When Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed won a neck-and-neck primary, the popular Twitch streamer and liberal “kingmaker” Hasan Piker had a message for El-Sayed’s detractors: “Everyone being like, Abdul has a f*ck-ton of work to do mending bridges, here’s the f*cking take-nuke for you, okay? You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of sh*t.”

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump had a different take. “He doesn’t love Israel. He doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart, and there’s not a fricking thing he can do about it,” he declared in a televised speech.

There’s a mental exercise I employ all the time. I call it Good for the Jews? — and as I read increasingly-apocalyptic headlines, I evaluate them according to the game’s titular question. Is this good for the Jews? Piker’s statement: No. The president’s words: Also no.

Part of the reason I am wary of both left- and right-wing populism is that........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)