National Brotherhood Week

Appreciation Month? Awareness Day? Stop it! OR National Stop It Month

Forget a cure for cancer. I want a cure for cause-related months.

Forced into a constant state of awareness, I have no more room left in my brain. I just lost all the state capitals I ever knew. “Sorry, Helena, Montana,” I told it. “But I have to spend that area of my prefrontal cortex being aware of National Oceans.” “That’s not the area of the brain that stores memories,” Helena, Montana, shot back. “I know,” I said. “I lost the knowledge of where in the brain these things are stored during National Building Safety Month last year.”

My inbox is constantly clogged with the joyous news that This Is National Brotherhood Week! and Today We Celebrate Pets.

For instance, according to the presidential proclamations for June, this is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. Also Great Outdoors Month. And National Caribbean American Heritage Month. And African-American Music Appreciation Month. And National Oceans Month.

Last month was even more exciting. It was National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, National Foster Care Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Older Americans Month, and National Building Safety Month.

And these are just the ones the government is telling me to observe!

What bothers me about these months, besides the illusion that I am capable of maintaining this much awareness at any given time, is the delusion — perhaps most aptly conveyed in Tom Lehrer’s “ National Brotherhood Week ” — that dedicating a month to these things will resolve anything at all.

People once understood this.

Historically, one of the powers of the president is the power to proclaim things . George Washington proclaimed two national days of prayer and left it at that. Then along came John Adams, who, not satisfied with prayer, opted for a “National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer” on May 9, 1798 , “as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power it has appeared to me that the duty of imploring the mercy and benediction of Heaven on our country demands at this time a special attention from its inhabitants.”

This approach has suffered something of a drop in popularity.

Vodkapundit » It Ain't Exactly National Brotherhood Week

One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the bus.” Another, who swore he wasn’t getting his information from the mutually despised Fox News, admitted he’d lost faith in the president.

If several dozen interviews with POLITICO are any indication, a similar conversation is taking place in Jewish communities across the country. Obama’s speech last month seems to have crystallized the doubts many pro-Israel Democrats had about Obama in 2008 in a way that could, on the margins, cost the president votes and money in 2012 and will not be easy to repair.

“It’s less something specific than that these incidents keep on coming,” said Ainsman.

Returning to the “perhaps, maybe, perhaps” of my opening, whenever I post on here that Jewish voters are finally starting to move away from the Democratic Party, I get a chorus of “It’ll never happen… they all come back for the election… self-destructive… etc., etc.” Well, as I said, “perhaps, maybe, perhaps.” But I would remind the naysayers of one thing — their reaction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing happens unless you do it. Or as the zen monks would say, “You can’t get there by trying. But you won’t get there if you don’t try.”

It’s foolish to think that Jews — especially the wealthy Jews who make up such an important part of the Democrat constituency — will suddenly flock to the GOP next year. Especially if the Republicans nominate a social conservative, as seems likely.

But Jewish voters don’t have to switch teams to hurt Obama; all they need to do is abandon him. And with the growing sense that Obama has already abandoned Israel, perhaps they’ve already begun to do so.

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