Open Mic for the week of 11/6/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Because it is going to come up for gloating or concern trolling probably, a New Times/Sienna Poll allegedly has Trump leading in almost every battleground state except Wisconsin: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/politics/biden-trump-2024-poll.html
The problem is that the poll is quite trash by its own admission and cross-tabs. They apparently contacted 600 people via landline to conduct the poll and admitted by their own standards that the sample was overly biased towards Republicans. Do you know who has and answers landlines? Old people. What are old people likely to do? Vote Republican. The polls also gave Biden a 5 point lead among those who actually voted in 2020.
Yet for some reason, i am supposed to be very concerned about guys like this:
“Dakota Jordan, a 26-year-old also from Maricopa County, did not vote in the 2020 election. He said that he would rather not have Mr. Trump in office at all, but that “given the choices,” he would vote for him over Mr. Biden, absent a criminal conviction. “If he was convicted, there’s absolutely no way — I can’t elect a criminal as my leader,” he said.”
This guy did not vote in 2020. I have strong doubts that he will vote in 2024.
Yes, it is possible and plausible that Biden loses in 2024 but Trump has never won the popular vote and repeating 2016 is tough odds. I am also having a hard time imagining Trump getting 22 percent of the black American vote considering he received above 9 percent of the black American vote.
But concern troll away because evidence doesn’t matter, only the holy polls do even if the polls are badly designed by their own admission.Report
The media is manufacturing drama.
They’re in “the better the science, the worse the results” territory.Report
Would you say that the people who listened to Nate Silver in 2016 instead of Sam Wang were “concern trolling”?Report
Speaking of Nate Silver, he wrote about the poll.
He’s taking more of a “we should have done things differently a year ago” stance, though.Report
Nate Silver is someone who lives and dies by polls. He will never question them.Report
It’s far more important that we stick with what we know in our hearts to be true.Report
He goes back and forth.
He was the one that got a lot of criticism in 2016 for arguing the limitations of polls. He gave Trump better odds because he saw a greater chance of systemic skew.
In 2020, on the other hand, in ways that strained credulity he argued that the polls were basically accurate.Report
He was pretty trolly in 2022 which ended up being a red trickle and the 2023 Special Elections have featured Democratic over performance.
I do have a theory that abortion is still a big issue out there and it gets ignored by a lot of wonks because many are white and make and can only speak about the topic with the same emotional maturity as Jonah Hill’s character from Knocked Up.Report
I’m remembering how none of the smart people thought boring old Joe had a chance to beat the rest of the younger, hipper rivals like Buttiegieg or the female candidates like Warren or Harris.
Until he did.
I’m also recalling that the heart and muscle of the Democratic coalition isn’t affluent college educated male pundits but black church ladies, none of whom have a Substack or NYT column.
If there is a shift towards the Republicans, I would expect it to show up in the downballot races and issue oriented races like the one coming up in Ohio.
Again, I stand by my prediction that the 2024 election will be close and turn on a handful of states.Report
“I’m remembering how none of the smart people thought boring old Joe had a chance to beat the rest of the younger, hipper rivals like Buttiegieg or the female candidates like Warren or Harris.
Until he did.”
FTR, polling always said he did. It was only people ignoring the polls that convinced themselves otherwise.Report
People thought that Joe Biden was not in touch with 2020’s twitter youth and because of his stance on Israel is not popular with the today’s tiktok youth. The twitter youth and tiktok youth might be very loud but they aren’t even close to a majority of the Democratic party.Report
I was pretty unconvinced by his trolling in 2022 and am not convinced by this trolling in 2023. It is about 900 times less convincing and clever than you think it is.
2024 is serious but dank memes are not a valid response to pointing out flaws.Report
Sam Wang Yesterday.
Sam Wang Today.
Sam Wang Forever!
Anyway, I think that his “memes” are not particularly “dank”. I think that his take is that both of the people most likely to get nominated are fairly unfavorable is a take that isn’t *THAT* hot.
Now, I’ve heard rumors that Even David Axelrod has acknowledged that polls exist… and if there is anyone less dank than David Axelrod, I don’t know who it would be. Paul Begala? No. Paul Begala is danker than Axelrod.
Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg is less dank than David Axelrod.
Where were we? Ah, yes. Nate Silver. If I were to sum up Nate’s take, I’d say that it was something like “How in the hell did we get *HERE*?”
I know that *I* would prefer to vote for someone other than Biden or Trump. Therefore.. I will.
But the two-party dead-enders don’t have that freedom and so I tend to think that Biden v. Trump will suffer from some serious uncertainty.
That, of course, entails stuff like “polls a year out being FREAKIN’ WORTHLESS” but it also entails stuff like “we can’t rely on what worked last time working next time”.Report
You are doing exactly what I thought you would be doing? And I wasn’t thinking of Sam Wang.Report
And yes, polls a year out from an election are worthless. If they are good, you should not let them make you complacent and they also do not reflect history set in stone.
I outlined why I think the poll is not great with facts and you respond with trolling and Nate SIlver’s dank memes.Report
I wouldn’t argue that the poll was great.
What I would argue is that Biden can’t rely on coasting the way he was able to during a pandemic and the Democrats who might argue that Team Blue has it in the bag might be engaging in motivated reasoning.
Trump is beating Biden on a handful of key metrics and they include stuff like Immigration and, you guessed it, The Economy.
Will that hold over the next year? Who in the heck can say! Hell, Trump’s still in court! He could *EASILY* get convicted and a “Found Guilty” could swing him in enough minds to have him lose a SECOND time to Joe Biden.
There is *SO FREAKIN’ MUCH UP IN THE AIR*.
That said, there’s a difference between “this shouldn’t be over-weighted in importance” and “this doesn’t mean anything, it means nothing at all!”
For one thing, David Axelrod is making noises about Biden dropping out.
The poll isn’t great, sure.
But the things that it points at aren’t great either.
And dismissing the poll entirely does nothing to address the things that the poll is measuring.Report
I feel like candidates can only get one “we just want Trump gone, we just wanna go back to brunch” election. After that you gotta have people on your side.
“Oh, what, you’re saying that Democrats will vote for Trump?” No, I’m saying they’ll stay home, like happened in 2016, and you see where that gets you.Report
For what its worth, I am more of a Simon Rosenberg kind of guy: https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/there-are-elections-on-tuesday-and
He was pretty spot on in 2022.Report
The only demographic that didn’t go more for Trump in 2020 than in 2016 was college-educated white males.
Now, that’s not saying that a majority of every demographic went for Trump, but if you’re counting on The Support Unwavering, then maybe don’t do that.Report
The Times/Sienna Poll also had a generic, unnamed Democrat beating Trump by 8 points in 2024. The previous result from 2020 had a generic, unnamed Democrat beating Trump by +3 points. Basically, Republicans are fired up because the other guy occupies the White House and this should change a bit in 2024 as the election actually gets real to normal people and Democrats.Report
I don’t even answer my cell phone if the caller isn’t in my contact list…Report
Exactly. The only people that do are over 60. Possibly over 65 generally.Report
Well, my stepmother is over 70 and we text quite a bit, so I think it’s more than just being over 60-65. It may be an age thing if it’s 80+, but likely also other demographics, like income, etc.Report
What It Takes for a Democrat to Be Competitive in the Deep Red South
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/brandon-presley-mississippi-governor-race
“I think I’m very much in the mainstream of Mississippi political thought. I don’t support sex changes for minors, I don’t support boys playing girls’ sports,” he said. “I’m pro-life but I strongly believe in exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.”
Plus being 2nd cousin to skinny Elvis probably helps a bit.
RCP has him losing to Reeves (R) by quite a lot; 538 has a couple polls showing -1 or even … or losing by a lot.Report
I imagine he is going to lose. Mississippi is a red state and he has about as much a chance as Republicans do at winning state wide office in California. For the record, there was a lot of gushing in the media about how Lanhee Chen might just be the first Republican to win state-wide election in California since the Governator in the 2022 Controller Race. He lost by a nearly 11 point margin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_California_State_Controller_election
On the other hand, Democrats have been out performing in the 2023 special elections and I am optimistic about Virginia and New Jersey.Report
Probably going to lose, yes. But, if you thought you might want to win?
https://gov.louisiana.gov/Report
In many ways, he would still be better than Tate Reeves and I will grin and beat it through his stupid comments on not being a “Metropolitan Opera Democrat.” At the very least, he won’t likely have a massive corruption scandal. However as I commented on the Bulwark (I like JVL and Tim Miller) and maybe LGM, it is going to be harder in the future for there to be regional Republicans and Democrats.
I don’t think California is the crazy liberal state everyone imagines it to be. The median San Franciscan voter is not represented by the aging hippies at the Anarchist bookstore on Haight Street. But the issue here is that Californian Republicans do not want to be a technocratic, socially liberal, fiscally moderate party that runs people like Michael Bloomberg or the resurrected spirit of Jacob Javits. They want to run on the same resentments that fuel Trump and the modern GOP and this alienates most of the urban and suburban voters who dominate California voting.Report
Sure, I get it… what’s even the point of electing a 30-degree course corrected Gavin Newsom?
Other than the fact that 30-degree Gavin doesn’t exist, so what’s to keep Gavin heading True North on any point at all?
But yes, I agree that Regional R’s and D’s aren’t really the solution to a multi-party option after we ditch FPTP voting.Report
Issues like reproductive freedom and LGBT rights are now litmus tastes for the Democratic Party in ways that they weren’t in the past. I still think that as the sane party, there is a lot of variation among Democratic politicians but somebody who could win in the Deep South might have some issues with the rest of the nation. Even in form of demeanor, the sort of down home good ol’ boy personality is going to turn off a lot of Democratic voters elsewhere. Look at the fights over Gavin’s demeanor on the other blog.Report
From a demeanor perspective, Brandon Pressley would actually do quite well in most Democratic circles, though he does have a distinct northern Mississippi accent he won’t ever really loose or cover up. He comes off as educated but not snobby about it, passionate about certain issues and willing to give people a fair shake. His positions on abortion and transgender rights are not to my liking, but he’s as liberal as most Mississippians get on those issues.Report
I’m not even following the VA races closely to hazard a guess; I can say, however, that I’m adjacent to Senate 31 and am bombarded with their preposterous ads.
On the one hand, former Prosecutor is going to defund all police.
