Al Jazeera's headlines on the Israel-Hezbollah War are interesting for certain values of interesting. Stuff like "Israel is about to invade Lebanon like it did Gaza but why?" Oh I don't know why Israel decided to fight Hamas, maybe something happened on October 7th, 2023. Disagreeing very strongly with Israel's tactics against Hamas and Hezbollah are one thing but denying that Israel is just doing this for the jollies of it is delusional.
Trump made some pretty speeches about protecting social security and Medicare in the 2016 Republican primaries. He has administrated as a very orthodox Republican though.
Trumpism is conservatism now but that needs to change. There will always be many people with "don't rock the boat" political instincts. "Don't rock the boat" can be channeled in a good way like "don't mess things up" or "don't make a bad situation worse" or it can be harnessed in a bad way like what the Radical Right does.
The Pro-Palestinian faction in American politics messed up big time by being unable to agree to a few simple rules to speak at the DNC. They explicit stated they want to spoil the good mood. Sympathy for the Palestinians in the Democratic Party has been highest now than ever but I don't think the Democratic Party likes the Pro-Palestinian faction in American politics that much because they are annoying and refuse to play the game.
It's both old a new. The enemies of liberalism to the Right and the Left always saw liberals as effete and decadent even after armies from liberal nations keep beating their rears in modern war. There are some differences between now and then though that aren't necessarily helpful to liberalism. I think Jaybird is on to something when he says that a lot of what motivates liberals can look like it is driven by what is fashionable at the moment just as much as genuine concern. Free Tibet came and went as the cause of the day.
I also don't think that liberalism coded exactly as feminine as it does now. The Confederates might have thought they were more gallant than the Northerners but being a rude farmer or factory worker was an essentially masculine thing. These days there are rituals in liberalism that come directly from educated upper middle class codes of behavior with some hippiness added. The working classes always tended to find upper middle class codes of behavior hypocritical internationally, they want to be direct rather than indirect and don't find anything wrong with rude t-shirts. Tying liberalism to upper middle class behavior might be a bit of a mistake.
Still not seeing it. I assume it exists. The way that Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian people outside of the area see this conflict are just too different to have a useful conversation. Even on the Hezbollah attacks, many of the Pro-Palestinian people just seem to assume that Israel should soak things up because reasons even though everybody admits that Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel. If this is how outsiders see each other in the conflict than the hatred of the participants might be too much.
From what I can tell, the Pro-Palestinian side has just decided that Israel is an irritant to be destroyed. People on the Right, Left, and other places have no use for Jews in their cosmology. This is the age of big block groups, men vs. women, white vs. off color, cis vs. trans, and Jews are just too small and peculiar to fit into any group. They just want us to go away.
This relates to something that bothers me. It has been trivial easy to find a diversity of Jewish opinions on the Palestinians from smash them all to death to Jews willing to abandon half the world's Jewish population in favor of the Palestinians and everything in-between. It has been harder for me to find a diversity of opinions on the Pro-Palestinian side. There just doesn't seem to be the Pro-Palestinian equivalent of "we need to find a way to live in peace with Israel" or "we need to understand where the Jews are coming from." It all just seems like "Israel is a bad settler-colonial state that is a blot upon al of Islam." I don't know if this is just because Jews have fewer issues airing our dirty laundry and disagreements publicly and there is a big conversation hiding behind closed doors that I'm unaware of or if that on the Pro-Palestinian side hostility to Israel as a concept is just a lot greater than hostility to Palestine on the Pro-Israel side. It doesn't make me optimistic about the possibility of peace. The Pro-Palestinian side just seems so utterly demanding and unyielding.
For once, a serious answer. Yes, I think that a lot of this does come from the real or perceived perception that a lot of bougie liberal morality is based on what is fashionable rather than something more constant. I disagree with this to a large extent because I can see at least some consistent patterns like the weaker party or the most disadvantaged party is always perceived to be in the right even if that changes or that certain groups are seen as having a truer and special way of being compared to the Western set.
