Amie Eden of the Forward notes a survey proving my long held belief that my fellow American Jews are political retards. They don't think, they vote purely on ethnic lines. I certainly did, when I was still living in America. Overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, they believe the Republican Party and the Right in general is violently anti-semitic, when the Left is by far the most anti-semitic mainstream political movement in the US. I remember last Passover seeing a cousin of a high school friend spend 45 minutes on a conspiracy theory involving Iran and the Christian Coalition, which sought to prove that Bush actually invaded Iraq to harm Israel's interests. This kind of thing is widespread in the Jewish community and is nothing more than willful self-delusion. There are a myriad of reasons, historical and psychological why this is the case, but I think the main one is that American Jews feel simultaneously accepted by and alienated from American society. They express their acceptance in their economic and social success, and the alienation through their political stances, which by and large see America in a very pessimistic way and identify with the poor and other alienated minority groups. This also goes a long way to explain the continued fetishization of the civil rights alliance by American Jewish organizations, despite the fact that it has long since become discredited and irrelevent in the eyes of African-Americans, now one of the most intensely anti-semitic communities in America. What it adds up to is this: the famed political savvy of the American Jewish community is nonsense. By and large they refuse to vote their own interest, economically or otherwise, and are prone to demagogury, manipulation, and blatent mau-mauing to an extraordinary degree. I agree that there probably will not be a major shift to the Republicans this November, but it will be in spite of current realities, and not a result of them.