On the other hand, a ‘Youngkin’ entrepreneur backing 15-week abortion (w/exceptions) is banning all abortions.
My favorite when I go to Planned Parenthood for the source of ‘Banning ALL abortions’, there’s nothing but a ‘scary’ blurb with no content but ‘scare links’ to stuff that makes you think there must be evidence there.
The links:
What if means to be pro-life today: https://www.bisnow.com/washington-dc/news/washington-dc-scene/msica-y-sueos-46410
And this humdinger from Facebook in the year of our Lord 2014:
Hey Everyone,
Wanted to pass along the topic for this Sunday’s mass group. After mass, we will be talking about what it means to be pro life in the world today. Our good friend, Lila Rose, a leader in the pro life movement, will be joining in and sharing some thoughts.
Also, we’ll be praying the rosary before mass at 2:40 in the chapel and after the discussion, we’ll be hitting up the Tombs for drinks, this time John Gallagher, will be buying….
Looking forward to seeing everyone and God bless,
Juan Pablo
—
So whatever happens, it’s either because of defund the police or abortion.Report
I love election time in VA. Every ad on broadcast TV is a window into another world where the outcome of each contest is not already known.Report
I assume there are some toss-ups.Report
Yeah, we’re well past ‘negative ads’ and fully in alternative reality ads narrated by ‘Movie Guy Voice’ : ‘In a world where my opponent wins [this one tiny rural State Senate Seat] puppies will be murdered and all the fields will be salted’Report
My wife and I think the best is the one that quotes some (I assume paroled?) criminal as saying ‘I will kill you all’ to a family he was holding at gunpoint… INCLUDING A BABY! (baby crying in the background) There are 5 or 6 we see that are definitively more unhinged than any I can recall from past years.Report
Do you really want to live in a world where criminals rob not only parents but BABIES too?
How will you go to the Dentist when ALL THE DOCTORS are in prison?Report
Looks like we’re gonna live in a Baby robbing world.Report
As an occupant of a world where baby robbing is typically tolerated I can say it’s not so bad. I’ve also heard that under Bruen babies cannot be denied the right to concealed carry. In time they will learn to defend themselves.Report
As you might imagine . . . I have thoughts. Pressley is running a much strong campaign the Jim Hood did 4 years ago (Hood was the AG when he decided to run against Reeves and was our last statewide Democrat). Most of the local media polling has him inside the margin of error for winning.
Turnout will be key. There is a LOT of Republican apathy showing up in statewide polls, and the Reeves response to the welfare scandal hasn’t helped. Neither has his unwillingness to take up Medicaid expansion, which many other sate Republican officials now think is a good idea.
I’ll go vote tomorrow and we will circle back Wednesday or Thursday to find out.Report
Yeah, will be interested in your take as it shakes out. The article spends a fair bit of time illustrating how Reeves is being painted as the ‘out of touch elitist’ to Presley’s earthy populist outsider. I have no particular insight into whether that’s resonating among enough Republicans to either stay home or see Presley as ‘one of us’.
But step one, to Saul’s chagrin, is probably establishing one’s Non-Metropolitan-Opera-Democrat bona fides.Report
Agreed on the bona fides. Its been interesting – national Democratic groups have outspent national Republican groups on Mississippi 7 to 1 trying to move this needle. And Pressley is no one’s idea of a Progressive or leftist. He’s at best a socially conservative fiscal liberal.Report
An interesting thread that points out that Democratic support for Israel is somewhere around Democratic support for Traditional Marriage in 2006.
Same Sex Marriage, it points out, was inevitable.Report
There’s no national divorce. But the right is getting the Jews in the settlement.Report
Eh, the left will still accept the ones willing to shut the hell up about their ersatz South Africa. They’d be perfectly welcome if they’d keep to the topics of abortion, racism, and Trump Trump Trump.Report
It’s just a tiny little pinch of incense.Report
The Republicans have believed that the Jews are going to split right over Israel since 1967. This has not happened yet and there is no evidence of it happening any time soon.Report
A song that has been topical since May 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgf5g3NMQlwReport
I hasten to add to my comment above that the Baroness was not ALL bad…
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-regret-to-inform-you-that-my-wedding-to-captain-von-trapp-has-been-canceledReport
Vox has this rathe infuriating article Hezbollah’s role in the war against Hamas up.
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/28/23935157/hezbollah-lebanon-israel-hamas-palestine-gaza-iran-militia-group
There is a frustrating line of Western criticism, more frustrating than the purely anti-Israeli sentiment from the tiktok, that is intelligent enough to be aware that the Muslim world is filled with anti-Semitism and that the basic definition of justice in the I/P conflict throughout most of the Muslim world is “No Israel, No Jews.” This includes groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Taliban and countries like Pakistan and Iran. They also know that there is widespread anti-Semitism of the “demon Jew is out to get you variety” or the “Jews are conspiring against all of Islam.”
And with this knowledge they basically assume that “only Jews have agency” and need to do all the work in resolving the I/P conflict, with people whose basic position is that the only justice they can accept is “No Israel, No Jews” and still think we should be paying the dhimmi tax and be de facto and de jure second class citizens. There is no plan to deal with the vast amounts of anti-Semitism among Muslims or really anywhere else. They won’t do anything about and they will do as much as possible not to talk about it or prevent even Jews from pointing it out.
Jews are expected to give true respect but in return we at best get lesser tolerance or more likely the vast majority of the world’s Muslim deciding to go to the bathroom on us as a people and as a religion. Can’t do anything about and can’t even talk about it. All sorts of dopey Jews going to multicultural events where they earnestly talk about what wisdom we could learn from the Qu’ran? What do we get in return. Nothing but hate and mockery. Can’t do anything about it, can’t talk about it.
Any serious I/P peace plan needs to address the vast amount of Jew hated through out the entire world and not just in a bundle with other hatred. Because I really believe that the world can make great strides globally against many other forms of bigotry and still have hundreds of millions or billions of people who believe the “demon Jew is out to get you.”Report
I think there needs to be more stuff like this from the German Vice-Chancellor, basically telling people to just stop it with the anti-Semitism forcefully rather than gently or pretending it doesn’t exist.
https://twitter.com/BMWK/status/1719757619471008148?s=20Report
Oh no, not a religious-based government where people have different rights based on their religion? Those things are horrible! I’m so glad we all oppose those.
Good thing Israel doesn’t grant any special rights to Jews, eh?
Unrelated, presented without comment:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-25/how-israel-s-arab-citizens-fare-in-an-unequal-society-quicktake
Well, one comment: That article skims right over the fact that Israel has basically illegally annexed East Jerusalem, and…doesn’t let them vote, despite claiming it’s part of Israel. That’s 300,000 Arab Israelis who cannot vote. In a country of slightly under 10 million. 3% of the entire population, about 15% of the entire Arab population.
(I have repeatedly bitten my tongue in writing this, and forced myself to only talk about _Israel_ proper, not what Israel does in the West Bank.)Report
A Jewish guy may or may not have stopped being alive after what may or may not have been an altercation at an event that was, apart from the altercation, peaceful.
Technically, it involved punching up but the Sheriff’s office declared it a homicide anyway.
Before people jump to conclusions, keep in mind: People die every day.Report
European style hate speech laws generally get really strained when you try to apply them to the I/P conflict because both sides can invoke them. So you get these weird ad hoc decisions like you can have a Pro-Palestinian rally but you can’t chant from the River to the Sea because that is going a tad far. France also recently criminalized abolishing Israel under their hate speech laws. I’m sure that you can come up with similar things from a Pro-Israeli rally like you can have a pro-Israel rally but you can’t say the Palestinians are nothing more than an Arab ploy to destroy Israel and don’t have a real identity.
The American approach to free speech is great in that you don’t have officials making these ad hoc decisions and what is and what is not hate speech. The bad part is that you can have dueling protestors and hearing rhetoric they find extreme from the either side gets the blood boiling and a fist fight breaks out.Report
Apparently the guy experienced being struck in the face with his own megaphone and then, of his own volition, percussively lied down on the ground and without much care put his own head on public property at a velocity that was unsafe for him to do so.Report
In all fairness, they did change this headline to something else.
But, for a few hours, it was that.
I understand that the writers don’t pick the headlines.Report
Yeah, no.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-06/man-dies-after-fight-at-protest-westlake-village-israel-hamas-war
“Kessler, of Thousand Oaks, was struck in the head, knocked backward and hit his head on the ground, deputies said.”
Other news reports said that Kessler was struck in the head with a megaphone and fell, hitting his head on the concrete sidewalk causing a brain bleed.
If true, that’s not an accident. That’s a crime.Report
The Previous headline at the LA Times:
Jewish Man Dies after California Altercation at Israel-Hamas Protest
The Current headline at the LA Times:
‘Conflicting statements’ complicate investigation into Jewish man’s death at protestReport
The guy who did it has been fingered. It’s apparently a computer science professor at Ventura County Community College.
Doesn’t look like they have a radio station.Report
Two competing narratives.
One is that it’s taking so long to arrest the guy because they’re going to add hate crime enhancements to the charges which means that all of the evidence needs to be air tight.
The other is that it’s an obvious tragic case of self-defense and the LAPD knows better than to arrest someone who was engaged in obvious self-defense even if the interaction itself had a tragic unintended outcome.Report
Kat Rosenfield coming in with by far the best op-ed I’ve seen on canceling of those voicing extreme pro-Palestinian views. Paywalled sadly but worth reading if you can get to it.
Most important, though, it’s not our place — mine, or yours — to punish speech that offends us by trying to get the speaker fired.
I think this was an easier concept to grasp back in the analog world, when political bloviating was mainly the province of actual politicians, op-ed columnists and talking heads on cable TV. Even amid the with-or-against-us fervor that gripped the nation post-9/11, when commentators such as Bill Maher or artists such as the Chicks suffered professional consequences for speaking out against the war in Iraq, no ordinary person had to fear losing their job for voicing an unpopular opinion. Social media had not yet given us the means of broadcasting our every thought into the ether, nor had slogans like “Silence is violence” created a pressure-cooker environment in which every person, no matter how far removed from the levers of power, feels compelled to post on current events, lest they end up on the wrong side of history. The notion that everything is political, and hence that a person who speaks bad thoughts is causing harm in some grand cosmic sense of the word and needs to be silenced, is an understandable byproduct of the current culture.
