular Israel might be in the court of international opinion, no matter how many of its neighbors wish to massacre its people, no matter how many 20-something leftists spend their days fantasizing about “intifada revolution,” Israel garners support from Americans because its principles are just.
For a person in the political world to so egregiously misconstrue the beliefs of a mainstream constituency — to be so wrong, even if sincere — is one thing. To do it to your own boss, whom you are professionally responsible for painting in the best light, is another. This is quite an aggressive form of the sickness that has overtaken young leftists: an absolute inability to see things from another perspective. If Fetterman cares about basic competence, Adams ought to be out of a job pronto.