A Jewish President

Sometimes I try to make myself yearn for a Jewish president, just to see how that mindset feels.

"Oh,"...wait, sorry..."Oy, if only there were a president who looked more like me. With a large schnozz and curly hair. Man, that would be...."

What? What would it be, exactly?

My town's mayor looks like me, and it's not so great. Lord knows that guy doesn't have my best interest at heart. On the other hand, that's just a mayor. That glass ceiling shattered some time ago, so maybe I'm inured.

But, president! My god, that would be fantastic! It would show how far we've come! But who's "we"? Y'know, my people. People who look like me. Everyone deserves a president who looks like them. Because people who look like you have your best interest at heart.

A Jew, for example, will always share their sandwich with another Jew. When I spot a Jewish person, I know they'll stop whatever they're doing to hear about my hopes and dreams and fears. Because that's what one's people do.

But wait. Black conservatives didn't feel like Obama had their interest at heart. And millions of female Bernie/Biden/Pete supporters didn't feel that Elizabeth Warren had their interest at heart. So perhaps the "looks like me" thing is just a puffy trope, despite seething lamentations on Twitter about the field being reduced to penis-bearing organisms who've undergone numerous solar orbits with a paucity of melanin. Gross!

Still, one roots for one's team, duh. You just do! Don't try to confuse the issue! We might not agree with, or vote for, people who look like us. And, yeah, they might not have our best interests at heart. But, still: "go team", right? There's gotta be something to the perpetual Color Wars we've been playing ever since summer camp, right?

Weak tea. In fact: water.

Is there anyone who'd seriously deem it a triumph for the female gender at this point if we got a female president? I dig deep trying to muster shock and wonder at the notion of a female head of state. "Wow, Jacinda Ardern is prime minister of New Zealand....and, get this, she's a woman! A WOMAN! How'd that happen?" but there's nary a flicker. It just seems normal. Totally normal and unexceptional and non-triumphant.

It'd be equally normal here, too, aside from the rote pattern matching. After penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis penis and penis, some hope to see a vagina, because they live not in a world but in a scorecard.

Of course a woman can (and will) be president. Do I "want" that to happen? Well, it'd depend on the woman! I wrote a large check to Amy Klobuchar, so "yeah" for that one. I'd have voted for Elizabeth Warren, as I voted for Clinton, though they weren't my favorites. I wish Sally Yates or Marie Yovanovitch had run, but dread AOC's inevitable reign. Honestly, I find women a pretty mixed bag, just like literally every other grouping of humans.

The underlying assumption that everyone has a team - your people; who look like you and therefore have your best interest at heart and who'll share their sandwiches - is lovely. So lovely that I almost hate to dispel it with my boorish logic.

Something seems off about the world, and we always attribute it to whichever attribute we're self-conscious about, and this drives us to make common cause with a shared-attribute group - an alliance of convenience. The goal is to reduce the maliciousness, harshness and unfairness, and this desire would be noble if we wanted to see the world fixed for everyone...for example by being kinder and fairer and more thoughtful, ourselves. But no one wants to fix it for everyone, and we damned sure don't want to behave any better, ourselves.

"Us" is really "me and my alliance of convenience". In other words, "me".