The truth is, people have always held an incredible variety of stupid opinions. They’ve always been foolish, or biased, or bigoted, or believers in wild conspiracy theories. But they have also always been perfectly capable, and deserving, of remaining employed and contributing productively to society irrespective of the views they hold. Social media has not changed any of this; it’s only made it easier to know who thinks what. Can that be upsetting? Of course, but the onus is on all of us to deal with those feelings like adults. The list of appropriate responses to offensive speech is virtually limitless; you can argue, or look away, or just silently revise your opinion of the speaker for future reference. (I will not, personally, be inviting the posters of those Hamas paraglider memes to my birthday party.)
But the idea that speech should have consequences, and that losing your livelihood is an appropriate price to pay for using your voice? It’s grotesque, and as we are beginning to see, unsustainable. This snitching, surveilling, offense-seeking culture of intolerance is anathema to a functional society; it will tear us apart if we let it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/06/free-speech-being-jerk-social-media-dismissals/Report
Oops didn’t realize html is offline. Second paragraph on is a quote from the piece.Report
As ever, the cri we s for something called “free speech” are just empty platitudes unless they can articulate where free speech ends.
Are the boundaries of speech different for schools, or public libraries than private consumption?
What are appropriate boundaries for expressing our dissent from speech, like critical comments, refusal to engage, refusal to hire?
Without grappling with these sorts of questions it’s just flag waving performance.Report
“Qualitatively, we should have more X.”
“Give me a quantitative number for X. Explain to me *EXACTLY* what amount X should be.”
“Qualitatively, we should have more than we have now!”
“WE CANNOT HAVE 100% X. BY SAYING THAT YOU WANT 100% X, YOU ARE SUPPORTING AN ODIOUS CONCLUSION!”
“I’m not arguing for 100% X. I’m saying that, qualitatively, we should have more than we have now.”
“That’s just an empty platitude unless you can give me a quantitative valuation.”Report
Yes, exactly.Report
It’s not a particularly good trick once you see how it’s done.
Given that it is possible to say “you’ve gone too far”.
Seriously. Game this out. You do *NOT* want “you’ve gone too far” to become a meaningless criticism.
“You shouldn’t hit people in the head with megaphones.”
“Oh, so you’re saying that people should be allowed to consume unmentionable examples that are deliberately chosen to be risible?”Report
Oh don’t misunderstand me.
I’m a big believer in free speech. Free speech is great we need more of it.Report
Articles like this assume that everybody is going to abide by the rules once we agree upon it. The rule in this case is that you shouldn’t be fired or be refused as a hire because of extremist speech and being a big jerk on social media. The problem with this is that all evidence shows that not everybody is going to abide by the rules. The Pro-Palestinian side is going to demand all the benefits but argue that being pro-Israel is so vile that anybody mildly pro-Israel must receive their punishment to get rid of that terrible evil.
This is from the NY Post so take it with a grain of salt:
https://nypost.com/2023/11/05/opinion/woke-mob-cancels-influencer-for-being-israeli/
Since the Pro-Palestinian activists aren’t going to disarm, I see no reason why my side should and expose ourselves to death and danger.Report
Words cannot hurt you, and you are not physically threatened by people by virtue of their stupid political opinions. Like most Americans you will almost certainly die of cancer or heart disease, or some other complications of aging, maybe if you are really, really unlucky a car crash or something like that. This mentality that words are a physical threat is exactly what people need to walk away from.Report
I think this is completely wrong. Words have been used to stir up the masses into performing great acts of violence against disfavored groups. Words can also inflict a lot of emotional pain on individuals. Saying that words can’t hurt you and people just need to be stoic and stiff upper lipped about them is based on false premises like how memory was seen as reliable when now we know it is completely unreliable.Report
I don’t see how we can have both a big multicultural society function and also treat abstract, non-quantifiable, emotional pain as a serious problem. Some ruffling of feathers is inevitable and it’s incumbent on mature adults to be able to take it in stride. The alternative to the stiff upper lip is not safety, it’s childishness.
Anyway your protection from physical harm, other than exercising your own good judgment, is living in a country with strong institutions that so far have mostly operated within the rule of law. The special pleading you’re making here is more likely to undermine those things that generally serve to prevent intergroup violence than to reinforce them. Memory also isn’t the only thing that is unreliable. Threat perceptions, and understanding of what threats actually exist versus those that don’t, are also quite prone to mistakes and misfires.Report
What if we had a rough consensus about the limits of speech?
Like, it is OK to be fired for wearing swastika on your free time, but not OK to get fired for wearing a MAGA hat?Report
I put the onus on the firers rather than the fired to have some principles in mind, that they then apply universally, and think the presumption should always be against action for speech occurring outside of the work place. There will never be an issue by issue consensus. My operating principle is that it shouldn’t happen, but if there are situations that warrant it they need to be so bad that they are obviously disruptive to the workplace in a way that cannot be fixed without removing the person.
As an aside, while I probably still wouldn’t agree with it, I’d find it less concerning if there was more consistency. All I see is panicked bending with the wind of perceived public opinion and the hobby horse issues of a small number of powerful people.Report
The world would be a much better place if that were the general rule. But it isn’t, and never has been. And that has rarely been the general position of many currently vocal free speech pretenders.Report
The fact that hypocrisy would eventually be exposed in some corners isn’t really the issue for me. That was inevitable.
I am not sure if it is a principle, but by and large our society needs to be able to talk through things, and not have knee jerk reactions to controversial speech by private people. I understand there was never a time where some firm line was drawn between public and private. The question to me is whether we think it would be good for everyone to be walking on egg shells solely for the reason that we aren’t as anonymous as we used to be. I don’t think there is any good reason for the answer to that question to be yes.Report
Didn’t we have this conversation at the time of the Harper’s Letter?
One thing that I thought was ironic was MattY signed it while still at Vox and one of his co-workers did the open letter thing using a *LOT* of HR-speak (feeling unsafe, that sort of thing) and MattY quit and opened a substack (and it became one of the most popular ones, measured by subscriptions) and *THAT* turned into whether we should ban substack as being a hate speech site (which fizzled out hard) and the former co-worker changed her name and was let go from Vox as part of one of the subsequent rounds of layoffs.
All that to say: We don’t know *WHAT* is safe and what is unsafe at first glance. Some of the stuff that looks really unsafe is actually safer than the stuff that has a really pretty façade.
Free Speech keeps us safe. Even if it looks really scary.
We’re going to have this conversation again and again, though. The folks who prefer pretty façades have a lot of inroads to institutional power and seem to keep thinking “we just gotta weather this rough patch, then we’ll finally be in charge”.Report
I think you’re right on the endlessness of it. But I also think what’s due for a comeback is the old maxim about sticks and stones, combined maybe with a little more acceptance that people are by and large unreliable narrators when it comes to their own lived experience. That after all is a big part of what it means to be a grown up.Report
The difference between lived experience and anecdotal evidence is that anecdotal evidence can often be reliably sourced.Report
Everybody loves Free Speech until they get insulted right to their face.Report
I don’t know that I agree that signing the Harper’s Letter qualifies as a right-to-one’s-face insult.Report
One of the few pieces of social-justice wisdom I consider valid is that insults are as they’re heard, not as they’re intended.
Now. What you do about being insulted should depend on the intent.Report
“But they have also always been perfectly capable, and deserving, of remaining employed and contributing productively to society irrespective of the views they hold.”
The problem with this is that many people’s views include a belief that they have a moral imperative to act on their other views at the expense of doing their jobs. We saw this, e.g., with the NYT meltdown over the Tom Cotton op-ed.Report
I disagree with the way they reacted in that situation but those people are so ridiculously unrepresentative of the norm that you can’t use them to calibrate anything. Really a lot of the problems come from trying to calibrate to the preferred (to say nothing of arbitrary and self serving) standards of ivy league educated journalists saturated in the childish, bizarro world activist norms that prevail in corners of academia.Report
I’m not exactly sure about this entirely. I think there is a substantial difference between not getting hired because of some opinion stated and getting fired because of some opinion you stated. Many of these elite young Pro-Palestinian activist hot heads are seeking employment in areas with lots of Jewish employers and employees. Since they aren’t exactly shy with voicing their opinions this can create a lot of tension in the work place because I’m pretty sure the Jewish employees are going to be thrilled with constant lectures on how Israel is an illegitimate settler-colonialist state. Employers generally want to avoid flare ups and they are going to favor existing employees over potential employees. We also know that this is going to be a one way thing. The Pro-Palestinian advocates have made it abundantly clear that they believe people who have pro-Israel opinions must be pressured and punished into the right opinions and behaviors. I’m not sure why having everybody else unilaterally unarm themselves while they go wildly about is going to work in getting them to calm down.Report
I know it is paywalled but the op-ed is specifically about speech outside of the work environment, not within in.Report
“But the idea that speech should have consequences, and that losing your livelihood is an appropriate price to pay for using your voice? ”
All speech has consequences. Freedom of speech is the limitation of the gov’t on retaliation on the speaker, not the general public (and don’t tell me that there isn’t consequences for some speech directed AT the gov’t.
I have no problem if a business owner realizes he has a hate monger in his employ, a racist, whatever, and decides his company is better off without him. I have no problem with a company deciding that, after seeing person who’s received an offer of employment, do something untoward, rescinding that offer. A perfect example, is my dad boycotting certain companies and products because the owner was against certain issues my father supported.Report
There’s a difference between what one can do and what one should do. I said on the other thread that an open and free society can survive this kind of sanction of people insisting on expressing certain views, as long as it is really limited to a small handful of ideas, narrowly construed, and with a liberally applied benefit of the doubt. Put more simply it isn’t the end of liberalism if the guy with swastika tattoos on his face has trouble getting work.
What we should be wary of is an ever growing web of taboos impossible to track and arbitrarily enforced, which is what in my estimation apologists for these kinds of sanctions really want, probably because they think they will be able to enforce it in a heads they win tails you lose kind of way. What we’re seeing here is how tempting it is to go Planet of Cops when people think it is them who gets to be the cop.Report
All speech has consequences. All speech has always had consequences. And it has never been popular. As a purely legal matter, we are freer than we have been in my lifetime and the lifetimes of my parents and grandparents. In our meatspace interactions, most of us are freer in a social sense than we have ever been.* The only real differences from the past are technology and whose ox is being gored at the moment. But what principle governs what we can say or do about speech we don’t like?
I, myself, do not get worked up much about, for example, odious celebrities. I would not boycott an otherwise potentially interesting movie starring Mel Gibson or produced by Woody Allen, but then again, I never watched a movie because it starred Mel Gibson or was produced by Woody Allen. That, however, is simply my own laid-back preference and I do not prescribe it as a rule for others. If people don’t want to see Mel Gibson or Woody Allen movies, that’s fine. And if enough people don’t want to see them — and do nothing more than stay home — the powers-that-be will count the box-office receipts and there won’t be any more Mel Gibson or Woody Allen movies, or at least they’ll be harder to find. That will suck if you’re a Mel Gibson or Woody Allen fan, just as it sucked if you were a fan of the Dixie Chicks, as they then were, but that’s just life and there’s nothing to be done about it.
Now suppose the Gibson/Allen haters not only sit home and watch something else, but tell friends and acquaintances why they’re sitting home? Is that OK? Why or why not? What if they wrote letters to the local paper saying that Gibson/Allen were odious and they weren’t going to watch their movies anymore? Is that OK? Why or why not? Or take out an ad in Variety? Or write to the heads of the studios? (That’s not really the way it works in the movie business any more, but plug in network executives or someone else if you like.) And does it make a different if you say simply, “Gibson/Allen is odious and I won’t watch his movies anymore,” or say in addition “And you shouldn’t make them anymore.”
None of this is stuff I would bother to do, not out of any great principle, but merely because I am laid-back and lazy. I may point and laugh at people who get so worked up about such things, but I can’t say on any principle that they shouldn’t do it.
* It may seem otherwise if you currently find yourself “unfree” to say things you used to say that used to be fashionable, but are not now. That is just an example of the gored-ox rule. It was always tough to say whatever was then unfashionable. It often took guts then and still does now.Report
But we’re in a weird place where all of us are Mel Gibson now.
People are getting fired for, for example, ripping down posters of kidnapped Israelis. I suppose that I can understand not wanting to have my teeth cleaned by a lady who thinks that the posters are Israeli propaganda responsible for manufacturing consent for a genocide… but it seems odd to have a dental tech fired for doing that in her spare time.
We’re no longer talking about refusing to see Fatman or Blue Jasmine at that point.Report
All of us have always been Mel Gibson, but we were protected by our relative anonymity. Now we can broadcast our assholery to millions of people who would otherwise know nothing of us, and the result is predictable. Just as it was predictable at smaller scale in the before time.Report
This isn’t limited to people who sign open letters, though.
Not only we can broadcast our assholery, other people can broadcast it. People aren’t broadcasting themselves tearing down photos. Other people are filming it and broadcasting it.
It’s reached the point where there is pushback against people filming public protests in common areas lest someone be “doxxed” for being part of a protest.
Melissa Click’s “We need some muscle over here!” on a cultural scale.
There doesn’t seem to be an underlying ethic or limiting principle beyond “Who? Whom?” and, lemme tell ya, the results of that are predictable as hell.
Like, I could see how someone might even say “we should avoid these likely results” once they’ve gamed them out.Report
Yeah we’re on a space where companies are facing organized boycotts for having rainbow flags on their stuff.
By the very same people yell the loudest about freedom of speech.
Is it hypocrisy or are there legitimate ways of punishing speech we find offensive?
Opinions vary, right on this blog.
ETA: It’s like we need to define limiting principles.Report
I suppose that this is much like the old “I can’t believe that Republicans are opposed to abortion but support the death penalty!” criticism made by people who are opposed to the death penalty but support abortion.
“They support boycotts of corporations but are opposed to private citizens having their actions publicized and getting them fired!”Report
So the boycott wasn’t a curtailment of free speech?Report
Eh, saying that people should be forced to purchase mediocre beer doesn’t strike me as free speech either.
“Free Speech” is one of those things that you have whether or not I buy your product.Report
Gotcha. So it wasn’t punishing the company for saying something, it was merely people realizing the company no longer shared their values.
“Bob, we couldn’t help but notice your Facebook page where you said “Trump is great!”.
Now, we’re not going to punish you for your speech, Lord knows we are big fans of free speech, but it’s clear now that you don’t share our corporate values. Turn in your keycard and a guard will escort you out.”Report
This has to do with misunderstanding the difference between sticks and carrots, I think.
Giving a carrot == Giving a benefit.
Giving a stick == Giving a punishment.
Withholding a carrot =/= Giving a punishment.
If you can’t make that distinction in your head, it’ll probably be confusing because you’ll conflate not giving a carrot with giving a punishment and a lot of stuff follows from that.
(We can also make distinctions between a corporation choosing to not hire a person and private individuals calling up corporations in order to get people fired. If you can’t tell the difference between not using a stick and providing a carrot, you probably will have trouble with that too.)Report
“OK everybody welcome to the company holiday party. We had a great year and everybody is getting a bonus! Except Bob, of course.”Report
Is public shaming “punishment”? Application of a stick?
Because something like “everybody is getting a christmas card from us with an extra ‘gift’!” and everybody but Bob gets a check and Bob gets a $5 book of coupons good for Wendy’s Frostys is not punishment.
But shaming Bob in front of everybody would be.
This goes back to the whole difference between carrots and sticks thing. Again: It’s a tricky concept!Report
Yeah that’s the point.
It’s complicated.
The boundary between protected and unprotected speech, who you’re protected from, what sort of reaction or punishment can be applied…it’s all complicated and constantly being negotiated.Report
Well, qualitatively, I think that we should have more.
But if you keep conflating withholding carrots with applying sticks or conflating withholding sticks with providing carrots, you’re going to continue to give examples where others point out that not giving X is not the same thing as providing or withholding Y.Report
Where did I conflate the two?
I’m just saying that the boundary between protected and unprotected speech, who you’re protected from, what sort of reaction or punishment can be applied…it’s all complicated and constantly being negotiated.
If you want to make some sort of limiting principle out of carrots versus sticks, go right ahead- I’ll give it a listen.Report
In the example that you yourself gave, is where.Report
Oh I know the difference.
I just don’t understand why it would separate an acceptable curtailment versus an unacceptable curtailment.
Like I said, if you want to create an operational principle using “carrots v. sticks” this would be a good time.Report
So you say, so you say.
The operational principle would be something like “I have the presumptive right to my carrots and to give them to whom I choose” while “I do not have a presumptive right to apply sticks willy-nilly. ”
But that opens the door to stuff like people arguing that if you don’t have a presumptive right to a thing, therefore the argument must be that said thing is banned… we will see if this goes there, though.
Perhaps I should just go with the whole iterated prisoner’s dilemma thing and we can argue about tit-for-tat or high collaboration and pretend that we have never discussed such a concept before.Report
Well it seems like you are still working it out.
Which seems reasonable since as we both have said, its very complicated.Report
So you say, so you say.Report
““Bob, we couldn’t help but notice your Facebook page where you said “Trump is great!”.
Now, we’re not going to punish you for your speech, Lord knows we are big fans of free speech, but it’s clear now that you don’t share our corporate values. Turn in your keycard and a guard will escort you out.””
chip
why do you think we’d say “no that shouldn’t happen”?Report
The Bud Light thing is a fine example of what free speech entails and what it doesn’t. A bunch of dudes who, for whatever reason, drank Bud Light, decided that they did not like Bud Light trying to expand its market by advertising to people the Bud Light dudes didn’t like. So they stopped drinking Bud Light. That doesn’t strike me as problematic. Does anyone disagree?
And if enough dudes stopped drinking Bud Light to hurt AB-Inbev in the pocket book, that’s just the breaks.
So some Bud Light dude has some of his bros over for the football game and serves Miller Lite instead of the usual Bud Light. Is it OK to tell the bros why?
Then some Bud Light dudes tell the world why they don’t drink Bud Light anymore. Is this OK? Does it matter whether they merely say they don’t like ads directed at trans people or whether they include the explicit or implicit threat that they won’t drink Bud Light unless AB-Inbev stops reaching out to new customers they don’t like?
All of that sounds like free speech to me, which doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t point and laugh. That’s free speech too.
What, if anything, would cross whatever line one thinks one can draw?Report
Trying to come up with limiting principles for big political issues that people feel really strongly about is not going to be easy. Like we prevent the anti-choice side for calling abortion murder but at the same time the reproductive freedom advocates can’t call anti-choice people “forced birthers”. I’m not sure how this would work out.Report
Technology is a bitch. But what it magnifies is the same old same old. There isn’t now, and never was “an underlying ethic or limiting principle.” And the current crop of free speech pretenders haven’t offered one other than arbitrary preferences.Report
I imagine that that is what the main argument will be.
We’ve never had 100%.
Therefore we’re haggling.
Therefore you should have less.
Therefore your preferences for more are arbitrary.Report
Imagine what you please. If you actually disagree as a factual matter, feel free to expound.Report
“There isn’t now, and never was “an underlying ethic or limiting principle.””
Why do you support retaliatory firing for people speaking out about racialized harassment and transphobia in their workplace?Report
I don’t. What makes you think I do? And there are actual laws against such things.
But I don’t claim that my position is based on some sort of grand, free-speech principle binding on others. Some folks think they have such a principle, but when asked for a coherent explanation, they sputter. This doesn’t advance the discussion much.Report
The boundary between protected speech and unprotected speech has always been a negotiated haggle, just as the boundary between acceptable punishments from unacceptable.
This why I push back so much on the virtue signaling because unless people are honest about being willing to punish unprotected speech, it give cover to all sorts of crypto- censorship like in my example of Bob, where isn’t being punished, just having his life made very unpleasant.Report
It’s sorta weird here that no one has brought up the boycott that is illegal to participate in, or at least the government penalizes people or businesses who do participate in it, in the vast majority of US states.Report
The Israel BDS boycott!
For what it’s worth, I think that it’s 100% cool for individuals to do it, 100% cool for private companies to do it, and within the boundaries of established government’s powers to make it illegal for public colleges/universities to do it if they receive government funding.Report
Just ordering government institutions to not do that would almost certainly be legal, but that isn’t vaguely where those laws stopped. Most of those laws literally made lists and barred state entities from working with any organizations that openly did BDS. Sometimes these lists even applies to individuals, although the courts have…frowned on that and struck a lot of that down.
So, I guess, the next city government that wants to ban Chik-fil-A just has to impose ten million dollar a day operating tax on all restaurants, and then give everyone _but_ them ten million dollars a day in tax credits or whatever. Suddenly, it’s legal, I guess, under anti-BDS law logic.
Also, it’s weird how apparently the courts think people have more free speech rights than corporations and non-profits. Kinda thought we had already settled that, and I’m being to suspect that was extremely dishonest and it turns out that corporations only have free speech when it’s speech conservatives like!Report
I think that there’s something about how Israel is an official Ally of the United States and how organizations affiliated with the government, even state government, have to deal with the fact that there’s a Supremacy Clause.
Maybe we should have not seen South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987) as a victory after all… I mean, there just ain’t *NO* exceptions to what Big Daddy wants.Report
That…makes no sense as a justification. You are basically inventing a Federal law that does not exist. We could argue whether or the Federal government _could_ make a law requiring states to not work with anyone doing BDS (they could not), but they _have not_ done that, so that is irrelevant.
Also, incidentally being ‘allies’ with a country is not actually any sort of legal status outside of a war we are both fighting in on the same side.
There is no magical official list of countries we are ‘allies’ with vs. ones we are not. We work with all sorts of countries in various ways, and technically work with _every_ country in a few ways. (That’s what happens when you house the UN.)Report
DUDE YOU ARE TELLING THIS TO SOMEONE WHO LIVED THROUGH ASHCROFT V. RAICH.
YOU WANT TO TELL ME THAT THESE RULES DON’T MAKE ANY FREAKING SENSE? OH! REALLY! HOW FREAKING INTERESTING! PLEASE TELL ME MORE!!!
As it is, these are the rules that have been established. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have learned to.
There may not be an “official” list of “allies” but Israel is an “official trading partner” of the US and that dates back to the 1985 U.S.-Israel Free Trade Agreement.
“BUT THAT SHOULDN’T COUNT”!, you may want to assert. Yeah. Sure. Get in line.Report
That solider commentator I like has mentioned several times that the US has weird (lack of) rules for the weapons we supply to Israel. With Ukraine we’re very comfortable telling them they can’t use them in Russia. With Israel they can do what they want.
His expectation/speculation is that is part of whatever deals we’ve made with them.Report
“There isn’t now, and never was “an underlying ethic or limiting principle.””
“Why do you support retaliatory firing for people speaking out about racialized harassment and transphobia in their workplace?”
“I don’t. What makes you think I do? And there are actual laws against such things. But I don’t claim that my position is based on some sort of grand, free-speech principle binding on others.”
So, you oppose retaliatory firing for people speaking out about racialized harassment and transphobia…because there’s a law about that. No law and you’d be okay with it; as you say, your position isn’t based in any grand free-speech principle binding on others.Report
What is your native language?Report
“Now we can broadcast our assholery to millions of people who would otherwise know nothing of us, and the result is predictable.”
It’s a classic Boomer move to assume that anyone who got in trouble deserved it.Report
Reading comprehension, my dear boy, reading comprehension.Report
you’re aware that you’re epitomizing the thing I’m accusing you of being, rightReport
No. I can’t be “aware” of something unless there is something to be aware of. Maybe if you could string a few temperate sentences together in some logically connected way we could get somewhereReport
are you sure you’re not BlaisePReport
That’s not much of a start.Report
“Dark Matter” is not my real name.
The problem is not so much that one person “speaks their mind” as it is that if you’re putting out flame bait then someone in a workplace environment will take you up on it and then there is no work but there maybe violence.
My elementary school student was in a group study/practice event with some of her classmates and then one of the parents brought in a puppy. When that happened all productivity stopped. I’m sure the adult running the show asked the owner of the puppy to not bring them next time.Report
The op-ed concedes there is a fair line to be drawn within the workplace. I don’t think anyone signing pay checks has to tolerate someone pursuing whatever their pet issue is on company time. This is about looking for conduct outside the workplace, and even more specifically, people who think they should try to identify and contact a person’s employer about statements made outside of work.Report
There was never this time where you could do whatever you wanted outside of work w/ zero repercussions. It’s just what gets you repercussions has changed, and more importantly, everybody has a megaphone. Yes, in 1985, you could say some crappy things about your co-workers or whatever, and nobody outside of your backyard BBQ would know you said it.
If you say something in public or on social media that’s public, people have to understand that’s basically the same as saying it in front of your boss. Especially if it allows somebody to say to your boss, “I’m not going to give you money anymore, and I’m going to make sure lots of people know the type of person that they’re helping keep employed.”
Surprise, if you start acting like an ass, and start insulting your co-workers or customers, it doesn’t matter if you did it on or off the clock.
Now, there is a fix to this to a certain extent (end at-will employment), but most of the people who dislike the fact The Mob can be authoritarian and petty still want bosses to be able to be authoritarian and petty.Report
This comment starts off talking about saying anything, then moves to saying bad things about co-workers, then to insulting co-workers or customers. Fair enough; those are real-world examples. But what do you mean by “insulting”? Does it include all things they might find objectionable?Report
” But what do you mean by “insulting”? Does it include all things they might find objectionable?”
Anything they can convince their boss or HR. If you want to say edgy jokes about people not like you, then either don’t post them or Facebook, or don’t work w/ people who might be upset by said jokes.
This isn’t new – it’s just for the first time, middle-aged white dudes actually are facing sanction, so it’s the end of the world.Report
First off, injecting race, class, or sex into something where it’s unwarranted is never a good sign, and you just did all three, so I know this isn’t an intellectually serious conversation. Beyond that, your original comment seemed to use the example of saying bad things about co-workers to give a specific extreme example of a reasonable fireable offense. But if you really mean any statement that might note be liked, then there’s nothing narrow about it. You throw away any hope for articulable standards.Report
Go ask your own HR people at your employer how broad their criteria are. You may be surprised.
Funny how he never actually used any of those words:
That aside, let me assure you that in modern America the quickest way to be shown a door (or moved to a broom closet) is not make comments under any of those banners.Report
He said “middle-aged white dudes” while describing a phenomenon unrelated to race or sex. I’ll admit I assumed it was “middle-class” without looking closely, so I have to grant that he didn’t insert class.Report
It seems to be basically the phenomenon described in section VIII of this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/Report
When I started reading this link, I was thinking that I’d forgotten how good this author is, and why haven’t I read more of him. Ending it, I feel like a wraith from a horror movie, having watched years of life sucked out of my soul in a matter of moments.
I respect self-reflection, but Slate Star Codex has no impulse toward drawing conclusions.
It seems strange that we have a culture based on self-rejection, but maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. I think there’s always a sub-culture that thinks of itself as above the commoners; we just happen to have one that has more members than any other sub-culture. The modern liberal or whatever you want to call him is elitist, internationalist. It’s upper middle class in a way that’s economically identical to the middle class but defines itself by its not-averageness. It feels a kinship to anything it perceives as not being part of the American middle class. And it is a kind of elite, historically: its members are more defined by their leisure than by their work. They could lose a foot and it wouldn’t affect the quality of their diet, which is typically only true of the nobility. And without noblesse oblige, they’re not going to be productive. But it’s more than that, there’s a suspicion of productivity, because that’s a trait of the middle class.Report
I think this is more a normative conversation (how things should be) than a positive conversation (how things are). I have no doubt that people can get in trouble for things we’d both find objectionable or both find unobjectionable. We’re talking through the best direction for things to change.Report
I am continuing to be both amazed, dismayed, and incredibly angered at the ability of pro-Palestinian activists in the West to totally ignore the event that kicked off the current war between Israel and Hamas. I had to go to court to submit evidence, immigration court isn’t entirely electronic yet, and some type of organization was blaring some type of program where the person being interviewed was comparing what Israel is doing in Gaza to police brutality against African-Americans and things like the murder of George Floyd.
Never mind this entire thing started because Hamas committed a massacre of 1,400+ Jews in a rather grizzly manner and is holding hundreds of Israeli and non-Israeli civilians hostage including literal babies. Plus the entire Hamas being on the record saying that the only thing that will accept is “No Israel, No Jews.” These little details seem a tad important into understanding why Israel is engaging in war against Hamas but in the mushy muddle fantasy land of the Pro-Palestinian activists Israel just decided to go up and wage war against the poor poor Palestinians in Gaza for no reason. What utter gutter trash they are.Report
The Jews of Europe are experiencing a lot of anti-Semitism in the wake of the current Israel-Hamas War:
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23950628/antisemitism-rise-europe-israel-hamas-war
This always happens every time the I/P conflict flares up. Diaspora Jews manage to rally around Israel without going after Muslims and Pro-Palestinian activists but the other side just can’t help themselves and target Disaspora Jews despite claiming to be merely anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic.Report
That’s a fun slight of hand you did there, LeeEsq, where one side is ‘Diaspora Jews’ and the other side is ‘Muslims and Pro-Palestinian activists’. Hey, um…what about Pro-Israeli activists who aren’t Jewish? Shouldn’t they logically be counted on one side, if non-Muslims pro-Palestinian people are counted on the other?
Because a good chunk of both antisemitism, and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment, are by white Christians, or white secularists.
As that article also said:
“European Jews aren’t the only minority group being targeted due to the violence in the Middle East. An organization dedicated to tracking Islamophobia found that reports of Islamophobic acts in the UK increased five-fold in the days after the Hamas attacks, according to the Financial Times. European Muslims are worried for their safety.” – https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23950628/antisemitism-rise-europe-israel-hamas-war
Racism, religious bigotry, and xenophobia is a pretty serious problem in…most of the Western world.
And, I think people are underestimating the amount of overt racism that exists in Europe. Britain has a pretty big problem with anti-Arab bigotry _in general_, enough that they have invented a racial slur to talk about them. France has literally three generations of Muslims living in slums and likes to keep barring them from wearing head-coverings.
Anti-Jewish bigotry just had a bit of a guilt-based taboo for the last 70 years, and it seems like that taboo is wearing off.Report
Yeah, and what about, like, heart disease? Most days it kills way more Jews than the Palestinians have gotten a chance to, and people overlook it just because it doesn’t brag about killing Jews as much as Hamas does. But Lee continues to ignore it. It just makes it hard to trust, you know, people who think like Lee. You know what I mean.Report
Right under this post, Lee has a post about Roger Waters, who, last I checked…is not Muslim. It seems clear he actually is including ‘People who support Palestine but are not Muslim’ in his mental tabulations, and it seems equally clear he is _not_ including ‘People who support Israel but are not Jews’.
