the attitude with arnie arnesen the friday edition March 13
Arnie Arnesen
“There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.”
– Donald Trump, January 2026, In response to a question regarding checks that remained on how he exercised power on the world stage.
Sixty-three years ago, Hannah Arendt coined the concept of the “banality of evil,” describing Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann as disturbingly normal rather than a monstrous fanatic. Arendt didn’t mean that Eichmann was not evil, but that he was a small and ordinary man with an “inability to think for himself.” She found a “depthless ordinariness” in Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem, which accounted for the provocative term of “banality.”
Today, we are watching Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu conduct a war that is evil. There is no banality to be observed. They are not ordinary people. They are evil.
Netanyahu’s rhetoric over the years has been Islamophobic. Prior to a trip to Germany in 2015, he charged a former Muslim elder in Jerusalem with convincing Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews. Netanyahu said that, at the time, Hitler wanted to “expel the Jews,” but not exterminate them. He appeared to be absolving Hitler of the murder of six million Jews in order to lay the blame on Muslims.
Trump’s relationship with Muslims has also been a defining and controversial aspect of his political career. Shortly after taking office in 2017, Trump signed an executive order banning citizens from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. The so-called “Muslim ban” caused massive disruptions that separated families and halted visa processing of thousands of people. Previously, he promoted false claims about Muslims celebrating the attacks on 9/11. There have been surges in hate crimes and discrimination against Muslims in both terms of Trump’s presidency.
Prior to the two attacks on Iran this year, the Israelis and the Americans combined to conduct genocidal attacks on two million Palestinians in Gaza. With U.S. complicity during the Biden and Trump presidencies, the Israeli Defense Forces intentionally and systematically destroyed Palestinian people and their history and culture. The campaign involved mass killing, starvation, and destruction of infrastructure. In 2023, South Africa formally accused Israel with genocide in the International Court off Justice, a charge supported by numerous countries.
A leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, has charged the IDF with ethnic cleansing and a “forcible displacement” of Palestinians on a “huge scale.” B’Tselem warned that genocidal activity will expand to additional areas where Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, and currently we are witnessing examples of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Right-wing Israeli politicians are calling for expelling Palestinians from Israel itself, although they hold Israeli citizenship.
Trump and Netanyahu are now joined in a war against Iran that will punish Iranian women and children. Only days after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that his government would not cooperate in an offensive war against Iran, B-1 and B-52 bombers arrived at British airfields that appeared to represent the first stage in the “big hits” that Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have been promising. Starmer is now saying that the U.S. Air Force can use British bases for “specific and limited defensive purposes.” There are no defensive purposes in this evil U.S.-Israeli war. Furthermore, Iran has no air defense.
Hannah Arendt warned that lies to the people “become the warrant for other lies.” Trump and Netanyahu are lying to their people, and there appears to be no end in sight.
Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy
opening thoughts for Texas
Democratic primaries in Harris County had one clear winner | https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/harris-county-election-democratic-voters-results-22063280.php
Davis Mendoza Darusman already faced long odds. For one, he was a 28-year-old first-time Democratic candidate running for a seat few had ever heard of. Justice of the Peace, Precinct 5, Place 2 isn’t exactly a sexy position, but it’s one Davis rightly understood to be the nexus of Harris County’s eviction crisis. A social media-savvy activist, Davis ran because he cares about helping people stay in their homes. When he talked about bringing reform to the megacourt where more than 50 evictions are filed each day, he spoke with the urgency of someone who had done his homework and knew change was possible. He rattled off stats about diversion programs that have worked in smaller courts and passionately committed to scaling them up. That visionary spirit is, in large part, why the Houston Chronicle editorial board endorsed him, even though his inexperience gave us pause. As a Mexican national, I can’t vote. But I was invested in seeing Davis, and his refreshing vision, win. Alas, years of writing carefully researched, woefully ignored endorsements should have taught me better than to get too excited. Spoiler alert: Davis lost. And resoundingly so. Voters picked Lisa Jefferson – another first-time candidate, albeit with longtime clerk experience in JP courts but little vision for reform – by a 24-point margin. I wanted to understand why. Was it his youth? Was it his unusual second last name? Not quite. According to Mike Doyle, Harris County Democratic Party chair, the main factor was likely something simpler: His opponent was a woman. And if there was any group that came out ahead in this year’s Democratic primary elections, especially in more obscure races, it was women, Doyle says. He should know. He just lost his own bid for reelection to newcomer Traci Gibson, who will be the first Black woman to lead the Harris County Democratic Party. Doyle was careful to emphasize that this is only a general trend, not a scientific analysis. The party hasn’t done focus groups yet. And it obviously didn't hold for top-of-the-ticket races such as the one for statewide Senate. But the phenomenon is common in unusually high-turnout elections like this one, which included a lot of first-time primary voters. And the turnout in this primary was nothing short of soul-replenishing. Nearly 1 in 4 registered voters participated, smashing recent presidential and midterm primary records for both parties. Experienced voters often take printed lists to the polls. But what about new voters, who are shocked by the long ballot? Or voters who haven’t done that much homework?Either they skip races where they don’t have an opinion, or they make up a strategy to pick.In the case of the Democratic Party, Doyle said, the higher turnout was led by women. And Democratic women, research shows, tend to vote for other women in races where they know little about the candidate or position. .....
John Thune refusing to alter rules to force a vote as US president says he won’t sign any legislation until bill is passed https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/11/trump-john-thune-save-america-act
Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Sell This War Has the salesman in chief gotten rusty? https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/03/trump-iran-gas-prices-economy/686337/
Iran War Exposes America’s Unfixed Supply ChainsWe have a trillion-dollar military without enough bombs to fight for more than a week, and none of the critical components needed to make more. https://prospect.org/2026/03/12/iran-war-trump-military-america-israel-ukraine-bombs-supply-chains/
The U.S. Bombed an Elementary School in Iran. Trump’s Response Makes It Worse. It is possible—under previous presidents, it has been policy—to admit to making horrific mistakes in wartime. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/03/iran-trump-war-school-bombing-missile-strike-tomahawk.html
Israel and the US are fighting Iran together. Are they on the same page though? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/12/israel-us-iran-war-trump-netanyahu
Pentagon estimates first 6 days of Iran war cost $11.3B. https://thehill.com/homenews/5780153-operation-epic-fury-cost/
D. ARNIE ARNESEN
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Host of "The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen"