I forgot to add, I don't think most Palestinians want an Islamic Republic, or at least are not committed to one. There might be issues of courts, because of religious differences, but I don't think that's an insurmountable obstacle.
I don’t see why they should get a right of return while my children don’t have it. My children are Polish through their mother. Poland was forced to change it’s borders after WW2.
The post WWII migrations in Europe are one of the least discussed and most impactful consequences of that war. There are a lot of discussions that need to be had that aren't.
Coincidentally, though, a friend of mine just got a Polish passport, because his grandparents were born in Poland, and fled after the war. I recommend checking out the Polish rules for citizenship for descendants if you're really interested in your kids going back (and why wouldn't you be; the perogies alone are worth it).
Similarly, my partner is an Italian citizen because her paternal grandparents were born there. I believe this is true of many European countries with large 20th century diaspora, for both demographic and moral reasons.
Israel presents a different moral issue, though (and, as you correctly note, not just for Israel): the formation of Israel resulted in the forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish residents from what is now Israel, and the (as you correctly note, anti-semitic) expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people from the surrounding (mostly) Arab states. That level of forced ethnic cleansing should be rectified. I realize 70 years of Israeli-Arab conflict means that rectifying it is difficult, but I refuse to believe that these are two groups of people who can't live together, despite the fact that prior to 1948 they had done so for millennia, more or less peacefully.
There's a lot of work to be done, but to start that work, they have to stop killing each other, and the best way to get them to stop killing each other is for Israel to end the Occupation, blockade, and siege, and to treat its Arab citizens as equal. From there, the possibility of dialog opens, not only between Jewish Israelis and non-Jewish Palestinians, but between those two groups of people and the rest of the region. It will take time and a lot of healing, but I remain convinced it can be done.
To be fair, this is pretty much exactly what we said about the fire bombing of Tokyo, and the "you have to understand" was some MBAs and economists doing a twisted a cost-benefit analysis.
You're making a category error here: Hamas is a militant resistance group in Gaza, only loosely representing the Palestinian people (regardless of whether a majority of Palestinians support their acts of resistance), elected once but ruling since '08 by force, having defeated all rivals for power in combat. Israel is a democratic state, run by a repeatedly elected government, and populated by people who overwhelmingly support the Occupation, the settlements, the Apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, and now the genocide.
All you have to understand is that one side is committing genocide by popular demand, and the other side is being violently oppressed and killed, with very little or no say in the matter.
Life is complicated, and in very few circumstances is anyone all good or all bad. That we treat so much of the world as so black and white, outside of the very obvious moral abominations (say, genocide), is a failing in itself.
There also does seem to be this weird sub-group of the LGBT radical community that seeks an alliance with Islam despite the homophobia in Muslim majority countries or even in Muslim communities in the West.
Looking past your Islamophobia to your flailing attempts at criticizing Butler, it would help if you had read or listened to what she's said about Islam and Muslims generally and on the subjects of women and LGBT specifically.
Being on the left, like being anywhere else in the political universe, will result in strange bedfellows, for sure. There are a lot of arguments on the left about what this should entail, and whom we should criticize and how. I tend to be more of a universalist, at least philosophically, which makes me skeptical of religious and ethnic nationalists, whether they're white nationalists or Jewish nationalists or Arab nationalists, and it makes me skeptical of repressive religious regimes and cultures, regardless of the religion or culture. I get a lot of heat for this from some people who see my position as imperialist. I very much dislike Hamas and Hezbollah, but I am also aware of the situation, very familiar with its history and its present, so I understand also that they are products of circumstance, and unless circumstances change dramatically, it will be very difficult to get better groups.
I know what I would prefer: a single state with equal citizenship for anyone who wants to live there, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and the right of return. How you get there is a difficult question, but no less difficult than a two-state solution, particularly given Israel's firmly entrenched political supermajority (Israeli politics now ranges from center right to far right). There are literal books on the topic, and ultimately, it's not my say. What I do have a stake in is the U.S.'s involvement, and I'd like for all military aid to cease immediately, and a cessation of all economic support for Israel until the the Apartheid ends.
I realize Lee thinks all of this would mean the wiping out of all Jewish Israelis, but that's because he's extremely racist, and he can't help but see non-Jewish people in the region as violent brutes.
I abhor any ethnostate, and in particular, any ethno-supremacist state, which is what Israel is. Not only is it bad on its face, but ethno-supremacism always leads to the sort of far right politics that have long been popular in Israel and now dominate it completely. You are right that I believe Israel does fall neatly into an anti-imperialist framework, but a someone who is unequivocally anti-Apartheid, anti-ethnic cleansing, and anti-genocide, I mostly oppose it on those grounds, recognizing that the imperialism makes those things inevitable.
I think she probably regrets calling them "progressive," which has a fairly specific valence, if not definition, in American politics, and can be separated from the left, and especially the global left, more generally. Here's her explanation (from the Wikipedia page Dark Matter linked above:
My first point was merely descriptive: those political organizations define themselves as anti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global left, so on that basis one could describe them as part of the global left. My second point was then critical: as with any group on the left, one has to decide whether one is for that group or against that group, and one needs to critically evaluate their stand.
This is the same woman who said that Hamas and Hezbollah are more progressive than liberal Zionists several years ago
What she said (in 2006):
“Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important engagement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the Left. I similarly think boycotts and divestment procedures are, again, an essential component of any resistance movement.”
Judith Butler apparently has an interview in an intellectual journal or something somewhere where she describes 10/7 as an act of resistance.
That it was an act of resistance is factually true. That does not mean the attacks on civilians were justified (I do not believe they were; I cannot speak for Butler), but to pretend it wasn't an act of resistance against a brutally violent siege and blockade is to live in an ahistorical fantasy world.
Why is it a heatmap instead of just a line graph? It’s a one-dimensional set of values of 16 linear points! Heatmaps are for two dimensions sets of values, not one!
You can read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0
The heat map represents the density of clicks on a given point for the two groups. I think it does an OK job of representing their data.
Why is it surrounded in blue? What does that blue mean
The color range and associated values is presented under the maps.
On top of all that nonsense, why is the heatmap scaled differently for conservatives and liberals?
The scale is based on the max number of responses.
As you'll see if you check out the paper, they have a lot of caveats for that study, but the paper itself includes 7 studies (3 variants of study 1, and two variants each of 2 and 3).
I mean they probably voted for Reagan twice, thought Democrats were pinko commies, were anti-"welfare" and pro-fiscal conservatism, and hated PC culture, so politically very similar to non-Trumpy conservatives today, mutatis mutandis.
Ah yes, I know that one. Didn't expect to see Piketty cited here, though. It's a good paper. Have you read any of his books? Capital in the 21st Century will probably be one of the most influential books of the first decades of the 21st century, but if you haven't read Capital and Ideology or A Brief History of Inequality, which are both much easier than Capital, I recommend them.
It would be interesting to see how the studies they’re doing in political psych labs today would have come out in, say, 1950, or even 1995.
Anecdotally, a bunch of the hard rock, drug-using, sexually... flexible adults I knew in the 90s were politically conservative, and often extremely so. It seemed incongruent to me even then, because they were so rebellious in their personal lives, but thought of liberals as commies.
I generally prefer to talk about conservatism and liberalism entirely in the context of specific political systems. For example, in the American system, Republicans vs Democrats, a dyad that looks different in many ways from the Tory-Labor system in the UK, and very different from the political systems in many other countries where you might have a far left labor party, a far left green party, a center left party, a center right party, a basically fascist far right party, and maybe other far right or center right/left parties.
In the American context, the binary division between "conservatives" and "liberals" isn't that old: within living memory (within most of our lifetimes, I suspect), conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans weren't that uncommon, and the splits and realignments of the 40s, 50s, and 60s were still taking shape into the 90s. Only in the last 40 or so years has the increasingly firm political division become an increasingly clear cultural division. I would not be surprised to learn that these fairly new divisions were highly correlated with the personality and political psych findings. It would be interesting to see how the studies they're doing in political psych labs today would have come out in, say, 1950, or even 1995.
On top of this, of course, you have political outsiders: the libertarians who used to frequent this place, e.g., or anti-capitalist leftists, both groups with a pretty wide variety of political ideas and personality types.
Yeah, as someone who was not into Coates back then, I'm really excited to see this turn, or rather, as he correctly notes, expansion of his focus, because the people who were really into him 10 years ago are precisely the people who need to hear him now.
As for October 8, there are a lot of people who haven't been paying attention to the Middle East, or at least haven't been paying close attention, who reacted to October 7 similarly to the way Americans reacted to September 11: there is no history, there is no pre-October 7 reality, October 7 is entirely ahistorical). Anyone who has been paying close attention (which pretty much excludes the people who comment on it here) couldn't not see the history. So if you say, "Killing the civilians was inexcusable, but..." the people who see October 7 arising out of nothing will get upset with you. I think what happened after 9/11 shows what the consequences of ignoring history, and we've seen that even clearer after 10/7.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/30/2024”
Is the liberal in the room with us?
"
Interesting that you read her Wikipedia page and already know all of her secret views that she doesn't say anywhere you could have read.
Your mental gymnastics remain impressive.
"
I forgot to add, I don't think most Palestinians want an Islamic Republic, or at least are not committed to one. There might be issues of courts, because of religious differences, but I don't think that's an insurmountable obstacle.
"
I don’t see why they should get a right of return while my children don’t have it. My children are Polish through their mother. Poland was forced to change it’s borders after WW2.