Actually, I’ll just ask.Report
Oh, hey, there recently was a supposedly ‘peaceful’ pro-Palestine rally on a college where outright antisemitic slogans were shouted! Showing just how bad this actually is:
https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2023/11/10/hundreds-of-pro-palestinian-students-walk-out-as-part-of-national-call-to-action-gather-for-peaceful-protest-art-installation/Report
In a further attempt to prove that they are merely anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, Rogers Waters has a chat with Glenn Greenwald and says that the Simhat Torah massacre never happened and it was staged by the Israelis:
https://twitter.com/__Donhulio__/status/1721702398144463147?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1721702398144463147%7Ctwgr%5E80d8ad06b5530b8a33f210decec90b14cd07a65d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D13690620https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D136906t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20232F112Fone-thing-you-can-never-say-that-you-havent-been-toldt_e%3DOne20thing20you20can20never20say3A20that20you20havenE28099t20been20toldt_d%3DOne20thing20you20can20never20say3A20that20you20haven27t20been20told20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DOne20thing20you20can20never20say3A20that20you20havenE28099t20been20tolds_o%3Ddescversion%3D685fe71837a5e31e62ed92d8c3551184Report
Who is ‘they’ referring to in that sentence?
Based on the context of your previous posts, it should logically be ‘Muslims and Pro-Palestinian activists’, but…Rogers Waters isn’t that. I already pointed out how silly it was that you compared the behavior of ‘Muslims and Pro-Palestinian activists’ to Diaspora Jews, singular, instead of ‘Diaspora Jews and pro-Israeli activists’, but, um…he’s not even a Pro-Palestinian activist.
He’s just some random famous antisemitic white guy. (In fact, for those playing along at home, he’d already been exposed as antisemitic.)
He reflects on the pro-Palestinian movement as much as Franklin Graham recent comments about how Muslims should be barred from the US reflects on the pro-Israel movement.Report
Beshear easily won reelection despite some last minute polls showing the race tied. Ohioans vote overwhelmingly to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and to legalize recreational marijuana. Democrats retain the State Senate in Virginia and appear to be on track to retake the House of Delegates.
So pretty good night.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDAReport
Ohio legalized pot! Now there are 24 states that have done it plus DC.
You’d think that we’d be able to get some movement *SOMEWHERE* at the Federal level… Maybe next year.Report
While only about 34% of the vote has been counted, it appears that Mississippi intends to stick with the GOP for its leadership – though in Hinds Ciubtybtgey had to leave the polls open an extra hour because they ran out of ballots. In a night when Kentucky re-elected Andy Beshear and Ohio enshrined the right to abortion care in their constitution (along with legalizing recreational marijuana.
I can’t say I’m horribly surprised but I can say I continue to be saddened that so many in our state want so desperately to cling to an illusion of power that they keep supporting people who bother wise hurt their own voters. But I guess they can go back to b!T hung about Joe Biden now.Report
Running preliminary numbers – 784,522 people voted for governor, which is roughly 40.86% of registered voters. That’s up from turnout on 2022 which was 32% but way below the 60.4% figure for 2020.
The voting population breaks down as 60.3% White, 37.1% Black and the remainder a number of other minority groups. Gov. Reeves got 51.8% while the Democrat got 46.9%. Last time out, Reeves got 52.1% and former Attorney General Jim Hood got 46.6%. So Democrats moved the needle a very little bit, but considering that every other state-wide republican was reelected, it’s not much.
Were the 16% of black voters who are barred from voting for felony convictions reenfranchised one wonders what effect that would have on outcomes.Report
The House votes to censure Rashid Tlaib for her comments In Israel-Gaza:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/07/politics/rashida-tlaib-censure-vote/index.htmlReport
234 to 188.
22 Democrats broke ranks in order to make this bipartisan.
From what I can tell, this doesn’t entail so much as being asked to sit in a different seat when they get together with their various committees. It’s purely symbolic (though she does have to stand in front of everybody while the measure is read aloud).
Maybe she’ll frame it and hang it on the wall.Report
I see this as an illustration of just how unhealthy our relationship with Israel is. You’ve still got George Santos and Bob Menendez in the house and senate respectively, but fail to toe the line on Israel’s war? Can’t let that go without some official admonishment, even if it is kind of meaningless.Report
Agreed.Report
So, in LGBTQ news:
Remember back when I pointed out that everyone pretending the anti-trans issue were good winning issues for Republicans had failed to notice we hadn’t actually had _elections_ about those? That just because Republicans were sure it was as winning issue didn’t mean it was in reality.
So, in Bucks County PA, Republicans spent $600,000 on a school board election for the distract that ‘Mom 4 Liberty’ took over back in 2021, doubling down on anti-trans and gay book banning. $600,000 for a _school board_ election.
They lost as much as it was possible to lose in that, every single one of their encombents and candidates lost. Six hundred thousand dollars for a _school board_ elections…that they lost.
They also lost school board races in Iowa, in West Des Moines, Johnston, Iowa City, same setup with same made-up issue about gay books and trans students. (But less spending, I think.)
They lost the Kentucky governor race, where Daniel Cameron was running basically as the anti-trans candidate.
About the only place Republicans actually managed to have an anti-trans politian win was…Gov. Tate Reeves, and an interesting fact about that race is that the Democrat challenger stupidly supported basically what Reeves did, so it was more like two anti-trans candidates against each other, and the race wasn’t really about that. And…that’s fricking Missippi, also. Democrats winning would be absurd, although the race was closer than it should have been.
I think the school board races, which were almost _entirely_ tests of how the public behaved in regard to open anti-trans and anti-gay issues, and very little else, were more telling than the governor’s races, which are often about a lot more. But YMMV.
So, in other words, we finally had the test if it was a winning issue, and…there’s the result.
…
Also, less in ‘News’ and more in ‘entirely expected’…so, um, people talking about how queer people should support Israel instead of Palestine because Israel supports gay rights, I give you the official account of the State of Israel: https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1721457922859729398
In a shocking twist, it turns out the far-right controlled-by-religious-fanatics Israeli government thinks making fun of queer people is great. Hmm. Weird.Report
Or, to put it another way: Anti-trans is very very similar to anti-abortion. A small minority love the idea and will vote for anyone promising it and vote against anyone attacked for not supporting it, so sometimes it is possible to get into office via some of their support.
But if you actually _do anything_, you will make a much larger subset of people very angry and get slapped down. They ignore the threat, but not the actuality.
This…worked pretty successfully for abortion while Roe v. Wade was in effect, because you could do the first part and then not actually have to do anything. You could pass bills and they didn’t do anything, or just yell about the Supreme Court and do nothing. It stopped working for that recently.
But it never worked for anti-trans bills, because they did have to pass them once elected, and they went into effect.
Ironically, almost all of anti-trans bills has been struck down, but they didn’t get struck down _fast enough_ to stop voters from getting horrified and angry at the results, as they watched neighbors flee various states.Report
Minor point of order – Pressley lost by roughly the same percentage that Jim Hood did to Reeves four years ago. Democratic candidates for governor have been garnering around 40% for a while. Which is essentially the black vote plus a few percentage points of whites.Report
Ah, gotcha.
So I guess, anti-trans stuff had…no effect on that race, either way. Mostly because the electorate is too polarized.Report
probably.Report
The only small modular reactor nuclear power project licensed in the US was cancelled today. NuScale, the reactor designer, and UAMPS, a group of small western state municipal utilities and coops who were the financial side, announced there were no longer enough participants who would purchase power for the project to go forward.Report
Ugh. That sucks.Report
I have consistently said that NuScale’s tech would continue to creep up towards the $10 billion per gigaWatt that other nuclear costs to construct, and that the UAMPS utilities would all be bankrupt if they had to cover the overruns. The project has stopped short of that unpleasant outcome.
Next up in the betting pool is the Gates-Buffett molten-salt reactor to be built outside Kemmerer, WY (the land is currently occupied by a coal-fired plant owned by Buffett’s PacifiCorp). Current construction cost estimate is $4B for 365MW capacity. Dept of Energy’s contribution will be $2B (maybe).Report
High Speed Rail but for everything.Report
Any “feel’ of what price ($/MWh) were they offering the energy to the utilities?
Anything about 100 $/MWh (10 c/kWh) would be completely uneconomical. That would still be about twice what renewable energy can be bought on a long term basisReport
Is that due to renewable energy tax credits and subsidies?
Is the cost of nuclear energy including “life cycle issues” like waste storage and disposal that renewable energy isn’t required to account for?Report
No, Low 40s $/MWh is a (very good price) for long term renewable generation without subsidies. Subsidized renewable energy is sold (last I checked, it’s been a while) in the high 20s.
So paying 100 $/MWh, three to four times what the utilities could buy power for, would be a massive subsidy from the utility customers to NuScale. One that could perhaps be considered in the name of developing small scale commercial nuclear power. But there are limits to the subsidies customers should be asked (or forced) to make. Go back to the drawing board and get it right, or use that money to support a different technology
This is literally my day job, and has been for decades. Power generation in over twenty countries.
And you are mistaken that renewable power prices does not include decommissioning costs. Basically all the environmental licenses for solar and wind power I’ve seen includes the details and costs of that decommissioning. In California (at least in Alameda county) you actually have to provide a 25 years performance bond to cover those costs before you get your construction license.
And you might be surprised, but decommissioning a renewable facility in actually don’t that expensive. Among other things you have no soil pollution to remediate, and most of the structures are very light and easy to disassemble. You do have to take both the blades and the actual solar panels to authorized recycling facilities, but that’s a lesser burden than to dispose of oil polluted soil
You can buy subsidized renewable energy in the high 20s.
100 $/MWh would beReport
IIRC, the last time Xcel Energy Colorado put out an RFB for more wind power, they had some offers at 19 $/MWh. Granted, some caveats: downslope winds from the Rockies are some of the best onshore wind resources in the world when all things are considered; the contracts would be for every MWh the wind farms can generate; Xcel has a 320MW 1.3GWh pumped hydro storage facility up in the foothills that can soak up a fair amount of any excess.Report
I don’t know about the Rockies (except that flying over western Colorado you see wind farm after wind farm), but windpower investors’ returns are extremely sensitive to capacity factors, the ratio of how much energy it generates versus how much it would generate in wind blew up 100% of the temp.This factor depends not just on how constant the wind is in a location (it doesn’t really need to be strong) but also on the technology; modern wind farms are more efficient capturing the energy than older ones.
