Progressives Torn As Bus Under Which To Throw Jews Fails Emissions Test (PreOccupied Territory)

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Sacramento, December 31 - Stalwarts of forward-leaning politics voiced consternation today at a new dilemma that may force them to choose as never before between the values of ecological sensitivity and steamrolling Jewish concerns in pursuit of those values.

Progressive figures across California expressed dismay Thursday after the 48-seater vehicle, under which they had intended to throw Jews while pursuing the progressive agenda, could not meet the state's air pollution limitations, the toughest such thresholds in the nation. As never before activists observed, they must decide whether to proceed in their endeavors to implement a progressive agenda if in that pursuit they do not end up harming Jewish interests.

"It's not a problem we gave much thought to," admitted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY). "All of us just kind of assumed that throwing Jews under the bus was an automatic consequence of pursuing our vision for the twenty-first century in ecology, economics, race relations, everything. But it turns out sometimes you have to go out of your way to make harming Jewish interests, or at the very least disregarding the expressed concerns of the vast majority of the American Jewish community, an outcome. We need to have some serious conversations about how far out of our way to go to ensure that outcome, and what the other costs might be to such a direction."

Previous conflicts between Jewish concerns and the progressive agenda have tended to make Jewish concerns secondary or irrelevant to the desired outcome, as when prominent progressives have declared support for Jewish sovereignty and security in the ancestral Jewish homeland to be at odds with progressive values. "It's not Israel-Palestine per se that's the issue," explained activist and Women's March founder Linda Sarsour. "My buddies in the Nation of Islam probably couldn't care less whether Israel exists, or who rules the Palestinians, just as the Arabs in Palestine couldn't care less when they were under foreign rule for many centuries. It's the Jews of America that bother Brother Farrakhan, not the Jews of Tel Aviv, although licking the latter in the teeth might also be good. No, it's about maintaining the Jew as an enemy, and as time passes, our sensibilities have increasingly painted the Jew as the source of our community's problems, because it's more convenient to blame someone else than to fix your own problems, and hey, look, the Jews are right here, always available as scapegoats."

"But this time it's a little different," she acknowledged, "because now we have to determine whether harming Jews is simply a positive side-effect of our efforts, or a goal in itself, and if the latter, then does it outweigh other progressive goals? I think we all know what the decision will be in the end, but it looks good to have a 'conversation' about it that really only involves people who want Jews to just go away with their irritating insistence that people treat them with the same humanity and respect we demand for everyone else."