Can the Centre Hold?

I'm speaking in a Yeatsian, rather than a political, sense:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity--W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

I've already mentioned the disgraceful performance of Sky News's Kay Burley, who decided to put her spin on the question of proportionate equivalence with the following "question" for Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy:

I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised, promised to release, as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians that Israel has said that it will release, and he made the comparison between the numbers and the fact that does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives…”

Just try diagramming that last sentence. Even if your native-speaker-of-English bona fides are not entirely up-to-snuff, you'll readily spot the clever trick at the end, in which she tries to connect the "F" word (as in: what comes next--no matter how I phrase it--is clearly a FACT) with her phony question for Mr. Levy: "Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?" She concatenates the two and then waits for Mr. Levy to (literally) drop the mic in defensive confusion. What a disgusting display. And how brilliantly he responded, calling it just that.

Then, we have Leo Varadkar, the Prime Minister of Ireland, who--while celebrating the return of 9-year-old hostage Emily Hand to her family--uttered these stirring words in a Tweet (or whatever they are called nowadays):

This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.

I can't tell if he thinks the little girl wandered away from her family in a shopping mall, or if he's trying out for the part of John Newton in the next church play. (Unlikely, that second one, given the religious and political complications, methinks....)

Next, we have this headline from the New York Times, part of what's turning into the daily reality show of hostage and Palestinian release drama:

Twitter's community notes function went into overdrive, and eventually even the New York Times issued some context to the story, and admitted that this national heroine had disfigured herself by trying to drive a car laden with a propane bomb through an Israeli police checkpoint where it exploded and blew her up in the process. That she's alive at all today is--I expect--only the fault at the mercy of those same Israelis, although they reportedly refused her demands to do plastic surgery extensive enough for a complete facial reconstruction.

From everything I can see, her reasons for being convicted and in an Israeli jail are fairly typical of those Palestinian prisoners released in this "hostage deal." Ugh.

Today, we have the developing story of ten-month-old Kfir. He and his four-year-old brother were taken hostage, along with their parents Shiri and Yarden Bibas, on October 7. None of them is on the list of hostages to be released during the current cease-fire, and they are believed to be held somewhere in Southern Gaza by a terrorist faction other than Hamas itself. It's unclear if they were taken from Israel by that faction, or if Hamas handed them over to that faction in order to disperse hostages throughout Gaza, to make it more difficult for Israel to continue military operations in the Strip once the current "pause" reaches its sell-by date. According to the Telegraph (again):

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani [the Qatari Prime Minister] told the Financial Times that Hamas cannot agree an extension to the current ceasefire until it locates 40 women and children who are allegedly being held by civilians, gangs and other Islamist groups.

“We don’t yet have any clear information how many they can find because . . . one of the purposes [of the pause] is they [Hamas] will have time to search for the rest of the missing people,” he said.

Hamas has told Qatar that it did not capture any civilians on October 7, instead blaming it on other Islamist groups and opportunistic Palestinian civilians. [Emphasis mine]

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will extend the current four-day ceasefire by one day for every 10 additional hostages that are released.

But the Qatari prime minister’s comments will cast doubt on whether Hamas can provide the hostages necessary to keep its side of the bargain.

I don't know if you'll find this level of detail anywhere else (although, to be fair, much of what I've read in the Telegraph turns up in the New York Post about 48 hours later).

I also don't know any other way forward than to keep on pointing out the truth among the cowardly deflections and the outright lies that spew forth on a regular basis. If we keep on doing that, and don't give up, then maybe the centre can hold. If not, I expect we'll continue slouching towards...you know...the thing..., and all bets are off.

On a lighter note--because, by gum, sometimes it is possible to lose yourself in all this misery, and sometimes we need a little leavening in our lives, I give you what is possibly both the most sublime and the most ridiculous example of cultural memory-holing on record, in which the U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (a Gen X-er), in what he probably thought was a praiseworthy stab at bipartisanship, invoked the memory of The Great Communicator. It's right at the beginning of the clip.

🤯

Here's the dear man in 1986.

He was a great communicator. The fact that Miguel Cardona (or whichever nitwit wrote his speech) missed the point, buried the lede, or simply decided to ignore the facts tells you more about him/them than it does about Reagan.

Sometimes, the jokes just do, as Tomi Lahren says, write themselves.

Illegitimi non carborundum.