One of the thoughts that have been kicking around in my headspace is whether one of the problems that liberalism is facing globally that it comes across as too namby-pamby for a lot or even most people. A lot of the norms of contemporary liberalism come from the dulcet tone culture of the educated middle classes. Globally, the working and lower middle classes always considered the dulcet tone culture of the educated middle classes to be at least kind of ridiculous if not outright fake. The allyship rituals like reciting your preferred pronouns probably comes across as eye-rolling at best to many people but the educated middle classes believes in their culture and doesn't quite get this.
A key question for Israeli Jews and the vast majority of Diaspora Jews is what are we going to be allowed to keep. Because a lot of us see Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian clerical regime, too many Muslims, and their Western fans are basically saying "the Jews will be allowed to keep nothing." It doesn't seem like they are just calling to leave Gaza and the West Bank but for the complete dismantling of Israel. Every school, business, and institution Jews built needs to go and the Jews need to go as well in the green line. Tel Aviv is a "Palestinian" beach city. If this is the only just solution to tens or hundreds of millions of people worldwide than I don't see why Jews need to go along with this. We already had decades, centuries, and thousands of years of Jewish work destroyed by the you know who, Communists, Arab nationalists, and Islamists in living memory. Now tens or hundreds of millions of people world wide are calling for the complete destruction of even more Jewish work. Why should we go along with this in the name of abstract principle?
The behavior of the International Caring Community has really angered me during this crisis. There is just a context less air of white saviorism, of "don't worry our precious aboriginal Palestinians, we the International Caring Community will save you from the icky Jews." There is a big book given to the Jews or things to do and the requirements placed on Palestinians or Muslims is a number close to zero. Why doesn't the International Caring Community put pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah to cool it and stop firing rockets into Israel? At least call them out.
There is just a big difference between the Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian propaganda that I see and it doesn't give me tremendous hope for a peaceful resolution of the I/P conflict. This might be because I am very sympathetic to Israel but pro-Israel propaganda seems to be a lot more positive than Pro-Palestinian conflict. It is about the beauty of Greenline Israel, the accomplishments of Israel/Jews, and look at our hot IDF women soldiers. Pro-Palestinian propaganda is a lot more negative. I've seen several posts trying to pass Tel Aviv as a "Palestinian city" or archeological sites in Israel proper as "Palestinian." I get no sense that they can live with Israel or Jews in anyway and that justice means "No Israel, No Jews" period.
People keep assuring me that not all the Palestinians or Pro-Palestinian people are like this but I have yet to see any evidence of it. What I see from nearly all of them is that true justice requires the total destruction of all the work done by the Jews. I don't like it. They seem unbending and unyielding on even the most minor point whether they be Palestinian, Muslim, or Western Leftist. I don't see any issue why the entire burden of deescalation and retreat falls on the Jews besides that our enemies are raising their fists in blood thirsty defiance forever.
I am posting the Wikipedia article because it is the most neutral source I can find on this. There has been apparently been an international out cry over a death sentence given to a young Iranian Jewish man for murdering a young Iranian Muslim man. The people arguing for the young Jewish man have argued he has acted in self-defense and that Iran's justice system is selecting him for death because he is a Jew who killed a Muslim:
During the pandemic, I came to realization that debates on personal freedom always seem to reduce to, "how free should people be to make bad decisions." Obviously losing it all on sports gambling is making a very bad decision. I don't know any open gambling or other addicts but it could be that people I know are secret addicts. There are arguments that all sorts of bad decisions should be allowed in the name of liberty and freedom or because not allowing them is worse and these arguments aren't necessarily wrong. There are also strong and colorable arguments for severe regulation of humanity in the name of better or good society.
The Further Left has seemed positively ghoulish to me for the entirety of the Israel-Hamas War. On the one hand, at least some of them try to reach out to Diaspora Jews on how bad Israel's treatment of the Palestinians are because of our history. On the other hand, they also basically demand that Diaspora Jews completely abandon Israeli Jews to their deaths and don't realize how this comes across to Diaspora Jews even when you tell them this in plain English and at an elaborate level.