Fifteen years ago normal onshore capacity factors were high 30%. 41 or 42% was record breaking. Today, you wouldn’t bother to develop something below high 40s , and over 55% would be normal. Offshore generation is high 60s, and each percent point increases the returns dramatically, since the marginal cost of the additional generation is zero.
Solar capacity factor is much more stable and predictable, having been low 20s for fixed panels, and high 20s for panels with trackers for a long time. On an annual basis, latitude doesn’t affect this numbers since summer and winter days tend to cancel each other, but cloudiness is an important factor.Report
The project was required to issue periodic updated estimates that included a “no more than” figure for the power. That price started below 50 $/MWh. The last estimate was 59 $/MWh. When things were starting out UAMPS and the Dept of Energy tried to get PacifiCorp to join. PacifiCorp ran their own numbers and said “You’re crazy. It’s going to be something over 100 $/MWh.” The timing of the announcement is suggestive: the next estimate was supposed to be released at the end of the year.
All of those prices are to some extent artificially low. The Dept of Energy provided the site at the Idaho National Lab, and paid a billion dollars of the upfront costs for engineering and NRC licensing.Report
Science – most specifically climate science – doesn’t care about your feelings:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/09/climate/global-warming-hottest-year-history-climate-intl/index.htmlReport
Two groups of activists engaged in a mostly peaceful protest/counter-protest in front of LA’s “Museum of Tolerance” last night when one group accused the other group of sharing propaganda.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass decried the violence.Report
A more accurate description would be Pro-Palestinian activists start a fight because the Museum of Tolerance was showing an anti-Hamas documentary. This is another reason why Jews don’t believe Pro-Palestinian Westerners when they say they aren’t anti-Semitic. They can’t bring themselves to even criticize Hamas and that should be easy.Report
NY Times has an article on Hamas’ desire to create a permanent state of war in the Middle East:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html
This is why a cearefire is useless unless Hamas is destroyed. A ceasefire without this means that Hamas will just regroup and wage another massacre.Report
Do you like protests? Do you like the New York Times?
Well, we just put chocolate in your peanut butter.Report
The Pro-Israel people think NYT is biased against Israel.Report
That’s a conspiracy theory.Report
In a similar vein, remember when McConnell was hassled at a restaurant by protestors?
Well, both sides do it. Warren was hassled at a restaurant by protestors earlier tonight.
You want to do things that people disapprove of? Well, forget about eating food in public.Report
to be fair, “hassling elected officials in public spaces over policy disagreements” is fairly close to the spirit in which America was founded.Report
Yes, I’m consistent on this. Want to be a politician? Don’t expect to be coddled, and protected from the people. Even when the people are dumb.Report
Damn snowflakes. But, come to think of it, it isn’t the politicians themselves who seem to be whining, so maybe they aren’t the snowflakes.Report
Yeah, I actually think even your median Republican politician is less idiotic on this than the median Republican think tanker or media personality. They obviously may not like it, but it’s not like they don’t know they vote for things a lot of people don’t like, especially in specific places they might go.Report
She probably thought that she got one deal but, to her chagrin, found out that she got another deal entirely.
She’s probably looking at where she was in 2014 and comparing that to where she is today and saying “How?”Report
White girl wants to play racial grievance, thinks she can even get to pick her own team, fine, whatever. Let’s see who’s on the schedule this week. I hope it’s the whites again.Report
What do you mean both sides? Aren’t these left-wing protesters?Report
Both sides get heckled.Report
That’s like “Jon Stewart criticizes both sides”: the right for not being on the left, and the left for not being left enough.Report
I hadn’t noticed how 538 got absorbed into ABC and was shocked… and then I realized that’s kindof why 538 got absorbed into ABC.Report
I’m honestly up to hear with Pro-Palestinian advocates in the West at this point. Ever since the day after Hamas committed the Simchat Torah massacre, they have been going on and on about the poor poor Palestinians and not a word about the evil of Hamas or what they did. You might as well think that Israel is just waging in war on a lark. When you ask them what they would do if they were Israeli PM, they just dodge it and say “that’s not my responsibility.” The way they talk about the current you wouldn’t think that 1,400 plus Jews were killed and hundreds of people are being held captive by Hamas including literal babies. Its just all “Palestine, Palestine, reward Hamas for their crimes.”
Hamas is on record that the only solution they accept is “No Israel, No Jews.” They state that they are going to do this until Israel is gone. The Pro-Palestinian activists just think that Israel needs to create a Palestinian state and take it on the chin with stiff upper lip grief management until the Palestinians calm down and work out all their frustrations. This from white goyim who are safe and many of whom are descendants of settler-colonialists themselves and who excluded and persecuted Jews. It’s freaking rich.Report
Here’s Ben Shapiro talking to some of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1NFirxhXWE
There’s a lot of fuzzy thinking. Israel should be conducting it’s military campaign without killing any civilians.
What they did make clear, when pressed, was that “The Occupation” means “all of Palestine”, i.e. there is no room for Israel of any size.Report
This was a region of the world that was doomed to violence from the get go in 1948.Report
I know, Hamas’s _founding document_ says that Palestinian will encompass the entire area, they will _never_ be satisfied with anything less, no matter much people pretend otherwise:
*frowns at that odd phrasing* ‘Between the Sea and the Jordon’? I thought the phrase was ‘Between the River and the Sea’, not ‘Between the Sea and the Jordan’, which is way less pithy. ‘The Jordan’ just sounds awkward instead of ‘the Jordan River’, and if you’re naming the river, you probably should name the sea also, although I don’t know why you’d need to name either, there’s not some confusions of rivers and seas about there.
Admittedly, that is in the very early days of Hamas, in 1977 and Hamas was only founded in 1987….wait.
Can we get a quick confirmation on where that’s actually from?
*checks notes*
Wow, sorry, that’s on me, a bunch of typos there, Arab for Jewish and Palestine for Israel, and it’s not even Hamas: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform-of-the-likud-party
Totally my bad, everyone.Report
Claiming both sides do it ignores they’re still fighting over whether or not the Jews get a state. Not all Israelis believe in the two state solution, but every time anything like that is proposed they’re not the ones saying “no”.
From the Palestinian perspective “the Occupation” includes all of Israel and there needs to be a full right of return (which destroys Israel).
Which means the question should be what can Israel do without a peace agreement. Withdraw, make big walls, and hand the Palestinians a state… but I find it hard to believe Hamas and the groups like it don’t turn that into a large terror camp.Report
That is not true. The last serious progress on this issue was The Geneva Initiative, in 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Initiative
That was by Yossi Beilin, the Israeli negotiation for the Oslo Accords, and by Yasser Abed Rabbo, the prior prime minister of the Palestine Authority. He even signed it, although technically that didn’t mean anything.
Yasser Arafat praised it. The _current_ Prime Minister of Palestine praised it. Jordan liked it. Guess who didn’t like it? Ari Shannon. The Likud PM of Israel.
To be clear, there was _nothing_ wrong with any aspect of this proposal, no actual legitimate objection. It didn’t lay everything out, it even was a deliberately obfuscating about a few things like Palestinian Right of Return, so that it could be sold to both sides, it was a plan _to do things_ within a framework.
It even had land swaps laid out in broad terms, with, again, a process by which they would be specifically worked out.
It was eventually signed. The organizations on both sides (Palestine and Israeli each got an official quasi-government NGO that worked together.) were even created to enforce it, via various mechanisms.
Do you know what broke it? Made it impossible to actually function? It’s that thing that everyone pretends was a gift to Palestine: Israel withdrawing from Gaza.
Which Ari Shannon did because The Geneva Initiative _was going to work_, in fact, was working.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3720176.stm
The present state of affairs, Mr Weisglass suggests, is much more satisfactory for Mr Sharon and government: “When you freeze [the peace] process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the [Palestinian] refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a [US] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”Report
And while you’re thinking about that, right now, Benjamin Netanyahu is being ripped apart in the Israeli press because _he personally made sure Hamas was funded_ the last few years. Made sure Qatar kept funding it, even when Qatar was hesitant because of the blowback.
“According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.” – https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
Israel ‘disengaged’ from Gaza as a deliberate sabotage of a functioning peace process already happening. They then got handed the most amazing gift in the universe of _Hamas_ getting elected, which meant that literally no one would ever be able to do any sort of peace process ever again.Report
Netanyahu is opposed to peace.
That doesn’t change that Arafat literally couldn’t make an agreement that didn’t destroy Israel.
What we’re going to see over the next few months or years is Netanyahu will be thrown out of office. Everyone will sit down to the peace table again.
A long process which gives time to bad actors on both sides can’t work. A peace agreement needs to resolve the RoR. The Palestinians will insist on a strong RoR which would destroy Israel.
So we’ll find out that we’re still stuck on what we were stuck on in 1948. Whether or not the Jews get a state.Report
No, he’s opposed to _Palestine_. Or, to use your words, he literally won’t agree to an agreement that won’t destroy Palestine.
And it’s not just Netanyahu, it’s basically all Israel government that has ever existed.
Arafat agreed to the Oslo Accords in 1993 and Oslo II in 1995, which stated that Israel would gradually transfer parts of Palestine to their control. The process was supposed to happen for the next five years, and it did not because of…complicated stuff that both sides did, although I will point out a good deal of reluctance was on the side of Israel because their Prime Minister was assassinated by a far-right Israeli for _signing_ Oslo.
Camp David, in 2000, was supposed to fix this. Arafat walked away, which you claim was because the RoR, which clearly was a sticking point.
The Geneva Initiative was a mere three years later. Blaming Arafat for ‘permanently refusing peace’ for…uh…three years is kinda absurd.
Why are you calling this a ‘peace agreement’? Israel and Palestine were not at war.