The post WWII migrations in Europe are one of the least discussed and most impactful consequences of that war. There are a lot of discussions that need to be had that aren't.
Coincidentally, though, a friend of mine just got a Polish passport, because his grandparents were born in Poland, and fled after the war. I recommend checking out the Polish rules for citizenship for descendants if you're really interested in your kids going back (and why wouldn't you be; the perogies alone are worth it).
Similarly, my partner is an Italian citizen because her paternal grandparents were born there. I believe this is true of many European countries with large 20th century diaspora, for both demographic and moral reasons.
Israel presents a different moral issue, though (and, as you correctly note, not just for Israel): the formation of Israel resulted in the forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish residents from what is now Israel, and the (as you correctly note, anti-semitic) expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people from the surrounding (mostly) Arab states. That level of forced ethnic cleansing should be rectified. I realize 70 years of Israeli-Arab conflict means that rectifying it is difficult, but I refuse to believe that these are two groups of people who can't live together, despite the fact that prior to 1948 they had done so for millennia, more or less peacefully.
There's a lot of work to be done, but to start that work, they have to stop killing each other, and the best way to get them to stop killing each other is for Israel to end the Occupation, blockade, and siege, and to treat its Arab citizens as equal. From there, the possibility of dialog opens, not only between Jewish Israelis and non-Jewish Palestinians, but between those two groups of people and the rest of the region. It will take time and a lot of healing, but I remain convinced it can be done.
"
To be fair, this is pretty much exactly what we said about the fire bombing of Tokyo, and the "you have to understand" was some MBAs and economists doing a twisted a cost-benefit analysis.
"
You're making a category error here: Hamas is a militant resistance group in Gaza, only loosely representing the Palestinian people (regardless of whether a majority of Palestinians support their acts of resistance), elected once but ruling since '08 by force, having defeated all rivals for power in combat. Israel is a democratic state, run by a repeatedly elected government, and populated by people who overwhelmingly support the Occupation, the settlements, the Apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, and now the genocide.
All you have to understand is that one side is committing genocide by popular demand, and the other side is being violently oppressed and killed, with very little or no say in the matter.
"
Understanding is a good thing. Or perhaps I was reading sardonicism into the scare quotes.
"
Life is complicated, and in very few circumstances is anyone all good or all bad. That we treat so much of the world as so black and white, outside of the very obvious moral abominations (say, genocide), is a failing in itself.
"
There also does seem to be this weird sub-group of the LGBT radical community that seeks an alliance with Islam despite the homophobia in Muslim majority countries or even in Muslim communities in the West.
Looking past your Islamophobia to your flailing attempts at criticizing Butler, it would help if you had read or listened to what she's said about Islam and Muslims generally and on the subjects of women and LGBT specifically.
"
If you haven't seen any of Avi Shlaim's interviews or dialogs, I recommend them. For example, this excellent conversation:
https://youtu.be/nUjdDYoTZG0?si=2ejdYuTPALh-RRFN
"
In power? No. Unfortunately, the conflict and ethno-supremacism have created two groups of extremists.
"
Being on the left, like being anywhere else in the political universe, will result in strange bedfellows, for sure. There are a lot of arguments on the left about what this should entail, and whom we should criticize and how. I tend to be more of a universalist, at least philosophically, which makes me skeptical of religious and ethnic nationalists, whether they're white nationalists or Jewish nationalists or Arab nationalists, and it makes me skeptical of repressive religious regimes and cultures, regardless of the religion or culture. I get a lot of heat for this from some people who see my position as imperialist. I very much dislike Hamas and Hezbollah, but I am also aware of the situation, very familiar with its history and its present, so I understand also that they are products of circumstance, and unless circumstances change dramatically, it will be very difficult to get better groups.
"
You're forgetting how violent anti-Apartheid resistance was in South Africa, including the group led by Mandela. South Africa is a very good analogy.
"
I know what I would prefer: a single state with equal citizenship for anyone who wants to live there, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and the right of return. How you get there is a difficult question, but no less difficult than a two-state solution, particularly given Israel's firmly entrenched political supermajority (Israeli politics now ranges from center right to far right). There are literal books on the topic, and ultimately, it's not my say. What I do have a stake in is the U.S.'s involvement, and I'd like for all military aid to cease immediately, and a cessation of all economic support for Israel until the the Apartheid ends.
I realize Lee thinks all of this would mean the wiping out of all Jewish Israelis, but that's because he's extremely racist, and he can't help but see non-Jewish people in the region as violent brutes.
"
I abhor any ethnostate, and in particular, any ethno-supremacist state, which is what Israel is. Not only is it bad on its face, but ethno-supremacism always leads to the sort of far right politics that have long been popular in Israel and now dominate it completely. You are right that I believe Israel does fall neatly into an anti-imperialist framework, but a someone who is unequivocally anti-Apartheid, anti-ethnic cleansing, and anti-genocide, I mostly oppose it on those grounds, recognizing that the imperialism makes those things inevitable.