As a commentator on the other blog pointed out, many people on the Further Left, these are the types that use the word settler-colonial regarding Zionism and Israel, project their own guilt about the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand onto Israel. Jews become the hyper-white settler-colonialist while the Palestinians are the too true Marxist Feminist indigenous people of color. That reality is more complicated does not matter. Destroy Israel, and all indigenous people will be avenged.
I posted this on the other blog but there are only 15 million Jews in the world. 7.2 million of them live in Israel. I really don't understand why the Western Pro-Palestinian movement believes that ordering all the Diaspora Jews to totally abandon every Israeli Jew to their fate, especially when the Holocaust happened, makes sense. Do they really think that the world's 15 million Jews are going to want 7.2 million other Jews to death? There is a big assumption that Pan-Jewish feelings aren't that real unlike other Pan-(Insert Identity Group feelings). When it turns out that only a literal handful of Jews are willing to abandon Israeli Jews to their fate and most Diaspora Jews don't like loyalty tests, Pro-Palestinian Westerners are floored. Like they can't comprehend it.
I'm also tired of the Pro-Palestinian Westerners really overlooking what real actual Palestinians are saying and substituting it for something more ideologically reliable in their headspace. They aren't doing the Palestinians any favors by doing this. On the other blog, a poster suggested that a lot of them are projecting their own guilt towards colonialism onto Jews and want Israel to be sacrificed as revenge for all indigenous suffering. Many of them aren't really that sympathetic towards the Jews as a group, so that is icing on the case.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/23/2024”
JD Vance goes Khmer Rogue:
https://x.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1838595472069362151?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1838595472069362151%7Ctwgr%5Ed8835d7b27880a7849c580b383b59295bd6794d4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%2F2024%2F09%2Fthe-professors-are-the-enemy
"
Al Jazeera's headlines on the Israel-Hezbollah War are interesting for certain values of interesting. Stuff like "Israel is about to invade Lebanon like it did Gaza but why?" Oh I don't know why Israel decided to fight Hamas, maybe something happened on October 7th, 2023. Disagreeing very strongly with Israel's tactics against Hamas and Hezbollah are one thing but denying that Israel is just doing this for the jollies of it is delusional.
"
Thanks. I knew statistically that people like this had to exist but they generally keep quiet about it.
On “Why a Trump Loss is Best for Conservatives”
Trump made some pretty speeches about protecting social security and Medicare in the 2016 Republican primaries. He has administrated as a very orthodox Republican though.
"
Trumpism is conservatism now but that needs to change. There will always be many people with "don't rock the boat" political instincts. "Don't rock the boat" can be channeled in a good way like "don't mess things up" or "don't make a bad situation worse" or it can be harnessed in a bad way like what the Radical Right does.
"
The Pro-Palestinian faction in American politics messed up big time by being unable to agree to a few simple rules to speak at the DNC. They explicit stated they want to spoil the good mood. Sympathy for the Palestinians in the Democratic Party has been highest now than ever but I don't think the Democratic Party likes the Pro-Palestinian faction in American politics that much because they are annoying and refuse to play the game.
On “Missouri Conducts Controversial Execution of Marcellus Williams”
Everybody relevant was screaming not kill this man but the current governor decided to restart the clock towards death.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/23/2024”
It's both old a new. The enemies of liberalism to the Right and the Left always saw liberals as effete and decadent even after armies from liberal nations keep beating their rears in modern war. There are some differences between now and then though that aren't necessarily helpful to liberalism. I think Jaybird is on to something when he says that a lot of what motivates liberals can look like it is driven by what is fashionable at the moment just as much as genuine concern. Free Tibet came and went as the cause of the day.
I also don't think that liberalism coded exactly as feminine as it does now. The Confederates might have thought they were more gallant than the Northerners but being a rude farmer or factory worker was an essentially masculine thing. These days there are rituals in liberalism that come directly from educated upper middle class codes of behavior with some hippiness added. The working classes always tended to find upper middle class codes of behavior hypocritical internationally, they want to be direct rather than indirect and don't find anything wrong with rude t-shirts. Tying liberalism to upper middle class behavior might be a bit of a mistake.
