I regret how much I supported John Fetterman
Never have I been more disappointed in a politician who I had such high hopes for...
Kim Kelly puts it perfectly when she describes Pennsylvania’s junior senator as “John Fetterman, American Jagoff."
A jagoff - according to what I can only assume is a highly reputable source, YaJagoff.com - is a phrase of Western Pennsylvania origin used to refer to a stupid, irritating, or contemptible person.
If you were to ask me a year ago if I thought John Fetterman was a jagoff, my answer would have been a resounding “no.” I can’t say the same today.
He was our first major interview
In 2020, Big John and I were beyond excited that John Fetterman accepted our invitation to be interviewed on the podcast. It was a HUGE get for us! One could argue it distinguished Appodlachia as a “real” podcast - not just some flash in the pan. During the interview, Fetterman’s brusk demeanor and no-bullshit attitude made him seem like an even more authentic version of himself.
This is why it sucks a bit more to be writing this. I feel a weird sense of loyalty to the guy because our interview with him earned us a lot of credibility and opened doors for us. However, I can’t pretend he hasn’t been one of the biggest disappointments in politics in a long time.
Playing footsie with being “progressive”
One could argue that running openly as a progressive in 2022 in Pennsylvania was risky - a swingy state whose politics aren’t easily contained into a neat box and who voted for Donald Trump a very short two years prior. I respected this because it felt like Fetterman wasn’t willing to compromise on his values and beliefs just to win an election - he would be himself. Although his opponent, Dr. Oz, was deeply flawed, pulling off a win statewide in Pennsylvania is no easy task, and he did it as a self-described progressive.
He did waffle a bit during the primary and has since pointed to this as validation that he isn’t progressive. However, throughout his general election campaign and even afterward, he made it known that he identified as such.
Why am I fixating on a label? Some would argue that the term “progressive” barely has any meaning. Fair, to some extent. However, doing this shows Fetterman's willingness to distort his truth to fit the convenience of the time, which brings us to Israel and Palestine.
The lack of empathy for the continued slaughter of Palestinian civilians
The lack of empathy for innocent Palestinian civilians being slaughtered by a sociopathic Israeli government1 is something I truly will never understand.
The United Nations placed Palestinian civilian casualty estimates at 30,228 (as of March 1, 2024), with another 1.7 million internally displaced and 2.2 million facing significant degrees of food insecurity. These figures come from the Gaza Ministry of Health, and even President Biden appeared to acknowledge the validity of the numbers.
Kim Kelly summarized Fetterman’s position on Israel and his public attitudes toward protesters way better than I can, so I’m sharing some of her words:
Over the past several months, Fetterman, who represents me and 13 million other residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, has unexpectedly emerged as one of Congress’s most rabidly pro-Israel voices….It’s not that all of Fetterman’s positions are wrong.
There’s no problem with his repeatedly calling for Hamas to release the Israeli hostages in Gaza—that’s fine. Everyone wants all the hostages to come home. It’s the way he’s gone about expressing his stance beyond that reasonable demand. Quite simply, he has decided to be a real dick about it.
Fetterman, you see, is not only pro-Israel. He’s anti-cease-fire, anti-protest, and anti–any scrap of dissent from US taxpayers unhappy about funding the murders of Palestinian children. His standard line, which he used on a pro-Palestinian veteran who approached him in D.C., is that people should “be protesting Hamas.” Well, we’re not sending Hamas billions of dollars in military aid, are we, bud?
The “being a real dick about it” part stands out to me.
Fetterman is essentially viewing this entire situation through the prism of a binary situation: You mad? Be mad at Hamas! This is a very “Twitter-esque” worldview because it fails to account for anything outside a simplistic worldview (as I’ve always said, Twitter is where nuance goes to die). We should absolutely be protesting Hamas, their slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians, and their weaponization of innocent people in Palestine among many other things. But protesting Hamas isn’t mutually exclusive from protesting the Israeli government’s actions and the U.S. government’s support of those actions. Fetterman’s actions and statements come off as carte blanche for Israel’s government to bomb with reckless abandon in what a UN expert recently characterized as amounting to genocide.
Maybe I’m being naive…
Maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised. Perhaps I’m being incredibly naive. Okay, I can accept that. But hear me out…
When other politicians were coy about fully embracing and supporting transgender rights, Fetterman wasn’t. His respect and unabashed support of a highly vulnerable and marginalized population of people is something that - sadly - still takes a degree of political courage to do. And he appeared, at least at the beginning of his tenure, to be holding to this credo, to a small extent (William Way center funding notwithstanding).
Perhaps I thought this was not selective empathy and could translate to other marginalized populations. Maybe I felt that he would agree with the very rational and humane concept of holding the Israeli government accountable for the horrific actions they are committing and the innocent lives they are taking from this earth.
I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes tend to approach politics with unearned optimism. Politicians can often be vessels of hope2, and their charisma can be captivating. Maybe progressives like myself are left so longing for people who uphold our values that when one appears to come along, we foolishly believe they will continue to be a vehicle for what we strive for and hope our government can accomplish.
People can make fun of this all they want, but I still believe good people exist in Congress3 and in elected office generally.4
John Fetterman has been extremely disappointing on a lot of grounds. But for me, one of the worst is how damaging he has been for mine and younger generations belief that you can place hope in the people you elect at the highest levers of power and have them not turn their backs on what you thought they believed.
-Chuck
An important note: I use the term “Israeli government” very deliberately because I think it's critical to distinguish the actions of a government from the people represented by their government. Too often, an entire people are associated with the vile acts their government commits, and I don’t think that is fair. I’m sure many Israelis are disgusted by what the Netanyahu-led government is doing in Palestine, and vice-versa with Palestinians and the terrorist attacks by Hamas. This is similar to how we approach the nuance of living in Appalachian “red states” and not being representative of the right-wing politicians who govern them.
See: the entire 2008 Obama presidential campaign
Despite his flaws, I continue to stan Sen. Sherrod Brown because he stood on the picket line in 2006 with my dad in Marietta, OH - when nobody else gave a damn about what him and his fellow Steelworkers were going through. There was maybe one reporter there the entire time. Brown didn’t have much to gain from it other than the goodwill of a few struggling Steelworkers.
Especially in local government (and perhaps I’ll write about some of them soon).