"
I think she probably regrets calling them "progressive," which has a fairly specific valence, if not definition, in American politics, and can be separated from the left, and especially the global left, more generally. Here's her explanation (from the Wikipedia page Dark Matter linked above:
My first point was merely descriptive: those political organizations define themselves as anti-imperialist, and anti-imperialism is one characteristic of the global left, so on that basis one could describe them as part of the global left. My second point was then critical: as with any group on the left, one has to decide whether one is for that group or against that group, and one needs to critically evaluate their stand.
"
This is the same woman who said that Hamas and Hezbollah are more progressive than liberal Zionists several years ago
What she said (in 2006):
“Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important engagement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the Left. I similarly think boycotts and divestment procedures are, again, an essential component of any resistance movement.”
Judith Butler apparently has an interview in an intellectual journal or something somewhere where she describes 10/7 as an act of resistance.
That it was an act of resistance is factually true. That does not mean the attacks on civilians were justified (I do not believe they were; I cannot speak for Butler), but to pretend it wasn't an act of resistance against a brutally violent siege and blockade is to live in an ahistorical fantasy world.
On “Why a Trump Loss is Best for Conservatives”
Ah wait, I see you've read it down here, sorry.
"
Why is it a heatmap instead of just a line graph? It’s a one-dimensional set of values of 16 linear points! Heatmaps are for two dimensions sets of values, not one!
You can read the paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0
The heat map represents the density of clicks on a given point for the two groups. I think it does an OK job of representing their data.
Why is it surrounded in blue? What does that blue mean
The color range and associated values is presented under the maps.
On top of all that nonsense, why is the heatmap scaled differently for conservatives and liberals?
The scale is based on the max number of responses.
As you'll see if you check out the paper, they have a lot of caveats for that study, but the paper itself includes 7 studies (3 variants of study 1, and two variants each of 2 and 3).
"
I mean they probably voted for Reagan twice, thought Democrats were pinko commies, were anti-"welfare" and pro-fiscal conservatism, and hated PC culture, so politically very similar to non-Trumpy conservatives today, mutatis mutandis.
"
Ah yes, I know that one. Didn't expect to see Piketty cited here, though. It's a good paper. Have you read any of his books? Capital in the 21st Century will probably be one of the most influential books of the first decades of the 21st century, but if you haven't read Capital and Ideology or A Brief History of Inequality, which are both much easier than Capital, I recommend them.
"
It would be interesting to see how the studies they’re doing in political psych labs today would have come out in, say, 1950, or even 1995.
Anecdotally, a bunch of the hard rock, drug-using, sexually... flexible adults I knew in the 90s were politically conservative, and often extremely so. It seemed incongruent to me even then, because they were so rebellious in their personal lives, but thought of liberals as commies.
"
I generally prefer to talk about conservatism and liberalism entirely in the context of specific political systems. For example, in the American system, Republicans vs Democrats, a dyad that looks different in many ways from the Tory-Labor system in the UK, and very different from the political systems in many other countries where you might have a far left labor party, a far left green party, a center left party, a center right party, a basically fascist far right party, and maybe other far right or center right/left parties.
In the American context, the binary division between "conservatives" and "liberals" isn't that old: within living memory (within most of our lifetimes, I suspect), conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans weren't that uncommon, and the splits and realignments of the 40s, 50s, and 60s were still taking shape into the 90s. Only in the last 40 or so years has the increasingly firm political division become an increasingly clear cultural division. I would not be surprised to learn that these fairly new divisions were highly correlated with the personality and political psych findings. It would be interesting to see how the studies they're doing in political psych labs today would have come out in, say, 1950, or even 1995.
On top of this, of course, you have political outsiders: the libertarians who used to frequent this place, e.g., or anti-capitalist leftists, both groups with a pretty wide variety of political ideas and personality types.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/30/2024”
Yeah, as someone who was not into Coates back then, I'm really excited to see this turn, or rather, as he correctly notes, expansion of his focus, because the people who were really into him 10 years ago are precisely the people who need to hear him now.
As for October 8, there are a lot of people who haven't been paying attention to the Middle East, or at least haven't been paying close attention, who reacted to October 7 similarly to the way Americans reacted to September 11: there is no history, there is no pre-October 7 reality, October 7 is entirely ahistorical). Anyone who has been paying close attention (which pretty much excludes the people who comment on it here) couldn't not see the history. So if you say, "Killing the civilians was inexcusable, but..." the people who see October 7 arising out of nothing will get upset with you. I think what happened after 9/11 shows what the consequences of ignoring history, and we've seen that even clearer after 10/7.
"
I think he did incredibly well there, especially in the face of hostile, downright disgusting questioning.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.