"
Still not seeing it. I assume it exists. The way that Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian people outside of the area see this conflict are just too different to have a useful conversation. Even on the Hezbollah attacks, many of the Pro-Palestinian people just seem to assume that Israel should soak things up because reasons even though everybody admits that Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel. If this is how outsiders see each other in the conflict than the hatred of the participants might be too much.
From what I can tell, the Pro-Palestinian side has just decided that Israel is an irritant to be destroyed. People on the Right, Left, and other places have no use for Jews in their cosmology. This is the age of big block groups, men vs. women, white vs. off color, cis vs. trans, and Jews are just too small and peculiar to fit into any group. They just want us to go away.
"
I am not getting anything.
"
This relates to something that bothers me. It has been trivial easy to find a diversity of Jewish opinions on the Palestinians from smash them all to death to Jews willing to abandon half the world's Jewish population in favor of the Palestinians and everything in-between. It has been harder for me to find a diversity of opinions on the Pro-Palestinian side. There just doesn't seem to be the Pro-Palestinian equivalent of "we need to find a way to live in peace with Israel" or "we need to understand where the Jews are coming from." It all just seems like "Israel is a bad settler-colonial state that is a blot upon al of Islam." I don't know if this is just because Jews have fewer issues airing our dirty laundry and disagreements publicly and there is a big conversation hiding behind closed doors that I'm unaware of or if that on the Pro-Palestinian side hostility to Israel as a concept is just a lot greater than hostility to Palestine on the Pro-Israel side. It doesn't make me optimistic about the possibility of peace. The Pro-Palestinian side just seems so utterly demanding and unyielding.
"
For once, a serious answer. Yes, I think that a lot of this does come from the real or perceived perception that a lot of bougie liberal morality is based on what is fashionable rather than something more constant. I disagree with this to a large extent because I can see at least some consistent patterns like the weaker party or the most disadvantaged party is always perceived to be in the right even if that changes or that certain groups are seen as having a truer and special way of being compared to the Western set.
"
One of the thoughts that have been kicking around in my headspace is whether one of the problems that liberalism is facing globally that it comes across as too namby-pamby for a lot or even most people. A lot of the norms of contemporary liberalism come from the dulcet tone culture of the educated middle classes. Globally, the working and lower middle classes always considered the dulcet tone culture of the educated middle classes to be at least kind of ridiculous if not outright fake. The allyship rituals like reciting your preferred pronouns probably comes across as eye-rolling at best to many people but the educated middle classes believes in their culture and doesn't quite get this.
"
A key question for Israeli Jews and the vast majority of Diaspora Jews is what are we going to be allowed to keep. Because a lot of us see Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian clerical regime, too many Muslims, and their Western fans are basically saying "the Jews will be allowed to keep nothing." It doesn't seem like they are just calling to leave Gaza and the West Bank but for the complete dismantling of Israel. Every school, business, and institution Jews built needs to go and the Jews need to go as well in the green line. Tel Aviv is a "Palestinian" beach city. If this is the only just solution to tens or hundreds of millions of people worldwide than I don't see why Jews need to go along with this. We already had decades, centuries, and thousands of years of Jewish work destroyed by the you know who, Communists, Arab nationalists, and Islamists in living memory. Now tens or hundreds of millions of people world wide are calling for the complete destruction of even more Jewish work. Why should we go along with this in the name of abstract principle?
The behavior of the International Caring Community has really angered me during this crisis. There is just a context less air of white saviorism, of "don't worry our precious aboriginal Palestinians, we the International Caring Community will save you from the icky Jews." There is a big book given to the Jews or things to do and the requirements placed on Palestinians or Muslims is a number close to zero. Why doesn't the International Caring Community put pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah to cool it and stop firing rockets into Israel? At least call them out.
"
He was out and about celebrating something somewhere.
