John Fetterman wants us to respect his pain – even as he mocks Palestinians’
John Fetterman is a workwear icon. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania has made a national name for himself by wearing baggy basketball shorts and a scruffy hoodie in any and every situation. And his penchant for sportswear makes sense: he needs it for all the vigorous political flipflopping he does. While progressives helped Fetterman into power, it only took a few months in office before he started giving them the middle finger. Republicans once mocked Fetterman for his slobby presentation and his health problems (the senator had a stroke while running for office). Now, however, he’s getting admiring comments from the right and hosts of Fox News are cheering him on for his hawkish pro-Israel stance and his antiimmigration comments.
When he’s not yelling about how we need to be softer on Israel and tougher on immigrants, Fetterman likes to talk about his mental health. Last February, the senator checked into a hospital for clinical depression and spent six weeks there as an inpatient. After he left, he wasn’t shy about talking about his health problems. He gave an emotional interview on MSNBC and was on the cover of Time. Now it’s been reported that he’s writing a memoir about his experiences with depression. The book is going to be called Unfettered.
When public figures are candid about their mental health, it helps to destigmatize the issue. It shows people that depression can come for anyone: no matter how successful someone may look on the outside, that doesn’t mean they’re not battling demons on the inside. And it’s particularly powerful when a big, rough-around-the-edges guy like Fetterman talks about his feelings.
When I heard about Fetterman’s new depression memoir, however, my main thought was: how dare he. It feels incredibly twisted that Fetterman has been handed a book deal to talk about his mental health while he’s simultaneously cheerleading the bloody bombardment of Gaza. As a person of Palestinian heritage – and a constituent of Fetterman’s – I feel like it’s a slap in the face that he’s asking us to empathize with his pain, to take his feelings seriously, while he loudly and proudly demonstrates that he doesn’t give a damn about the pain being meted out to Palestinians. Not only has he rejected any discussion of a ceasefire, he seems to think calls for one are worth laughing about and has repeatedly made headlines for his trolling of anti-war protesters. He’s even used his health to shut down critics. “The joke is on you. I had a stroke. I can’t fully understand what you are saying,” Fetterman joked after an activist accused him of having blood on his hands.
War destroys everything, including people’s mental health. Even before Israel’s latest bombardment, living under a blockade in Gaza was hell, physically and mentally. A 2015 report from Save the Children, conducted after Israel’s 2014 bombing of the region, found that an average of 75% of children in the worst-hit areas of Gaza were experiencing unusual bedwetting regularly. That report found that children in Gaza lived in constant anxiety about the possibility of the next war. “Why do Gaza’s children have no rights? Why does no one feel our pain?” one 14year-old asked Save the Children.
Again, that was in 2015. Now many of the children who were surveyed for that report are probably dead. Since 7 October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed at least 10,000 children. Thousands more are buried under rubble, presumed dead. The survivors, who are currently starving because Israel is not allowing aid in, will be emotionally traumatized for the rest of their lives. How do you move on when entire families you used to hang out with have been annihilated; how do you keep going when everything you know has been turned to dust? In Gaza, 1.9 million people have been forced to leave their homes and many of them will never be able to return because there is nothing to return to.
I don’t know how any human being can look at what is happening in Gaza and not want to break down. For the last four months I have been struggling to hold it together as I see harrowing video after harrowing video of what people in Gaza are going through. I have been racked with survivor’s guilt as I sit in my comfortable house, looking at my happy two-year-old, reading about toddlers with missing limbs, who are being operated on with no anesthetic. I am not alone. I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that every single Palestinian in the diaspora feels traumatized. As, of course, do many non-Palestinians, including lots of Fetterman’s anti-war Jewish constituents who have been organizing protests and calling for a ceasefire.
Fetterman, meanwhile? He seems to find the pain of people in Gaza, the distress of his constituents who want the bloodshed to end, very amusing. The US has always been firmly proIsrael but Fetterman doesn’t just toe the line on the issue; he’s drawing new lines. In November, he mocked protesters arrested at a ceasefire demonstration in Washington DC by waving an Israeli flag at them and grinning. The man took the time to walk back into his office to grab an Israeli flag so he could taunt the protesters: that’s not just toeing the line, that’s being unnecessarily callous and cruel.
As the Palestinian body count goes up, Fetterman hasn’t modified his hawkish stance at all. On the contrary, he has continued to mock people who want an end to this bloodshed and recently broke with the vast majority of Democrats to vote against a resolution reiterating US support of a two-state solution. Last week he unfurled a huge Israeli flag from the rooftop of his home in response to protesters accusing him of aiding genocide. He seems to think this is a hilarious thing to do.
I’m not saying that Fetterman shouldn’t be allowed to talk about his depression just because he seems impervious to the suffering of Palestinians. But the fact that he has been given this book deal while he’s mocking people who are in mourning is a stinging reminder that not everyone’s pain matters.
Fetterman seems to find the pain of people in Gaza, the distress of his constituents who want the bloodshed to end, very amusing