And the Geneva Initiative _did_ decide this. It says that Israel will accept back ‘some’ of the refugees. Here : Option iv [The option of displaced people returning to Israel] shall be at the sovereign discretion of Israel and will be in accordance with a number that Israel will submit to the International Commission. This number shall represent the total number of Palestinian refugees that Israel shall accept. As a basis, Israel will consider the average of the total numbers submitted by the different third countries to the International Commission
This is all part of Article 7: https://geneva-accord.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/The-Geneva-Accord_-Full-Text.pdf
I.e., this agreement literally said ‘Israel will at least _consider_ what other countries suggest to us (The joint committee operating between the countries) as a number, decide on a number themselves, and then we will agree to it, and that is what it shall be’
Which means it was set up as a _negotiation_ tool. One that was, ultimately, was entirely under Israel’s control.
Israel then proceeded to announce ‘This now ends any claim to a Palestinian Right of Return!’, which was very deliberately incendiary, even if technically true.
Palestine _actually did_ give up a right of return there, technically speaking, as nothing stopped Israel from deciding the number was 0. This just caused a commotion because Israel started to _openly gloat_ about that instead of what a country trying to build a peace would _actually do_, what the plan wanted, which was for Israel to come up with some symbolic number that would not change their demographics, perhaps give some _other_ Israeli land to Palestine for other refugees as part of the land swaps, perhaps pay for other refugees to move to other countries (There obviously were several other options beside ‘options iv’.)
And then, years later, everyone is at peace and no one cares what exact details there were.
But Israel instead announced it like that because they were a far-right government and that’s how politics work in Israel. That’s what upset people, and it was clearly an attempt to sabotage things.
But, pointedly, that _didn’t break things_. It upset some Palestinians, but things continue to move forward, everyone who was involved in it for the year or so said it was working, and in fact some of the stuff is still in effect.
Gaza is what broke it. You can’t pretend the process wouldn’t have worked due to one side, and ignore the actual literal thing that the other side did that deliberately broke it. Especially since Palestine actually did give up the right of return to get to that point, even if it was extremely awkward when Israel started dancing in the streets about it.Report
First of all, thank you, that’s a great link.
2nd of all, “was going to work”… really???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Initiative#Palestinian_criticism
It was working because it was able to tell the Palestinians they were going to get a full right to return and the Israelis they wouldn’t.
So as long as “the peace process” can tell the Palestinians that they’re going to be able to destroy Israel at some point, it works.
This is why we can get “a peace process” and can’t get “a peace agreement”.Report
…because what it actually did was give a partial, slow right of return that was not going to impact demographics but _would_ fix some of the most egregious issues.
You are the most absurd broken record that has ever existed. You just somehow inherently magically know that the second Arabs outnumber Jews, those Arabs will vote to immediately dissolve Israel and turn the land over to Palestine and commence mass murder.Report
My point is Israel is never going to allow a right to return.
Claiming an RoR would be fine because they wouldn’t be genocidal if they could vote in Islamic Republic ignores that Israel will never allow it.
That was even true before the most recent mass murder done to the cheers of the Palestinians.
What I believe or you believe about how the Palestinians would behave is irrelevant. The Israelis think they need a state. That without a state the world will stand back and let them die just like they did before.
Calls for a “cease fire” that leaves Hamas in charge just re-enforces that view.
If the peace process needs to pretend that Israel will allow a RoR in order to get the Palestinians to the table, then that peace process is doomed.
The deal is land for peace. The Palestinians give up their claim to an RoR, they let Israel live in peace, and they get a state. Everything else is irrelevant details as long as the Palestinians aren’t willing to do that.Report
Israel literally blew up a deal that would have let them not ever do any sort of RoR. It would have to hear some other opinions for that, but it could have then said ‘Okay, 0 refugees get to come back’, and it would have been over.
Israel _wants all the land_. I know you do not seem to be willing to comprehend this fact, but they have literally said it over and over, Likud, who has been in charge of this, has said it over and over, it is the position of a rather large chunk of the citizens of Israel and the majority of the ones that have held political power this entire time.
Israel. Wants. All. The. Land.
Or at least the entire West Bank, if they absolutely have to they might be willing to give up the microscopic Gaza Strip, but that’s it.
Ergo, they will literally never agree to anything that does not give them the entire West Bank.
That is not some sort of debatable question, it’s something that keeps getting stated, BY THEM.Report
There are millions of people who want to use a RoR. There are crowds of people who chant “from the river to the sea” at every opportunity. When I see random Palestinian people talk about this, it’s exceptionally rare for them to back Israel existing (as in, I’ve seen it once).
You’re saying “_would_ fix some of the most egregious issues” in combination with “Israel would accept zero refugees”.
I don’t see how those combine.
I think looking at a process where the main Palestinian problem with it is it doesn’t spell out a RoR (and thus has 49% percent opposing it even in combo with the PA claiming it’s not a resolved issue), and somehow concluding that the Palestinians are cool with Israel existing is projection.
It is possible that the Palestinians are finally willing to drop the RoR and it’s the Israeli Right which remains the problem.
But when I look at them I see various crowds chanting “the sea”, Hamas, Hamas being popular, the various “peaceful” marches to claim an RoR, and I just don’t see a willingness to drop RoR.
Just the idea that this issue needs to be obscured in order for there to be a process is telling.
Far as I can tell, the typical Israeli isn’t a right wing zealot who wants all the land but the typical Palestinian is.Report
Yeah, you can always trust the Republicans to drive the economy…off a cliff:
Moody’s lowers U.S. credit outlook, citing political dysfunction
Moody’s cited a string of recent red flags, including brinkmanship over the debt limit, the ouster of the House speaker and rising threats of another government shutdown. “In Moody’s view, such political polarization is likely to continue,” the firm said, making it increasingly difficult for lawmakers to “reverse widening federal deficits.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/10/moodys-credit-rating-deficit/Report
“The economy is great! Inflation is transitory! We have a new definition of ‘recession’ and, therefore, we aren’t in one!”
“I found a way to blame it on Republicans.”
“HOLY COW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DESERVE BETTER!!!!!”Report
Yeah, go with that.Report
Which one?
“Bidenomics is great! The American people are doing better than ever! Look at this green line!”?
I’ve seen it done and it’s less persuasive than you might think.Report
The ratings companies always downgrade the US’s credit when stupid games are played with it.
It is not their fault that is always Republicans playing those stupid games, nor it is their fault that this time, in the middle of those stupid games, Republicans decided to do something even _stupider_ and remove the Speaker of the House for _not_ blowing things up, making it even less likely this will work out well next time.Report
I am exceptionally sympathetic to the whole “Israel” side in the current dispute. Like, I am 100% down with the argument “you want a ceasefire? What was wrong with the May ceasefire?” and similar. I understand that the response to October 7th needs to find pretty much everybody who was involved with it and make sure that “what happened last time” makes it into the discussion for any future musing about whether there should be another attack on a hippie music festival.
That said, this makes me snort and ask how bad the numbers are in internal polling.
It strikes me as being an indicator that enthusiasm for the whole thing is waning. “Time to bust out the *BIG* propaganda!” But, and here’s the point, the *BIG* propaganda has to be believable. This is not even amateurish.Report
http://www.haaretz.com claimed Mein Kampf was a best seller back in 2016.
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2016-01-19/ty-article/.premium/mein-kampf-is-a-best-seller-again/0000017f-e2a4-d9aa-afff-fbfca2b10000
The same claim was made by the The Telegraph in 2002 (6th best selling book in “the Palestinian territories”, Arabic translation).
Also 1999. The way to bet is it’s always in the top ten for the entire territory.
Israel complaints about this sort of thing being used as educational material also go way back.Report
Sure. But the claim wasn’t “this was on a bookshelf in one of the homes”.Report
I don’t see what the issue is. That book is amazingly popular and studied. This was an area where Hamas had control. If the dead guy was a Hamas warrior then finding a well thumbed copy seems reasonable. My expectation is the percentage of them who have the Koran is higher but whatever.
If you’re seriously into anti-Semitism, and Hamas is, then that book is a must have. They also control the educational system in Gaza so we should expect it’s taught in schools.
Gaza has Na.zi levels of anti-Semitism and thinks the holocaust was a good thing. This is not news and it’s not new.Report
Yeah, I know.
“Plenty of people have this book!”
“The claim was that it was found on a body.”
“It’s a best seller!”
“The claim was that it was found on a body.”
“Lots of people who hate Jews want to own a copy!”
“The claim was that it was found on a body.”
“I don’t see what the issue is.”Report
If you arrest a hundred people at a Nazi rally, would it really be a shock if a few of them have that book on them?
It is certainly possible, even likely, that this is purely propaganda.
But the most unbelievable part is that a high level politician knows this level of detail of a combat zone. That people in Gaza are THAT level of anti-Semitic is more an established fact than an idea.Report
I see it differently. There is a big tendency to define anti-Semitism in the strictest and most limited terms and believe that only a few malcontents are anti-Semites among many non-Jews and even more than a few Jews. The other position held by other Jews is that Jew hatred or anti-Semitism is a very common belief throughout the world and hundreds of millions or even billions of people believe some form of anti-Semitic belief. This means that anti-Semitism is widespread and the people who wish harm to the Jews are common.Report
Please don’t read me as saying “I haven’t seen any evidence that Palestinians are anti-Semitic and you can’t make me!”Report
if they wanted it to be taken seriously they should have used Protocols Of The Elders Of ZionReport
(laughter) (deep breath) (more laughter)
Report
One reason why the different of the Further Left never get anywhere with the masses is that they have this inability to stay on message. The Iraq II protests petered out because a bunch of other causes that would be a big turn off to normies lack praises to that great humanitarian Slobodan Milosevic or Free Mumia kept getting dragged into things. Occupy Wall Street probably had some totally unrelated points come up. For whatever reason, the Further Left in the Westhave decided that Israel bad and Palestinians good and are sticking to this and forgetting about Hamas or what they did to start the current war. So at any Further Left protest anti-Israel messages come up even if it is about climate change or LGBT rights. For normies, this just looks like a bunch of weirdos who hate Jews and can’t stay on message because they hate Jews.Report
If it looks, acts, walks, and quacks like a duck, at some point you have to realize it really is a duck.Report
a) kinda puts that whole “the octopus isn’t a MESSAGE, it’s just a STUFFED ANIMAL” thing in a different light.
b) another Vibe Shift moment, because in the 2010s people at a left-wing-ish-cause event would have been entirely okay with it turning into a Generic Left-Wing-Ish-Causes Event.Report