"
There is just a big difference between the Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian propaganda that I see and it doesn't give me tremendous hope for a peaceful resolution of the I/P conflict. This might be because I am very sympathetic to Israel but pro-Israel propaganda seems to be a lot more positive than Pro-Palestinian conflict. It is about the beauty of Greenline Israel, the accomplishments of Israel/Jews, and look at our hot IDF women soldiers. Pro-Palestinian propaganda is a lot more negative. I've seen several posts trying to pass Tel Aviv as a "Palestinian city" or archeological sites in Israel proper as "Palestinian." I get no sense that they can live with Israel or Jews in anyway and that justice means "No Israel, No Jews" period.
People keep assuring me that not all the Palestinians or Pro-Palestinian people are like this but I have yet to see any evidence of it. What I see from nearly all of them is that true justice requires the total destruction of all the work done by the Jews. I don't like it. They seem unbending and unyielding on even the most minor point whether they be Palestinian, Muslim, or Western Leftist. I don't see any issue why the entire burden of deescalation and retreat falls on the Jews besides that our enemies are raising their fists in blood thirsty defiance forever.
"
What are you trying to do? Do you have any side that you are on besides provocation?
"
Res ipsa loquitur:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Trump-240923.jpg
"
I am posting the Wikipedia article because it is the most neutral source I can find on this. There has been apparently been an international out cry over a death sentence given to a young Iranian Jewish man for murdering a young Iranian Muslim man. The people arguing for the young Jewish man have argued he has acted in self-defense and that Iran's justice system is selecting him for death because he is a Jew who killed a Muslim:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvin_Ghahremani
"
During the pandemic, I came to realization that debates on personal freedom always seem to reduce to, "how free should people be to make bad decisions." Obviously losing it all on sports gambling is making a very bad decision. I don't know any open gambling or other addicts but it could be that people I know are secret addicts. There are arguments that all sorts of bad decisions should be allowed in the name of liberty and freedom or because not allowing them is worse and these arguments aren't necessarily wrong. There are also strong and colorable arguments for severe regulation of humanity in the name of better or good society.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/legal-sports-gambling-was-mistake/679925/
"
The Further Left has seemed positively ghoulish to me for the entirety of the Israel-Hamas War. On the one hand, at least some of them try to reach out to Diaspora Jews on how bad Israel's treatment of the Palestinians are because of our history. On the other hand, they also basically demand that Diaspora Jews completely abandon Israeli Jews to their deaths and don't realize how this comes across to Diaspora Jews even when you tell them this in plain English and at an elaborate level.
"
As a commentator on the other blog pointed out, many people on the Further Left, these are the types that use the word settler-colonial regarding Zionism and Israel, project their own guilt about the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand onto Israel. Jews become the hyper-white settler-colonialist while the Palestinians are the too true Marxist Feminist indigenous people of color. That reality is more complicated does not matter. Destroy Israel, and all indigenous people will be avenged.
"
What were you doing on October 8th, 2023?
"
I posted this on the other blog but there are only 15 million Jews in the world. 7.2 million of them live in Israel. I really don't understand why the Western Pro-Palestinian movement believes that ordering all the Diaspora Jews to totally abandon every Israeli Jew to their fate, especially when the Holocaust happened, makes sense. Do they really think that the world's 15 million Jews are going to want 7.2 million other Jews to death? There is a big assumption that Pan-Jewish feelings aren't that real unlike other Pan-(Insert Identity Group feelings). When it turns out that only a literal handful of Jews are willing to abandon Israeli Jews to their fate and most Diaspora Jews don't like loyalty tests, Pro-Palestinian Westerners are floored. Like they can't comprehend it.
I'm also tired of the Pro-Palestinian Westerners really overlooking what real actual Palestinians are saying and substituting it for something more ideologically reliable in their headspace. They aren't doing the Palestinians any favors by doing this. On the other blog, a poster suggested that a lot of them are projecting their own guilt towards colonialism onto Jews and want Israel to be sacrificed as revenge for all indigenous suffering. Many of them aren't really that sympathetic towards the Jews as a group, so that is icing on the case.
"
And trying to make him relevant again.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.